Showing posts with label building. Show all posts
Showing posts with label building. Show all posts

Sunday, March 09, 2014

You have to wonder...

I get Google ads alongside my Gmail, something that doesn't bother me in the slightest, because most of the time I barely notice them. (I can read a newspaper and miss most of the advertising.)

But I have to wonder at the the appropriateness of the some of the ads that do turn up. Alongside a poem in an email today were the ads listed below. The poem was about seeing dance in every movement of life, and it's a nice piece by Mitch Roberson called Every Day We Are Dancers. The bit about the two men carrying a huge mirror across the road is particularly neat. 

So let's look at these ads, and see if Google has lost the plot or not in its ad placement. 


Building Report
Leak and Building Inspections. Free Treated Timber Testing Service

Okay, there's a mention of a building in the poem, so perhaps this is apt - there's another building ad further down, but nowhere is there any mention of leakage. Unless the fact that the poem starts off in a shower is the connection. 
Publish Your First Book
Get Matched With A Publishing Professional. Get Started Now!

There are two ads relating to books, but the poem doesn't have time for anything but for itself to be read. 
Bad Credit Car Loans NZ
Instant Approval - Guaranteed! Apply Online Now.

The only mention of a car is in the middle of the word, macarena.  Bit of a long shot, that one. 
Windows 7 Driver Download
Windows 7 Drivers Latest Download. Microsoft Certified. (Recommended)

No windows, drivers, or downloads in the poem. Not even someone driving down the street. 
Leaky Building/Reclad
Specialist construction services helping people with leaky buildings
"Is Your Computer Slow?"
In 2 min,Restore your Speed. Fix error messages! - [ Free Download ]

Slow computers are completely missing from Mr Roberson's poem. 
Read Free eBooks
Download From Our Free eReader & Get Six Great Classics for Free!
Manage your own cafe/bar?
Learn Cafe Admin, Barista Skills, Wine Lists, 10 Weekends

As are cares and bars. 

Hmm, it looks as if Google bummed out almost completely on this one. Maybe it's Have a random Google ad Day. 



Monday, August 06, 2007

Our old enemy, Asbestos

Hands up if you know what Mesothelioma is. Okay, give up? Well, perhaps you can help with telling me what the mesothelium is. No? This just isn’t your day.

Well, one of the advantages of writing about things you’ve never heard about is that you learn something. And learning something, as Tony Buzan tells me more than once in a book I’m reading, is what the brain - that incredible instrument - enjoys. So here we go, brain! Try Mesothelioma on for size.

Mesothelioma is a nasty cancer (as if there were any nice ones) that affects the mesothelium. Okay, I know you’re going to tell me you’re none the wiser, but just wait, and I’ll enlighten you. The mesothelium is the protective membrane that surrounds the chest cavity, the abdominal cavity, the cavity around the heart, and the internal reproductive organs. Sounds like a fairly important piece of equipment. I didn’t even know I had a membrane protecting all those bits. One of these days I’m going to do a degree in anatomy and see if I can actually learn what this is that I’m walking around in.

So, what’s Mesothelioma? It’s a form of cancer that’s linked to asbestos exposure. It occurs in the sac lining of the chest (pleural mesothelioma) or abdomen (peritoneal mesothelioma), or the lining of the heart (pericardial mesothelioma). I presume the sac linings are similar to the membranes. If not, that’s another piece of stuff I carry around.

You wouldn’t think we’d be much affected by asbestos anymore, since it’s been banned as a building material for nearly forty years. But my brother-in-law worked with a man at one time who is now making a mint clearing out asbestos from old buildings. It’s a job that requires more than membranes and sac linings; these guys not only wear full-on protective clothing, but work in specially-made tunnels and other such equipment in order to avoid contact with the asbestos.

So unfortunately there is still a need for Mesothelioma treatments. And the worst thing is that this particular cancer has no effective cure. All that can be done is treat it as other basic cancers are treated - which may not be the best option.

And where there are asbestos victims, there are people to work behind the scenes in dealing with claims for the loss of work and health and so on. Belluck and Fox in New York, for example, is one company that specialises in this issue. They investigate where and when the asbestos caused problems and aim to apportion blame. Not that this much helps the victim, usually, as few people who get Mesothelioma pull through. Still, it will give some degree of compensation to the victim’s family.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Adding on

At one time we thought of adding a patio outside what is now our bedroom. (It started off as the girls’ bedroom, became a dining room for a time when they’d grown up, and then reverted to its normal state again.) But we could never agree on the idea. I didn’t fancy having French windows straight into my bedroom, even if I could have stepped out onto the equivalent of a patio garden first thing on a fresh, sunny morning (a patio garden, that is, if we’d put flowers around it).

If it had been left up to my wife, she would have taken the opportunity one weekend when I wasn’t around, and would have knocked the window out, and some of the wall, and left us with no choice but to do something. (She did this with a door once.) Fortunately, she restrained herself on this occasion, and we continue to sleep in a room that has its original windows.

But every so often, she harks back to the idea of ‘something’ outside the window, whether it’s our window or the window upstairs – where ‘we could build a balcony!’

The photo above comes from The Old Vicarage, Treneglos, near Launceston, in Cornwall.