String fellow

Here's my adaptation of the first verse of William McGonagall's famously crap poem about the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879:- Beautiful road bridge of the silv’ry estuary Alas! I am very sorry to say That some lives have been taken away On the last Tuesday of March 2024, Which will be remember’d for evermore.

Bataclan, Manchester Arena, Re'im, Crocus. Where next?

I'm sure there's some dodgy logic in that statement!

Can't help thinking that if we only make the play-offs after being top virtually all season, the players will be so crestfallen that they'll completely blow it.

Galvani believed that frogs' legs muscle movements were caused by electricity somehow produced in the pelvis. Volta believed that the response was caused by salt in the muscle acting as an an electrolyte between the two different metals in contact with it at the time, a scalpel and perhaps a copper dish. It was this insight that resulted in his invention of the battery.

If anyone should be credited with 'inventing' electricity, my choice would be the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, who invented the first battery way back in 1799. Arguably, this was one of the greatest inventions ever, and finally disproved Luigi Galvani's idea that electricity was somehow produced by fluid in animals to bring about muscle movements.

At junior school, I vaguely remember learning that Newton invented both gravity and rainbows! Maybe that sentence is missing the phrase 'the theory of'. (Brian May always reminds me of Newton, for some reason.)

In Newton's defence, he had an awful childhood, without parents, and was socially inept throughout life. He was unable to make friends easily, never married, and almost certainly had what today would be called Asperger's syndrome. But he made the very best of his unfortunate situation by using his mind to be the equal of, or to outshine, all the other outstanding scientists and mathematicians of the time, including Leibniz, Hooke and the Bernoulli brothers. One example of his genius was to solve the problem of the fastest descent curve within just a few hours. Newtonian mechanics are at the heart of much of classical physics, and without him we'd have no gravity!

There's a high probability that this season will see the highest points total ever recorded by an English club which doesn't then gain promotion.

Not sure the FA Cup has much prestige now. Clubs fielding weakened teams, fifth round played mid-week, no replays after round 4, inconsistent rules regarding VAR usage, etc. all point to the FA Cup being only slightly shinier than the EFL Cup these days. I suspect that City would have happily traded their Bournemouth win for a win at Leeds.

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and City taking a one-goal first-half lead in vital matches then hanging on until about 10 minutes from time when the opposition finally equalises then grabs a late winner via a deflected shot.

Footage of the long range B1 Bombers taking off last night didn't seem to specify where they were taking off from. I assume that it was from Lakenheath or maybe Cyprus or perhaps Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. It would be interesting to know.

He's clearly not the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus!

Sixth place over the last ten seasons has been achieved with the following number of points, going forward from 2013/14:- 72, 78, 74, 80, 75, 74, 70, 77, 75, 69. On that basis, two more wins would give us a better than even chance of at least making the play-offs. (Nightmare scenario: only making the play-offs then losing to Cov on pens in the final!)

A total of 69pts. is exactly half of the theoretical maximum total of 138pts. available in the Championship in a season. So if we lost every remaining game, we'd be averaging 1.5pts per game, which would still be above average, because draws are worth only 1pt.

Being a Swan match, a Vesta-gaard strike would set the place on fire!

If Hamas was entering an Israeli hospital, I suspect they'd be trying kill everyone.

Since you ask, I'd say successful students are those that fulfill their ambitions both within the education system, then in their subsequent careers and in their lives generally. As for education broadening the mind, that isn't always the case. Students frequently seem to have, for example, incredibly narrow-minded political views. As for good grades not being the point of education per se, I did imply that, when mentioning that qualifications don't necessarily equate to having had a positive experience within the education system.

The most successful students tend to be those with the highest self-esteem and motivation. Combine those things with good social skills, and things usually turn out very well. But education also makes you realise the limits of your knowledge and capabilities. Without the three attributes of self-esteem, motivation and social skills, plus the realisation of one's limits, then the whole experience can turn out to be far less positive than expected, even if you do end up with good qualifications.

Also, the link between 'right wing lunatics' and football hooliganism is somewhat tenuous, according to this report. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7a39b8ed915d1fb3cd6590/1539-disorder-football.pdf

If Putin wanted to test NATO's resolve, he'd probably attempt a minor incursion into a neighbouring NATO country such as Latvia. This would be 'justified' on the basis that its relatively high ethnic Russian population needed to be 'protected' from malign western influences. NATO's response might be that triggering Article 5 would only escalate the situation, and therefore NATO allies of Latvia wouldn't get actively involved. Russia would see this as weakness, and slowly but surely advance on Riga. Eventually, all three Baltic States would end up back within Moscow's sphere of influence, and so conscription in the UK wouldn't be factor at play whatsoever. It would probably end up being seen as a knee-jerk decision in the face of Russian aggression elsewhere in Europe, with many on the left of UK politics regarding it as a form of social control rather than being a legitimate attempt to bolster the UK's defences.

China is not good at winning wars - their last attempt to take Taiwan was defeated by poisonous snails!

Have we ever played Bournemouth in the FA Cup before? I don't think so.

I had one too. Nice cars, although I didn't like having the spare wheel mounted directly above the engine.

I've still got some here - great for playing MS-DOS based games like Duke Nukem on very old pcs equipped with floppy drives and operating on Win 3.1 or Win 95.