I watched this weird film the other night, called the Shadow of the Vampire, described as a 'darkly humorous' film. It's about a film director,(played by John Malkovitch) who is making a film about a vampire, but unknown to his film set crew and other actors, the vampire really is a vampire. The director explains the actor's strange behaviour (such as only coming out at night, eating bats, and other general weirdness) by saying that he is a method actor, and as such will be staying in character throughout the whole shoot. The vampire's reward? That he will have the chance to really drink the blood of the heroine in the final scene. It didn't really explain what the Director had against the woman who was playing the heroine, but I guess Malkovitch looks weird anyway, so I was almost prepared to overlook that one.
Anyway, the film reminds of that film with Tom Cruise called Interview with a Vampire, where as a vampire he comes across a theatre where some vampires live in the basement, and they also act in a play about vampires. So when a hapless woman gets her blood sucked out on stage, the audience gasp and then clap at the brilliant 'acting' but they don't realise it's for real. So both films are about vampires pretending to be actors pretending to be vampires.

A muslim girl at a school in Buckinghamshire has lost her appeal against being banned from wearing a full face veil at school.

I fully agree with the schools argument that it would interfere with communications and learning. There was a similar case in Dewsbury where a teaching assistant was suspended because she insisted that she wore a full face veil when with the children. The reasoning behind the suspension was the same.

I say yes to religious freedoms in this country, so long as they don't interfere with important things, such as children's learning or security. We must stand up robustly to the people who don't realise that when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Some countries are much less tolerant than ours when it comes to religious freedom. For example, in Tibet the people are restricted in how they practice their religion (Buddhism) by the Chinese, who imposed their will on Tibet without being asked.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6382247.stm

Did anyone watch the program on BBC2 last night about the 9 11 conspiracy theories?

I thought it was an excellent program, well researched and it quietly laid some of the myths to rest. For example, one of the myths is that the flight 93 did not actually crash in Pensylvania but landed at a nearby airport, and was part of the Government 'plot' to make it look like terrorists had crashed it into the ground. The truth was that it was not an American Airlines plane at all that landed at the airport but a Delta airlines plane that was diverted because the authorities had feared that it also had been hijacked. When it landed it became apparent that it had not been hijacked, and the media quickly circulated the correct story. However the old story (due to a mix up) still circulates that it was flight 93. And the proof of this (correct) story? The Beeb tracked down one of the passengers who was on the Delta airlines flight, and she confirmed that it was her flight that had been diverted. She even showed her boarding pass that she has kept to this day, which proves she was on that flight.

Another myth is that it was not actually a plane that crashed into the Pentagon, but was a cruise missile, or some other aircraft, which may have been controlled from a hercules aircraft that was seen flying around in the immediate vicinity at the time. The Beeb tracked down the pilot of this aircraft, who stated that he saw an American Airlines plane flying nearby and doing a very steep banked turn towards the Pentagon. If there was a big cover up, he would not have been available for comment, or he would have been untraceable.

The program did however concede that there is one conspiracy; that the U.S. Government has tried to hide the fact that they were aware of an impending terrorist attack but did nothing about it, and that is why they were unprepared for it. But this conspiracy has occurred after the attacks, not before them, and the lack of action was due to negligence rather than a deliberate act. The program also conceded that the Government has been very slow in releasing video footage which 'shows' that it was a plane hitting the Pentagon. This air of secrecy does nothing to quell the conspiracists.

What do you thing of it all?

Hi,

Thought I would post my latest contraption made of steel pipe. I did all the bends myself using a hydraulic bending machine. I also put the threads on the ends of all the pipes using a stock and die. The white stuff you can see on the ends is PTFE tape which creates a water tight seal when you screw the end of the pipe into a fitting.

The class I go to is in Halifax, one day a week. It is a mixture of young people (16, 17 yrs) and more mature students. At the moment we spend the morning doing practical work, and then do theory in the afternoon and evening. At first I found it challenging when some of the young ones made fun of me, it was like being back at school. I eventually realised that they make fun of each other anyway, so it is normal, and they are a fairly nice bunch of people. However I do wish they would pay more attention in class sometimes; I find it distracting when they talk amongst themselves. I would not like to be a teacher!

In my last blog i said watch The Day After Tomorrow, the disaster movie about global warming. When I saw it at the cinema I was dead impressed and it made an impression on me. However, when I saw it on the telly last night I saw it more as a Hollywood hyped up movie where the message about global warming got lost behind the over the top special effects and over acting, and hackneyed story line.

I think Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' has the more balanced approach!

