Rubik’s Cube still in the news

It’s good to see the Rubik’s Cube going strong after all these years.

“Nakajima solved the classic 3×3 version of the six-coloured cube – which has nine squares on each side – with an average time of 12.46 seconds in five attempts.”

“None were able to beat the world record of 9.86 seconds set by French cube enthusiast Thibaut Jacquinot in May.”

And I was thought my best time of 50 seconds was pretty good!

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Japan teen in historic Rubik win

It’s official: swallowing swords hurts your throat

The Ig Nobel awards are out, and a great collection of flagrant abuse of science they are too. My favourite is the awards in the linguistics category: “Juant Manuel Toro, Josep Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Barcelona University, for showing that rats cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards”.

It’s official: swallowing swords hurts your throat

Champions League football headlines

In anticipation of various possible outcomes in the Champions League final tonight between Liverpool and AC Milan, I thought I’d make some possible headline predictions dependant on the on-pitch action:

It’s all gone Kaka

Liverpool win 3-1 after a Kaka own goal.

Crouch-ing goalscorer hidden goal

Liverpool are robbed as Crouch’s goal obvious crossed the line but was missed by the officials.

What a Carragher-on

Slapstick defending results in Milan winning 1-0.

Kuyt for 6

Dirk Kuyt scores a double hat-trick.

Agg-agg-agg-agg-agg-agger

Darren Agger eats some spinach, turns into Popeye, and scores afer beating Italian centre-back Brutus.

It’s Reina-ing men

Something bizarre happens to do with Liverpool’s keeper and lots of other players.

Return to Zenden

Zenden scores the winner following a one-two with any other player.

Liverpool Riise to the challenge

You can probably guess.

Gordon Benit-ez

Benitez is brought on as a subsitute in the 120th minute and scores the winning penalty.

Life’s a lottery, football’s a Rafael

As above.

Doing his Pennants

Jermaine Pennant’s clearance is deflected into his own goal and the player decides to retire and join a monastery.

Rafa’s lucky Jerzy

Benetiz is coincidentally wearing his favourite jumper as Dudek (the substitute keeper) miraculously saves all of Milan’s penalties.


Just some of the many headlines we may be seeing tomorrow.

Earthquakes, the English way

I’m disappointed that we couldn’t feel anything of the 4.3 magnitude earthquake in Kent from east London at 8:18 this morning (although I admit I was barely awake then). However, the reports coming onto the BBC site show exactly how the English cope with these kinds of events.

Compared to the recent earthquake in Japan, which was much more severe and killed a number of people, and which happened the day before I arrived but which there was very little panic over by the day after, our home-grown earthquakes are very low-key.

Some of the earthquake witness quotes are the best thing, though, and shows the true scale of the event and the way our nation responds to it:

“The seagulls went crazy and in parts of Dover the electricity is off.”

“I was lying in bed and it felt as if someone had just got up from bed next to me.”

“I live near a popular area for dog walkers and no-one is about, everyone seems to be staying indoors wondering if there will be another one.”

“But the wardrobe doors were banging and sort of shaking and the bed actually felt like it was moving.”

And my favourite:

“I thought my wife had got cramp or something but then I saw the curtains were moving and the whole house was shaking. It lasted about 1.5 seconds.”

If they changed the headline to “Earthquake as violent as wife’s cramp hits Kent” then it would make my day.

BBC NEWS | UK | Earthquake shakes parts of Kent

BBC NEWS | UK | Eyewitnesses on the Kent tremors