Ten Things this month takes a brief look at where the money goes.
Ten Things I’ve Bought in the Last Month:
Another meme, courtesy AJB on Facebook. It’s almost inevitably a variant on previous ones but is about the height of my abilities today.
Join in if the mood takes you.
Some while back I wrote about the Tavel Rosé, Richard Maby’s Prima Donna, I’d bought from the Wine Society. We continue to enjoy it. In fact it gets better as the supply has now moved on from the 2016, which is what I wrote about, to the 2017 vintage.
And yes, the 2017 is even better than the 2016. It is a little paler in colour, but if anything bursting with even more red berry fruits – especially raspberry.
Now the Wine Society have very recently got what was obviously a small parcel of Maby’s new Tavel, the 2016 Libiamo. I grabbed a case of six without hesitation.
At £17 a bottle Libiamo is significantly more expensive than the Prima Donna, at a mere £11. But if I thought the Prima Donna was good, Libiamo is just out of this world. It’s the same deep coloured rosé, with the same burst of red berry fruits. But oh! how the oak barrels in which it is aged come through: as a delightful ambiance of dry sherry. So much dry sherry that it almost feels like a fortified wine – which is brilliant. We were both stunned!
We’ve just drunk a bottle with a quite rich spaghetti with prawns in a sun-dried tomato pesto sauce. They went so well together; the richness of each complementing the other.
No wonder Libiamo is already sold out! I can only hope there will be further supplies!
There’s again a lot in this month’s round up of items you may have missed the first time. So here goes …
Science, Technology & Natural World
Maglev trains have been around for a surprisingly long time, so why aren’t they ubiquitous?
Inter-species hybrids were once looked on as just biological misfits, but science is now coming to appreciate their importance for evolution. [LONG READ]
Did you know that witches’ brooms grow on trees? You do now!
Tidal power is supposed to be able to provide a significant percentage of the world’s energy needs, but a close look suggests it won’t. [£££]
Health & Medicine
Here’s a little about how Moorfields Eye Hospital in London really has changed the world.
It’s only a matter of time before we get the next major pandemic. An American-centric look at our preparedness? [VERY LONG READ]
The medical profession prescribe a lot of opioid painkillers. But are they all they’re cracked up to be, and would we miss them if they weren’t there?
Restoring life using CPR is brutal and rarely works. So why do people have so much faith in it and demand resuscitation at all costs?
Against most specialists expectations there’s work going on to develop a single vaccination to prevent several common cancers. It’s about to start a major trial in dogs.
While we’re on cancer, the placenta may just give us insights into cancer treatment – it’s just one of nine ways the placenta is so amazing. [£££]
Scientific American recently asked “When Does Consciousness Arise in Human Babies?”
Did you know you have an “inverse piano” in your head? Well actually there are two and they’re in your ears.
Finally in this section, Fred Pearce in the Guardian, takes another look at the real fallout from the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster.
Sexuality
Why was it ever in doubt that women can have multiple orgasms?
Environment
Here are two articles on the length of time it takes garbage to decompose. The first is fairly general; the second gives us the following graphic looking at plastic and other rubbish in the sea.
And while we’re on plastic, Annie Leonard in the Guardian says that the “plastic crisis” is too big to be solved by recycling alone.
The Woodland Trust are understandably – and quite rightly – angry at Network Rail’s apparent plans to clear trees from railway embankments.
Social Sciences, Business, Law
History tells us that all cultures have their sell-by date, so has the West’s time come and are we on the brink of collapse?
Oxford and Cambridge Colleges own a bigger portfolio of property than Church of England.
The rail industry are running a public consultation on rail fare structure prior to submitting proposals to the government. Do have your say.
History, Archaeology & Anthropology
Aethelflaed: A Saxon warrior queen who was out to vanquish the Vikings.
London
Layers of London is a super resource which allows you to overlay a number of old maps on the current street plan of London. One of the best is the Tudor layout of 1520. IanVisits takes a look.
Lifestyle & Personal Development
So just why are Dutch teenagers among the happiest in the world? And couldn’t we learn something from their approach?
Here’s Zen Master and writer Brad Warner contemplating the problem of spirituality, religion, the ego and intellectual honesty. It is readable, and well worth a read.
Meanwhile the Guardian (again!) reports that UK homes vulnerable to a staggering level of corporate surveillance from smart TVs, smartphones, laptops, security cameras etc.
Shock, Horror, Humour
And finally, just because it isn’t 1st April … a prep school in Derbyshire has lost its Bakewell pudding in space. So very careless!
