Weekly Quote W/E 24/01/09

"Monday 2 January 2 A.M. Oh, why am I so unattractive? Why? Even a man who wears bumblebee socks thinks I am horrible." - Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding.

Another strong contender

This one's probably more likely to win should there be a contest. This is just a fantastic song, I'm not sure why it popped into my head, but I'm sure glad it did!



Word of the post: Franchise –noun

1. a privilege of a public nature conferred on an individual, group, or company by a government

Weekly Quote W/E 10/01/09

"Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush cackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a tide. A very short space of time through very short times of space." - Ulysses, James Joyce

OK, that was mean...

I'll try and make up for it with a strong contender for greatest song of all time - the video quality isn't brilliant, but the song quality is bang on!



Yeah, c'mawn!


Word of the post: Skip - verb (used without object)

1.	to move in a light, springy manner by bounding forward with alternate hops on each foot.

2.	to pass from one point, thing, subject, etc., to another, disregarding or omitting what intervenes: He skipped through the book quickly.

3.	to go away hastily and secretly; flee without notice.

Spread the joy

For some unwanted and inexplicable reason I've had this song in my head for a few days and I thought I'd inflict it upon you all as well.



MWAHAHA!


Word of the post: Disparaging –verb (used with object), -aged, -ag⋅ing.

1.	to speak of or treat slightingly; depreciate; belittle

2.	to bring reproach or discredit upon; lower the estimation of

Weekly Quote W/E 03/01/08

"Fog everywhere, fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city." - Bleak House, Charles Dickens.

Happy New Year

Just to let you know what's on - courtesy of Wikipedia

2009 (MMIX) is the current year, a common year starting on Thursday, January 1 of the Gregorian calendar.

2009 has been designated as the:

• International Year of Astronomy.^[1][2]
• International Year of Natural Fibres.^[3]
• International Year of Reconciliation.^[4]
• Year of the Ox (by the Chinese calendar)

Predicted and scheduled events

January

• January 3 - 111th United States Congress begins. A new delegate will be added for the Northern Mariana Islands.
• January 9 - Mahmoud Abbas's term as President of the Palestinian National Authority will end.
• January 15 - International Year of Astronomy Opening Ceremony at UNESCO HQ, Paris, France.^[13]
• January 20 - Inauguration of the new United States President, Barack Obama.
• January 26 - Annular solar eclipse.^[14]
• January 26 - Possession of "Extreme pornography" will become illegal in the United Kingdom.^[15]

February

• February - The NASA's Dawn spacecraft will flyby Mars for data and gravitational assist en route to Vesta and Ceres.^[16]
• February 1 - The International Cospas-Sarsat Satellite System will stop monitoring for 121.5 MHz and 243 MHz (Class B) signals from distress radiobeacons.^[17]
• February 2–15 - The FIS Alpine World Ski Championships 2009 will take place in Val-d'Isère, France.^[18]
• February 8 - The 51st Annual Grammy Awards will be held at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.
• February 12 - Celebration of Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday in the United States. The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission has scheduled a series of events in Washington, D.C.
• February 12 - Darwin Day, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. Events are already being planned at the London Natural History Museum.
• February 12 - On STS-119, the Space Shuttle Discovery will deliver and install the fourth starboard truss segment on the International Space Station.^[19]
• February 13 - The Unix time number reaches 1234567890 seconds at 23:31:30 UTC.
• February 14 - Lithuania will celebrate the millennium of its name.
• February 17 - Analog television broadcasts will mostly end in the United States, as the Federal Communications Commission will require all full power stations to send their signals digitally.^[20]
• February 18–28 - The 2009 Winter Universiade will be held in Harbin, China.^[21][22]
• February 22 - The 81st Academy Awards will be held at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California.^[23]

March

• March - The United States will begin the first round of negotiations with the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership countries on a possible free trade agreement.^[24]
• March 5 - The second World Baseball Classic will begin.
• March 5 - NASA's Kepler Mission, a space photometer which will search for extrasolar planets in the Milky Way galaxy, will be launched.^[19]
• March 5–7 - The 2009 Rugby World Cup Sevens will be hosted by Dubai.
• March 14 - Opening ceremony of Lille 3000, Europe XXL
• March 29 - The 60th FIA Formula One World Championship will begin in Melbourne, Australia.

