The Commons have just voted 400:175 in favour of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill (HC Bill 126), despite a rebellion by nearly half of all Conservative MPs.

There's an interesting opinion piece in today's Independent:

Spotted courtesy of the "Geeks are Sexy" blog, a set of rather impressive photo manipulations to illustrate what (live action) female versions of a trio of Avengers characters and a trio of Dark Knight characters could potentially look like (links to original source) - the series is dubbed "If women ruled the earth"...

One for the cycling fraternity on the site...

Is fate conspiring against (British Cycling) Team Sky?

Following on from TdF winner Bradley Wiggins and Head Coach Shane Sutton getting up close and personal with cars, Mark Cavendish has now collided with one (albeit this time in Tuscany rather than Manchester or Lancashire) and suffered a bruised arm.

In among the various ballots running in addition to the federal ones yesterday, several States were voting on the issue of same-sex marriage (the first to offer a vote on the issue).

Definitely one from the weirder side of the news - Hong Kong property tycoon Cecil Chao has offered HK$500 million ($65 million) to any man who can woo her away from her lesbian partner. Gigi Chao has eloped with her partner to France and the pair have had a church blessing.

If that wasn't bizzare enough, she's not cross with dad. "I'm actually on very, very loving terms with my father. We speak on a daily basis. He just has a very interesting way of expressing his fatherly love."

Apparently today (September 19th) is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Lulu have used it as an excuse to have one of their famous flash sales.

Until Friday (21st) you can get 15% off any order with the code "PIRATA".

Alas Neil will be taking no more small steps anywhere. He died earlier today at the age of 82, apparently from complications following heart surgery three weeks ago.

Source: NBC News.

Obituary (BBC News)

Just in case anyone's wondering where EnemyofFun has disappeared to... he's got caught up in events that took place a long time in a galaxy far away :)

Courtesy of a post he made to Google+ this morning:

Sorry for being absent for so long in my writing...I assure you nothing bad has happened. I've actually kinda got sucked into Star Wars The Old Republic. I did writing almost 5 pages of my latest chapter for Season...here's hoping I can take some time off TOR to actually finish off the chapter :)

So now you know :)

Just got back from a nice walk around the local area, checked the news to see if the TdF had finished...

...and yup, it had and there were no unforseen calamities, so we ended up with the perfect result as predicted for the past few days: Cav won the stage, Wiggo won the race, and Froome was second.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/18946960

Congratulations to all three!

Next stop: a certain quadrennial sporting event... which starts on Friday evening for most, but Wednesday afternoon for the footballers (!)

This has to count as one of the most bizzare stories ever to come out of the world of sport:

A female Indian athlete who won a gold medal at the 2006 Asian Games appeared in court on Friday charged with raping her former lover who has alleged that she is actually a man. Pinki Pramanik was remanded in custody for 14 days to await trial on allegations that she repeatedly raped her female live-in partner.

Source: AFP (via Yahoo)

Spotted on Google+, shared by a prominent Googler (Kristoffer Sorensen):

The Danish Folketing has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a full ecclesiastical marriage service in the national Evangelical-Lutheran church for homosexual couples, to be instituted as a full, official marriage equal to that of heterosexual couples. After a lengthy and sometimes heated debate, which ran some three hours over its expected time, 85 members voted in favour of the law, 24 against and with two abstentions.

Source: Politiken.dk

Apparently, the reason the Folketing can rule in this way is that the Protestant Church in Denmark is a State Church.

Yes, well, erm, I've notched up another milestone on my journey through life. In years gone by, I'd be exactly half way through my allotted three score and ten, but with the way both longetivity and statutory minimum retirement ages keep rising, I might still be as fit as a fiddle and in work by then. I can but hope :)

So... thirty five years I've been on this planet (well, I will have been as of about 5:45pm tonight, as mum will frequently remind me at this time of year!) - here's to many more.

Cheers! :)

You may remember several weeks ago, one of Bailey Summers' original songs from Jem got a very positive reception. At the time, only the lyrics existed.

When I read it, I started to get the inklings of a tune, and with Bailey's permission, have attempted writing some music for it (my first attempt at composing since GCSE Music in 1993-95!). Bailey approves, so now the next stage is to publish it here, in the hope we've got some arrangers / musicians / singers who can take Bailey's words and my melody / chords, and work some magic with them.