More next month!
Amused this afternoon to come across this image on Google …
especially when the said Google juxtaposes it with …
So, yesterday the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that allowing only same-sex couples to have a civil partnership was discriminatory. See, for example, the BBC News report.
Well what a surprise! Surely this was so easily foreseeable by even the most intellectually challenged politician.
So on top of everything else they have to worry about, the government now have to do something – although they will naturally drag their heels as long as they can, and probably until someone takes then to court again because they’ve done nothing. They have a track record, after all.
But really, where is the problem? Isn’t the answer so very simple?
Just what were the politicians thinking of in making the current mess in the first place?
Gawdelpus!
David Banister, Emeritus Professor of Transport at University of Oxford, has landed another scathing assessment of the proposed Heathrow Runway Three:
And here’s another …
Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
[Joseph Campbell]
Another in my very occasional series of articles on depression – my depression. They are written from a very personal perspective; they are my views of how I see things working and what it feels like on the inside. Your views and experiences may be vastly different. My views and experiences are not necessarily backed by scientific evidence or current medical opinion. These articles are not medical advice or treatment pathways. If you think you have a problem then you should talk to your primary care physician.
Here’s a small selection of links to articles on depression which you may find useful and/or interesting.
Our usual monthly round-up of quotes, interesting and amusing. Let’s start with a really long quote …
This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.
This is everything I’ve learned about marriage: nothing.
Only that the world out there is complicated,
and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,
and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,
is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze,
and not to be alone.
It’s not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it’s what they mean.
Somebody’s got your back.
Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn’t want to rescue you
or send for the army to rescue them.
It’s not two broken halves becoming one.
It’s the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home
because home is wherever you are both together.
So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing,
like a book without pages or a forest without trees.
Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them.
Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials.
Because nobody else’s love, nobody else’s marriage, is like yours,
and it’s a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance you cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.
And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand,
not knowing for certain if someone else is even there.
And your hands will meet,
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.
And that’s all I know about love.
[Neil Gaiman]
And now for the rest …
The trouble with fiction is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.
[unknown]
Religion is about acquiring a system of beliefs that are often based on received tradition and cannot be tested. Spirituality, on the other hand, is a quest to know the deeper truths of life for oneself regardless of what tradition says.
[Brad Warner]
If science disproves some aspect of Buddhist belief, then Buddhist belief must change.
[Dalai Lama]
Theoretical physicists used to explain what was observed. Now they try to explain why they can’t explain what was not observed. And they’re not even good at that.
[Dr Sabine Hossenfelder, Physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, at
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/why-some-scientists-say-physics-has-gone-rails-ncna879346]
When a man only got his letters in the morning he was pretty safe from surprises for the rest of the day; but with the telegraph he has no remission from anxiety and is on the tenterhooks all day long.
[Philadelphia Medical Times, 1883]
Her legs were longer than seven minutes in heaven with a boy that doesn’t know you’re a lesbian.
[@nebulastucky]
David Davis has mastered a wide range of martial arts, including karate, origami, pastrami, macramé, asti spumante, and Haruki Murakami. He is also a black belt in jujitsu, tiramisu, Nosferatu, Mogadishu, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
[Michael Deacon, Daily Telegraph, 09/06/2018]
I’ve read quite a lot of Raven. The books are basically Trollope written by a sex maniac. His books have their pleasures but he is not in Powell’s league.
[Nick Booth]
The ultimate definition of bravery is not being afraid of who you are.
[Chögyam Trungpa]
Being ordered to be ‘confident’ is like being ordered to be ‘happy’ – just saying it out loud makes it harder for someone to do.
[Girl on the Net, @girlonthenet]
Maybe DNA is a substance that allows molecules to band together into little teams that can, like, go off an have adventures and stuff and, like, y’know, be President of the United States, or work for a car wash in Van Nuys.
Maybe consciousness is a force in the universe, like gravity or electromagnetism. Maybe we can’t observe consciousness as an object because it’s the thing that is trying to observe. Maybe consciousness is another name for the act of observation. Or not. What do I know?
[Brad Warner at https://twitter.com/BradWarner/status/1007541226424406016]
There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born. It is serene. Empty. Solitary. Unchanging. Infinite. Eternally present. It is the mother of the universe. For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao.
[Lao Tzu]
British children seem under perpetual assault from the three horsemen of the apocalypse: obesity, social media and the manic gods of examination.
Simon Jenkins, Guardian, 15/06/2018]