Croquet royalty

Seen here with the humans during the World Championships:

CF Sainthood

I have written before about chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).  Or ME as some people call it. Not very interesting for people who do not have it, but really quite interesting indeed for people who have. So If you haven’t, you might well well want to move on now to something else. If you have, you might want to read on.

Told you so

I reckon I have done pretty well at the prediction game recently. I predicted that science would come around to the view that homo sapiens had interbred with Neanderthals in Europe. I predicted that Julia Gillard would knife Kevin Rudd in the back to become Prime Minister of Australia.  I predicted that Tin Flannery would become an icon of national fun.  Tum te tum.

Peace at Last

Perdita was being a total pain. But I did not really blame her: for several days she had to wear a bright pink bucket over her head.  It drove her crazy, and she was smashing into every door, every piece of furniture, and every human leg.  Which drove us crazy too.

And then I got her a blow-up version.  Suddenly, she has been a different dog: calm, quiet and delightful.

The Silence of the Lamps

It is hard not to admire Aung San Suu Kyi.  Last year, in her Reith Lecture, she referred to the BBC as “a beacon of liberty” and, when you are under house arrest for umpteen years, having access to an independent, fearless and honest source of news must be hugely important.

But it also hard not to notice that the light that the beacon shines is highly selective in some areas, and in the area of climate scepticism, there is pretty much total silence from the BBC, and its offspring around the Commonwealth.

Take a case in point. The blogosphere has been busy recently reporting an extraordinary exchange between NASA and 49 of its most prominent former astronauts and scientists

Am I Ronald?

At the recent International Society of Construction Law Conference in Melbourne, the Hon Robert Brooking, who used to be a judge on the Supreme Court bench in Victoria and who is now starting to get on a little bit in age (he is still charming and interesting to talk to), introduced me as “Ronald” which is not quite the name.  But it was probably not entirely random, for we were at the time giving away as a prize a copy of my book on the Workers Liens Act.  The only book previously written on topic was The Artificer’s Lien by RD Elliott, who was a Magistrate in Adelaide, back in the 1960s. So maybe Robert had in the back of his mind that I was him, or perhaps a Ronald Jr?

Anyway, I decided to check if we were related.  After all, my grandfather was born in Australia at a time when people had lots of children, and this spelling of Elliott – with two Ls and two Ts – is more usual in Australia than it is in Scotland. It would be a nice bit of symmetry.  So, I did a bit of research.  And the answer was …no. No close relation, at any rate.

• I am the son of Denis George Elliott, son of James George Elliott, son of Robert Webber Elliott, son of Thomas Elliott of Kingsbury Episcopi, Somerset
• Ronald Donavan Elliott was the son of Ronald Elliott, who was the son of Luke Lionel Elliott, who was the son of Joseph Elliott of Shoreditch, London.

Never mind. I still have lots of other forebears. As do we all.

Killer Cream

I am horrified to see that people are still using sunscreen, confident in the hope that it will protect them, from dangerous cancer: the malignant melanoma type.

I have posted on this before: see eg the entry for 24th February 2008 at http://www.users.on.net/~rjfenwickelliott/diary2008.html.  Since then there has been more research. Thus Sunscreen abuse for intentional sun exposure by P. Autier published in September 2009  analysed why it is that

melanoma risk is increased when sunscreen is used.

Chill out

I got a message that a friend had watched something on Chill. I had a look, and it was quite amusing.  But then a message popped up on Facebook announcing that I had watched it.  So the moral might be: don’t touch Chill with a bargepole if you value your privacy.

Dita Dog Dashing

Perdita was pleased to see me home. She celebrated by racing round the park, trying to catch parrots.

Big Bag Blog

I have a few Orvis bags. Very good they are too: American jobs that come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but always made out of green canvas and brown leather.

The cabin bag has lots of pockets, which is good, including a pocket at the back, which has a zip, not at the top, but at the bottom. After owning these things for several years, I only today found out why: it is so you can undo the zip, and slip it over the handle of one of the bigger wheely things, and then wheel them around as a pair.

Neat.