over heard on the radio today as i wondered around the house.

7% of atheists believe that Jesus was the son of God.

man who did survey: “yes, we where a bit surprised by this one.”

I think we just had an earth tremor…. or a very heavy cat jumping up and down….

the whole house just wobbled… (12:58am and yes I am awake… don’t ask!) News 24 Don’t know yet…

01:04 update: BBC Radio says its all over Northwest, Midlands and Chelmsford… quite a specific reference there…

01:07 BBC News 24…. still no news… news website…. tremor is west midland…

it didn’t half wobble you know. it must have been at least a 0.4 on the richter scale (which suggests it will be a 4!). Still real people use the moment magnitude scale

01:15 Don’t know why the call it news24? the newsreader is just on a loop I’m sure… although at the last news headlines she looked at bit flusterd….. false alarm she’s talking about the euro…

the real time monitring of earthquakes doesn’t have it on it’s map yet…

01:19 BBC24 know!!! as far north as Darlington…who’d of thought? Darlington someone had a phone…oh and some place called London as well.

01:22 The BBC website has moved it “Reports of tremor felt across central and southern England”

01:28: The Radio said it was 13 miles south of Hull .. that’s Grimsby not very southern really. as we all know the south starts at Crewe.

01:32 OK the Beeb have said it’s 4.7 I’m going back to bed before any aftershocks. shake me from my desk….

Oh and I’ve just found the nerdy information about the wobbly thing you can even see the field it was in (+/- 4 miles!)

01:48 I was going to bed until Jemma Harrison, 22, in Bury, Greater Manchester, said:

“It was really bad. I was fast asleep and woke up and the room was shaking and there was a loud bang and alarms were going off.”

Sorry I don’t quite believe you Jemma. yes you where 30 miles closer than me. but really does this mean the town of Bury is now a buzz with people all wondering around in a daze?

Natasha Cavey, in Tipton in the West Midlands, said:

“All my cupboard doors flew open and the whole house shook, it was unreal. I can’t believe it.”

I paid good money for B&Q to fit those doors and they are so not level!

the BBC are collecting these ’stories’

02:40 the British Geological Survey reckon it was 5.1 which makes it biggest since 1990, I’m not sure who gets the final shout on how big it was because the Americans are still saying 4.7. It is quite a big descrepency. 5.1 is about 2.9 times more powerful than 4.7 the scale is all logarithmic you see.

02:57: you could just spend all night (like me) reading different people say different things. The Register are at bit snobby about this all. and reckon the European stuff is better. currently we still have earth quake of the day yesterday had a 7.1 in Indonesia.

07:40 : The BBC really need to stop making it obvious they have a southern bias. it was felt south in London and far north in Huddersfield; Huddersfield is only about 20-25miles north of where it happened.

All these things this weekend haven’t stopped me reading papers you know…

The Guardian I can now just point you to my clippings

but still I’m going to mention, Home schooler’s flee from Germany which is amazing if not for the fact that Laws set-up by Hitler are still being used to oppress people. and it’s nice to see the government still being advised by big business on things they don’t know about… despite being told it was silly and practically impossible they want ISPs to workout how to block illegal downloads.

The Times today had a few nice stories. Richard Hammond is still not really fixed, he has mind issues and can’t park cars that well. Most people arn’t too keen on a state wide DNA Database, You’ll have to guess where I stand on that one. 5 Million adults have never been north of the watford gap, and one 1 in 5 from the south have been to Liverpool, and finnaly ‘we’ apparently want to get rid of public toilets and pay pubs to let us use theirs instead, while we are there lets get shop security guards to provide policing for inner cities…

and I know it’s the New York Times and we don’t live there… but just look what happens if you go all DNA crazy… People don’t take tests to find things out, incase it effects there health insurance or the chance of getting a job ; nice.

Nice to see over reaction is alive and well. Some one looses some CDs in the post. and people start making it so laptops only work at one desk.

“A programme available on licence for ?10 a month links to a control centre, which takes action if a laptop is used outside designated areas such as a government office or even a specific employee’s desk.”

Guardian, feb 20th

Look, this is really just for me - so I’ve got one place to go through all the things i might read today (ish).

Guardian [Sat Feb 16th]

Family Section

• Dad, I’m going to thrash you There comes a time in every parent’s life when their children start to outwit, outdo and outclass them. Damnation, says father-of-three Tim Dowling

Weekend Magazine

• There are an infinite number of ways in which I would not like to die
• One million tiny plays about Britain
• American psyche
• This column will change your life
• Dork Talk

Money

• Pop goes the property boom New-build flats sold four years ago at ?180,000 are now fetching just ?130,000. Miles Brignall reports from Manchester, on the frontline of the housing slowdown
• My worst job Stuart Maconie found neither office life nor moustaches suited him

Work

• Space invaders Hotdesking is on the rise in companies who offer flexible working. But could sharing your desk stop you getting the job done, asks Ian Wylie

The Guide

• The hard sell Anti-piracy
• Charlie Brooker’s screen burn

The Times [Sat 16th Feb]

• Once you start, where does the stampede of moralism stop?
• Barack Obama’s secret weapon plots a new course for election victory
• Permission to smoke? That?ll be ?10
• All right class, get out your Times atlases . . . Is it part of a newspaper’s job to educate?
• Dyslexia: spelling it out Dyslexia is at least recognised, even if parents abuse the system

and just some stories from the torygraph and the independent

• Why Tesco is a key part of our freedoms
• Martin Keown: ‘I rang my wife after the game. She’s usually very supportive, but she said: “I think you’ve gone and done it now…”‘

and the biggest and longest counting procedure in the world (the us elections) has got me reading the New York Times, which is quite cool. It’s all a bit to much like the west wing to be true.

• Democrats Look for Way to Avoid Convention Rift
• Unofficial Tallies in City Understated Obama Vote
• Suit Could Shed Light on Actions of Patriots
• and quite an amusing, gosh those British and their sports… set of photos.

I’ve gone a bit newspaper silly today. loads and loads of things, most of which sound interesting but I may not read. just follow the link at the end if you want to see the full list. or ignore this is you don’t want to be bored with a list of newspaper articles.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not even a proper election yet, and it’s in another country, but I do like a good night of counting.

Just in-case you live under a rock, It’s Super Tuesday in America, that’s a day when loads of people go decide who they want to be in an election in November. It turns out they must have huge party membership over there because of how this is just the parties voting for who they want.

I have been searching the Internet and i can’t find a good swing-o-meter or any American who looks like Peter Snow. but the New York Times has a fancy map which is quite cool. due to the random complexity of this thing i don’t think you can tell who’s winning at any one point. but that makes it all the more fun.