scottsdad

Who designed the hover board?

That scene after the company merged and he got to sack the guy for the second time is one of my favourite TV scenes of all time.

Suitcase as well. It's the wee touches that count.

The average weight of the spinal cord is 35 grams.

All depends on the tutor. If you get some lunatic obsessed with academic integrity/misconduct like me (or, to his credit, the Prof who is an absolute zealot) then you're fucked. Doubled fucked at both ends because the act of changing words and paraphrasing shows deliberate intent to commit academic misconduct, so any punishment would be severe. If you get someone who's a bit overworked and not checking closely, you might get away with it.

Scott has made his choice and is going to uni in September.

Graduation time for many - but f**k me it has been hard this year. I don't know why, but the exam boards this year were torture. Many of my colleagues seemed to be going out of their way to be stingy. I've been in 4 Boards this time around, both here and as external examiner at another uni. Now, I am on the lenient side. If there's a borderline case between a 1st and a 2:1, say, I'll always make the case for a higher award. Others are different and cite academic standards as a reason to argue the other way. But this year has been tougher than most. Colleagues being frankly mean. I had to stop one exam board and have a separate meeting with the Chair to explain the rules properly to her, and ask why they were not being applied to the benefit of some students. Some unis just use an algorithm to determine the outcomes but we have discussions. It's great when you fight hard for someone and the exam board relents (to shut me up). This morning, I've spent 4 hours dealing with one guy who is devastated. He has been told to come back next year to sit one course again. Had his tickets booked for graduation and everything. Long weekend coming up and much needed. This whole few weeks has been shite.

6 for Friday

4 posts, all in the politics forum.

What about the Star? Pregnant mum in row with neighbours over six-foot fence blocking off access to home

Avoid the Zafira at all costs. The engine blew on mine after 40,000 miles. I was parked outside the Spar, turned the key and it went bang. A piece came through the side of the panel and ended up on the road. The guy from the AA came, lifted the bonnet and gave funeral rites.

9 for Thursday. Chess dude.

I saw this when it first came out. It didn't make Star Wars any better. Instead of the force being some mystical thing that goes through you and surrounds you, now it sounds like an STI. "Sorry, son, you've got a dose of the midichlorians" I took my dad to see it at the Allan Park cinema in Stirling. He had injured his shoulder at work and was wincing in pain all the way through. The fact the film was rubbish wasn't helping. he was having a miserable time. Just before the final light saber fight, the fire alarm went off and we had to leave. On the way out the staff offered us a free ticket to come back and watch it again. My dad just said "No" and walked past.

Mad men is a show you watch differently to most others. It is beautiful in its own way - the look and feel of it is fantastic. One of the few shows I felt immersed in the place - it really felt like I was in a journey through the 1960s. The drama is actually quite small and very human. It won't ever turn into Breaking Bad or 24. But the characters in it are really excellent - Roger Sterling is underappreciated, I have no idea why P&B isn't littered with gifs of him. And it is slow - no getting away from it. Even when it is fast, it is slow. But...it is well worth it. I have seen it 3 times now, I think.

Used to be the same here before Police Scotland. if you couldn't get into Central, Lothian & Borders, Fife, Grampian, etc., guaranteed that Strathclyde would take you.

Gringo

My neighbours built their fence 2.5 inches onto my garden…they are robbing my land but are blaming ME

I’m being kicked out because of row with my neighbours over fence – I did what all gardeners do, it’s ridiculous This is a great read. What "all gardeners do" is lean their stuff against fences, nick stuff from other allotments, dish out verbal abuse, have heart attacks and have his gate locked.

He's just a lonely guy - his wife died during Covid (6 people allowed at the funeral only). I asked him how he was doing...he told me.

Yes

I was talking to my neighbour yesterday. Hadn't seen him in a while and he looked very thin. He's in his 70s and when you see someone that age lose a lot of weight, you think the worst. He told me he had been in hospital, in intensive care for 10 days and had also caught a flesh eating bug whilst in there. But the reason he was in hospital? An abscess. He described it as "internal" and one of the biggest the surgeon said he had ever seen. They had people come from Glasgow and Dundee to take photos of it. The only way they could get it out was to go in through the perineum. As he described it "they had to lift up the baws and get at it that way". The abscess was so big it left a huge wound right between his scrotum and bumhole. They kept him in intensive care to allow the wound to close a little and waiting for a plastic surgeon to come. They put in stitches - as he explained it "stitches on the inside and stitches on the outside". Anyway, he seems better now and I just wanted to share this with you.

7 for Wednesday. Last 3 wrong.

I'm sure we've had a similar thread in the past, but the gist of my post there was this: The vast majority of police are good people. They have to deal with some stuff that I am glad I don't have to. Very, very rarely when my dad opened up about some of the stuff he saw, the stuff that upset him invariably revolved around dead kids and teenagers. He spoke openly once about a car accident he attended and there were two dead 17-year-olds in the car. Years and years later that could still bring him to tears. He was first on the scene there. Or the motorcyclist who was decapitated - he never, ever let me ride a motorbike growing up. He once was the only emergency services person on site when a woman went into premature labour. He delivered the baby and it was stillborn. For weeks he barely spoke to us, or anybody. These are some of the very few stories I got out of him. But knowing him and others he worked with, they do stuff most of us could never do - dealing with abused kids, victims of domestic violence, and more. But there are also a minority of bad ones. The guy who robbed his mother of all his money, who worked with my dad. The guy whose job was to check on the prisoners every 15 minutes and simply didn't as he was a lazy f**k, also worked with him. Some of the stories coming out of the Met are truly horrific.

My dad was in the police. This was one of the guys he worked with. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ex-police-couple-face-jail-for-stealing-from-mother-dvdm7blrn