From the new series of Fort Boyard on Challenge …

– Jodie Marsh: Arrange these two groups of letters to form a word — CHED and PIT.
– Team: Chedpit.

Marketing spiel at the Design Museum in London:

After the tragedy of the 11 September attacks and the Afghanistan war, Jerszy Seymour decided to design a seat which would give the world a great big hug and bring everybody together. The result was Muffdaddy. Made from machine washable denim covers with removable polyurethane cushions, Muffdaddy is easy to clean and maintain.

And my personal favourite, knowing my thoughts on the Daily Mail, quotes from Lynda Lee-Potter’s column before and after Diana’s death…

“The sight of a paunchy playboy groping a scantily-dressed Diana must appal and humiliate Prince William… As the mother of two young sons she ought to have more decorum and sense. She has for many years criticised Prince Charles for being a distant, undemonstrative father. In the long run he’s been the more responsible parent and certainly inflicted less damage, anguish and hurt.”
— Lynda Lee-Potter, Daily Mail, 27 Aug.

“Throughout their childhood she gave her sons endless loving cuddles… She adored her children.”
— Lynda Lee-Potter, Daily Mail, 1 Sept.

Originally posted on The LBSC

For the past week, I’ve been beta testing the Guardian’s Digital Edition. And I’ve been really pleasantly surprised.

Before going to university, I would happily sit and read the paper with my breakfast. Now I can’t, given that I now have to go and BUY the paper. Since I’m a lazy git, this only happens very occasionally, and I’ve been getting my news from other online sources. But I’ve been missing proper newspaper journalism – even if you look at the Times’s online edition, the copy is all the same but it doesn’t “feel” right.

The Guardian have come up with the answer, an answer to which I may end up subscribing and never buying a newspaper again. I’m a Guardian fan anyway (I love the sense of wit and irony the Guardian has), and this version is a really good idea. You get a little picture of each page of the paper (you browse through them one at a time), and then you click on the article you want to read. This brings it up in a right-hand column in HTML format, and you have the option to download the article or email it in a number of formats. So you get to see where it “fits” in the paper, and you can read it. You can even click on the adverts, and it brings them up in a little pop-up window.

And, of course, it’s ready and waiting when I want to read it – no having to go and buy it at the shops. You can even access about a week’s worth of back-issues, which is handy if you don’t have time to log-on one day.

It’s such a good idea, that I want to give it an award. But I can’t. Because I don’t have one to give.

Originally posted on The LBSC

I’ve seen at least one American report about the way George Bush “put his life on the line” to surprise American soldiers at Thanksgiving in Iraq that has said “Can you imagine the British heads doing that?”.

My immediate answer was “Yes, we already have”. President Blair was there SIX MONTHS AGO, and Jack Straw was there YESTERDAY.

But since the Bush protests, we are suddenly evil. The Fox News network reported that Al Jazeera is as commonly watched here as Sky News. It’s like they think you are pro-Bush or a terrorist. You’ve got to love the American media. I don’t like certain parts of the British media, but I’d rather be lumbered with our lot than theirs…

Fantastically bitchy comment from Roger Mosey, big BBC boss person, on the new look News 24 (starting Monday): “We’ve learnt from Sky, but didn’t copy it – we’re going for impact with taste”

Talking of the new-look News 24, looks like it might be fairly good – seems to be morphing into an intelligent, analysing news channel which still keeps you bang up to date. Kind of the broadsheet yin to Sky’s in-your-face tabloid yang. Can only be a good thing…

Originally posted on The LBSC

Last night some friends and I decided to go out and celebrate the end of our exams (yes, they were only one day long, but that’s irrelevant). We decided to go out for tea so we’d be back early, since we had to be in a lecture at 9 this morning. Due to a number of people pulling out at the last minute, it turned out that it was me and three girls who are all good friends (two from my physiology group, and one other medic). So we hopped in a taxi and shortly arrived at TGI Fridays. And it was nice. I should make it clear that I only had one drink. Anyway, the meal was remarkably cheap because our waitress kept making mistakes, so the manager came and apologised, and we ended up paying only £2.50 each for our entire (three course) meal and our drinks. So that was cheap.

We then decided to walk back – it’s not far, but does involve crossing a five-lane road, and, on this occasion also involved me getting stuck on the top of a fence, leading several swimmers in the gym the fence surrounds to think I was some strange pervert, but that’s by-the-by.

We eventually arrived back in one girl’s room, where I drank Apple Juice, from her fridge – she has a full size fridge in her room, how cool is that? I then returned to my room, and I remember nothing after that. Except I must have posted on here, and also got changed and into bed.

The weird thing is, this is not the first time this has happened. A couple of weeks ago, I remember working at my desk, and waking up 2 hours later in bed, having moved all the stuff off my bed onto the floor in neat (well, neat for me) piles. But I don’t remember it. Should I be worried?

