Sounds impossible, but at Airkix they have a vertical wind-tunnel, and offer an hour of indoor skydiving training which includes 2 “flights” for £40, or once you’ve got some experience you can skydive for £10 per minute. Sounds like it would be fun to try! (You generally have to weigh less than 114 Kg or you won’t get off the ground, however).
The BBC plans to launch an on-demand TV service which uses software that will only be available to Windows users. If you’re a British resident or a British citizen, you might consider adding your name to the online petition to Tony Blair.
Julian Beever is a pretty amazing 3D pavement artist. Just take a look at some of his pictures here.
A man in Manchester (UK) used his MP3 music player to hack into cash dispensers and capture details of customer’s credit cards and PINs, allowing him to steal £200,000 from them. He was only discovered after being stopped for making an illegal U-turn; police discoved a fake credit card in his car, which led to his house being searched and additional evidence being found there.
Banksy, who no one can accuse of not having a sense of humour (remember this?), has updated Paris Hilton’s debute CD without her permission. The modified version features a topless picture of Paris with a dog’s head and tracks remixed by Banksy. I want one!
The Independent reports that 500 000 rubbish bins in the UK already carry an electronic device to identify the bin, which would allow the local council to track the weight of rubbish in the bin, and charge by weight for its collection. Which is quite a neat idea, I think. Our bin is hardly ever more than half full when it’s collected, so we should benefit from the billing system.
The Mail on Sunday doesn’t think so. Bins and the collection vehicles are being fitted with the new technology, and their headline is: Germans plant bugs in our wheelie bins. The article makes it sound like an act of war has been commited by the Germans, although in fact their only involvement is that two companies doing the fitting work on the bins happen to have their head-office in Germany. It seems to have generated heated views in the UK:
Conservative MP Andrew Pelling said burglars could hack into the computer system to see if sudden reductions in waste at individual households meant the owners were on holiday and the property empty. He said: ‘This is nothing more than a spy in the bin and I don’t think even the old Soviet Union made such an intrusion into people’s personal lives. ‘It is Big Brother gone mad. I think a more British way of doing things is to seek to persuade people rather than spy on them.’
It looks like Brighton might be about to get a new landmark – a 600 foot high observation tower, called the Brighton i360 (are the architects Apple fans, perhaps?), on the seafront at the site of the West Pier, with a lift that can take 100 people at a time.
The combination of Britain and snow is often good for a suprise – the Brits don’t believe in investing much in gritting lorries or snowploughs. So there is always chaos when it snows (which it does, surprisingly, every winter). Ten centimeters of snow constitutes an official emergency. You don’t believe me? Well, read this article in today’s Guardian. Here’s a quote:
If the snow gets deeper, Mr Carter [Kent council’s winter services duty officer – JK] and his colleagues can enlist the help of local farmers. “There are about 250 in a farmers’ snowplough agreement, which means that as soon as the snow reaches two inches they get their snowploughs out.”
Maybe there are other European countries which call out the farmers to man their snowploughs for 2” (5 cm) of snow, but I haven’t heard of them.
The Office for National Statistics in the UK has published the list of the most popular names for babies in England and Wales. Mostly very traditional names, which would not be out of place in a Charles Dickens novel:
Top 10 boys’ names in England and Wales in 2005:
1. Jack
2. Joshua
3. Thomas
4. James
5. Oliver
6. Daniel
7. Samuel
8. William
9. Harry
10. Joseph
Top 10 girls’ names in England and Wales in 2005:
1. Jessica
2. Emily
3. Sophie
4. Olivia
5. Chloe
6. Ellie
7. Grace
8. Lucy
9. Charlotte
10. Katie