Daily archives: July 12, 2010


links for 2010-07-12

  • Alex Dowsett (Trek-Livestrong) tuned up for next week's U23 European championships by winning the Procycling Hot Laps at BikeRadar Live.

    Dowsett clocked a blistering 2'12 for the 1.2 mile (1.9km) lap of the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit, an average speed of 32.2mph (51.8km/h). The time was even more impressive given the extremely windy conditions and hilly nature of the circuit.

    (tags: cycling)
  • So just how true is this perception that motorists are so unfairly taxed? Well in the financial year 2006-07 £28.43bn was raised from taxes on fuel and Vehicle Excise Duty (VED). In the same year around £8.78bn went toward maintenance and £11.91bn new road building, but that is not the whole story. The cost of policing the roads and the expense incurred by the judicial system has been estimated to be £3bn. Also, the cost to the NHS of injuries due to road accidents crashes, according to figures from collated by RoSPA, was £9.93bn. So the total cost to government was £33.62bn, meaning there was a short fall of £5.19bn, which had to be covered from other non-motoring related taxation.

    In addition there is the cost to businesses and other drivers due to delays caused by congestion, estimated by those rampant greens, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), to be about £19.1bn.

  • Aging rats have had their memory loss reversed, thanks to a compound that helps them form new memories again. The compound could be a breakthrough treatment for Alzheimer's.
  • Religion has at least two weaknesses. One is that it is empirically false, and all of its specific claims are either pointless and unverifiable, or have been falsified. Another, though, that we neglect at a cost of diminished effectiveness, is that it's hilarious. It's a prime target for exposure of religious folly; it's the soft, ticklish underbelly of faith and we need more people to exploit it.
    (tags: religion)

Where to buy books by Ian Pattinson

I’ve realised I’m slacking off from my self-promotional duties and some of you don’t know about all the products I have out there which you can buy. So I’m going to do a few posts telling you about the many cool things you can buy which will also support Spinneyhead. Let’s start with books.

Sounds of Soldiers, So Much To Answer For and Global Weirding are available in print through my store at Lulu.com. If you have a Kindle e-book reader (or computer, iPod,iPhone or iPad with the Kindle software), you can buy all three novellas, and some short stories, as Post and Publish.

Ruby Red is available as a download through Lulu or for the Kindle.

When you buy any of these books, or if you’ve already sampled them, please leave a rating on the relevant site to tell others how much you enjoyed them. Thanks.


Point of Contact- No great threat

No great threat

I’m sure the language used to describe the hostiles would be much more colourful, but I’m trying to keep this the equivalent of a 12A. So occasional swearing, some violence, but not too graphic, and some talk about sex but no on page nudity. I have some ideas for a 15 equivalent tale, and some more adult stuff, but that’s for another day.

If you’d like to follow just the Point of Contact comic you can subscribe to its RSS feed.

And please vote me up these lists. Thanks-

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