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What is with the glowing pink planetary-shaped object that is visible from the window in the background? Do you live in a spaceship?

If so, I propose you name her "Barbarella".

Actually, I propose that whether you live on a spaceship or not.

half way through The End of Mr Y. now. liking it. Very interesting.

That's a weird one, that - the second half of the book doesn't really fit with the first half. Almost like somebody got a Lovecraft horror and a Dan Brown thriller, ripped them both in half, then sellotaped two halves together to make a new one. I enjoyed it but it just seemed a bit disjointed.

I'm currently reading The Emperor's New Mind by Penrose. Enjoying it. Picked it up because I read Douglas Hofstadter's I am a strange loop and thought it was so horrible that I needed to read the ripostes as a sort of mental two fingers up at Hofstadter. Turns out it's actually really very good, and Penrose comes across as a very nice chap too. Highly recommend it.

I wonder if the IPCC would be useful? They're not normally known for their helpfulness, but it might be worth a try.

http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/index/complaints/your_complaint_.htm

"Act in a manner that does not discredit or undermine public confidence in the police service" <- could perhaps form the nub of the complaint, refusing to do anything about a known troublespot for over a year is not really encouraging public confidence in the service

Oh come off it, you're not trying to tell me that there's a shortage of chick peas?

Chickpeas cause poison gas, not funny-voice balloon gas. You are welcome to fill your children's, and your children's children's balloons with chickpea methane instead, of course, although this will perhaps make you slightly less of a hit at their parties :(

But we can extract it from Natural Gas.

Until that supply runs out, yes.

Where exactly is the Helium going?

Into space, mainly. It's atoms are so light that it can escape Earth's gravitational pull and be lost forever :(

Thought the USA can, and they refused to supply it to the Germans, which is why the Hindenburg and others exploded, as they had to make do with Hydrogen?

Almost - the US has helium reserves in the form of natural gas in the ground - they made it cheaper to discard helium than to recycle it so lots of scientists are very worried about the impending shortage. We can't extract it from the air and it's only created as a side effect of extreme circumstances of radioactive decay over really long periods of time or through nuclear fusion inside stars.

We'd all better treasure those funny voices while we still can ;)

Every time you have a fat boy gateau or Kebeb blow-out, just drink a mug of helium, and it all averages out.

Apropos of strange gases, did you know that helium cannot presently be manufactured? That stuff that we put in our balloons to do funny speeches with is a finite resource that is running out. If anybody ever sells you a can of it then keep it safe because in a few decades we will have a Mad Max-like apocalypse scenario over helium. You heard it here first.

Bothwell, how does that account for days when you are more hydrated? If you drink more water you will be heavier but have consumed no extra calories. I thought that was why it was advised to only weight yourself once a week, so you aren't worrying about fluctuationa from day to day.

It accounts for it through the moving average - extreme peaks and troughs are smoothed out over time as you increase the size of the data set. It's not really that great for people who tend to freak out at daily fluctuations, but if you recognise that those fluctuations are normal and that they happen to everybody (sometimes with no apparent reason) then it becomes a very powerful tool for seeing what happens to the fuel that you put into your body.

But it's no use measuring them for a couple of weeks then pretending that's enough of a data set - you're talking a period of 5-6+ months before you get a genuinely useful average out of the data that accounts for natural peaks / troughs.

What calculations are you making to come up with these numbers?

Pretty simple maths, tbh: there are 3500kcals in 1lb of fat, so you measure your weight every day and plot it against a chart that separately details what your daily calorie intake is. You can use the average of the difference between the two to determine what your energy expenditure is. Note that this needs to be done over a fairly long period of time to cover the days where you eat ten pizzas during a marathon PS3 session or Ramadan begins.

Here is a superbly boring but illustrative spreadsheet with all these things filled out and a moving average line for extra nerd-cred: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/006851.html

I'm a tiny little munchkin with a bird-like frame so probably not really within the "average" bracket anyway. My BMI (such as it is) is apparently normal - another half stone or so and I'd nudge into the overweight range.

The problem with all of these official guidelines is that they really don't take into account individual factors - how could they? Trying to cater for everybody in a single average figure is never going to work. It leads to people like me seeing recommendations to massively over-eat and people like you being advised to give anorexia a go. Terrible stuff.

The only way to be sure is to actually do the calculations yourself but it's not so easy to fit the instructions for that on the back flap of a Kit-Kat wrapper :/

This is in the process of being upped to 3000kcal by the relevant authorities.

Holy shit.

I manually calculated my daily calorie intake requirements and what I found was that my actual requirements were hovering around the 1600kcal mark, so far short of the RDA. This was about 3 or 4 years ago when I was fatter than I am now but got significantly less exercise. This also explains why it's so easy for me to put weight on without appearing to really eat obscene levels of scran. It also demonstrates that these official guidelines are absolutely terrifying.

What is the typical height and wingspan of a medium to large chicken?

Is it carrying a coconut?

