I am annoyed by the whole fabric of society.

Discussions in our house were a might fraught after viewing Marcus du Sautoy trying to convince Mathematical Illiterate Alan Davies that maths lacks common sense. Now off the top of my head I could not explain the details of what is actually called the Monty Hall problem and without the solution in front of me I still lean away from what is truth and towards the intuitive answer but at least I am able to test the real-world answer using a program and the answer is 2/3 for switching, 1/3 for staying where you are after 10 million cycles. Trouble is I don't think the random number generator in VB is that random but I could not be bothered to drag random numbers out of Pi. The answer was good enough for me.

Anyway, to PJ Harvey and John Parish and A Woman a Man Walked by. The official review in the Guardian is glowing, claiming that the two artists are at the peak of their powers. However, Miranda Sawyer in The Observer, usually an arbiter of reasonable taste, struggles to cope with the yelling and barking (which is not hyperbole) . Indeed two of the tracks are shouty in the extreme, like Linda Blair on a bad day but then again what did you expect? Try and reconcile this with the intelligent and coherent woman in the video interview. Also purchased in the same tranche as Peej and Parish was Wire along with Wiretapper 21 the standard repository of all that is good and great in the less-travelled staves of modern music. None of the tracks on this are in any way as frightening as the two most raucous Parish/Harvey tracks and some are quite gentle. All good stuff though.

Finally, China have presented their own Panchen Lama. How do they think that this has any validity? Bearing in mind that the Dalai Lama's own choice of Panchen Lama is lost somewhere in China after being rejected by the Chinese Government, to say that there is a suspicion of foul play is quite an understatement. There are plenty of obviously, political acts which are two-fingers up at the rest-of-the-world but this is the most blatant of the lot, not that I'm sure you would be able to find out about it in China itself. Angry I am. Not sure what anyone can do to be honest but then wha' do I knoo?