Two things I picked up in The Week today: Liverpool City Council is formally considering dropping the word "obesity" from its health campaign, as it might be offensive to overweight people. Now is that isn’t political correctness gone mad, I don’t know what is! Surely "obese" is the actual medical term for being fat, so aren’t these (hypothetical) people just offended by the fact they’re… well, obese?

Still, this comment was completely outclassed by the quote from one of the tabloids: a man on a Qantas flight threatened to bring down the plane by mindpower. Luckily, the airline staff was alert and overpowered the poor sod, who ended up with hands and legs cuffed for the rest of the flight (one does wonder whether he may have been more comfortable than the rest of the passengers).
The thing that puzzled me is this: if the man was truly trying to bring the plane down by mindpower, what’s the use of handcuffing him? I’m struggling to avoid horrible puns-on-words here; even without them, surely he wouldn’t need his hands to exercise his mind? Then again – his mind doesn’t seem in the best of states, so who knows what support it might’ve needed.

Nothing like a good chuckle on a Monday morning train, eh?

Both our Ladies Is and IIs made it into the Cambridgeshire cup finals for their respectively leagues this year. As these finals are conveniently played on one day and in one place, a couple of us decided to trundle off to St. Ives and support that part of the club that get close to silverware, at least. Even if it involved getting up at 8.30 on a Saturday morning, it was well worth it!

Gratifyingly, both teams played really well and both won, the IIs 3-1 (against St. Neots) and the Is 2-0 against that other Cambridge club, Nomads. In all fairness, the IIs probably could’ve won even more impressively, but they slowed down a bit in the second half – although, credit where it’s due, Saints did step their game up quite a bit (if, gladly, not enough).
The Is’ game was a bit closer and seemed to go Nomads’ way for a while. How exactly the girls managed to turn it around, I’m not sure; but fair play to them: they scored two cracking goals and defended magnificently, so certainly deserved to win!

I remember the finals’ day two years ago, when IIs were playing as well. That time, it was freezing; especially those of us that had donned our pretty, but useless, training tops were struggling a bit. Today, in contrast, the weather was absolutely smashing: bright blue sky, sunny and not a volcanic cloud in sight. Unsurprisingly, the second game saw us spectators (and quite a few of the IIs’ squad) hit the beers and enjoy the sun. Sitting in the sun, with a beer, cheering on 25-odd pretty girls and a celebratory BBQ in the evening to boot: what could be better than this?

As I’m sure everyone knows by now, one of Iceland’s volcanoes exploded on Wednesday night. This caused the UK (and big chunks of the European mainland) to close their airports; apparently, the cloud of volcanic ash can bring down planes and cannot be spotted on radar. You know, I think the regulators got it right this time.
It did cause some merriment, though; especially, when you pop into the Tube and catch only half an announcement (after all, as some people know to their detriment, I’m hardly famed for my attention to the spoken word…), saying that "Due to a volcanic eruption…". Let’s be honest, that’s hardly the kind of remark you’d expect the London underground to make, do you?

It got better, though. On my way back home, I noticed that the London Evening Standard predicted that the ash could would create beautiful, violet sunset for us all. Well-known as I am for my aesthetic sense (and intimate knowledge of the word violet, for that matter), I figured I’d have a look-out for this while on the train. Turns out, I’m not the only one. Imagine my surprise when the – rather yobby – chap to my left leans forward all of a sudden, peers past me into aforementioned sunset and declares that he is wondering whether this pretty sky is actually due to the volcanic ash or not. I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but this dude looked like he’d struggle to read the cover, let alone spell the word "book"; so I really didn’t expect him to either care about the sunset or carry a half-decent conversation about it.
I might add that I’ve turned British enough that I was shocked someone actually dared to talk to me on a train, yet replied politely and rather non-committally to it…

Lovely post-script to this: at a curry with my teammates, someone mentioned that a plane did indeed almost crash due to volcanic ash (albeit about 15 years ago). Apparently, the captain’s message to his passengers went something like this: "I’m afraid we’re experiencing some difficulties, as we have lost power to all motors. I hope you won’t panic too much; we’re doing our best not to crash in the ocean". Anybody want to take a bet the good man was English? If he wasn’t, I vote he is made a honorary one: you don’t get much stiffer an upper lip that this!

