This morning’s stand-out story on the Beeb:

A bold amphibious escape bid by a bear at Berlin zoo has been foiled in a dramatic shoot-out. Juan the Andean spectacled bear first paddled across a moat using a log for a raft, then scaled a wall. Finally he appeared to commandeer a bicycle, before zookeepers with brooms cornered him, and a colleague picked him off with a tranquiliser gun.

I don’t meant to be picky, but… doesn’t a “dramatic shoot-out” depend on both parties being armed? Unless they’re not telling us something, and that this bear had managed to get a gun from somewhere too - now that would be pretty fucking cool. Scary, but cool.

Site now back online, now hosted at 34sp.com. Website should be OK, email seems to be taking a bit longer to sort out though.

Hi-tech satellite systems used to open train doors automatically have been failing, leaving people trapped on trains in the South of England. […] The satellite tracking system monitors where trains are and should open the doors automatically when they stop at a station.

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me. As terreus points out, why don’t they just have a button in the drivers cab? I suppose it could be just that Southern’s parent company, Govia, has to find something to spend the whopping £670 million in subsidy that it will be receiving over the next five years, courtesy of the taxpayer.

Update: Spy Blog points out the potential dangers of such a critical component relying on GPS, and possible problems when the EU’s Galileo goes online.

As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here […] It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are fucking morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.

Man, you’ve gotta love the Swedish, especially when they flame stupid corporate lawyers.

Having just seen that ad for Nuts, the weekly wankmag, with a woman failing to do the DIY while her boyfriend reads aforementioned magazine, I’ve come up with a much better one. While the gormless boyfriend is busy feasting his eyes on Jordan, the girlfriend is angrily trying to put the batteries in her vibrator the right way round. Then cue Johnny Vaughan - “Women! Don’t expect any help on a Thursday!”

Ha ha! The Australian Bureau of Statistics produce a per-capita Olympic medal table (via MeFi), and they still only come second.

A series of similar tables, taking into account other factors like GDP as well is illuminating reading, India are pretty much bottom of most of them, while the Bahamas, Cuba and Estonia all do quite well, and the US is nowhere to be seen. The one factoring in team size is illuminating. The UAE got a gold medal with just four team members - how good is that?

Grr. Left my umbrella in the pub on Tuesday night, and my phone in the back of a taxi last night. Not happy. The bureaucracy involved is tedious (though not too painful) but it means I am going to be wet and unable to communicate until I get them back (or, more likely, get replacements).

Endsleigh (my phone insurers) were unintentionally hilarious though, when I rang them to make the claim I was put on hold, the music of choice being Gabrielle’s “Out Of Reach”. Surely not the right tune to hear if you’ve just lost something expensive or important?

One thing that jogged my memory when reading about the theft of The Scream, and that was that the figure in the picture is not screaming, but covering its ears to protecting itself from the screams that are coming from all around it. I think it was in a letter to Private Eye or something. Anyway, I’ve found precious little backing this assertion up on the net, so it’s probably spurious, but it’s still a fascinating theory.