Normal Service Resumed

That Is, As Normal As It Gets
Today we will be pontificating about buses, bushes, bleeding, Bad Astronomers and big figures.  Now, not many blog intros can boast a line-up like that, can they?  Or if they can, they can't be quite as <thinks> witty and perceptive about it.
     You'll have to trust me on the "witty and perceptive", there are no independent judges here.

No support from Conrad from this quarter

     Oh, and you may have noticed that I've not resorted to Brewers for an inspirational title to the blog - let's just see - Hmmm.  "Fiduciary Issue" - that smacks of economics, and I do plan to harp on this later.  Is that coincidence or not?  Nah.  Surely not.

The Bus Wait Rate
I did put this concept out there as a rather throwaway item, i.e. when in a hurry and expectantly waiting for the bus to come, you see lots passing on the other side of the road, taunting you.  Conversely, if you're not on a rapid schedule, nothing crosses your field of vision.
     Well the first part of that assertion is right: on Friday morning, waiting for the 24, three buses and a coach whiz past on the uphill side of Rochdale Road.  Last night, meandering my casual way into town - nothing*.


The Greenery Of The Scenery
Once again Conrad was struck by the sheer lushness of the vista down Rochdale Road.  No, I don't mean the trees alone, I'm pretty sure some of those houses down there are going mildewed with damp.

     I walk opposite one en route to the pub quiz so I may be able to back this rain-riddled assertion with photos.  I'll get back to you on that.

"Bleeding Edge" By Thomas Pynchon
As you probably know by now, gentle reader, Conrad is quite the fan of Mr. Pynchon.  Over the past year I've finished off "Against The Day", "V", "The Crying of Lot 49", "Mason and Dixon" and "Inherent Vice".  Now it's the turn of "Bleeding Edge", set between the Dotcom Crash and 9/11.

There was also -

     If you want to impress an audience of poseurs and/or pseuds, you should let drop that you read Pynchon as people imagine his stuff to be incredibly dense, difficult, awkward, sterile and demanding.  Not a bit of it!  He delights in silly puns, made-up songs, characters with daft names, detailed little tangents angling off from the main plot, and is occasionally laugh-out loud funny.  True, his plots tend to be complex, so you can't take a break from reading for a couple of weeks, as you will have literally lost the plot.  In BE the dialogue is clipped and sometimes cryptic, and there are quite a few pop culture references, though not as many as Inherent Vice. 

- this, which is apparently Iron Man wearing his Bleeding Edge armour

      Not to mention some things that even your well-read and wise scribe has heard of.
"Zapper fraud"? - this is a real thing, where crooked shop owners alter their electronic till records with illegal software to avoid tax.  Who knew!
"Bribe Payers Index" - again a real thing - you can't take these for granted with Tom, he is creative and persuasive:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribe_Payers_Index

There are 28 nations on the list, from least likely to bribe, to those with suitcases stuffed with bills just waiting to be thrown in the back of the car.

     I did forget to mention the central character, Maxine, who is a Chartered Fraud Expert, who reminds me of nobody more than the leading actress in "A Taxing Woman".

The Edge, Bleeding

HOW Much?
This is, perhaps, tip-toeing into the shallows of current affairs where the blog normally fears to tread, but - once again! - whose blog is it?
     Okay, last year the Co-Op posted losses of £2.5 billion, which is quite a loss by anyone's standards, and was commented on widely with a range of critical analyses - especially by Robert Peston, the BBC's Economics Editor, who is something of an ordure-oscillator**.
     You think that's bad?  Please stand up Tesco!
     There had been speculation that the supermarket chain would be posting a loss of £5 billion, which is pretty bad - you don't have to have a degree in economics to realise that much - and they would have been grateful for that as the actual loss was £6.5 billion.
     You think that's bad?  Please stand up RBS!
     Last year these characters posted a loss of £3.5 billion, which is not good.  You can appreciate that?  This year they trumped that spectacularly, with an £8.25 billion loss.  Actually it was £8.24, but what's £10 million in a total like that.
     You think that's bad?  Please stand up Network Rail!
     These recently announced a loss of £38 billion.  Think about that for a minute.  Round it down to £36 billion and that's a loss of £3 billion per month, and if we average a month as 30 days, that's losing £100 million per day.
     How on earth can they manage to lose that amount of money?  Are their managers staggering outdoors with wheelbarrows loaded with £100 notes, to be dumped into piles as big as the Pyramid Stage at Glasto and then set alight with flamethrowers?

This!  Every day of every month for a year!

Enough cutting-edge satirical humour!

The Bad Astronomer Posts
Phil Plait, a.k.a. the Bad Astronomer, is one of the internet doyens of online astronomy.  He has two books published and a television series, and is a tireless promoter of science and astronomy, besides possessed of a sense of humour.

Phil (left) with Mythbuster Adam.  Cool!

     So.  He recently posted on Slate, where he hosts a page about astronomy, about extra-solar planets.  This revelation concerns a "hot Mars", that is a planet similar to Mars but in an orbit very, very close to it's sun.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/06/18/exoplanet_the_mass_and_size_of_planet_smaller_than_earth_revealed.html

     "Tell us, Conrad!" I hear you cry.  "What is an extra-solar planet!"
A planet not in our own solar system.  Yes, that simple, except up until the mid-90's we didn't know if any planets existed outside our solar system.  There are various methods used to detect them, but at first only the huge gas giant types could be picked up - although the proviso was made that within a decade we'd be finding planets the size of Earth.
     And lo! It's been done.
     All credit to Hom. Sap., you are a clever and inventive species.  Thankfully you don't have Faster Than Light travel yet, so the Galaxy is safe***.

A hot Mars.  No - hang on  a minute -

* No buses crops up as part of the night out.
** You can work this out, I'm not translating, BOOJUM! is still SFW.
*** For the moment ...