I went to Brighton on Sunday, to take part in an FP7 dissemination event. The project, CarboSorb, was set up by one of our key academic contacts (albeit without much of our help, I think). When I visited the University of Brighton a few months ago, he invited me to come along to the event and give a talk on collaborative resarch projects. Who would I be to refuse that…

It was surprisingly small scale. In total, there were only 25-odd people there, half of which was part of the consortium (or Brighton students wandering in for a free lunch); most of the rest were the other invited speakers. I don’t want to knock the event and its organisation, but it didn’t really feel as dissemination, considering most people there were working on it already. Then again, it can’t be easy to get people outside the "community" (apologies to all Private Eye readers out there, frowning at the use of the word) interested in a project that is still very much in its infancy. I really shouldn’t really knock it, until we’ve run one of our own (which we may well do in the somewhat near future)…

Anyway, it was good fun, too! Rather quickly, I reverted to academic-conference mode (i.e. having fun and drinking more than I should, really) instead of networking mode (still drinking, but throwing business cards around as well). It’ll come as no surprise to those readers that actually know me that during dinner, I was accused of having ridiculous amounts of energy (including nicking it from the Italian dude sitting to my left)… And in the pub later, I got into a nice and heated political discussion . To my utmost surprise, that was with a real-life LibDem activist (which, to be honest, I wasn’t even sure really existed). Surely it won’t come as any surprise either that I managed to shock the poor man, by outflanking him on the democratic side…

So, all in all: while I’m not completely sure how useful it was beyond showing support for Andy’s FP7 project, it was definitely enjoyable. And sometimes, that’s just all you’re asking for. Throw in a Sunday afternoon on Brighton beach and a few book-and-beer moments and I was perfectly content!

Our friend Mike invited us to a Kiwi film night yesterday, to sample the best of New-Zealand film making. After an impressive load of dithering, we finally settled on two films to watch: the rom-com Eagle vs Shark and horror classic Black Sheep.

They were both pretty good! Eagle vs Shark was quite straightforward: shy girl tries to win geek as boyfriend, while he trains for a revenge mission on a school-time bully. Bit of a shame that the bully is now disabled and that the protagonist geek doesn’t actually know anything about fighting outside a computer game. Add in a pretty disfunctional family (who take to the girl quite well) and laughs are more or less guaranteed. It’s more comedy than romance (and at time just simply sad): especially challenging the bully had us all pissing ourselves laughing.

But this was completely topped by Black Sheep, which is absolutely hilarious. A reject of a genetic modification program on a sheep station is set free and turns into a weresheep, attacking and turning people into some Kiwi-version of the Minotaur. Fighting them is the youngest son of the station (with a phobia for sheep) and a hippy chick. It’s all very much like Shaun of the Dead, but with Kiwi accents and sheep as the evil buggers; unsurprisingly, it packs quite a few jokes about the "special bond" between a New Zealander and his sheep…

The best thing about it, though, had nothing to do with the film itself. Rather, it was the shocking news that Yuandi – wuss that he is – refused to watch it, as he didn’t want to have nightmares for weeks. How scary can a film about weresheep be? I mean, on a scale of 1 to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, this one failed to even register! Yuandi’ll never live this one down…

G2 had an interesting article yesterday, where they followed the campaign of Nabeel Yasin, an Iraqi poet and politician. Yasin is heading the only party in the recent Iraqi election that is not linked to any religion; rather, he’s putting all his energy into properly reforming Iraq’s politics. Unfortunately, the elections were less than kind to him, all his efforts notwithstanding; amidst allegations of vote-rigging (depressingly familiar and almost expected), Yasin’s Renew Iraq party got only a handful of votes. Whether he was unfairly treated by the Electoral Commission seems still unclear…

But that’s not really what I picked up on. In a throwaway comment, Yasin mentioned taking a bus to one of his supporters in Baghdad, adding "in Baghdad, the last person on the bus collects up the fares and hands them to the bus driver". How lovely is that? It doesn’t make any difference in the grand scheme of things, but I like it anyway. Wouldn’t it be great if we’d introduce that kind of system here as well? After all, it’s only fair if we take over some cool bit of Iraq’s culture, isn’t it?

