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Not much happening around the apartment this week. We had our first experiences of 90f heat (about 32c), and pretty toasty it was too. Down in Texas they've had over two weeks of 100f and higher temperatures. So far over 100 people have died as a result, including about 40 Mexicans who were trying to sneak into the country in a wagon without any water. Whilst there's not much you can do about the cold, there are many options for the heat. Take a cold shower or bath, head down to one of the air conditioned malls or libraries, anything. One person even died although they had air conditioning in the house. They hadn't switched it on because they were afraid of the cost of the extra electric. Sounds familiar, doesn't it.

One of the advantages of this new PC (well, it was new 9 months ago!) is that it has one of these new DVD ROM drives. This allows us to play movies and watch them while in bed (sad, really). We're building up a bit of a collection and this week we bought US Marshalls, with Tommie Lee Jones and Wesley Snipes. A good action movie, with a reasonably interesting plot. Last week we watched Contact, starring Jodie Foster and Tom Skerrit, about the first contact with Extra Terrestials, although the search leading up to the discovery of the radio signals took up a good half of the movie, the building of a space vehicle another half, and the meeting the rest. A very interesting movie.

Talking about movies, you really must have a look at Andrew Hicks' web site. He has around 900 movie reviews, the diaries of the life of a nerd (his own diaries of high school and college life) and various other stories and bits and pieces. He has an excellent sense of humor and self-deprecation, as well as biting sarcasm, and has had me chortling away on many an occassion.

A couple of things have caught my eye in the Scottish news this week. The first being that the Lords have rolled over and allowed the Government's Education Bill to go through, even though they sent it back twice because of the odious section that has English, Welsh and Irish students paying for a fourth year at Scottish universities. All other students wouldn't have to pay, something that's so racially biased it leaves one speechless. It'll never get though the first court challenge, of course, but it just means more uneccesary cost and waste.

This week the transport white paper was released to much scoffing. Whilst the concept of encouraging the utilization of public transport is something I agree with there must be the infrastructure present to tempt the public before you start with the big sticks. An example, may help. When working at Scottish Power's East Kilbride office it used to take me 45 minutes to do the 30 or so miles from Grangemouth in the morning. To use public transport it would have taken a 5 minute walk to the bus stop; a 15 minute bus journey into Falkirk; a 5 minute walk from the bus depot to the train depot; a 30 minute train journey into Glasgow; a 30 minute train journey out to East Kilbride; and, finally, a 10 minute walk to the office. That makes 1 hour and 35 minutes, excluding any waiting time for buses and trains, probably another 30 minutes, at least, for about 2 hours. Add to that the social factors of having your own personal space in the car, where you can listen to the radio or whatever, and public transport has got a long way to catch up.

Another possibility raised in the white paper was toll roads. I have no problem with this sort of idea, and there should be some sort of variable cost based on your usage of your car rather than the single level car tax each year. This really penalizes those who hardly ever use the car. Some sort of road usage tax or, even better, the road tax should be added to the gas price. Those who use their vehicle the most should pay the most. However, one caveat. The extra funds raised should be used on the roads and not siphoned off into other things. Most of the excises and duties raised on motoring are used for other, non-related, sources. That should be changed, with more effort being put into the public transport infrastructure.

Well, that's enough for this week. I'll catch you all next week.