Looks good...not sure how long I'll wait til I have to get one.

Ken Clarke vs. Peter Mandleson

There's just something funny about this...more banter than debate.

So, I believe I hit a new low two days ago. Having gotten into the regime of going to the gym before work, I have a pretty slick preparation process the evening before. This is so that, in my semi-slumber, I don't have to stagger around my bedroom packing my bag and most fundamentally remember to take things so I don't end up at work with a tea-towel and one shoe in my bag.

This planning is prone to human error, which reared its ugly head on Tuesday morning. Having been the gym I unpacked my work clothes...shirt, trousers, fresh boxers....socks? SOCKS?...No socks. This wouldn't be a disaster on a casual day, but wearing a suit with sweaty white gym socks is pretty much the faux-pas of all faux-pas. I panicked. What options do I have? Is the white socks option that bad? Yes. When I put my hands on my head in near surrender, I spotted my forbidden fruit taunting me on a radiator. Someone had left their worn Homer Simpson socks tantalisingly dangling in front of me.

I hurriedly took the socks.

As I pulled them on over my feet I was filled with guilt and shame. I'm a great believer in forgiveness and that people will make one mistake at some stage in their life, they might cheat on a girlfriend, start a fight or steal something that's not theirs. What I'm most upset about is, I effectively wasted my one theft on a pair of sweaty Homer Simpson socks.

Academia will only take you so far...

The following is an actual question given on a University chemistry final exam.

The answer by one student was so “profound” that the professor shared it with colleagues via the Internet, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law that gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that, if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.

Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell. Because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay constant, the volume of Hell must expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Sandra during my freshman year, that “it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,” and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is endothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is extinct…leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being - which explains why, last night, Sandra kept shouting “Oh God!”

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY “A”.

Why did Kraft pay £11.7bn for Cadbury? Because Americans can't make chocolate...

I was going to blog about this and say pretty much exactly the same thing, before Toby Young beat me to it:

I remember the first time I bit into a Hershey Bar. It was the summer of 1976 and I was 12 years old. I’d never been to America before and the first thing I wanted to do on touching down at JFK was sink my teeth into one of these legendary chocolate bars. I was already a fan of American cuisine, being an enthusiastic early adopter of the McDonald’s outlet in Muswell Hill, and was confident American chocolate would knock our own into a cocked hat in much the same way that Big Macs were superior to Wimpy burgers.

I tore off the wrapper, bit off a sizeable chunk and began to chew greedily. Hang on a second … something wrong here … Where was that familiar hit of cocoa? The lovely sensation of squashing a square against the roof of your mouth? It tasted more like a bar of soap than a bar of chocolate. It seemed inconceivable that American GIs had been able to seduce nice English girls during the Second World War by proffering one of these bars alongside a pair of nylons. Next to this, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk was pure ambrosia.

"I went to the coronation in '53, we sat in the heavens looking down at the throne...the chair. I went with my wife, who was pregnant at the time, not as pregnant as she looked as we packed sandwiches under her dress, we ate them while we watched the coronation"

- Tony Benn (Legend)

Florence and the Machine - Lungs. Really good album.