Thursday, Nov. 23, 2017 - 22:20

In the cricket England batted first and recovered from the early loss of Cook to reach 127/1. Vince reached 83, Stoneman 53, but Root fell cheaply and stumps was reached with a hard-earned 196/4.

I'm reading 'Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil' by John Berendt. I'm halfway through and am a little frustrated and annoyed at the book blurb etc. which has described it as an important and critically acclaimed 'true crime' book (similarly to 'In Cold Blood', which I quite liked). However so far it has been 170 pages of descriptions of the colourful inhabitants of a city in the state of Georgia, and the crime has only just occurred, at the mid-point of the book. I just feel this is wrongly formatted and it sticks in my craw, I feel cheated and that the author has bloated a less important part of the book - it's not a true crime book, it's a travel/memoir with a crime well of the way into this. I may change my mind in the second half, but I am a bit irked.

This evening I learned of the existance of albums like 'Pretty Eight Machine' by Inverse Phase, making 8-bit cover versions of songs such as those by NIN which very well suit it by virtue of the fact they're industrial/electronic originally innit. There are benefits to the YouTube generation and the ability to make music and get it out there, though there are problems with pop music and pop culture and the limited number of things that actually make it - that book I read, marketing, etc. blah blah.

One hundred and fifty years since 'The Manchester Martyrs' were hanged in Manchester - for killing a police officer while freeing two Irish nationalists from custody. William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien – were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The trio were members of a group of 30–40 Fenians who attacked a horse-drawn police van transporting two arrested leaders of the Brotherhood, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, to Belle Vue Gaol.

Ex-Manchester City player Robinho has been charged with rape and faces a nine-year jail sentence. Ex-Manchester City player Ched Evans was imprioned for rape. Ex-Manchester City player Adam Johnson has been imprisoned for having sexual content with a fifteen year-old girl. Ex-Manchester City youth player recently was in the news appearing in court accused of raping a woman in Grimsby. I'm not saying that there is a problem specifically associated with the North-West club (in truth there are probably a great number of professional footballers who could be pigeonholed as young men with more money than sense who are used to popularity and having their own way) but it did occur to me as a bit of pattern when I read the news today.

There was a Panorama episode tonight about illogical mistakes and biases. Daniel Kahneman (Nobel Prize winner, 'Thinking Fast and Slow' author) talked about the errors of intuition and the like. It was an interesting subject, kinda nicely documentaried, but I suppose I would prefer to read about it - more depth perhaps and detail, opportunity to go into aspects more objectively.

A cold front is defined as the leading edge of a cooler mass of air, replacing at ground level a warmer mass of air, which lies within a fairly sharp surface trough of low pressure. It forms in the wake of an extratropical cyclone, at the leading edge of its cold air advection pattern, which is also known as the cyclone's dry conveyor belt circulation. Temperature changes across the boundary can exceed 30 °C (54 °F).[1] When enough moisture is present, rain can occur along the boundary. If there is significant instability along the boundary, a narrow line of thunderstorms can form along the frontal zone. If instability is less, a broad shield of rain can move in behind the front, which increases the temperature difference across the boundary. Cold fronts are stronger in the fall and spring transition seasons and weakest during the summer. When a cold front catches up with the preceding warm front, the portion of the boundary that does so is then known as an occluded front.

GROUP A

Macc Tel Aviv 0-2 Slavia Prague:-

Astana 2-3 Villareal:-

GROUP B

Skenderbeu 3-2 Dynamo Kiev:-

Partizan Belgrade 2-1 Young Boys Berne:-

GROUP C

Ludo Razgrad 1-2 Istanbul Basaksehir:-

Sporting Braga 3-1 Hoffenheim:-

GROUP D

AC Milan 5-1 Austria Vienna:-

AEK Athens 2-2 HNK Rijeka:-

GROUP E

Lyon 4-0 Apollo Limmasol:-

Everton 1-5 Atalanta:-

GROUP F

Lokomotiv Moscow 2-1 FC Copenhagen:-

Sherrif Tiraspol 1-0 Zlin:-

GROUP G

Viktoria Plzen 2-0 Steaua Bucharest:-

Lugano 1-0 Hapoel Beer Shaver:-

GROUP H

FC Koln 1-0 Arsenal:-

BATE Borisov 0-0 Crvena Zvezda:-

GROUP I

Konyaspor 1-1 Marseille:-

Red Bull Salzberg 3-0 Vit Guimaraes:-

GROUP J

Athletic Bilbao 3-2 Hertha BSC:-

Ostersunds FK 2-0 Zorya Luhansk:-

GROUP K

Nice 3-1 Zulte Waregem:-

Lazio 1-1 Vitesse Arheim:-

GROUP L

Rosenborg 0-1 Real Sociedad:-

Zenit St Petersberg 2-1 Vardar:-