Tag Archives: Beijing

The nest is above

THE PIC above is of the Beijing “nest” – the main stadium of the Beijing Olympics which are now thankfully done. As we were frying around the world, we missed some major crap sporting events, including Wimbledon and the Olympics. We also missed endless golf tournaments no doubt! So there is a god.

It was taken last year at the Intel Developer Forum as was. The area then was pretty boring, but we’re sure by now all the excitement is over one year later and now it is even more superlatively boring.

Kind but officious officals were keen that we took the right track to IDF. We preferred to take the wrong track, but were kindly sent to the right track. Outside our hotel, the manager came out because we were sitting on precious marble and said: “Sir, we cannot have our guests sitting outside, and enjoying the sunshine.”

It was ever thus. Who invented sport? Was it the English? If so, damn their poxy games called cricket and rounders and netball!  Never mind croquet.  And “football” (soccer)

Buenos Aires gets smoked out

THERE’S A LOT about smoke on the Interweb this weekend. For example, according to Reuters, Buenos Aires, which must mean something like good air, is suffering its fifth day of being engulfed by fumes.

Columnist India Knight, over at the Sunday Times, here, opines that the English smoking ban is wiping out the art of conversation, closing hostelries,  and forcing everyone back into their homes, which have become fugged up places. Ms Knight reckons that putative London mayor Boris Johnson will hold a referendum on smoking in the capital, if he wins on the 1st of May next. Johnson apparently got some dosh for speaking to something called the “Tobacco Association” last year. Nothing to do with the sweet smelling plants, presumably. Of which, more, later.

Meanwhile, it seems that the authorities in Beijing, home to the Olympics, have backed down from banning smoking in the capital – one of the most polluted in the world – because the citizens just won’t have it. And China isn’t even a Western style democracy.

In other emission related news, the UK Independent on Sunday is attempting to explain why flowers have lost their scent, here.  It’s nothing to do with ciggies, apparently, and everything to do with motor cars. Actually, bees used to like tobacco plants, but that’s before the type that delivered lovely scents have been  displaced by varieties that don’t give off scent at all. Weird.

Bee-keepers, like honey bees, apparently a dying breed like tobacco smokers plants,  used to use smoke so they could get honey out of the hives. Because bees originally nested in trees, the smell of smoke used to make the bees gorge on honey, which quietened them down a lot so they wouldn’t sting (much), while the bee-keepers took advantage of the honey induced torpor to raid the hives and plunder the honey.

BOGGARDS Rhododendron honey is poisonous. Wasps are not evil. They don’t get nasty until their hives start to break down, and the grubs refuse to feed them sweet secretions in return for the fresh meat the workers have delivered. That’s because the Queen has stopped producing grubs, and there are no grubs to feed the workers. Nature isn’t half red in tooth and claw. ♦