20.9.08

The Ordinary Rose Speaks

Stuart Rose (bogus Chairman of M&S) has opened his empty mouth again. Rose is reported as saying that the government was too slow to react to recent financial market woes.

Gee Rosie, teach me your insights. Nothing to do with 20: 20 hindsight then!

Clot!

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

19.9.08

Google's Chrome Browser

I downloaded and started using google’s Chrome web browser because I was sick to death of seeing Internet Explorer using as much as 100 megabytes of memory to bring me what often looked like the simplest of html pages. 

At first Chrome used up a lot less memory. Then I noticed yesterday that it was using THREE instances of memory ... don’t know how to say that really. All added up to about 70 – 80 Mb of RAM. 

I have just looked again and today Chrome is currently nestling in 105 Mb of RAM plus  25Mb of RAM and 43 Mb of RAM ... worse than IE, I can hardly believe it. They really are all the same these people. What is all that nonsense about Chrome being an new operating system within a browser and being more efficient and the rest of it? Bullspoo that's what! 

DW

18.9.08

Random Musings

Well, not so random really as regular readers to this august Blog will recognise the themes in what I am about to write. 

Obesity 

You might have been watching the Olympics and Paralympics on your television over the last month or so. In many of the programmes you will have seen you can’t help failing to have noticed how slim, indeed petite, many Chinese women and men are. It is a source of major embarrassment to go to somewhere like Beijing, then, to see representatives of your own country barrelling out of their hotel rooms into the streets, restaurants and sights of their host country. 

Who is it who has decided that it is becoming more acceptable and therefore normal for people to become and stay obese. Middle aged people become overweight and always have. Some more than others of course; but I am really concerned by this scenario: 

As I left Beijing I went to the airport in a mini bus with an English family of father, mother and two children: 

  • ·         Father around 6 feet tall and obese
  • ·         Mother around 5 feet 7 inches tall and obese
  • ·         Daughter as tall as her mother and around 22 – 24 years of age and obese
  • ·         Son as tall as his mother and around 17 – 18 years old and significantly overweight 

These people are unhealthy by dint of being overweight. At the moment they could tell me that they have made the choice to be obese and it is none of my business. Well, in a few years’ time when the father starts to get short of breath and maybe becomes one of the many on incapacity benefits and has to visit the hospital more and more for more and more treatment, then it ceases to be a personal matter and becomes a matter for society. The same with the mother. Even worse for their children as I assume that they have become obese or overweight many years before their parents. Hence the children will become a burden on the State a decade or even more before their parents will. 

This is a shocking state of affairs and these people need to be educated out of their Burger bars and their outsize portions in other equally unhealthy restaurants. 

The sad news is that it was apparent in Beijing that as China is becoming richer the Chinese are starting to suffer from Western dietary and weight problems. A few children and a few adults are outsize now. I can’t estimate what proportion of Chinese people are obese now but the signs are there. McDonalds is there as is KFC and all of the other monstrous fast food outlets that parade as restaurants. 

Authenticity … not 

On the plane home from Beijing I sat through the latest Indiana Jones film: like the rest, wham bam; heaps of incredible action; the Russkies are still managing to be the enemy … The film is set in the 40s or 50s, not sure although I think they did tell us the date and they obviously went to great lengths to make the buildings, the clothes and the cars all appropriate for the period. Then they did their usual thing with the language. Whilst the majority of things we say now are the same as the things we said in the 1940s and 1950s, their script writers and editors fail to appreciate that in those days even the Americans didn’t say things like this, in one sentence: 

It’s about money, it’s about fame, it’s about archaeology … 

If you’re going to go to such lengths to get the setting right, don’t forget the language too. 

Pink Floyd 

You might have seen that Richard Wright of Pink Floyd has just died: 65 years old and died of cancer. Again on the plane I took the chance to take a look at the Pink Floyd compilation they have on their ICE system (spot the airline!!) and found: 

  • ·        Arnold Layne
  • ·        See Emily Play
  • ·        Bike
  • ·        Among others

 Loads of very fond memories came flooding back as I listened to them again … man! Ave atqe vale Richard! 

Diana Dors 

I think I have ranted about Diana Dors before. Dors was an overweight bleach blonde woman who was famous in the 1950s and 1960s in the UK. I couldn’t understand her fame then and I can’t understand it now. I watched a bit of her on the Tommy Cooper show on the ICE system. She tried to tell a joke: it fell flat. Then she tried to sing a song: she warbled. Tell me the secret and let me become a celebrity like that. 

Wow! 

I met a quiet and unassuming American on the Great Wall of China! He was in my tour party and we chatted a bit. He is an animator from Hollywood and works on projects for ESPN, Fox, ABC and a few of the other big television stations in the States. We talked about lots of things and he kept saying Wow! At first I thought he thought I was saying interesting and profound things. Then I heard him chatting to other people and he said wow to lots of things they were saying too! 

No offence, just his way of speaking I think. 

DW

16.9.08

She was Mobbed!

After her SILVER medal winning perfomance in Beijing last night daughter Fran came out to see her mam and me and she was beseiged by people wanting to have their photos taken with her.

Fran was a bit overwhelmed but copes well with these things.

These medals go in the vault at the bank now along with the others.

DW.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Himalayas

Flew over the Himalayas this morning: they were bathed in unbroken and glorious sunshine most of the time. I've flown over them before but some things are just awe inspiring. They are so rich in features as well as beauty. DW Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device