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Is there beer on Mars? I DON'T THINK SO!!!

Good news you haven't got covid. Bad news you won't walk straight for a week.

Current life is very unlikely indeed, but signs of life that has potentially existed there millions of years ago... That would be huge! I hope they find biosignatures in solar system during my lifetime, and if I had to bet, I'd bet on Europa!

They were speaking about some of the victims on Tele this morning and it's sad viewing. Many may be in their 70s, 80s, 90s, but that doesn't mean they deserve to die prematurely from a virus that wouldn't even be present in the first place had the governments around the world acted 12 months ago when the virus was first made public knowledge. Maybe it wouldn't have completely eradicated the virus or prevented it reaching other countries, given how it was around for a few months before the world was made aware of its existence, but it certainly wouldn't have become this extreme. It's not just victims of the virus itself either, as this will cause a shitload of death and misery from the lockdowns themselves. It'll be a country(or world..) full of zombies on prescription drugs for mental health issues when all settled down. Suicides, physical illnesses caused by stress or being stationary too much, lowered and weakened immune systems, shattered front line workers who can't cope... I also don't know why they are speaking about March all the time either? January is when it was made public knowledge. If a new virus appears in a country, you take actions immediately surely? This isn't only England, but the majority of the world. Just fuck ups everywhere, it wasn't taken seriously enough and the mixed messages from the WHO didn't help either. The more a virus can be contained to one country, the less chance an epidemic becomes a pandemic, surely? It's lucky ebola appeared in a part of the world where people aren't well travelled(well, not lucky for them obviously) as that would have been devastating itself. I won't pretend to be an expert on viruses, but it seems quite obvious to me. The scenes from Brazil are like Medieval times with people literally suffocating in hospitals due to a shortage of oxygen. Awful to see.

Piccata Milanese. One of my favorite dishes. Only had it at Restaurants before, so I wanted to cook it for myself once. Turned out quite nice.

Bit late but it still made me laugh.

On the contrary, I think the board have showed some patience the past 3 managers. Giving Conte the season after his meltdown and constantly criticising the board. Trusting Sarri to see out the season after humiliating defeats from City and Bournemouth. I think the trigger had to be pulled on Lampard given there was now enough evidence to suggest he wasn't capable of accomplishing what was required. Experience saw out the other two managers. Don't really think any of our players down tools under Lampard. If anything, it just looked like 11 individuals on the pitch without a plan.

This is the reason why the first astronauts who went to the Moon had to spend a month in quarantine after they returned...simply to avoid bringing any extra-terrestrial microorganisms back to Earth. That of course was a bit over-cautious, but in a hypothetic scenario where we make contact with alien life forms, quarantine and other preventative measures would definitely be high priority. It works both ways though, we want to protect other planets from contamination as well. Robotic spacecraft gets sterilised before leaving Earth for this reason. Planetary protection is an important principle in space exploration.

Could be Spica! It's a blueish star (actually two stars, but indistinguishable) Virgo constellation, very bright, and should be seen in the east-southeast at this time of the year.

Venus was actually a different one, more south west, while this was probably more south east. This is why it was baffling as it does look like venus on the picture. I wish I had a powerful telescope, I may look into buying one when back on my feet. They seem to be a lot cheaper nowadays. Nice one for the recommendation of the app mate.

which direction was it in? Download the app called Stellarium. All you have to do is point your phone up to the sky and it'll tell you which stars are visible, galaxies you could see (not with the naked eye, mind), constellations or bright stars. If it was a planet, it could be Venus as it has a blue shade to it. If it was Mars it'd have a reddish hue.

I'd love it if they found life on there. I doubt it though. If life exists outside of earth, it'll likely be outside of our solar system.

Haha you know what Tommy Tank is slang for right

I might get this. I like it!

A very interesting interview with the CEO of AstraZeneca: https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/01/26/news/interview_pascal_soriot_ceo_astrazeneca_coronavirus_covid_vaccines-284349628/ "Anyway, we didn't commit with the EU, by the way. It's not a commitment we have to Europe: it’s a best effort, we said we are going to make our best effort. The reason why we said that is because Europe at the time wanted to be supplied more or less at the same time as the UK, even though the contract was signed three months later. So we said, “ok, we're going to do our best, we’re going to try, but we cannot commit contractually because we are three months behind UK”. We knew it was a super stretch goal and we know it's a big issue, this pandemic. But our contract is not a contractual commitment."

I have some sympathy for the UK government in a lot of the elements of their handling of the past 12 months. For example, they've been copping a lot of flack for the first late lockdown, they called it wrong here but the SAGE minutes show that actually, they were at least following one of the scientifically verified viewpoints. It's important not to bash every little thing that they did wrong and concentrate on the real big hitters. Border Control - failure to put in place any sort of sufficient quarantine until the summer when the air bridge stuff started. Dominic Cummings - it'll be incredibly difficult to prove what the impact of this story was on lockdown compliance as even if you asked people directly, it's incredibly hard for them to really understand and explain why they stopped taking lockdown restrictions as seriously. The worst part about this looking back is at the time at least it felt like Cummings was indispensable to the government as they tried to finish off their Brexit strategy but it turns out that calling Johnson's missus names was enough to give him the boot. Test and Trace / General Cronyism - don't really have to explain this. The vaccine rollout is Exhibit A of why the NHS, or at least companies with established or relevant expertise in PPE, contact tracing, etc. etc. are a better choice during a national crisis than firms in irrelevant sectors with links to the ruling political party. Christmas - probably the single biggest fuck up that has led to the most deaths, telling people they could have 5 days of freedom for Christmas against all sense and science before pulling the plug at the last minute. Cue thousands of people fleeing Tier 4 areas overnight before new restrictions came in and delivering the mutated variant to every corner of the country in one fell swoop. There's so, so much more that are almost up there. Eat Out to Help Out is up there along with the dallying over the November lockdown and spending all Autumn changing the rules for the tier system, announcing at one of the press conferences that the strictest restrictions (Tier 3 at the time) weren't strict enough to suppress the virus, schools in general all the way through the winter, and this is just the stuff that drove infections and deaths through the roof. After that you get into the free school meals stuff, planning to cut universal credit mid-pandemic, the brinksmanship over the Brexit deal in the middle of a pandemic and the farcical exam results algorithm. Not been the best year has it and it's disingenuous of him to pretend that the government have done everything they can to preserve life when actually they've done a lot of stuff that's tried to balance economic damage and loss of life, which is necessary to an extent but the chaotic inconsistencies and rule changes have left us with the worst of both worlds. At least he said today that he takes full responsibility for everything the government has done which is an acknowledgement of sorts that they've made mistakes. This shouldn't be a notable positive but it is at least a step in the right direction, and at least the vaccination program has been successful so far.

Johnson needs to shut his trap with his 'We will make sure we learn lessons' line... Thought it had been a while since that line was last trotted out.... The bloke couldn't learn a lesson if he went all the way back and started again from primary school level...

Immigration has nothing to do with this pandemic. For every immigrant that enters a country these days you've probably got 1000 people visiting or returning for/from work or holiday trips. We're way past this sort of thing.

Wouldn't say that, it had a few nibbles

I was thinking of the same,but then realised I've got no money left