Best hydrology resource I've seen online, sorry to be so positive.

The default is 10 m sea rise, shown to illustrate what will happen. Change it back to zero and it will go away.

It's illegal to leave your car unlocked? Eh? Try that again. WTF? Sorry, FFS.

Leave. Just leave. The world's big enough you don't need to live somewhere like that.

If your lawmakers are capable of doing something as petty as this in public, what's going on behind the scenes?

Eh? Patrick Moore may have held views that were certainly more UKIP than Labour, however describing him as a "far-right Nazi" (Head of the SS-type far-right Nazi?) is just nuts. I wouldn't have agreed with much of his politics, but just as Labour voters aren't communists, UKIP voters aren't fascists (and personally, I'd like to see Labour be a lot more socialist).

I always thought of Moore as being a complex human-being. His views on 'foreigners' were forged in WWII and he, and any of his generation, should be forgiven. War deeply changes people. I certainly take Voltaire's view on his opinions.

I wonder what you'd say about my neighbour, George, who my son interviewed for a project on D-Day? George was on Gold Beach on June 6th 1944 and his first words were "I've tortured so many people". He then described the living hell of the Falaise Pocket in a way that there's now one ten year-old who'd never join the army. He's lived his life quietly, but he's never forgot the smell, miles down-wind of Belsen. You won't find him driving a VW.

Moore's alleged misogyny was odd, it came not from the women who worked with him (I read many defences and not a single "J'accuse" from his female colleagues), but from his own views that the (his?) world should be a Boys-Own club. Also, and rarely, 'Never Married' apparently meant just that, not that he actually cruised the public toilets of the world.

RIP.

But this isn't tapping phones as we know it. Did the govt used to open all letters, read and copy them? Did it have thousands of wax cylinders running to record all phones, or have operators employed by the hundreds of thousands to make notes on all conversations?

These mass surveillance campaigns have actually been technically possible for a hundred years, but yet, they haven't "always" been doing it.

Never understood why people don't celebrate more as they're getting older. It's a race we all retire from at some stage, better to be increasingly glad.

Unless being born on 4th July is like having your birthday on Christmas or New Year's Eve?

This act was as amazing chutzpah as when the Chinese jet and the American SIGINTS spy plane collided 12 or so years ago. Can you imagine what the US would do/feel/sulk if the Chinese were flying the same missions over 'international waters', but this time from Cuba and up the eastern seaboard ?

It will come now.

And people swallow that 'unlawful combatant' nonsense? Didn't they have the right paperwork? Forgot to get their forms signed by the right people? Or just weren't ready to stand out in the open and be simply blown away by a military that is 100% better equipped than all the other militaries in the world, combined?

Phrases like 'unlawful combatant' are the true banality of evil.

Moderate-sized explosions in an area packed with people. Very early to speculate, but 'Homemade IEDs' are what the police are saying.

I'm totally speculating here, but this looks like 'domestic' (i.e., US and amateur) terrorists. Foreign governments like their explosives to be high and their targets to be internationally recognised. However, for the people who lost, lives, limbs or loved-ones, this won't be of any consolation. Our thoughts are with them all.

Here in NW Europe, we're being told we're kept warm in the winter by the "warm waters of the Gulf Stream". Unfortunately, we don't literally bathe in those waters. Heat is transported by SW winds that blow across them, picking up moisture which is then rained out over us and releasing latent heat.

This unseasonably weather is nothing to do with the Gulf stream weakening, it's simply the winds are blowing in the opposite direction (from the cold, dry land). Why they are prolonged is to do with the jet stream position's much further to the south. The mid-latitude jet's a product of the atmosphere's thermal gradient (and some orographically introduced wobbles) and its odd, prolonged position could quite conceivably be to do with Arctic sea ice loss.

In what could have been an awful piece of television, 6 European and 6 Japanese bankers in the City of London were sat down in a bar and given beer. After only 2 glasses, 4 of the 6 Japanese were bright red and visibly uncomfortable. One of the two exceptions was a noticeably small woman who polished-off half a dozen without problems. None of the Europeans were similarly affected.

The premise (which is widely accepted in Europe) is that beer and wine gave clean drinking water. If you reacted badly to it, good ol' Evolution found its path through unsanitised water. In the East, the drink was tea, so the tolerance of alcohol is not an innate part of the population.

Hell, beer WAS food for many generations. It is only very recently that food became cheap in the modern world. Before decent nutrition, beer was a way for manual labourers to get cheap calories quickly. We're talking up to the 1960s here, not just the 1690s.

The last two look especially mouth-watering. Off to raid the fridge and pop open the Port...

Is there a general market for these, or are such flavours still a niche? Trying to work out if the hump stopping wider distribution is formed by supply (existing interests) or demand (tastes too exotic)?

Not surprised by the cheeses from other cultures, just how uniformly poor they were, e.g., was expecting a cheddar, but they were all so incredibly bland; pretty much how fussy young children think cheese should taste.

Have seen how much the beer market's changed, with some delicious US local beers on quite wide distribution. Would have hoped something could have happened with another cultured product.

First visit was 20 years ago, San Fran and various towns and cities around. Monterey Jack was the most daring on casual display. We found some peppery cheddar in a shop in Sonoma that was interesting, but it reminded us of fruit beers- different taste to the bland, but adding things to the mix ain't the answer.

We spent 3 months in the US a couple of years back, across about 8 states. So not just checking out the airport transit store cracker-toppings. Instead of shouting at me, CONVENIENCE, FFS, answer the question. What is a good and widely available cheese now? Something with bite, texture, maybe even mould.

Two big shocks on entering American food/drink culture coming from the UK. A big one was how much a bar != a pub. But bigger was for a nation who consumes so much food, how can its cheese be this bad? 300 million people, surely there's room for a few hundred local decent cheeses? Are there any excellent and widely available varieties?