Some people are just mental I guess. Same silly bastards that look at you dead in the face as you're coming up to a junction and start crossing your path, still looking you in the face O_o URGHH!

Not a cyclist, but a guy on a scooter decided to undertake me right after some roadworks yesterday, right as I was thinking of moving back into the left. I'm hard of hearing so I don't really notice the sound of traffic approaching me. Turned my head around for a check to the left just before moving in and the fucker zooms right past me giving me a little wobble in his slipstream for good measure. Sends a chill down mah spine just thinking about it. The more I think about it the more I come to believe that huge numbers of the people regularly going about their business on the roads of London are certifiably insane. Brrr.

I just saw *Josef Fritzl* emptying some bins into his bin lorry at Newington Butts not 15 minutes ago!!!1

To expect to not have to slow down ever is rediculous, heaven forbid you might have to actually stop at a red signal! The vast majority of lights I stop at, mainly because I don't miss the few extra minutes it takes, also give me a chance to practice the ol' trackstand. Coming off the back of my touring this summer I'm also pretty rapid these days so I ususally catch everyone who ran the red in any case. If I'm approaching a zebra, toucan or signalled ped crossing I stop if anyone is waiting or on it, or at least slow down enough to let them pass and then ride through behind them. People nearly always say thankyou. Courtesy costs nothing and makes for a much more relaxed vibe on the journey.

Nobody ever thanks me at a crossing for stopping for them. Ever. I always stop, but nobody actually thanks me for it. If anybody ever did I think I'd fall off my bike in shock.

I did have the pleasure last night of having to swerve around two women with a little kid who had been standing in the road (ha!) by a bus stop who waited until I was about 2 feet away from them before sauntering out to cross. As I gawped at them incredulously while swerving I saw one of them point a finger dreamily at me as though I'd just appeared out of thin air and was composed entirely of fucking ectoplasm. So not only acting like a pair like a cunts but putting a toddler at risk of serious injury at the same time? Nice!

I don't really want to turn this into a whinge about peds but I guess my point is that courtesy should really go both ways. The whole concept of right-of-way exists for a reason, innit.

What do other peeps think? Bad cycling or absolutely right?

It's bad cycling any way you slice it but to be honest behaviour like that is from the minority of cyclists (London or otherwise), and rude fuckers are more common in cities anyway. I've had people shove me out of the way and walk into me in the street without a hint of apology (while on foot, natch) in London but that hasn't yet led me to the sweeping conclusion that all London pedengers are douchehats.

Why do women/girls go to the loo in pairs or more?

Do they really like to hear their mates having a poo?

They do this so that they can gossip about you in peace without having to deal with any tiresome interruptions / corrections.

This is true.

Surely too brazen for the thief to be riding it so close from where it was stolen?

This is London :/

Great work, though!

more ss madness this morning, a light blue On One on Waterloo Bridge which from what I could see had a perfectly functioning cantilever back brake...apart from the fact that it had been unhooked, rendering it useless. Fair enough..if it's broken, get it fixed, if you've done that on purpose then maybe think about fixing your head, or preparing to do so in future!

I've done that before if I've had to take the wheel off for something and then just forgotten to hook it back up. "WHEEEHEEE I LOVE GOING DOWN HILLS... but hmm i don't seem to be slowing down for this corner at the bottom the way i usually do... wait did i forget to replace the.. fffffffffuuuuuuu...". Happens, innit, some mornings. Did the owner of it have his helmet on the right way round, at least?

Oh, ok - it was on the London's Calling website so just assumed it was related. Still lunatics, though! I'm impressed and horrified in equal measures.

Holy crap, just checked out the video of the 2006 London Calling alleycat - these guys are 169% gold-plated nutters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLzGj10fg2g&feature=player_embedded

Yes you can.

you just need to undo the stitching on your skinny jean.

And risk my trendy friends laughing at me when I get to the coffee shop?! I dunno man, sounds a bit dangerous to me.

Couple of hours ago, somewhere in a hilly bit of Streatham, an old lady who looked about 70 or so gamely riding her ss Dutch shopper up a hill with about a 50 degree angle. With a full shopping basket in the front. I'm only 28 and I couldn't do that.

I need to edit my 15000 word dissertation into 12000 so not that hard, but i find i spend a lot of words being vague or timid, such as writing 'x has a tendancy to' rather than 'x does'. Being more assertive once i've finished the essay (because i've proved my point by then) usually saves my 1000 words alone!

George Orwell would tell you off for using "has a tendency to" instead of the more concise "tends to" anyway - not so much for weakness of voice (non-specific terms are necessary in some circumstances - think statistics or ambiguous experimental results), but for padding the sentence with unnecessary prepositions and articles ;)

Conciseness is a tricky skill because the more formal the writing you're producing is, the greater the temptation to fill it with terribly grand-sounding phrases. It's easy to look at something that's accurate but terse and think "oh, it doesn't really look academic enough, better tart it up a bit". I think most of us do that unconsciously, it's not even a deliberate decision.

Was going to add a fixie skidder in there somewhere but I couldn't find enough room!