All posts by Keith

I’m a controversialist and catalyst, quietly enabling others to develop by providing different ideas and views of the world. Born in London in the early 1950s and initially trained as a research chemist I retired as a senior project manager after 35 years in the IT industry. Retirement is about community give-back and finding some equilibrium. Founder and Honorary Secretary of the Anthony Powell Society. Chairman of my GP's patient group.
books, environment, history

Book Review: Burlington

Nick Catford
Burlington; The Central Government War Headquarters at Corsham
Folly Books; 2012
book coverThis is a large, coffee table-sized book full of photographs and maps of the now decommissioned and abandoned government bunker under north Wiltshire.
Nick Catford is one of the country’s most expert and specialist historians and investigators of underground Britain, and especially wartime/military and railway infrastructure, with several books to his credit. He is also an excellent photographer and a leading light in Subterranea Britannica (SubBrit). Which means he gets access to places most people wouldn’t and he’s absolutely the right man to write this book.
The first almost 50 pages provide a blow-by-blow history of the Corsham bunker from the mid-1930s through to it’s demise some 10 or so years ago, but majoring on its Cold War incarnations since the mid-1950s. The reminder of the 215 pages are filled with glossy photographs and charts of the layout of the various areas of the bunker, showing how each area would have been allocated and the now abandoned state of the site — complete with stored hardware, furniture, etc.


The photographs give a good idea of the decay that sets in very quickly when a site like this is abandoned. As yet apparently no roof-falls (at least not in the bunker area), but lots of water seepage and thus decaying wood and metal. Hundreds of new, but abandoned, chairs, blankets, packs of copy paper, telex machines, generators, telecoms infrastructure, catering equipment — it’s all there! It just beggars belief that all this can just be abandoned; one would think that at least the metal (and there must be hundreds of tons of it) could be recovered and sold off for scrap and recycling.

It’s the sheer scale of the enterprise, the government’s inability to organise its way out of a paper bag (certainly with any speed) and the scale of waste which for me makes this book so interesting. Plus the horrendous logistics of setting up the whole outfit, keeping it secret (the code name seems to have been changed every 2-3 years!) and maintaining it in a state of readiness. It all just boggles the mind.
If you are interested in what we get up to underground, things governmental and military or the general disorganisation of the way government goes about planning and implementing projects, you’ll likely find this book fascinating. Or you might just want to have your mind blown! If none of those floats your boat then basically, don’t bother.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆

current affairs, environment

A Right Bag of Cornflakes

Oh dear, dear.
From 5 October retailers in England are required by law to charge 5p each for single use plastic carrier bag. Except when they don’t.
It’s all well and good, and very laudable, in theory. But as with all legislation the devil is in the detail.


And oh dear me! As the Independent on Sunday pointed out yesterday, the system is a mess and is bound to lead to a whole raft of arguments with supermarket cashiers who are going to be at the sharp end of implementing the scheme. I can already picture the low-life having fisticuffs round the checkouts in Asda and Tesco.
Just take two minutes to read the article. Think about some of the implications and it’ll soon become apparent that this isn’t as clear-cut and easy as it needs to be.
If you want more you can always read the Government’s guidance.
What a mess!

photography, pleasures

Weekly Photograph

For lots of reasons this week and next we’ll be taking our weekly photographs from the archive. First off here’s one from almost exactly five years ago. Eeek! Is it really that long? It seems like only a few weeks ago.

Holy Stone
Holy Stone
Rye Harbour; August 2010
Click the image for larger views on Flickr

ramblings, words

Strange Conversations

About 30 years ago, the guy I shared an office with commented about “the strange conversations you people have over the dinner table”. This was, as I recall, occasioned by my mentioning that the previous evening Noreen and I had been ruminating upon the origins, and reasons for, the names animals were given in medieval times. You know: Reynard the Fox, Tib the Cat, Broc the Badger, and so forth.