April

• April - Albania and Croatia are expected to join NATO.
• April - The Women's Professional Soccer league will debut.^[25]
• April 2–5 - The 100 Hours of Astronomy begins. This is a cornerstone project of the International Year of Astronomy.^[26]
• April 4–6 - The 2009 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Final Four will be held at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan.^[27]
• April 13 - Citi Field, which will replace Shea Stadium as the home of the New York Mets, will open with a game against the San Diego Padres.
• April 16 - The New York Yankees will open their new Yankee Stadium, located across the street from the original facility, against the Cleveland Indians.
• April 24 - The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the LCROSS impactor will be launched to the Moon. Part of NASA's Lunar Precursor Robotic Program (LPRP).^[19]

May

• May - On STS-125, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will conduct the last servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. It will be one of the most advanced missions in space.^[28][29][30]
• May - General Elections will be held in India.
• May 2 - Presidential Election will take place in Indonesia.
• May 3 - Parliamentary and Presidential Elections will take place in Panama.
• May 12 - General election and referendum on electoral reform will take place in British Columbia, Canada.^[31]
• May 15 - On STS-127, the Space Shuttle Endeavour will deliver and install the Exposed Facility of Japan's Kibo laboratory on the International Space Station.^[19]
• May 16 - The Final of the 54th Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Moscow, Russia.^[32]
• May 20 - The UEFA Cup final will be held in Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey. It will be the second European Final held in Istanbul this decade after the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final
• May 25 - Triple conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune, Jupiter 24' south. First of three triple conjunctions of Jupiter and Neptune.
• May 27 - UEFA Champions League Final will be held at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, Italy.
• May 30 - Rededication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Titled "Retrospective" the ceremony will recreate the program from the original May 30, 1922 ceremony.

June

• June 4-7 - The European Parliament election 2009 will take place, the exact date varies depending on country.
• June 7 - A referendum on changing the Act of Succession will be held in Denmark.
• June 6–13 - The World Air Games will be held in Turin, Italy.^[33]
• June 12 - Iran will hold is 10th Presidential Election.^[34]

• June 14–28 - The FIFA Confederations Cup will be held in South Africa.^[35]

July

• July 1 - Sweden takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union from the Czech Republic.
• July 1–12 - The Summer Universiade will take place in Belgrade, Serbia.^[36]
• July 3–5 - The Global Conference on Abraham Lincoln at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford.
• July 11 - The Ares I-X test flight of the first stage of the Ares I launch vehicle, the crew launch vehicle of NASA's Constellation program.^[19]
• July 13 - Triple conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune, Jupiter 37' south. Second of three triple conjunctions of Jupiter and Neptune.
• July 14 - 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star Game will be held at the Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri.^[37]
• July 22 - Total solar eclipse. The longest lasting total solar eclipse of the 21st century.^[38][39]
• July 30 - On STS-128, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will use the MPLM Donatello to deliver experiment and storage racks to the International Space Station.^[19]

August

• August 23–30 - The 2009 World Rowing Championships regatta will be held at the Lake Malta in Poznań, Poland.
• August - The 30th Anniversary of the foundation of the Puerto Rico Statehood Students Association.

September

• September - The Burj Dubai in Dubai, UAE will be completed. It is already the tallest man-made structure ever built.^[40][41]
• September 12 - TCF Bank Stadium at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities will open against the Air Force Academy.
• September 14 - Parliamentary election in Norway.
• September 27 - Federal election in Germany.
• September 29 - The NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft will make its final flyby of Mercury, decreasing the velocity for orbital insertion on March 18, 2011.^[42]

October

• October - The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom will be opened.^[43]
• October - Presidential elections in Tunisia.
• October 1 - Denmark will begin turning off Analogue TV.
• October 2 - The host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics will be announced at the 121st Session (which will also be the XIIIth Olympic Congress) of the International Olympic Committee to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark.
• October 10 - The "Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge" (CPAK) will be held at the National Academy of Sciences Beckman Center at the University of California, Irvine.
• October 15 - On STS-129, the Space Shuttle Discovery will deliver integral components including gyroscopes, tank assemblies, and a spare latching end effector for the station's robotic arm to the International Space Station.^[19]
• October 25 - Presidential Elections in Uruguay.

