I've found my shopping home

Like quite a few other men, I'm not a great enthusiast for shopping. The only real appeal of going to our local designer outlet village, for example, is the opportunity to eat out (yes, I'm so fond of eating out, I can even enjoy eating at a place like this, though things have gone downhill since the gourmet burger place closed). However I have found a website where I really could enjoy shopping.

Called thinkgeek.com it has all the geekiest products you could imagine. The item that first brought it to my attention was the T-shirt illustrated. It has a built-in light up WiFi detector. How cool is that? Fussy people may wonder about how it will survive the wash (though people who wear this kind of thing may respond 'Huh? You wash T-shirts?') - don't worry, the electronic bit is removable for washing purposes.

As well as 9 other interactive T-shirts (one is a guitar you can strum), there's just about every gizmo that you could imagine. Want a wooden case for your iPhone? They've got it. A little electronic device that randomly turns TVs off and on? No problem. This is an online shop with a section called 'lights and lasers.' Enough said. Sadly it is US-based, so UK customers are likely to get hit with customs import duty.

If by now you are thinking 'So what?' then this isn't the site for you. But I guarantee some of you will find it fascinating. Just lock up your credit card before visiting www.thinkgeek.com.

P.S. Just noticed a T-shirt where a heart gauge lights up when you are near someone else with the same T-shirt. The idea is you give a second shirt to your girl/boyfriend so the hearts light up when they are nearby. I just love that they sell a separate transmitter in case you haven't got a girl/boyfriend, so you can put it near your favourite Star Trek memorabilia or whatever. Now that's real geek thinking.

(As I occasionally review products/sites in exchange for a freebie, I ought to make it clear that I have not been bribed in any fashion to mention this site - I just came across it by accident.)

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

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