Originally posted on The LBSC

I love how Sky News are using “Smooth Criminal” as the soundtrack to their Michael Jackson report tonight.

Originally posted on The LBSC

I’m currently between exams, having had this morning’s MCQ/TF/EMI/DIPSE paper, and awaiting my OSC(P)E paper this afternoon. This morning’s wasn’t terrible, but there was a fair amount (probably just over half) of educated guessing. And two questions I didn’t have a clue on. Worth 10 marks each. Out of 65. But let’s not dwell on that.

It appears that the evil students at Duck (Durham Universirty Charity Komittee) have stolen our MedSoc fundraising event from last year…They’re organising a Full Monty event. The theiving evil people. But MedSoc has moved on…This year, we’re having Full Monty: The Rivals , which I’m sure will be much more entertaining anyway.

Originally posted on The LBSC

I recorded this earlier in the week and finally got round to watching it at 2am this morning. It was disturbing.

I’m not entirely sure of my footing here, but is it normal for kids of 12-15 – that’s like school years 8 to 11 – to not understand the basics of sex? Do they really need to resort to porn to “know what to do” as they put it? There were kids of 15 on there (That’s year 11) who didn’t know how to correctly use a condom until sex ed at school. I read Catch-22 when I was 12, and I still reckon that the scenes in that are more graphic than any porno I’ve ever seen – and I certainly wasn’t confused. Am I the only person in the country who actually didn’t learn anything from sex ed?

Now, I may be the exception here, but I never had sex ed in primary school, and yet I remember finding a (used) condom at primary school, and knowing about it and how it had been used. I know I wasn’t in year 6 at the time, so the oldest I could have been was 10. And I also remember having an in-depth conversation about tampons vs sanitary towels at a similar age. And so I found it surprising that these GCSE-age pupils didn’t understand the BASICS. There was one lad on there who thought that having sex took an hour and a half at least…but maybe he’s going to grow into the world’s greatest lover.

But then, to be honest, I don’t remember when or where I leant this stuff, I can’t imagine my parents explaining it to me, maybe it was just from my prolific reading.

It also surprised me that 60-odd per cent of 12-15 year old lads claim to have watched porn with their friends. I find the very idea of this repulsive, and yet I’m statistically in the minority. And to think that 70-odd percent of this age group thought that their parents didn’t know they looked at porn surprised me further. It’s not something I would ever have discussed with my parents (the very thought of discussing anything like that with my parents makes me feel awkward – I cringed when one of the dads in the programme bought his son a porn mag for his 13th birthday), and I’d never go and openly display porn anywhere, but I never doubted that my parents knew I looked at it. I would have thought (as did the majority of the parents in the programme) that it was natural and usual for teenage lads to be “curious” in that way.

Frankly, the discoveries I have made about sex ed in this country over the last week have really surprised me – I find the teenage pregnancy figures even more startling now, as it seems that the majority of kids are lucky if they know where to put it to have any chance of getting pregnant.

So my question is this…was I just an over-informed geeky weirdo of a primary school child (not entirely unlikely), or were the kids in that programme just stupid?

Originally posted on The LBSC

I had my second physiology practical today. This is an entertaining activity, since I’m the only male in the group, which basically means that I end up volunteering each week, which means that I lie down for about three or four hours while four women do strange things to me. Of course, since I’m busy being the subject, they even write all the necessary notes etc. for me.

For some reason, this has a strange effect on my brain. Everytime I say anything, it just comes out, well, wrong. Quotes from this afternoon include “My hand’s going up your skirt” and “I’ll have to tie you to your bed”.

Exams on Monday. Eek.

There was going to be a point to this post, but, frankly, I’ve forgotten what it was. So I’ll just finish this here.

Originally posted on The LBSC

Knowing of JRC’s fondness for any product containing stillborn children, I thought that I would share with you the following information from one of today’s lectures…

Oil of Ulay was originally made from human placentas. And it’s still based on that formulation today. This disturbed me.

Many, if not most, of the perfumes on sale for women contain cervical mucus from animals, as this is (apparently) attractive to men. This disgusted me, but imagine how I felt when the lecturer announced that she used to use her own cervical mucus as perfume – she used to rub it on her neck and behind her ears. This made me feel physically sick.

I was originally going to frame this post in the context of further examples of ignorance, but, on reflection, I though it better to make the observation that a little knowledge can be very, very disturbing.

Originally posted on The LBSC

My concern was increased today when I sat at a desk with the following graffito (I never knew until about three seconds ago that graffiti is the plural of graffito – maybe I’m ignorant, too):

“do’nt write on the deskes”

Originally posted on The LBSC