I’ve been working flat out on copy for a client about computers and education. It’s amazing how much things have changed since I was school. And in saying that I realise that I am now, officially, old.

I’m sitting in the garden at home watching a flock of parrots (is ‘flock’ the right collective noun. If not, can I suggest a ‘gaudy’ of parrots or perhaps a ’screech’?)  What are parrots doing in Chiswick?  Escaping from their owners, I suppose.  Just like I escaped from the office.

Should I be embarrassed about welcoming business visitors to my home? It’s where I work, after all and it’s much easier for me to meet them here than somewhere else.  Perhaps it comes as a shock to people to find someone working from home.  Even if they create content there for multinational companies and the government.

Janis Joplin invited everyone to visit her once.  "Come to California, I’ll buy you a beer," she said.  Well, in my case, it’s more like "Come to my home, I’ll put the kettle on."

An acquaintance offered me a 1/16th share in a Cessna Mustang today.  This is the plane I would fly if I was rich.  Alas, my share of the maintenance costs alone exceed my mortgage payments.  I wonder if my wife would mind if I sold the house and we moved into a six-place business jet?  Probably.

I think I need to get my European commercial pilot’s licence (I already have an FAA CPL/IR) and do the Mustang type rating and then people can pay me to fly them.  I can write at airports while I’m waiting for my passengers. I’m not sure where I would meet business visitors though.  "Come to Cannes," I could say nonchalantly, "I’m flying there on Wednesday."  Perhaps that’s what the parrots say.

PS Apparently it is a company, flock, pandemonium or prattle of parrots. (Thanks for the link, John.)

Back in February I wrote a post about how to quantify risk. One of the examples I gave was of friends who refuse to inoculate their children against measles, mumps and rubella, preferring homeopathic treatments instead.

For some reason, their choice gets under my skin. Perhaps it was the bogus science or perhaps it was the feeling that they were getting a free ride from everyone else’s inoculation.

Of course, it’s absolutely taboo to criticise the way people bring up their children. In addition, as a society, we place a higher value on individual freedom than we do on the common good. Still…

My interest is in the way people think and how we communicate complicated information. I’m also interested in why I’m so bothered by this issue.

This is why I was fascinated to read an article in the New York Times today (Public health risk seen as parents reject vaccines) that made me think about this question in a different way.

According to the article, 242,000 children die from measles each year. In 2000, it was more like one million. Measles inoculations save the lives of about 750,000 children each year. Wow! Science delivers another miracle.

Now imagine going back in time to 2000 and insisting that, under no circumstances, should we immunise children against measles because of the (unproven) association with autism. Such a decision would condemn millions - MILLIONS - of children around the world to an unnecessary and avoidable death.

It’s obviously not a straight choice between child mass murder and homeopathy but there is definitely some muddled thinking and bad information out there. I wonder if the NY Times might have chosen a different headline. “Confused parents endanger children” comes to mind.

PS There’s an interesting article on Slate that covers the alleged links between autism and the MMR vaccine: Why there’s no dispelling the vaccine-causes-autism link

I’ve been evaluating Timebridge and it TOTALLY RULES!

It solves a problem that I have had for a long time. Booking interviews takes a long time. You negotiate back and forth by email or phone to find a mutually convenient time. Multiply this effort by a dozen interviews a week and it really adds up to a lot of wasted time.

I’ve been looking for a piece of software that would

• Let interviewees see my availability online
• Allow them to book a convenient time themselves
• Confirm the meeting using emailed meeting requests
• Link to Microsoft Outlook 2007

At one point, I was even going to pay a software developer to write a piece of software to do it for me.

Amazingly, Timebridge does everything I wanted. It’s almost as if they read the specification I wrote. And it’s free.

Dungeons and Dragons is connected to Google. From the New York Times (hat tip: Boing Boing).

I am connected to to everything else. This diagram and the accompanying article was written by Adam Rogers who used to work at Wired. I used to write for Wired. I produced a diagram for them that linked video games to everything. It’s six degrees of separation by diagram.

How Pong invented the Internet. From Wired 11/2004. Hat tip: me. I wrote it.

I’ve must have spent a month researching this piece and I wrote tens of thousands of words of notes. The whole thing was boiled down into a network diagram by Wired’s patient design team. One day I’m going to set up a computer games history site. (In the meantime, you can read a brief history of computer games on my personal site.)

I’ve always been a big fan of tea-drinking. It is a necessary part of my work and I recommend it to any budding writer. (See Tools for writing: A nice cup of tea.)

And now there is scientific proof.

The BBC reports today that:

Tea not only rehydrates as well as water does, but it can also protect against heart disease and some cancers

Nutritionists found evidence that three or four cups of tea a day can cut the chances of having a heart attack, protect against cancer, fight tooth decay and strengthen bones.

The article concludes "The Tea Council provided funding for the work. Dr Ruxton stressed that the work was independent." And I, for one, believe her. Absolutely.

Just when I was puzzling over what to write today, The Onion came to my rescue with Idiom shortage leaves nation all sewed up in horse pies. Here’s a taster:

WASHINGTON—A crippling idiom shortage that has left millions of Americans struggling to express themselves spread like tugboat hens throughout the U.S. mainland Tuesday in an unparalleled lingual crisis that now has the entire country six winks short of an icicle.