OK, this is what really happend

What about Lewis Hamilton eh? I was trying to watch the race on Sunday, but was preoccupied with things like making dinner and generally being a father. Mummy was out at the time, more on that later. Anyway, it looked like Lewis had lost the championship, but regained it in the final seconds of the last lap. The funny thing is, no one seems to know exactly what happened.

As far as I can tell, Lewis needed 5th place or better to win the title. He went into the final lap in 6th place. He'd changed to wet weather tyres because it had begun to rain. In front of him was Vettel, who had overtaken him on the previous lap, and in front of Vettel was Glock, who was the only driver still on dry tyres. Glock was 18 seconds ahead of Hamilton, the rain hadn't really happened, and it looked like Glock had the tyre advantage. However, by the time Hamilton reached the final corner, Glock had lost his 18 second advantage and Hamilton (and presumably Vettel) had sailed past him, thus giving him 5th place again and the title. That's what I reckon happened, but everyone you talk to has a different story.

I went to Devon this weekend with the boy. The Dragon stayed in Swindon because she has a friend with a sick child in the hospital. The friend is Chinese and doesn't speak terribly good English, so the dragon was acting as translator and general support. That's why I was making dinner and being a father yesterday evening. We'd returned from Devon, but the dragon was still at the hospital. Anyway, we had a pretty good time visiting Grandma in Devon. She was very pleased to see him and we went to the apple farm day in South Molton. It was good. They had a whole pig going round on a spit, tame owls, donkeys, and lots of cider and other apple products for sale. I borrowed my father's old camera and took a couple of pictures.



If you're interested in complete madness in the world of banking, here's a good story; it seems that Royal Bank of Scotland, which has just received a rescue package costing £20 billion to the British tax payer has put aside £1.79 billion for "staff costs" for the first 6 months of the year for its investment banking division. These "staff costs" include discretionary bonuses for staff. The investment banking division actually caused a £5.9bn writedown that wiped out the bank's profits for the same period. In simple terms, our PM used public money to buy a share in a bank that was about to crash and burn. The bank is now using that money to pay huge bonuses to the people that caused the problem. I'm in the wrong business.

OK, Prince Charles is off on one again about the rain forests. It's all terribly tedious but I suggest you click on the link to look at the picture of the Prince. Don't bother with the report.

OK, is that picture fixed in your mind now? Good, now click here.

It's not just me is it?

New research out today seems to show a correlation between teens who watch television sitcoms that include a high sex content (Friends, Sex in the City), and teens who get themselves pregnant by mistake. The research itself is fine. The conclusions drawn from it are all over the place. No causal link between the amount of television watched and the instances of teen pregnancies has been established. But of course, the inference is that these shows cause teen pregnancies.

It's still an interesting study. I think the most interesting point is that, of the 2,000 test subjects, 58 girls, and 33 boys were involved in a pregnancy. Unless there is some divine intervention to be factored in, each of those pregnancies requires a boy and a girl, yet there appear to be almost twice as many girls "involved in a pregnancy" than boys. Does this mean a small number of boys are fertilising a large number of girls? Is the sample skewed? Are there are large number of older men outside the sample group (12-17 years) fertilising girls under 18?