Zombie

93 year old Bernie Ecclestone, who has owned Formula One motor racing for the last 60 years, has gone on trial in Germany for paying a £27.5m bribe to a German banker to secure the sale of a stake in the F1 business to a company he favoured. Naturally he continues to run the F1 business on a day-to-day basis despite the charges - because F1 motor racing only exists because Mr Ecclestone exists. Mr Ecclestone is F1's figurehead and central schemer whose principal role is either accepting large amounts of cash from third parties or paying large amounts of cash to third parties, as well as attending nightclubs with young and attractive female models. Preferably blonde. So there is understandable concern - bordering on panic - that should he be found guilty and sent to prison then F1 will simply cease to exist. Theoretical physicists have recently speculated that if the unthinkable happens then F1 will vanish in a puff of smoke. Alternatively - and there is some disagreement about this - the whole of F1 could be sucked into a space / time void that would be created by his removal. F1 bosses are therefore in urgent talks to agree contingency plans which include creating a brand new - but still very old - Bernie Ecclestone using ground-breaking genetic engineering techniques, or organising a prison heist to enable Mr Ecclestone to escape and resume his position as F1 Head. When spotted by paparazzi coming out of a London nightclub with a 19 year old blonde model last week, Mr Ecclestone, who is 110, refused to say whether she was his latest squeeze - or his great great great great great granddaughter.

American football v rugby, or baseball v cricket are good counterparts Moyes had to go. Once intelligent, articulate and experienced guys like Michael Owen were saying this weeks ago it was clear the guy was toast

...and men can get breast cancer too

I could also drive from Lands End to John O'Groats in a bubble car - but it would be a miserable experience

oops

William Shakespeare, born this day 450 years ago on 23 April 1616 1564 Happy birthday Bill! Edit: thanks sheep - silly me, but he did die on his birthday!

Ah yes, well, "natural" language is sexist. Can't escape our patriarchal history - it's written into the very languages we speak. And language is gender inflected. Unless they're "artificial", man-made languages. Oops, man-made?? *gives self a hard smack!* And then there's colours. Blue, of course, is obviously male As for dystopian literature, it always struck me that in The Omega Man - the second movie adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend - it was Charlton Heston, "the last man on Earth" and the good white guy, who was fighting all those bad black zombie motherfuckers...

Yeah right Fact is we still don't fully understand our own planet's processes. And even if we did we wouldn't be able to agree a collective basis for sustainable management Nope, until we can look after our own backyard it's hubris thinking we can "terraform" other worlds And it's not looking good for humans living for prolonged periods in low gravity - Spaceflight osteopenia refers to the characteristic bone loss that occurs during spaceflight. Astronauts lose an average of more than 1% bone mass per month spent in space. Bone remodels in response to stress in order to maintain constant strain energy per bone mass throughout. To do this, it grows more dense in areas experiencing high stress, while resorbing density in areas experiencing low stress. On Mars, where gravity is about one-third that of earth, the gravitational forces acting on astronauts' bodies are much lower, causing bones to decrease in mass and density. Average bone loss of 1-2% was recorded in astronauts on Mir each month. This is in comparison to 1–1.5% bone loss in the elderly per year, and 2–3% in postmenopausal women. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceflight_osteopenia

you watch too much sci-fi Mars gravity is too low for long term healthy human life Mars has no magnetic field so - no strolling around in normal clothes, you'd be fried by radiation (solar and cosmic) - and any atmosphere we create will be blown away

Nice! Restored steam railways have become a big tourist business in England - hope the same happens your side of the pond

I don't doubt people have signed up to these things I don't doubt there are a lot of deluded people out there *hey, Simon Cowell's Britain's Got Talent is back on telly! * I do doubt that suitable candidates have signed up who fully understand what they would be committing to and have the right kind of personalities and skills Fact is prison would be like a luxury five star holiday treat compared with the lifetime of misery and privation these folks would have to endure Never mind the technical challenges - assuming they can be fully addressed, and most of the solutions are still scifi - the biggest issue is individual psychology. You can run tests till the cows come home but no-one can be signed off with certainty as being fit psychologically. Long term isolation testing / simulation on Earth has shown that even with those candidates assessed as ideal, serious behavioral problems occurred that would have seriously threatened a Mars type mission. You're talking about a mission taking up someone's entire life. There is no data at all, here, except for prison lifers in solitary. And those are very damaged people.

True, the time dilation will be minimal, but who would want to swap a normal active life here on Earth, experiencing our planet and all its wonders, meeting new people, living your life with loved ones and maybe your own family - everything that makes life worth living - who would want to swap all that for being cooped up in a box with a dozen other misfits you're going to end up hating and never being able to escape from - unless you murder them?

