Don’t believe everything you hear

Word Press is very helpful about letting you know when someone you might not approve is commenting – various highlighted icons and a balloon above the post with all the recent comments in it.  So I looked at one and was a bit surprised to see that ChristianBookBarn. com have ‘recommended’ my “article”  –  the previous post.   I looked at the post again and there really isn’t anything in it that would attract the attention of a seriously Christian site.  Is there?

Anyway, overhearing on the radio that tonight, Jessops (photography) has gone into administration and closed down its 187 high street shops, I began one of those chain reaction news searches.  So I learned Jessops really has gone and  that a 10 foot python hitched a ride on an aeroplane wing from Australia to Papua New Guinea but presumably regretted its attempt since it was DOA though, ironically  it held on till the landing.  This seems rather sad and you have to wonder what it was doing on the plane in the first place.

Then I learned that Oxytocin, a drug I vaguely remember having something to do with accelerating a sluggish childbirth is now being hailed as the new (but better) viagra, not only rejuvenating sexual performance for men but increasing affection, trust and cuddliness.  Sounds useful in view of the suspicious and alienated state of much of the world.

Then I found that that same world throws away half of the food that it produces – in London that amounts to 540 tonnes of food a month (I think; the article wasn’t completely explicit).  This is somewhere between tragic and outrageous but not really surprising.

And, it seems that driving to the music of Cold Play causes safer driving than, for example, hip hop as its rhythms mimic the heartbeat which, apparently is calming, not only to babies but also to drivers.  I must add that one study suggested that driving to classical music improves overall driving safety but is also associated with more erratic driving.  (?) I’m sure that sometimes I’m not an erratic driver.  Well it’s true that I drive a bit faster to a Vivaldi Allegro than to a Beethoven romance.  Indeed, when you compare, for instance Ravel’s Bolero* with Stravinski’s Rites of Spring, it would be at the very least puzzling, if there wasn’t a completely different effect.

Oh and it might snow next weekend.  (that’s now)  Well at this point, dinner was ready and I looked out at the mild, damp night and thought even if it was the Independant from whom I got all this ‘news’, I’ll need some convincing about the snow.**

Next post, in the interests of verbal (literal?  literary???) restraint, I will try and tell you anything I understood from the New Scientist which I bought last week***. (There was an article about coffee).

*I once played the viola part in a Quartet arrangement of it and I can assure you it’s deeply soothing.  Soporific even.  Stravinsky**, on the other hand was almost guaranteed to start a row among the children in the back of the car.

**Slightly amusing that spellcheck offerd Nijinsky as an alternative to Stravinsky.

***Ok ok, today it snowed for ten minutes. Any minute I expect to hear that the whole of Northumberland**** (is there still such a place?) is buried under six feet of snow.

***Sorry, I mean that I won’t tell you it now as that would make a  slightly longer post.  (Very slightly)

****I don’t think there is.  Going to look up British Counties.  Oh no!  (Or maybe Oh yes! ) There is such a place.  And so there should be.