- Crossing Continents (the BBC Radio 4 Documentary Series) did a 30 minute prog about - The phenomenon of E-Sports and Internet Addiction in Korea. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/7162941.stm

It kind of began .. "Aren't Koreans weird they think computer gaming can be a sport" , cos to British people "sport" involves exercise running about. (The first thing is some English sports like chess or crochet, bowls aren't exactly physical and 2 sports : darts and snooker are usually played inside a pub anyway. Anyway to me sports competitions are overrated anyway who cares if one guy can run faster than another.)

It also covered :
1- high penetration of technology into Korean culture : internet, blogs, gaming and "PC bangs". How Korean culture so being a glasses wearing geek. 2- the Samsung E-sport Team and it's star Game Athlete "The Stork" (Song Byeong Gu) competing in starcraft in a stadium with, fans, groupies and football type commentators.
3 - Internet/gaming addiction and the therapy clinics and camps the government has had to organise.
4 - PC Bang deaths and wondered in future it could it happen in other countries ?

- BBC FOOC on Benazir Butto (pronounced Butta on Malaysian TV so it doesn't sound like arsehole). The BBC guy didn't stand by any tradition of turning the dead into gods more a case now she's dead "we can speak the truth". First he said a lot of positive things like strong, intelligent, likeable etc. then
- 1. He described how she was like a Raja princess, even sitting on a throne with all the adoring peasants holding court. And her security team were rough.
- 2. Thief How undoubtedly the banks of Europe were stuffed with money she had stolen whilst in office.

- A Jewish school in Birmingham has 50% Muslim students (strange)
- guy talked about faith schools are like political school. Like would you send your children to a Conservative Party school : good simile, but some people would

- 10% of Turks are Alevis (Sufi) , no fast no pray, no haj but education is Sunni they have to learn Sunni prayers etc (law has supposed to have changed) ..(BBC Outlook)

- Shappi the Iranian comedian for years unfunny has actually learnt some jokes:
- The relationship between me and my mother is like the relationship between the British Press and British Muslims
- My brother would get shouted at and told off
- and he would say "that's not fair, when Shaapi's mishaves you never say anything !"

... em em Let's just say "your sister has a terrible temper",

Radio Netherlands- Reloaded excellent prog - They have a website called bibleandkoran.net - good site itended to help Christians and Muslims they have in common. However I guess the politicians would say it's a site for converting Muslims to Christianity and scare them.

- Cold does really give you a cold. The prof from the Common cold research institute said they always thought it was an old wives tale as cold is a virus, but when they did an experiment where they got students to stand in a bucket of cold water for 10 minutes, the number of colds was twice the control group. He put it down to cold reducing blood flow in the skin, so reducing blood flow in the nose, so reducing the number of white cells tackling viruses in the nose, so the viruses multiplied more. (Material World)

- Pasteur said "science is global language"

- NS - Why Cats can Survive Falls - they relax muscles, have 4 legs and they fall on their ribcage which hurts, but absorbs impact like a spring. So when you fall try to fall on your ribs ?

- Karl talked about using shake to power devices e.g. Ideas - shakeable phone - windup phone (windup charger are available)

- Bionic ear inventor is mad says brain is so complex only God could have invented it. He's smart, but nuts

- "Homeopathy Works, but it's impossible to prove it ! - I came across a homeopathic website - In a serious academic paper it argued it could never win in a randomised trial like the one James Randi will give the $1m prize for, as it' impossible to prove the effects are not a placebo i.e. you can't prove a negative .
- That's rubbish it's the same way all other medicines are tested. Placebo effect is a way of explaining why 1 in 20 studies succeed. If 18 out of 20 trials succeeded then it wouldn't be placebo

ABC Patent law - 1- it was created to help technology progress. Before people would keep their inventions secret.
-2- other guy said it was difficult cos people would keep claiming that you are infringing their patent e.g. you can't make a 3 legged chair cos they have a patent on all chairs. Many ideas have 5 patents.
... But surely this is just a question of proper governance of patents.

Williams claims he still uses a typewriter for scripts ? ?

CBC's Search Engine
-If viewer numbers have gone down then the writers can't expect to keep the same money for TV and get more for internet. The message I was getting before is those evil studios pay $X for the TV rights, but want to pay $0 for additional internet plays. But the way you put it .. it seems before the studio earnt say $10m in advertising, but now cos everyone watches on the net it earns $8m from TV so it can't afford to pay the writer an additional $Y for internet without cutting the $X. The ideal would be to comeup with a system to value the the TV advertising plus the internet advertising and pay writers from that.