Heartbleed flaw The Heartbleed "bug" was made public a week ago by Google and Codenomicon, a small Finnish security firm, which independently identified the problem. OpenSSL is used to digitally scramble data as it passes between a user's device and an online service in order to prevent others eavesdropping on the information. It is used by many, but not all, sites that show a little padlock and use a web address beginning "https". The researchers discovered that because of a coding mishap hackers could theoretically access 64 kilobytes of unencrypted data from the working memory of systems using vulnerable versions of OpenSSL. Although that is a relatively small amount, the attackers can repeat the process to increase their haul. UK site Mumsnet has been breached. It has been criticised for how it handled the breach - its email to members contains an inline link that it suggests they click to reset their passwords. UK police have previously warned members of the public to beware of unsolicited email asking them to click links "even if they are from companies you are familiar with". This is because fraudsters are taking advantage of Heartbleed to mount phishing attacks in which users are directed to spoof sites designed to steal their credentials. "It is dangerous," Dr Steven Murdoch, a computer security researcher at the University of Cambridge told the BBC. "Probably what [Mumsnet] should have done is sent out an email saying 'go to our website using the normal address [to reset the password]'. "If people receive an email they have not asked for they should be suspicious." Canada's tax agency has also been breached but it said it would not call or email the individuals it believed to be affected by its breach in order to avoid giving criminals a chance to exploit the situation. Instead it said it would send out registered letters. "I believe we'll see many more of these announcements over the coming days," Keith Bird, UK managing director of internet security firm Check Point said. "However, people should double-check that the website or service they use is actually advising them to choose a new password before making any changes to their settings. "This way, they can be sure the website has updated its security, and that they're not running the risk of exposing a new password. And if a service does recommend changing passwords, don't choose one that you already use for other websites." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27028101

your grandma's lucky to have you with your knowledge of healthcare admin

that's the whole point of siblings - otherwise there's no-one to squabble with

can't happen - unless you can find a way around the relativity equations there could be tens of thousands of civilisations spread around "the universe" but so far removed in space and time that we're never going to bump into each other and that's if they were in our own galaxy, the Milky Way *digs out a chocolate bar... * even travel to our nearest star is unfeasible which leaves just the solar system Buzz Aldrin chose a neat phrase to describe the Moon for his autobiography - "Magnificent Desolation". I just hope we never transform it into human made deslolation

Ah, sorry, jo-ann-nah is cockney rhyming slang for pi-ann-nah - piano Pianos present particular risks second hand so I have to disagree with Thorn that "an instrument with a history will treat you better" if it's a used piano. First they are complex mechanisms - and uprights are much more complicated than grands. Second if they have a history then we're talking use, and the more pianos are used the more worn out they will be. Buyers may be shy of playing in public or may not play at all if, say, they're buying for little Jimmy - in which case they'll be relying on what it sounds like when the owner or salesman plays. And pianos can be made to sound great - when they may not be so great to play.

you do need to be careful, though, and know what to look out for - used Joannas can be a heap of trouble .

dogs - I'm not a big fan of highly inbred specialist breeds, and they can have serious health issues because of the limited gene pool - if someone's abandoned / unwanted mut can become someone else's much loved pet then that's a good thing

thanks Eric - useful summary

How can "In God We Trust" be used to validate state law making? How can it not be a flagrant breach of the US Constitution which separated government and religion from the very beginning - for good reasons, as your founding fathers looked across the Atlantic at the religious mayhem in Europe? Time and again state governments willfully pass laws that feed into the legal industry, making fat lawyers even fatter, when - surprise, surprise - two sets of lawyers engage like rutting stags smelling more growth opportunities from yet another completely unnecessary and entirely avoidable - had there been any common sense - taxpayer-funded years-long spat. Which one set of lawyers will eventually lose - 50% of litigation lawyers are always wrong - until the next time... *wonders how many state elected politicians have got their fingers in lucrative legal pies* Religion and the state have always been and always will be in conflict. That's why studying history at school is so important - to learn from and avoid repeating the same stupid mistakes of the past. So when secular rights clash with religious "freedoms", as they always have done and always will, then if the state is a pluralistic democracy secular rights must always prevail. It's not difficult. Passing divisive laws like this is just a waste of your country's valuable human resources by tying itself into non-productive conflict.

ashamed to admit I watched BGT every week last year and I was so glad they won

OK, well here's one from the UK to give some global balance... bought a dozen free-range eggs on Saturday for £1.20... paid into an Honesty Box

He was sentenced to 40 years in 2000. 2000 + 40 = 2040. Any release prior to this date should be on the basis that he no longer poses a danger to the public on account of having been rehabilitated. In the UK this is a key factor in assessing early release. I'd guess the US has a similar process?

Often true. But not always. Sometimes at the end of a month dealers will offload a car at cost price to hit the volume target which is worth far more than the margin on a car. Then you also get the full warranty Trouble is you need to know all the tricks and have good negotiating skills to beat those pesky salesmen Something else you should always buy used are Strads. If you see a brand new one for sale make sure it comes with a full guarantee...