Tag that

To aid falling asleep some people count sheep. For many years I’ve used the practice of:

“Fall asleep thinking of a question,
wake up knowing the answer”

It works. I lie in bed thinking “what will be the topic of tomorrows blog?”, and invariably I wake at 4 o’clock not only knowing the subject but quite often with a draft of the blog in my head. This morning the idea rattling around in my brain was “write about the subject most blogged about”. The next step was obvious - identify the top blogged about subject.

Problem - not as easy as I thought it would be. Entered “most blogged about subject” into Google and got no definitive answer. Under such circumstances there is only one solution - drink a cup of Chai and ruminate.

Lateral thinking - if there is no direct answer, look for clues. Obviously, blog tags would give an indication of the subject. Looked up Technorati’s Top Tags list, the top twelve tags were: baby, blogroll, bush, computer, gaming, me, mobile, money, opinion, tags, tecnologia and usa. So the challenge is now to write a sagacious blog incorporating those twelve tags.

I know bogroll is toilet paper, but I had no idea of the meaning of “blogroll” until I Googled it. Years ago people would look in a dictionary to find the meaning of a word, but in the “computer” orientated world information and language is evolving so quickly Google seems to have become the fountain of all knowledge, the place you turn to first for information. So blogroll is a list on a blog of other blogs. As you can see I haven’t got one!! Perhaps you can help me out; if you think your blog should be the first on my bloglist let me know.

“Tecnologia” yet another word I have never heard of! Entered it into Google and got referred to “Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre“. There was only one thing I could do - Babel Fish it. French - English no, Italian - English no, Spanish - English no, Portuguese - English = technology. Now that I find very interesting. Not that tecnologia is technology in Portuguese, but rather a Portuguese word is 11th in the Top Tag list. I would guess the majority of blogs are written in English - next French, Chinese, Spanish? Anyone out there know how many blogs are written in each language? What ever answer you give will be wrong! With the number of blogs doubling every five months, your answer will be out-of-date before you finish typing it.

Technorati indicates there are 15,248,367 blogs about blogs and 20,300 blog posts containing the word tecnologia. I’ve just checked its gone up to 20,304.

Just a thought, do more people use their computer for blogging than “gaming”? I guess it’s the latter with children ensconced in their bedrooms. When young kids ask where they come from, they are often told they were found under a “bush”, for the parents sake I hope it was a “money” tree. When a mother gets a “baby” she can now expect to have to buy as soon as the child is out of nappies, a computer, game counsel and the ubiquitous “mobile”.

The list did say “bush” not Bush. But on rechecking some of the blogs with bush “tags” it should have been Bush. George W that is President of the “USA”. I really would appreciate it if someone could tell “me” how a country like the USA could elect such shulunk as its leader. That’s just my “opinion”, obviously the majority of Americans thought he was the best thing since sliced bread.

I made reference earlier to how things are changing so quickly, this is particularly true of the London skyline. As I look out of my window I can see 29 tower cranes, they are busy demolishing buildings built in the 1960s and replacing them with click here to see an example.

Iran incident, UK crises.

Hopefully Iran and Britain are getting closer to negotiating the release of the British Naval personnel.

The incident was caused when the crew of two British Naval patrol boats were arrested by Iran, but the crisis was caused by the subsequent inept handling of the affair by the British Prime Minister. Anyone who read the Islamic Republic News Agency’s initial press releases would have seen Iran was seeking a low key negotiated resolution. It only became a crisis when Big Mouth Blair claimed the sailors were arrested in Iraqi territorial waters. No one with smallest amount of common sense or knowledge of the subject would have made such a statement. But it is typical of Blair’s approach to diplomacy - let us not forget that Blair has taken Britain into more wars than any other “Peacetime Prime Minister”.

Why was it foolish for Blair to claim the incident occurred in Iraqi territorial waters? The Maritime boundary between Iraq and Iran was established by the Algiers Accord in 1975. However at the time it was recognised the border, in the open sea outside the Shatt al-Arab waterway, was defined not in reference to a well established coastline, but to moving mudflats; consequently it was agreed the position of the border should be reviewed every ten years. No such review took place as Saddam Hussein “tore up” the agreement in 1980, at the start of the 1980 - 1988 Iran Iraq war. Consequently neither Iran nor Britain can claim the boats were in Iran or Iraq waters.

The situation was aggravated when the UK briefed the press using maps which delineated the boundary with a thick red line. It must be realised, the question of the location of the border is as sensitive an issue to Iran as the ownership of the Falklands and Gibraltar is to Britain.

Over the weekend, Britain seemed to recognise the prudence of following traditional and well established diplomatic procedures to establish contacts with Iran. This however was not helped by Blabber Mouth Bush, referring to the sailors as “British Hostages”. Then his partner Blair could not resist throwing in his three pennyworths with his belligerent mutterings.

This World will be a safer place when Blair and Bush finally leave office. Hopefully they will shut up long enough for the diplomats to do their work.