I have been ill.

Since this doesn't happen very often, I thought I'd record it here. Now that I'm getting older (44), maybe I will get ill more often, but I think this is my first illness of 2016 which isn't bad.

Anyway, I've had some weird fluey thing. I gave it to bunn too, who had very similar (but not quite identical) symptoms. Today was my first day back doing proper work since last Wednesday, which was good because I had the last lecture of the term for my MBA students, a joint lecture with the head of the Business School. He'd had it too. As had two of the four students. As had the small daughter of one of the others. The remaining student spent the entire lecture breathing through her handkerchief.

The key symptom for me has been complete lack of energy, for days on end. That and weight loss. I've lost ten pounds in five days. That can't be healthy. And in fact it wasn't.

Feeling much better now. I had a productive day of work which means that I'm pretty much on top of my dmbsf bttpdjbuft work but way, way behind on where I want to be in terms of Shop on the Borderlands admin. And have barely started Christmas shopping. And we don't have any decorations up. Not to mention overdue housework etc.

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OK, we haven’t had a Phligm Phlagm post since mid-October, and the world was a different place back then.

I’ve been busy all right? Anyway, here’s the first load of links to catch up on. Feel free to take your time over them…

Christmas Reading List 2025

The Red Dwarf theme tune has secret lyrics, and they've only just been discovered. (But they’re actually suprisingly easy to hear once you know about them!)

What would you call a mystery species of aurochs / bison known only from cave paintings? The Higgs Bison of course!

I think we can call this "corruption", don't you?

Canoes are racist now, apparently. (Or to put it another way, the University of Victoria employs a complete fuckwit as its Professor of English, apparently.)

£250,000 gold coin found in child's pirate treasure collection.

"Kid needs permission slip to read 'Fahrenheit 451', his dad's response is brilliant." Of course, both teacher and dad (as well as almost everyone else) have in fact misinterpreted what the book is about.

One of the overlooked greats of RPG art: Russ Nicholson. I love his stuff.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams on being bullied by Clinton supporters.

True story: The raven in Poe's poem was inspired by Charles Dickens's pet raven.

OK, now will leftards shut up about tax 'avoidance'?

"...where he displayed upper body strength far beyond his supposed years and also was able to completely strip a rifle at a shooting range."

You don't need this laptop either.

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Cutting Corporation Tax to 10% wouldn't just be a good idea because it pisses off the French.

There are ten times more galaxies in our universe than we previously thought. That seems a pretty big error. Did some cosmologist put a decimal point in the wrong place?

What if the EU tried to stop us trading with them completely? Well, it's been tried before, and it worked out rather better for us than it did for them.

A quick tour of the remotest island in the world.

Britain's productivity has fallen. That's a good thing.

Nicely illustrated periodic table.

Baroness Scotland, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, deserves better paint than we do. We have to pay for it, mind. Oh, and a £4,000 cupboard. And an "extremely expensive" chandelier. And gave a £30,000 a month contract to a close friends  having waived the normal process. If she’s one of the "100 Great Black Britons", it doesn't say a lot for "Black Britons", does it?

"This is your decision. The government will implement what you decide." (Seems pretty straightforward language to this Politics graduate. Not “Parliament will decide and this is only a recommendation” or even “Parliament will implement what you decide”. Simply “The government will implement what you decide”. But then judges seem to use the English language differently from normal people… Or is it that the government lied? But surely only the evil brexiteers lied…?)

Guinness World Record for "Longest Single Game of Football Manager": 173 days, 16 hours and 51 minutes. That’s just short of 4,169 hours. He’s been playing Football Manager 2010, and hasn’t upgraded to any of the subsequent iterations. If I add up the time I’ve put into successive campaigns of Football Manager 2010 (1539 hours), 2012 (3081 hours), 2014 (1176 hours) and now 2015 (2908 hours) it adds up to 8,704 hours. So, I’ve put more than double the hours into FM than he has. Impressed?

Apple now sells 17 different types of dongle.

Bill Clinton on Jeremy Corbyn: "...the maddest person in the room".

The god Ganesha has been reincarnated. That's nice.

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Two stuntmen die jumping from a helicopter into a reservoir. Not because of the impact, but because neither of them could swim. That’s a special level of stupid.

Reading University is boycotting University Challenge because of "misogynistic and sexist comments".

Something that history shows us pretty consistently, is that democracy works. Some people need to think whether they should really be so keen to ignore it.

Anarchist Monopoly

Keith Vaz will  be one of the MPs scrutinising the new laws on unexplained wealth. Keith Vaz.

Since Fidel Castro has finally died, it's time to remind ourselves just how many people died because of monsters like him.

Steve Bannon is clearly not an anti-semite. (I mean, simple sense-check. Would someone who was anti-semitic really do well in their career at Goldman Sachs? Or Breitbart?)

It wasn't "shy tories" who skewed polling results for the 2015 General Election, it was "busy" ones.

Man Bathes in Yellowstone Basin, Dissolves in Boiling Acid

The Enganche.

It's worth joining Pinterest just to browse through the Flat Earth boards.

At 55 years of age, Joe Thomas Senior of South Carolina State, is almost certainly Division 1 College Football's oldest ever player.

Someone is making and distributing a blacklist of supposedly pro-Trump RPG and other game developers. (Unless they aren’t. While this will seem all too likely to gamers and science fiction readers, I’m not actually convinced of the truth of this story. That said, I’m not convinced by the denials either.)