nocto

i think john craven is cheating and celebrating newsround’s 30th birthday a couple of days early since i’m pretty certain that it’s always been just a day older than me, and not three.

you and me won’t be about (i presume) but there’s an asteroid with a one in 300 chance of colliding with the earth on 16 march 2880. what’s interesting is that there are some ideas about how to deflect it that don’t involve sending bruce willis up to deal with it, which is good because even he is unlikely to be around by then.

it seems that we can change the orbit of the asteroid ever so slightly by changing the amount of heat radiated from it and so it

could be redirected by spreading chalk or charcoal across the surface, or by sending a solar sail spacecraft that collapses around the asteroid and sort of shrink-wraps it.

that process isn’t action packed enough for hollywood no doubt.

watch out for a once in a lifetime astronomical sight later this month. in summary, get away from the city lights, watch the sunset and then after half an hour look at the 11 o’clock position in the sky (with the sun set at the 12 o’clock position). you’ll see all five planets that are visible with the naked eye lined up together and over the next few hours they will all set in a straight line.

this is happening from april 20th and it sounds like there will be a few weeks to attempt to find yourself cloud free sky to view it.

the correct pronounciation of newcastle, as in newcastle-upon-tyne, is without an r: nuKASSul, or thereabouts. newCARsul is a southern affectation and totally wrong. today i discover that in newcastle, australia the opposite is true. in that city the locals say newCARsul and the incomers say nuKASSul. they’re quite upside down.

the baltic centre for contemporary art opens on saturday 13th july 2002. there seem to be about a billion building projects happening on gateshead quays at the moment and i’m really looking forward to there being stuff there to see and do.

i’ve also ticked off the yorkshire sculpture park from my list the other week but i haven’t got the photos up yet and the photos are online as are some from a pleasant and knackering stroll about south shields last weekend.

this is one of those articles that concentrates on its point to the point of completely missing the point: save thousands by buying, not renting

abbey national estimates that on average, over a 25-year period, it is £101,679 or 30% cheaper to buy a property in the uk than to rent one.

how many people actually rent a single property for a quarter of a century? how does the equation change when you move house every two years, every four years, every eight years? there’s a host of factors including but not limited to: the ease and cheapness of surrendering a rental contract over the complications and expense of selling a house, the fact that property prices can go up as well as down (unlikely over twenty five years, but over two?) and the issues of leaving building maintainance costs to the landlord rather than shouldering them yourself.

although my own brief foray into the housing market was a financial success i’m not sure why abbey national are bothering to point the obvious out to us really, other than to try and sell more mortgages.