Raskolnikov

Tsutomo Yamaguchi has been verified by Japan as the only known survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, and I'm still trying to work out whether this makes him one of the luckiest or unluckiest people ever. In light of the fact that he's still alive at 93, I'm inclined to lean towards the former.

Looks like the Israeli Army are moving in on T-shirt Hell's patch.

Apparently last night, when Max Clifford told her it was time to meet her maker she momentarily perked up, thinking that some producers from Endemol were there to discuss a new TV series about her boys.

Yep. Congratulations Vinegar Tits. And I know we've had some cracking quotes from Max Clifford et al over the past few weeks but this one from Jackiey Budden this morning is a corker, "Family and friends would like privacy at last." Where to begin...

You're right I do. However, in this instance I shamelessly lifted the info from the BBC. Here's the link I should have provided the first time round. On the KERS front, I don't know nearly enough about the intricacies of it to make any sort of informed comment, although the ban on in-season testing probably has much to do with the fact that next to no teams are planning on using it in Melbourne. I imagine it will take a little while for the teams to perfect the system, and I'm guessing most felt that they needed to focus more on overall performance over the winter rather than trying to implement a system that isn't compulsory until next season. You never know though...

Here you go. Main winners would have been Mansell and Clark. Main loser would have been Piquet. Prost would have gained three but lost two.

So since any ranters we generally attract to this site are more often than not of the highly opinionated, yet deeply ignorant type, perhaps it's time we started getting that extra bit of mileage out of their posts by trying to unravel the hidden meanings behind the unusual words in their vocabularies. I'm envisaging this to work in a similar fashion to the Viz Profanisaurus, and if anyone feels they have a better, or alternative definition of a particular 'word' then by all means let us know. Simply include a link to the offending post so we all know what you're referring to. I'll start the ball rolling with this offering from josephine. sik - A Sikh that drops their aitches. losse - A Scottish version of Lassie.

Someone who got away in almost every sense is Jamal Al-Gashey, who is widely believed to be the last surviving member of the Black September hostage takers involved in the 1972 Munich massacre. Over 35 years on, he still lives in hiding, fearing retribution from Israel, and has only really emerged from hiding once, to be interviewed for the documentary 'One Day in September'. Admittedly, he's a real outside bet, but if Mossad do ever get an inkling of where he's holed up I don't imagine they'd think twice about dispatching him to join his comrades.

I do enjoy the way that the garbled moral outrage expressed by so many ranters is nearly always accompanied with a desire to see all of us suffer some form of horrific retribution. It's almost as if a pre-requisite of becoming a ranter is an unwavering belief in the notion that 'two rongs make a rite', coupled with a blissful ignorance of the concept of irony. And I sincerely hope that more ranters of the calibre of Ms woodlocked do drop by over the next few days as I'm planning on starting a Deathlist Thesaurus thread to try and help us navigate the illiterate minefield that is the world of the ranter, and more posts like this will help it get off the ground quicker.

The German authorities have got round to filing some charges against him. Just the 29,000 counts of being an accessory to murder. Next step extradition? Or perhaps the onset of some mysterious, debilitating illness that prevents him from travelling?

I must fess up to having actually been to Lourdes some years ago, and the amount of tacky souvenirs you see at every turn really does beggar belief. Toast's link is only the tip of the iceberg, and if you get away from 'official' souvenir stalls you don't have to go far to see people selling Virgin Mary lighters, penknives, and best of all, flick knives. Perhaps a Jade Goodie flick knife would be a fitting memorial, as they're both capable of bringing misery into people's lives.

I'll take March 28th.

I'm sticking with Sir Robert Robson.

It looks pretty certain that Benjamin Netanyahu is once again going to become Israel's Prime Minister, so I wonder if there will be any repercussions for Sharon, especially with the ultra nationalist Yisraeil Beitenu party led by Avigdor Lieberman looking likely to be confirmed as Netanyahu's main partner in a coalition government. Given that Sharon fired Lieberman from his government in 2004, and had many run ins with Netanyahu when he himself was PM, is it too cynical for me to suggest that the new government might find it easier to locate the off switch on Sharon's ventilator? Just a thought.

You may well be right, and I did toy with the idea of posting him in the 'Who's going to be around for a while' thread. However, as my second link above mentioned, he does harbour hopes of becoming a space tourist, and it sounds as if it's going to happen sooner rather than later, If that goes ahead, then I don't care how healthy an 89 year old body you've got, it's going to be put under some serious strain during blast off.

