topcat(The most tip top)

via the Irish cricket team obviously! Still raining at Clontarf. Scotland needed a win to have any chance of making the final so a washed out no result would be of no use. Ireland have already qualified so their insistence on gubbing us a third time seems churlish. You'd think they'd let us have this one even if it was just to avoid Afghanistan

Delayed by rain Scotland on 69/7 in the 29th over

No more wickets in Dublin but two maiden overs see Scotland stalled on 49 after the 18th over. The one glimmer of hope is that Jo'burg Irish Bowler Max Sorensen only has two overs left to bowl and Craig Young only has 3. Maybe the 2nd string bowlers will let Scotland open up again

It looks like only rain can help Scotland in Dublin As an aside it would be hard to imagine the young Ardoyners getting this angry If they were dressed like this

Scotland are now 37/4

Well that's the people of Ardoyne's loss irish cricket is going through a purple patch. They've beat Scotland twice in Belfast last month becoming ICC World Cricket League Champions, 2011-2013 in the process and they've just taken a third Scottish wicket for a total of 32 runs in Dublin in the ICC Intercontinental Cup.

The closest they came was a 2007 ODI against Ireland in Belfast where they frustratingly fell 1 run short of the 210 needed to tie the game with 3 wickets in hand. http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/295792.html Maybe if they'd opened up the throttle a bit sooner... Maybe their colour scheme did cause issues because subsequent ODI's have all been in Dublin although there was a Belfast T20 game that was completely washed out in 2008

You can find it on YouTube

The Jimi Hendrix Song "If 6 were 9" is about the problems of dyslexia, along with "Manic Depression" it was intended to form a trilogy but he died before he could record "The Irrational Fear of Lizards Boogie"

Asterix Le Gaulois I loved the Asterix books as a child and now I've finally moved up from reading Garfield in French to Asterix. One of these days I might be able to read a real book with no pictures but I've just seen that there's a graphic novel of Le Fantôme de l'Opéra so maybe that's the intermediary step

According to google an Irate US citizen had a strikingly similar experience with the State Department although his doctor was Indian and before that a Canadian had similar issues.

The Black Swan by Nicolas Taleb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_(2007_book) It's all about uncertainty and the false confidence given by mathematical risk assessment, the limits of human knowledge, chaos and lots of other things including predicting the banking crisis It's tough going at times and he talks about himself a bit too much but it's worth a read if you're into philosophy, social sciences or history

Deaf bigots

It is indeed. As soon as you cross the Taymar all the red rose logos on the brown tourist road signs have been painted over with the cross of Saint Piran And as my wife is from Devon I'm duty bound to point out that the Cornish are not too be trusted because they put the jam and clotted cream on their scones in the wrong order

My driving instructor called it "The Gas" in order to save on syllables.

Assuming that we've all looked at the same wikipedia page you should have spotted that the claim about Chinese being the second most popular language refers to Cantonese as being the second most popular "First Language". In this context people comparing the numbers of people claiming to be able to speak Irish on a census form with the number of people of chinese ethnicity isn't helpful. Firstly not everybody who looks Chinese can speak Chinese Secondly not everybody who says they can speak a language is fluent in it never mind it being their first language If we're to make a valid comparison between the two there has to be some minimum level of fluency attained by an individual for us to count them. And that will be a relatively arbitrary choice by the counter. The Census data is entirely based on a subjective self judgement of the individuals own skills and as the census data points out "An ability to speak, read or write Irish does not imply an ability to understand Irish unless stated. Persons in these categories may or may not have the ability to understand Irish". The one independently verified measure available of linguistic competence that is available though is A level passes http://www.rewardinglearning.org.uk/newsroom/press/2012/press_160812.asp and these show Irish Language lagging behind Spanish and miles behind French which would mean that, using that definition, you were absolutely right to say that Chinese isn't second. and also right to say that Irish isn't third (It's fourth ahead of German)

The doctor told my wife she had acute angina. So she slapped him

It's not just the terrorists tho, I can to an extent understand why you didn't tell the police about them. It's the environment that allowed them to flourish. You don't just become a terrorist from being a civilised person. If the communities called up those that mark terroitries by painting everything in their colours and writing kah/kat everywhere they can then they are much less likely to want to actually follow through on those slogans. If those chucking stones/bottles at the other side are pulled up for it and punished. Then they aren't as likely to move from bottles to bombs. If people don't hand over the sides of their houses to become memorials to terrorists, if the likes of the OO(unfortunitly I can't equal this up as seems necessary sometimes by naming the republican equivalent as I simply don't know who they are) marching through your streets whilst celebrating killing the other side are shunned rather than treated as a celebration like normal towns would their gala days(and even these are mocked as seen recently on here). Then signing up for your local division of whatever terrorist group becomes a lot less tempting. The support of these kind of things I mentioned helps recruitment massively for your various murdering groups, that is pretty obvious. And that's not mentioning the direct support that happens. I'd have thought that electing murderous gangsters into public office is probably the most obvious example. In doing so they may have given them some "respectability" but only at the expense of some of their own.

^^ doesn't understand statistical significance

Seems a bit unfair on the Norwegians, the jazz festival, Gay Pride etc...

Meanwhile there's been a second orange march in Edinburgh http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-23643831

Rugby Injury, Tendon damage at the top of the adductor muscle in the Hip. Same thing as Michael Ballack had apparently.

The problem with swimming for people who aren't technically good at it is that they struggle to breathe as much as air as they need so, like runners at altitude, they find themselves out of breath quickly. If that sounds like you then you might consider switching to repeated 2 length sprints with recovery intervals instead of a solid medium paced slog. It's easier to concentrate on improving technique for short stints too. The other option for freestyle is to throw in some lengths of 6 stroke breathing. That will be even harder at first but it forces you to get good at breathing so when you switch back to 4 stroke it will be a doddle

Physiotherapy seems to be finally paying off. I did 4km yesterday 26 minutes is some way off the pace I used to do but the fact that I did it and wasn't in agony this morning feels like a big win right now.