OK, so I promised myself I’d refrain from commenting on the (British) election, but this one’s just too beautiful. With the campaign hotting up, Brown and Cameron tussling over whether the National Insurance rise should be scrapped and the Tories launching their plans for a civic service for school-leavers (which, to my immense chagrin, I actually think is a pretty good idea), what’s the poop on good ol’ John Prescott? Apparently, bookies have dropped the odds on him; specifically, on him thumping someone during the campaign. It’s good to know that’s what keeps the public occupied, isn’t it?

Touch‘s started again . Yesterday was just a few friendly warm-up games, but even that was good fun! I would never profess to be any real good at the sport (especially considering that most other people in the team have extensive experience playing either normal or touch rugby), but I felt my play yesterday was not as disastrous as it could’ve been. So bring on the real matches, from next week onwards!

(For those of you who are too lazy to follow a link, tough rugby is a more subtle version of Rugby League, where tackles are made by touching the opposition player.
Oh bollocks – now I need to explain the difference between League and Union, don’t I? Very briefly: in League, after a tackle is made, the ball is rolled back and a new play is started; concede 6 tackles without scoring and the ball is turned over to the opposition. Union, on the other hand, is all about winning the ball after the tackle, hence the piling of forwards on top of each other.)

You know what really annoys me? OK, quite a few things. But this one is – currently, at least – top: annoying drivers who cannot be bothered to keep cyclists in mind. Obviously, this includes dimwits who turn left (right for those readers on the continent) without looking over their shoulder and of course the perennial favourite of smacking you off your bike while opening a door, exclaiming that "Oh, I didn’t see you" (which makes it just that little bit better: at least if you’re really unlucky, he’ll go down for manslaughter instead of murder).

Right, so it’s neither of those. This one’s actually a lot less harmful, but a lot more annoying as it’s oh so avoidable. It’s bloody annoying drivers, who insist on parking at the train station in such a way as to rob us cyclists of a spot. Let me draw you a little picture (and don’t comment on my Paint-skills!):

So, what with the bike shed always being full beyond its widest dreams (yet another gripe!), yours truly and a few likeminded individuals have latched onto this unused area just next to hit – cunningly marked by the big red X in the highly sophisticated diagram. One might notice that his area is well and truly fenced in; in fact, the only way to get your bike in (other than lifting it over the railings, which a strapping young lad can do, but not in his work togs), is through the tiny little gap at the back. Which, by some rare accident of planning, is exactly the width of a set of pedals.

Anyway, the more discerning of my faithful readers will have noticed there’s a parking bay next to our little sweetspot. Luckily, this being a carpark that is rarely full, there’s no real need to put your car in this bay. Not least since parking in it does a beautiful job of blocking in an average of five bikes. And impressively, most drivers seem to recognise this, leaving the slot free (or maybe that’s because the taxi-file blocks it half the time).

Then why, oh why do two people not get this? This morning, while I’m locking up my bike (yes, on the big red cross), this silly woman insists on parking her butt-ugly Alfa Romeo in the parking bay. Not because the car park was full (it was at least half empty), but simply because she can’t be arsed to walk the extra 50 yards from the next parking bay to the ticketing machine. And if she’d bothered to look, at least she could’ve left some room ’round the back of the car for bikes to pass (after all, we’re not that big); but no – madam had to park the thing all the way against the wall (incidentally crushing my backpack, but I’ll overlook that one). Annoying git! It shows how much this rankles that almost 7 (!) hours later, steam is still coming out of my ears on this one…

Picked up in The Week today: apparently, London Zoo has this really cool new development, where it mimicks a tropical forest in one big place, showing all the creatures that live there without cages, bars and so on. It all sounds pretty cool. But what a shame their thunder was well and truly stolen by the (lesser known, I grant you) Burgers’ Zoo in Arnhem, which has had such a place since 1988. I know the UK sometimes lags behind other countries for a few years, but two decades is really pushing things, isn’t it?