Hello readers,

You may recall that I went to Sheffield on Monday gone, to watch Lord Of the Dance in Sheffield. It just happens that this town is where in 1987 I completed my degree in Applied Science, at the Polytechnic which is now called the Sheffield Hallam University. So when I came to visit again 20 years later, I decided to get there early and have a good look round the town centre to see how things have changed. Alot of money has gone into the regeneration of the town centre, and alot has changed, quite dramatically, including the introduction of the tram system.

I plucked up some courage to go into my old college building off Arundel Gate, to see if it would stir some old memories. I was quite astounded to find that it had completely changed. The entrance lobby had become a vast atrium with several levels, and lecture theatres had windows opening up onto the atrium so that you could watch people having lectures. I asked at the reception if any of the lecturers I knew were still there. I gave them a couple of names that I could remember. They weren't there of course, and the receptionist made the comment that they had probably moved on. Well of course, they would have done, it was 20 years ago after all! I felt a bit sheepish expecting that anyone I knew would still be there. They invited me to have a look around the building. I tried to go to places that I remembered but couldn't because it had changed so much and these places weren't there anymore. I finished off my visit by having a cup of tea from the cafe in this vast atrium. As I was musing away, it occured to me just how much I had changed too. I felt like I was a visitor from another planet here, or from another time. I felt like the intrepid explorer in HG Well's the Time Machine, when he tries out his time machine for the first time, by gingerly pushing the handle forward which propels him into the future. He sees buildings collapsing all around him, and new modernised ones springing up in a matter of seconds. It came home to me that my time as a student was in a different era. I did not belong here anymore. It belongs to the new, young people now. On that note I left in a slightly philosophical, downcast mood.

The Day After Tomorrow, a disaster movie is on Channel 4 tonight (Sunday) at 8pm. If you are at all interested in the climate and/or global warming (or even if you aren't interested in global warming), then watch this film. It's an excellent portrayal of what can happen when the weather gets out of control and REALLY gets wild. It's got all the Hollywood special effects and is quite gripping and scary. Very much food for thought.

I went down to Sheffield on Monday to watch Lord of the Dance at the City Hall. Before then, I had seen Riverdance and Lord of the Dance on DVD, and really loved the Irish dancing style, and especially Michael Flatley. The production on Monday was more or less the same as on the DVD. My best bits are when the girls half way through a dance routine, suddenly strip off their dresses and dance the rest of the routine in their underwear, very provocative. The male dancers are then put through their paces with hard core step without music, with the occasional masculine grunt to get the testosterone flowing; probably to work off their pent up desires after watching the ladies dancing almost naked!

The actual 'Lord of the Dance' was not Michael Flatley of course, because he now stars in 'Celtic Tiger'. The dancer who took the part was very good, and he more or less copied, mostly quite successfully, Flatley's style of dancing. However he did not project quite the same macho attitude, which is a plus point or a minus point, depending on which way you look at it. Personally I prefer Flatley's rendition because after all, the whole thing is about good versus bad, and Flatley convincingly sees off the warlords at the end.

The only regret I had after the last curtain, was that I did not go to see Lord of the Dance a few years ago when Michael Flatley was in it.

However the good news is that I may get a chance to see him when Celtic Tiger returns.

Imagine being the captain of a supertanker, one of those huge ships that carry oil from one port to another. They weigh up to half a million tons or more. You have just set off from your home port to travel to a far destination, travelling at a steady 20mph when you realise that you've forgotton your toothbrush and need to go back. So you are going to have to slow down, do an about turn and go back. (Bear with me, there is a point to all this). However, this is no car that you can just stop and go the other way straight away. With so much weight it could take up to 5 miles in distance to slow down, then take ages turning around, and then an equal amount of miles speeding up again. In practice if you had enough room, say 2 or 3 miles either side, you could do a u turn without slowing down, but you get the idea that this is a huge thing to slow down or speed up, and change direction. If you think about it, your shopping trolley gets more and more difficult to move around when it gets loaded up to the brim with your groceries.

Now I think that Economical growth and global warming are like two supertankers, one has to change direction, or at least stop (economical growth), before the other one can even start to change direction; so it's going to take a long time.

Increasing world population = economical growth = even more population growth.
The only sure way to cut carbon emissions is to curb economical growth, but that is going to take a long time to turn things round because of peoples habits. The governments could for example pass laws to prohibit the building of new factories, new roads etc, and concentrate on maintaining existing ones, but try and tell China that!

Once our carbon emissions have decreased and the planet starts to recover, then that itself is going to take along time, and the ill effects will get worse before things turn around and they start to get better. the planet just would not react to the change straight away.

The good news is that this is no excuse to do nothing. We can still start taking measures now to help our children 50 or 100 years down the line.

I'm going to see Lord of the Dance on Monday in Sheffield. I'm really looking forward to it. Although Michael Flatley is no longer in it, it should be a spectacle.