nick-online  -

Seriously, I think all table tennis should be like this. Genius. Certainly make for an even more memorable Olympics in 2012...

With all the news on TV lately about the extreme weather conditions affecting the South Coast of the US, the mud slides in the Middle East and South America, along with the dire predictions made by such films as "The Day After Tomorrow", we shouldn't forget that England has its share of devastating weather too. I've attached a photo illustrating the damage caused to a friend's home from a storm that passed through Southern England last night. It really makes you cherish what you have, and reminds us not to take things for granted.

Japan is well known for its array of bizarre and amusing slogans, from the unfortunate brand names (Super Piss), the general junior high school english of municipal authorities (rubbish trucks emblazoned with 'Let's clean with Marukyo!'), and the apparent nationwide misunderstanding that the playboy bunny is just a cute rabbit. Recent new products in Uniqlo have however taken on a particularly surreal twist in their choice of t-shirt logos. Rational explanations in the comments, then, for this:

There are a lot of weird bugs around at the moment. It was cicadas for quite a while, and they were absolutely deafening. However, they have since been replaced by the little furry caterpillars, which judging by the current state of the road outside my flat do a lousy job of avoiding traffic. Japan is good at insects - some of them are freakishly large. There are mega beetles and grasshoppers which are about 4 or 5 inches long, and you can easily get close enough to see all their eyes and pincers and everything.

Had a small computer panic today. It would log into Windows fine but then blue screen crash and restart, and infuriatingly the blue screen only appeared for a split second so you had no hope of reading the error message. Panic panic panic - the last time something went wrong I had to send it back to Blighty for repairs and I didn't see it for a MONTH. Anyways, I have learnt two things in the resulting fixit session: 1) Evesham have very good technical support, if you're British and want a laptop then I recommend them as a manufacturer. 2) Windows, for all its irritations and stupidities, does have some reasonable fix tools. Ever been irritated by all those little things running in the little bar where the clock is? The bollocks little programs like Adobe Gamma Helper and the PC CD/DVD Writer software which you don't actually use? Go Start->run->msconfig, and in the Startup tab on the far right you can see all the things that get run when Windows starts up. If you don't know what some of them are, just type the name into Google - as long as it comes up as something in 'Windows Registry Process Information' or something like that then it's OK. Anyway, for any of those startup processes you can just uncheck the box to disable them and never be bothered by them again. Let's pray I've fixed it and it doesn't play up again...

Kat and I went to the "Mysteries of the Human Body" exhibition in Niigata yesterday. It's the plastinated human bodies by Gunther von Hagens, and it's really quite amazing. Strangely enough, it's not at all creepy or gross - even though some of them have no glass between you and the exhibit there's no feeling of 'I'm standing right here looking at a dead person'. Also, even though they're organs are exposed and parts of their flesh and bones cut away, they're not at all distressing to look at. I suppose part of it is that the bits you're looking at are what human bodies look like when they're healthy and functioning, albeit with parts missing so you can see inside. You can see the layers of muscle and how they connect to the bone and how the throat is connected to the stomach, but it's not gore, there's no sense of horror film or mutilation about it. Instead there's a tangible message of 'Look! Look just how complex and impressive it all is! Isn't that amazing?'. Also I think it helps that a large majority of the exhibits are standing, not lying down, further giving the impression of something displayed, not damaged. There were some really clever exhibits - one of my favourites the whole body but just the blood vessels, which was quite stunning. It's hard to see how it got so much stick back home - you get the impression that the people who were complaining about it probably hadn't seen it. I really recommend it - it's in Niigata at the Prefectural Civic Centre (kenminkaikan), Y1400 and runs until the 25th of September

I got rather a lot of stick at work today for not knowing the dance to Insy Winsy Spider (phonetic, spellings vary). Seriously, since when was there a whole accompanying set of gestures? Anyway, I seemed to be the only one ignorant of this particular facet of global childhood. I however objected strongly to the Americanising of the title to 'Itsy Bitsy Spider' - what exactly was so hard about the pronounciation of the original?

It's a rather depressing story, after all. Insy Winsy of course forever attempts to get to the top of the water spout only to be foiled at the very last moment and pushed back to the bottom again, a fate he shares, in a quirk of storytelling, with Sisyphus, condemned to roll a rock up to the top of a hill only for it to roll down again. Sisyphus did, however, chain up the God of Death Thantos so that the dead couldn't reach the underworld - quite how Insy Winsy could have matched that crime I can't imagine.