Front garden update – it’s doing well!

Well I posted earlier this summer about us ripping the tired old overgrown front garden out, and digging in some new soil, and planting  a few new plants (couple of roses for the long term).

Well I’ve been out watering most days in this hot summer we’ve had, and things are going really well.  The odd plant has fallen by the wayside, but most have flourished, and we’ve just added a few new delicate flowers that were grown from seed in my mini greenhouse!   You can see the original image from May HERE (or scroll down a bit!)… and compare that to the images below!

Rage against the X-factor

UPDATE: 21st December 2009 – WELL DONE EVERYONE (who took part in the facebook group and bought the single) – RAGE WON THE XMAS NO. 1 SPOT   what an amazing acheivement, it warms my heart to know that there is still some rebellion in music, after years of bland and fake music in the charts.

I’ve seen a great movement on the social networking site Facebook.  In a reaction to the fake and ‘evil’ X-Factor program, a group has grown up promoting an idea – the idea is to buy a Rage against the machine track from 13th-19th December (2009) to try and take the coverted Christmas no.1 spot from whatever cover the eventual winner of X-Factor will churn out.  The track can be downloaded from iTunes etc for it to count towards the Brtish charts (see the link below for full list of download locations). 

Even Santa knows xfactor is evil

X-Factor makes me feel queasy – people bang on about how good or talented some of the people are – but to me it misses the point.. anyone who prostitutes themselves to a contract with Simon Cowell are selling their souls – and the one thing about great music, it has soul… and if they are so fecking good, go out there and play the pubs, do the graft, earn the respect of your peers, and do it the proper way.  If you can’t make it, you haven’t got it – and can only sell a few records because of the huge publicity machine behind you.

So good on the facebook group, and here’s to RAGE AGAINST X-Factor – you can take a look here; http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2228594104 and as they say, don’t by the track ( ‘KILLING IN THE NAME’  by Rage against the machine) until 13th Dec, else it won’t have the same effect.

YouTube publicity video; Rage against X-Factor

UPDATE: it’s past the 13th Dec, and you can now start buying the track…  Amazon is OK – there was some worry as they are only 29pence, but it’s ok, they have confirmed their tracks at 29p do count (they loss lead with them, and do pay the 40p a track required), also Play.com, iTunes, Tescos etc all ok. 

badscience.net

I thought i’d take a minute to recommend a website (http://www.badscience.net/) and book “Bad science“, all written by a top bloke Ben Goldacre – a scientist who works for the NHS here in the UK.

The book (and probably the website) help show you how the world is full of examples of ‘bad science’ – how the media (and others) mis-quote scientifc studies, or just make it up for a story.

He doesn’t try and tell you what to think – he tries to show you to think for yourself, and question everything (as so much you think is ‘fact’ is in fact ‘fiction’ – or at least a mis-interpretation of fact).

For example – you probably think that taking vitamin C suppliments helps you stop getting colds – nope, there’s absolutely no evidence that is the case (taking HIGH doses of vit C can help young children fight off colds if they already have them).  Fish oil (omega 3) suppliments have been shown to make children behave better and do better at exams?  NOPE – there is no evidence for that at all – the ‘study’ which was done in the UK under lots of publicity actually ended up with the children doing WORSE than the year before the study…

Bad Science

New Terry Pratchett book!

Unseen Academicals - new Terry Pratchett cover

I’m a huge fan of Terry Pratchett, have been since I discovered his Discworld books many many years ago.

Great news is, he’s releasing a new book in a few months – and you can pre-order it on Amazon now (using my link to donate a few pennies without costing you anything!).

Unseen Academicals

It looks like it’s the story of the Wizards of the Discworld playing football – and I hope the librarian is in goal