Terror plots, brain drain, mumbling, and the PS3

So the head of MI5 has announced there are terror plots around in the UK, they're investigating upto 200 groups, 1600 individuals, and 30 plots. Woah! Is it budget review time already? You've got to wonder though - 200 groups and 1600 individuals, but only 30 plots. What are these suspects doing? Comparing knitting patterns, holding book discussions, or simply mouthing off about how terrible the UK is. Well if it's so terrible here's a solution - leave.

Seriously, a lawyer is asked to remove her headscarf so that the judge can hear her, she refuses and is now taking it to court in Europe at the taxpayers expense. Okay here's the deal - stop whining. At the last census count just over 70% of the population are Christian, just under 3% are Muslim. Now we're a tolerant nation we'll happily allow you to practice whatever religion you like provided it doesn't hurt anyone, but do stop banging on about your religious rights; you want such rights move to a country where the majority are Muslims.

As in almost all cases it's a small minority of a group who kick up the fuss, the rest just get on with life and presumably are thankful they don't live in a country where the government can chop off your head for speaking out of turn.

The boss picked up a copy of The Brain Game for the DS and brought it in, not wanting to ruin any data he might have I ran through one of the practices. It's quite simply once you understand it, not helped by the instructions being as clear as mud, if the screen shows Red you say blue, see easy... Red "Blue" Wrong "Blue?" Correct, Green "Red" Wrong "Red!" Correct. The resulting fiasco was a brain age of 80. Next time I'll try it with a Welsh accent.

The BBC were discussing film actors mumbling, after Michael Caine had complained, and had the almighty Brian Blessed on to discuss it. Way too short an interview, but it is something I've noticed and I've often had to switch on the subtitles and rewind a bit to find out what the heck they said. Is it old age, are they mumbling, or is it simply that they stick on some voice canceling music over the top to impart the correct mood? Anybody's thoughts on this would be interesting.

Finally, and I mean that in both contexts, the PS3 is heading for a release tomorrow... in Japan, we won't be getting it until March next year at which point the price is supposed to be around £500. Okay I think I'm going to be happy with my PS2 for the time being, after all I've just acquired a new computer and I'm still playing System Shock 2 on it so I'm not exactly in the market for the latest whizz-bang games. It'll still sell by the truck-load when it comes out though and hopefully they'd have ironed out the hardware bugs by then; just think of the Japanese and American markets as beta testers for us.