A man entered a restaurant, sat down, and it wasn't long before an extremely attractive, busty blonde waitress came over to his table. "What would you like sir?" She asked. The man looked her straight in the eye and said "I'd like a quickie please" "I beg your pardon!" She gasped. "That's right" he replied, "a quickie". "How dare you!" she shouted, before storming off. Five minutes later, she came back over to his table and said, "OK, I've calmed down a bit now so hopefully you're going to be sensible about this and tell me what you really want" "I haven't changed my mind" the man said, "I'd still like a quickie" This time the waitress slapped him hard before storming off. Ten minutes later, noticing that the man was still sitting at his table, the waitress went over to him once more. "Right, this is your final chance, so I'll ask you one last time what you want, otherwise I'm going to report you to the police" "But I still want a quickie" he protested, seconds before he was unceremoniously slapped again by the outraged waitress, who stormed off to ring the police. At this point, a fellow diner, who had overheard everything decided to lean over to the bewildered man and whispered "I think it's pronounced quiche"

Long before Al Gore set his environmental bandwagon in motion, eminent scientist, and best selling author James Lovelock was already raising the awareness of global warning with his Gaia hypothesis in the 1960's. And Lovelock is back in the news at the moment with the publication of his latest book 'The Vanishing Face of Gaia' which the author himself has described as his "final warning". Whether he offers that 'final warning' from a scaremongering point of view or whether, at the age of 89, he doesn't expect to live long enough to issue any further warnings remains to be seen, but if nothing else it's about time his name was mentioned on these boards.

Yar'Adua, Bouteflika, and Paul Biya of Cameroon also get a mention. Our friend Omar Bongo is having a bit of a tough time of it lately. Not only has his nephew been charged with 'illicit enrichment', but now his wife has fallen gravely ill, lapsing into a coma, with doctors confidently predicting her demise. Even if his health problems as detailed above are wildly exaggerated, that sort of double whammy has got to take its toll on a supposedly sick 73 year old. And as an additional African despot bonus, the wife in question, Edith Lucie Bongo, is also the daughter of Denis Sassou Nguesso, President of the Republic of the Congo.* One imminent death? Two corrupt, elderly African leaders about to lose a loved one? I make that Pimms O' Clock. * No jokes please about Bongo and Congo being used in the same sentence.

Yes thanks. Typically it arrived at work on my day off, prompting much confusion amongst my colleagues. Fortunately they just stuck it on the staffroom table with a big question mark on it, so it is now safely in my possession. Top choice of prize as well MPFC. Takes me back to my time at university when I owned a copy of it on VHS. Halcyon days indeed.

Yet another facet of this saga that perplexes and irritates me is this notion that she has to earn as much money as possible for her kids before she dies. The insinuation almost seems to be that if she doesn't earn this extra couple of million, then they're going to be living beneath the poverty line for the rest of their lives. What utter b*llocks! Firstly, their mother was already a millionaire before they were born, so they've already been brought into a world of privilege that I doubt few of us ever experienced. Secondly, even if money does run a bit tight in the future, what's stopping them being like anyone else in going out, getting a job, and earning a living for themselves. Now there's a radical idea!

Roll up, roll up, and post your heartfelt tributes to "brave" Jade here. A quite staggering display of hypocrisy, ignorance, and illiteracy from the good ol' British public, many of whom I'm sure were equally vociferous in their condemnation of her two years ago, no doubt musing at the time something along the lines of how this talentless racist symbolised all that was wrong with our country.

My flippancy in a previous post has inadvertently thrown up a possibility for 2010 in the form of Shih Kien, a veteran of numerous martial arts films, and who is best known in the West for playing the villainous Han in Enter the Dragon. Despite being rumoured to have died ten years ago, he is still very much alive and turned 96 last month. Obit chances are probably a bit dicey though.

The Great Leader is 67 today, and it looks as if his birthday may quite literally go with a bang, with the imminent test firing of a new long-range missile. How the other half live... From a health point of view, the Chinese special envoy who 'met' Kim Jong-il in January (over a liquid lunch it would seem) has moved to quash reports that the Dear Leader has undergone recent brain surgery, whilst also adding, Now maybe something's been lost in translation but it sounds more like he met Mr Han out of Enter the Dragon than Kim Jong-il.