the corner office

a blog, by Colin Pretorius

Burn rabbits

Not a great mental image if you're squeamish like me but if you care about the acid rain then maybe you have to embrace these sorts of things:

The bodies of thousands of rabbits culled every year from the parks in Stockholm's Kungsholmen neighbourhood are being used to fuel a heating plant in central Sweden.

I guess that'll be one way to deal with all the poor dogs who fail their MOT.

{2009.10.28 18:31}

Eat a dog

Fido is causing fairies to die in the rain forests:

The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found

The only morally consistent conclusion is that dogs should be taxed heavily, and that they should be given MOTs, and when they get old and fart too much, they should be put down.

Not that I have anything against dogs - I love dogs - but if we don't wanna choke to death on the acid rain then we know what we have to do.

{2009.10.23 16:41}

Back to work (just for me)

My big project is already overdue and I'm working flat-out to finish it off. I have to submit a paper version as well as an electronic version of the project. This is not a good time for postal workers to go on strike.

{2009.10.21 16:53}

Adieu summer

Our holiday was a nice way to close off the summer. A chapter closed, if you will. More like a huge 2,000 page hardcover textbook slammed shut vehemently by some little miscreant at school, crushing poor Johnnie's fingers in the process. Now he'll never be a guitar legend, and in 30 years' time he'll be up to little more than the occasional arthritic strum on a dodgy nylon-stringed guitar, sitting in a damp room with peeling wallpaper, a mangy cat that shits in the corners, a drinking problem and thinking of what might have been. That sort of closed chapter.

Now the weather's turned for the worse (not that I'm complaining), we're planning on moving soon, Ronwen has exams coming up, I have assignments up the yazoo and life has suddenly become tremendously hectic.

{2009.10.11 17:04}

Isle of Wight

isle of wight beach

We went to the Isle of Wight. It was Beautiful. We stayed in an old cottage a few hundred yards from the sea, and saw lots of wonderful sights and got to walk on sand beaches and pebble beaches and drove all over the island and sometimes just sat and stared out at the Atlantic.

The only things which could have made the holiday better would have been a good old storm or two (as it was, not a drop of rain the entire time we were there), and if the holiday had lasted another week or two.

{2009.09.25 16:09}

Overload

I'm getting too old for late nights. One of my subjects is a project course, which boils down to skooling me research techniques and how to do mathematical typesetting. The typesetting is quite a useful thing to learn but the research techniques I've done enough of in the past, thank you. That isn't helped by the fact that maths-heavy journal articles are by no means the sorts of things you can just read through and grok first time round. At least I can't.

I've just submitted one assignment now, have another one which has been half-done for ages and is nearly 3 months late, which is a personal best/worst for me. Still need to research and write 10 pages of mathematical waffle to that. Then the final assignment due in a month, that's 20 pages more of mathematical waffle.

Too much waffle, but gotta do it. But not tonight, time to sleep.

{2009.09.14 18:23}

Cusswords

I briefly had an F-word in last night's post, then edited it out. The sentence sounded better with the word in it, and I'd have had no compunction in saying it that way in person. But for some reason I'm starting to feel guilty about cussing on my blog.

Probably parenthood. I could get philosophical about it, but instead I'll get back to my studies.

{2009.09.12 15:17}

Perspective

Our current recession might be bad, but we're nowhere near the Great Depression (yet), as this chart (original plus commentary) illustrates:

now vs Great Depression

Media need bad news to make money, and politicians need problems to justify their jobs.

{2009.09.10 15:52}

Killer biscuits

The Telegraph: Crumbs: half of Britons injured by their biscuits on coffee break, survey reveals (via)

Imagine Health and Safety stepping in... or maybe, better not to.

{2009.09.10 14:47}

Humbling...

... cycling behind a woman in jeans and platform heels on a mountain bike, and not being able to keep up with her. Then catching up to her at a traffic light and realising she hasn't even broken a sweat.

On the up side, I racked up a pretty good time on an all-the-way-home ride tonight.

{2009.09.07 15:51}

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