Reynard the Fox

[Although it has to be said that Jim and I also had some curious conversations in the office; as you do when you are working in IT, you have a doctorate in Chemistry and your office-mate has a doctorate in medieval French, from a French university.]
And indeed Noreen and I do discuss some odd things over dinner. Last evening we wondered about the origin of the word kiosk.
Noreen suspected initially that it might be Arabic. I suggested possibly Hindi; and later wondered about Inuit.
And of course Noreen turns out to be right. Kiosk is indeed derived ultimately from the Persian. According to the OED:

From the French kiosque and Italian chiosco; after the Turkish kiūshk a pavilion; which is from the Persian kūskh, a palace or portico.

Secondarily to this the OED quotes as one of its sources (not the earliest, that’s 1625):

1 April 1717, Lady MW Montagu letter to Mrs Thistlethwayte: “In the public gardens there are public chiosks, where people go and drink their coffee, sherbet, etc.”

I remark on this because the only other time I have come across Thistlethwaite as a name was Prof. Frank Thistlethwaite, Vice-Chancellor of UEA when I was a graduate student there in the early 70s.
But it isn’t just us. A few weeks ago when we met up with our friend Katy (plus under-age hangers on) for lunch the conversation fell to wondering about the origin of hunkey-dorey, meaning OK, good or even excellent. None of us knew, or even wanted to hazard a guess.
But trawling the intertubes it turns out that there is no agreed origin of the expression. The earliest reference seems to be in the US Civil War period collection of songs George Christy’s Essence of Old Kentucky of 1862. Not that this tells us the origin or reason; just when it is first recorded.
Looking further Word Detective turns up another, but suspiciously spurious, possible origin:

Probably the most oft-heard story about “hunky-dory” holds that there was, in the 19th century, a street in Yokohama, Japan, called “Honcho-dori.” It is said that Honcho-dori was the Times Square of Yokohama, and thus a favourite hangout of US sailors on shore leave. So popular did this street become among sailors, it is said, that “Honcho-dori” entered naval slang as “hunky-dory,” a synonym for “Easy Street” or a state of well-being and comfort.
Now, there actually is a “Honcho-dori” in Yokohama. (In fact, there’s one in many Japanese cities, because “Honcho-dori” translates roughly as “Main Street”.) But there are two problems with this story. One is that there is no direct evidence of any connection between the first appearance of “hunky-dory” around 1866 and US sailors in Japan or naval slang in general.
Problem number two is that a connection with “Honcho-dori” is somewhat unnecessary. English already had the archaic American slang word “hunk,” meaning “safe”, from the Dutch word “honk”, meaning goal or home in a game. To achieve “hunk” or “hunky” in a child’s game was to make it “home” and win the game. So “hunky” already meant OK.

But where the dory or dorey came from is, it seems, anyone’s guess. But then maybe it’s just a rhyming duplication like okey-dokey.
Yeah, the strange conversations you people have over dinner!

ramblings

Manspreading

Bear with me because this is in large part me thinking aloud. And no, I’m not being a male chauvinist dickhead; I’m genuinely trying to understand a (modern?) phenomenon.
Manspreading — when a man sits with his legs wide apart on public transport encroaching on other seats — has recently been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. So this seems a suitable point for some thoughts on the subject, which actually goes wider than public transport.
Men are always being castigated for sitting with their knees apart, taking up too much room and (supposedly) showing off their jewels — or they would be showing them off if they weren’t clad in OMG jeans. I agree this posture is ungainly and unattractive; nevertheless I’m as guilty as the next bloke.
I have a four-pronged theory as to why this is, and why men don’t — indeed can’t, comfortably — sit with their knees together as women (mostly) do. This is at least in part based on personal experience and observation.

  1. Yes, the dangly bits get in the way. This doesn’t help.
     
  2. And the dangly bits get in the way even more with our modern tight underwear and trousers, where there isn’t the jiggle room to adjust their position, whether manually or automatically.
     
  3. We’re all fatter than we were, and the fatter the thighs (and remember men are also generally larger than women) the harder to get the knees together. Our forebears may have been fitter and had better muscles, but they were not generally as fat as we are, hence they were more able to sit decorously — not that they always did, as evidenced below!
     

  4. All this is exacerbated by men’s pelvic anatomy. Women’s hips are placed further apart than men’s (for good child producing reasons), which means men are already having their thighs squash their dangly bits. But having the hips closer together also means it is harder to comfortably get those knees together — the thighs are angled outwards more (presumably to provide better stability) so getting the knees together puts significant additional strain on the muscles of the hips and across the lower back. Try it guys, and see how it stresses your lower back.
     