November

• November - Singapore will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
• November - Presidential Elections in Romania.
• November - The retail sale of incandescent light bulbs will be banned in Australia.^[44]
• November - The NASA's WISE mission will be launched. It will survey the entire sky in the infrared with far greater sensitivity than any previous mission ever has, over hundreds of millions of astronomical objects will be catalogued.^[19]
• November 29 - Presidential Elections in Honduras.
• November 30 - Vancouver, Canada will open the Canada Line rapid transit line connecting Vancouver with Richmond, British Columbia and the Vancouver International Airport.
• November 30 – December 11 - The UNFCCC's COP15 Copenhagen 2009 conference will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark.^[45]

December

• December 10 - On STS-130, the Space Shuttle Endeavour will deliver and install the Node 3 and the Cupola on the International Space Station.^[19]
• December 11 - Presidential election in Chile.
• December 12 - The Oasis of the Seas cruise ship will make its maiden voyage. When completed it will be the largest passenger ship ever built, carrying 5,400 passengers.^[46][47]
• December 20 - Triple conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune, Jupiter 34' south. Last of three triple conjunctions of Jupiter and Neptune.
• December 31 - The deadline for implementation of the controversial United States legislation REAL ID Act.^[48][49]

Unknown dates

• Apple, Inc. will release another update of their operating system, Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard".
• Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, will be the American Capital of Culture.
• Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Ukraine and Georgia hope to join NATO program Membership Action Plan, the last step before full membership.
• Completion of the Metro Gold Line (LACMTA) Expansion and the Expo Line in Los Angeles, California.
• Completion of the Three Gorges Dam in China.
• Completion of the Virgin Galactic Spaceport in New Mexico, United States.
• East African Community to implement a common currency called the East African shilling.
• First flight of the SpaceX Dragon commercial manned orbital spacecraft.
• Intel will release as many as five new microprocessor variants of the Nehalem microarchitecture throughout the year. The Beckton variant may have as many as eight cores.
• Jay Leno begins a new late night television talk show, tentatively titled The Jay Leno Show.
• A restart of the Large Hadron Collider is scheduled for summer 2009. The LHC was shut down on 19 September 2008 after problems with a magnet quench.
• New Zealand will stop the sales of incandescent light bulbs.
• Next award of the Sylvester Medal.
• Opening of Tseung Kwan O South Line, MTR, Hong Kong.
• Possible launch of the KEO satellite time capsule. If it is not launched in 2009, it will be launched in 2010.
• Possible start of construction for a fixed-guideway mass transit system for Honolulu.
• RFSA's Phobos-Grunt, sample return from Phobos.
• Tesla Motors will mass produce the Tesla Model S, its second electric car.
• The completion of the Sound Transit Central Link Light Rail system in Seattle.
• The Boeing 747-8 will achieve entry into service (EIS).
• The Compact of Free Association between the United States and Palau expires.
• The final phase of the L.A. Live project will be completed, including a 54-story Ritz-Carlton/JW Marriott hotel and the 14-screen West Coast flagship theatre multiplex operated by the Regal Entertainment Group.
• The Dallas Cowboys New Stadium will be inaugurated.
• The Greenville Bridge will open to traffic.
• The United Kingdom will continue a 5-year process to cease analog television broadcasts region-by-region, with Granada, HTV Wales and Westcountry Television.^[50]
• The University of Greenland will move into a new research complex called Llimmarfik.
• Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, is going to be the European Capital of Culture.
• Western Australia will vote on the controversial topic of daylight saving time.
• World Trade Center Tower 5 will have its groundbreaking ceremony in New York City.
• Australia will begin turning off Analogue TV.

Have a good one guys!

Word of the post: Reroute - to change the route or path of, to send another way; also written re-route