Dec 16, 2012 19:08
I'm not going to talk about the main story of the week. It's very sad, and the more coverage it gets the more likely someone else is to decide it's a good idea. Here are some other things that have been in my mind.
Two stories about sports crowds caught my eye in the last week, one positive and one negative. The first was the Italian man who turned out to be the only supporter of his team at a match the other side of Italy. He was in the relevant city on business, but no-one else had decided to make the trip. The home fans started out mocking, but by the end were very positive, and the opposing club bought him dinner. The second story was in the UK, at a darts match. The long-haired, bearded appearance of a member of the crowd garnered attention from other fans, leading to chants about him being Jesus. The players became a little distracted, and I have sympathy for them, but I have always sort of assumed darts matches are quite noisy. The really bad bit is the response of the security team, which was apparently to remove the poor spectator for causing a disturbance.
Some people seem to be paying tax by popular demand, which confuses me. A bit like when the argument for reducing the highest rate tax band was that it wouldn't make any difference to the amount collected. I'm fairly sure that the whole point of taxes is that they aren't voluntary, on the grounds that we wouldn't pay the amount required to provide the services if we had the choice.
Finally, I think I have worked out why there need to be three very lengthy Hobbit films. If Peter Jackson films at 48 frames/second, and most cinemas can only show films at 24 frames/second, then clearly it will take twice as long as it otherwise would have done to show the thing. To those who have watched it, are the dwarves' voices very gruff?