    You can see how this works in this photo …
     
    compare-thigh-angles

     
    Look at the angles of this couple’s thighs and the closeness of the knees. See how it is anatomically harder for the man to get his knees together. Just think about the tension in the muscles.

So now let the sensible debate begin, and hopefully we’ll have some scientists prove me wrong (or even right).

amusements

Oddity of the Week: Sheep Racing

In early August this year crowds flocked to the Dumfriesshire town of Moffat to cheer and place bets on their favourite sheep during the fourth annual Moffat High Street sheep race.
Baa, ewe are ‘aving a giraffe, aren’t ewe?
No, they really do race sheep, complete with knitted jockeys and a boy shepherd. What’s more, the race is over hurdles. See here …


There are lots more pictures in the Guardian report.

personal, photography

Weekly Photograph

I’ve just realised that I have neglected my duty to post this week’s photograph — basically because I spent most of Monday engrossed in family history and discovering that one of my gg-grandfathers was tried in 1864 for fraud against his employer, the South Eastern Railway. I may write more about this in due course as he then seems to have disappeared from the radar and we’re still searching for the wreckage.
Anyway to this week’s photograph, a very old one from the archives, of the reflections in the Manchester office block where I was running a project.

Exchange Quay
Exchange Quay
Manchester; March 2004
Click the image for larger views on Flickr

environment, food+drink, history, links, nudism, science

Your Interesting Links

So here we are again with another round of links to interesting items you might have missed the first time around. Again not too much heavy science but a lot of oddities …
Cats vs Dogs. Who wins? Well from an evolutionary perspective scientists have concluded that cats are better.


Since when has a Goth Chicken been a thing? Quite a while apparently as it is a recognised breed with black feathers, black meat and even a black heart. And they are highly prized.
We all know we eat too much animal protein, so it’s no surprise that the trend for replacing red meat with chicken isn’t actually helping.
George Monbiot considers evidence that obesity is an incurable disease and asks why then governments are intent on punishing sufferers.
So what is it like if you lose your sense of smell?
There are lots of medical screening tests available but which are really useful and what are the drawbacks?
Michael Ignatieff looks at the ongoing human impact of the Fukushima accident and subsequent clean-up.
So which shall be the master: the Meridian or GPS? It seems they don’t agree where the Greenwich Meridian is by a small matter of 102 metres. which is fine, apparently.
Galileo looked at a pendulum and thus begat GPS. Or how seemingly trivial observations and inventions can have long-lasting and profound effects centuries later.
And while we’re on inventions, a creative man has built a machine to feed his cat — but only when the cat hunts and finds a hidden ball and puts it in a slot machine!
Mention of Galileo makes us turn to history, but let’s start even further back in time … An English academic working in America has been looking hard at the walls of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber and thinks he’s spotted the bricked up entrance to Queen Nefertiti’s tomb.
Now here’s an equally puzzling conundrum. Was Shakespeare stoned when he wrote his plays? Well maybe, because pipe remains found in Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon garden have been analysed and found to contain not just tobacco but also cocaine and cannabis.

Struan Bates at www.EnglishCivilWar.org takes a further look at London’s York House Water Gate, this time as represented by various artists.
Has anyone got a couple of million to spare? If so, Dungeness is up for sale — yes, that large expanse of shingle on the Kent coast. And as it’s a very environmentally sensitive area it needs a suitable owner. Now if I can just win the lottery …

After which it is all downhill (or do I mean down the beach?) …
Guys … Do you want to increase your fertility? If so, take a tip from the Scots and wear a kilt!
Don’t want to wear a kilt? OK, so nudism is another option. Here are two items where young ladies look at the experience of social nudity: the first talks of the challenges of being a lifelong nudist and the second tackles nudity in the interests of research.
Meanwhile Amnesty International has found some sense and now backs the worldwide decriminalisation of prostitution. Is it too much to hope the politicians might now listen? Yes, I thought so.
And finally some words from a working, legal (albeit American) prostitute on the misconceptions people have about the job she has chosen for herself.
That’s all. More anon.