Place of Stuff

Tim Minchin is well-known in the skeptical world.  An Aussie musician/singer/comedian he applies his knowledge to his music and brings forth some wonderful songs.

In his 9 minute beat poem Storm, he is able to distil a million tiring conversations and can show us all why some people get that throbbing vein in their temple when someone starts to hold forth in a social gathering.  Watch and listen to the poem, please.

This poem is being turned into an animated film and will be available later this year.  Storm the movie looks to be a great short film.  If you’d rather, follow it on Twitter and Facebook.

Enjoy.

Image via Wikipedia

The full title should be “The Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee on Homeopathy” but I think that would make the URL unreadable.  The English Parliament (UK Parliament?) has many Select Committees covering all aspects of governmental influence.  The Committees are drawn from all parties and their role is to examine evidence and take expert testimony.  They also take great pleasure in ripping apart MPs, civil servants and suppliers to the government.  Where normal parliamentary business appears to be stage managed and operating off some bizarre codewords and actions, Select Committees are very plain speaking.  Hansard, which publishes parliamentary records, has a list of Select Committee meetings and the records.  Luckily for us, they also provide video records of the meetings.

This Science and Technology Committee meeting was called to hear evidence and submissions on 3 subjects:

• Government policy on licensing of homeopathic products
• Government policy on the funding of homeopathy through the NHS
• the evidence base on homeopathic products and services

Continue reading ‘Parliamentary Committee on Homeopathy’ »

Did it, had a fantastic time and am now fully married.  Thanks to all of you who wished us well, it was a great ceremony and Helen looked beautiful.  Pictures are after the jump and all can be clicked for biggererness: Continue reading ‘Left For Wed’ »

Shutting down for the night.  Tomorrow is the big day…..

Those of you who can see me on Facebook will be aware that I changed my status some time ago to “engaged”.  I have gone from saying “no way, not ever” to “let’s set a date”.  I am nothing, if not inconsistent.  So yeah, I’m getting married.

Because we are both practical people (and a variety of other reasons) this is going to be an extremely quick and simple wedding.  We have booked a local registrar’s office for next May, there will be space for us and 4 guests and the whole thing takes minutes apparently.  For anyone reading this and looking to get married and not wanting to go through the hassle of the full ceremony and wondering who will sit where can do what I did.

It really is very simple and pretty damn low cost.  In fact, I don’t think there is a cheaper option which still ends up with you being legally married.  Obviously, this comes with a massive caveat: make sure your intended is happy doing this.  Proudly saying you have organised a quick, simple and cheap wedding when s/he would like the full monty does not mean that you will be off to a good start….  Anyway, do this:

• Find your nearest registrar’s office and phone them up
• Ask them for the availability on 2 or more preferred dates
• Explain that you just want the quick legal ceremony (this is the bare basics, you will be married but won’t have the expected floweriness.  Or flowers.)
• Answer simple questions – who are you, are you British, are you free to marry, that sort of thing.
• Pay £43.50 over the phone by debit or credit card (price correct today, it is subject to change though)
• Put the phone down and then tell the very small number of people and your witnesses where and when
• …..
• Profit!

Well, maybe not the last one, but you then have lots of money (hopefully) to have an awesome honeymoon happy in the knowledge that saying that you are on your honeymoon means people may give you free stuff!!

Speaking of honeymoons, where to go??  The Netherlands, Amsterdam to be specific, is romantic.  If you like far flung and exotic places, travel to China.  You could even try Lake Powell houseboat rentals if you want something different!  And a little bird tells me that Olongapo is very pleasant…..

We’re actually spending about 3 weeks in Florida because it’s a fantastic tourist spot and we like lots of sunshine and air conditioned hotels….

So yeah, for the followers of Ray news, I will be totally off the market in about 7 months and then I’ll have just 12 months until my first wedding anniversary.  Scary stuff and I suspect this means that I’m that bit closer to becoming an adult.

So in summary: engaged now, married next year, cheap and cheerful ‘cos that’s all we need, awesome long honeymoon/holiday.

Another quick heads up peeps.  WordPress 2.6.2 is out and you should update ASAP – especially if you

WordPress.org

allow registrations on your blog.

See the WordPress Dev Blog for details, but in short the new update fixes the SQL Column Truncation vulnerability and the weakness of mt_rand().  Apparently other PHP apps are vulnerable too – read the WP Dev Blog entry.

This version also fixes a bunch of new bugs.  I’ll be updating in the next 24 hours and would advise you to do the same.  Don’t forget to deactivate and then reactivate your plugins – and if you haven’t upgraded for a few versions, check their compatibilities.