All posts by Keith
Word: Lambrequin
Lambrequin
- An ornamental hanging covering the edge of a shelf or the upper part of a window or door.
- A border pattern giving a draped effect, used on ceramics etc.
[Think of the filigree ornamental wooden edging on Victorian railway station canopies or on the Colonial Governor’s house.] - A heavy protective cloth or scarf worn over a helmet in medieval times.
- In heraldry another name for mantling.
The word is a surprisingly late import from French with, according to the OED, the first use being in 1725 in Coats Dictionary of Heraldry.
Oddity of the Week: Kew Gardens
The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (aka. Kew Gardens) has been in existence since 1759 so it isn’t surprising it has a few little eccentricities.
The Gardens has its own police force, which with 17 staff and one vehicle is one of the smallest police forces in the world.
Turner’s Oak was planted in 1798 but was feared destroyed in the great storm of October 1987. However it was discovered that the tree had been lifted by the storm and dropped back down in place; this loosened the soil round the roots and gave the tree a new lease of life. As a result a new technique for treating old trees has been developed.
The Palm House is home to the world’s largest pot plant, an enormous Jurassic cycad, Encephalartos altensteinii, collected from the wild in the 1770s. It has a four metre wide trunk and is repotted roughly every 20 years.
Kew is also home to the smallest royal palace in the country, Kew Palace, which is more the size of a manor house than a palace. The palace (also known as the Dutch House) was reopened to the public in 2006 following a 10 year restoration.
From 7 things you never knew about Kew Gardens.
Quotes
Another selection of recently encountered quotes.
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
[Cicero]
[John Aubrey’s] thoughts and reactions are often so like ours that it comes as a shock to find that most people he knew could and did speak Latin, read by candlelight and had to dash outside to check the time on a sundial. He recognised the spread of London’s first coffee shops as a key democratic advance, an early equivalent of the internet, giving previously unimaginable access to everyone who wanted to make contact and keep in touch with a strange, fast-changing, often unsettling new era. ‘Before they opened, men only knew how to be acquainted with their own relations or societies. They were afraid, and stared at all who were not of their own communities.’
[Hilary Spurling, Spectator, 14/03/2015; reviewing Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey: My Own Life]
We never know the quality of someone else’s life though we seldom resist the temptation to assume and pass judgement.
[Tami Hoag, Dark Horse]
I do not want to deconstruct the pleasure of wine by trying to work out whether the aromas smell of bananas or apricots. If you analyse too much, you end up destroying the pleasure.
[Lionel Poilane, famous French baker]
They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.
[F Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise]
In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it; then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right; then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is — if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.
[Richard Feynman]
Most people that I talk to [in Japan] don’t identify as Buddhist, even if they’ve grown up in a house with a butsudan altar, and go to Buddhist funerals with their family. Religious activity is something you can participate in without even believing in it, without having to change some core part of yourself. Religious activity is in many ways “just” a social role.
[Gesshin Greenwood @ That’s So Zen]
People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.
[AA Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh]
If all Printers were determin’d not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed.
[Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)]
Those of us who know not the secret of properly regulating our own existence on this tumultuous sea of foolish troubles which we call life are constantly in a state of misery while vainly trying to appear happy and contented. We stagger in the attempt to keep our moral equilibrium, and see forerunners of the tempest in every cloud that floats on the horizon. Yet there is joy and beauty in the rolls of the billows as they sweep outward toward eternity. Why not enter into their spirit or, like Liehtse, ride upon the hurricane itself?
[Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea]
“Why do you look so sad?”
“Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings.”
[Leo Tolstoy]
Walk Nude, and people won’t need to undress you with their eyes.
You are never as broken as you think you are. Sure, you may have a couple of scars and a couple of bad memories, but then again all great heroes do.
But I must leave you with a couple of my favourite quotes from Terry Pratchett …
And what is this?
“It is a cat. It arrived. It does not appear to wish to depart.”
The cat, a feral ginger tom, flicked a serrated ear and curled up in a tighter ball. Anything that could survive in Ankh-Morpork’s alleys, with their abandoned swamp dragons, dog packs and furriers’ agents, was not about to open even one eye for a bunch of floating nightdresses.
[Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time]
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
[Terry Pratchett]
More anon.
Weekly Photograph
This week another round of pussy porn, with another couple of Tilly being cute — she does it so well when she isn’t being a turbo-charged varmint. Both shots were taken last week.
Cute Doze
Nose
Non, Papa Francesco!
A few weeks ago, Pope Francis stated as his opinion that couples who choose not to have children were selfish.
A society with a greedy generation, that doesn’t want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk, is a depressed society. The choice to not have children is selfish. Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: It is enriched, not impoverished.
[Guardian; 11 February 2015]
No. Absolutely not. I cannot agree. In fact the opposite is true: couples who have children are the selfish ones.
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Even leaving aside the cost of raising children, they are an environmental disaster. Right from the off parents have to provide nappies, where the choice is between two very un-green options: washable cotton terry towelling or disposables. Noreen looked at this from a professional standpoint and came to the conclusion there was little to choose, environmentally, between the options.
And from then on there is an ever increasing requirement for clothing, food, warmth, entertainment, schooling and all manner of other plastic toot. Very little of which is at all environmentally friendly.
Children are really not very green.
Which, I’m sorry to say, seems to mean that couples who have children do so essentially for their own gratification. What is that if it isn’t selfish? Especially on a planet which is already over-populated.
Noreen and I made a deliberate decision, some 30 years ago, not to have children. We were neither of us sure we wanted children and we both had (some approximation to) a career: me earning money and Noreen in a relatively poorly paid public service job giving back to the community.
In making the decision we committed to be there for our friends; their children; their grand-children; and even their parents. Why? Because at some time everyone is going to need some support.
However good a parent — and most parents do a fantastic job — they can never provide everything a child needs. There will always come a time when there will be something a child will not wish to discuss with their parents, but for which they might value unbiased support: boy/girl-friend problems; job worries; study concerns; money worries; having done something stupid and needing bailing out of the police station; or just needing a bed for the night. And adults can need these things too, of course.
Over the years we have been rung at 3AM by a friend wanting support because they’re in court the following day. We’ve helped friends through divorce. We’ve provided a contact point for the teenage daughters of American friends travelling alone through London. We’ve talked to teenagers about study options and going to university. We’ve connected parts of both our families back together. And so on …
How is this selfish?
OK, so from a biological point of view we aren’t propagating our genes. So what? Does it matter? If it doesn’t matter to us, then it matters not at all. And it is no-one else’s concern. But yes, we are lucky to have had the choice.
We’ve given up the option of passing on our genes and increasing the population in favour of helping other people who are already here, and most of whom are completely unrelated.
None of that sounds selfish to me — precisely the opposite.
So, no, Papa Francesco, on this you aren’t even wrong.
Five Questions, Series 7
So, almost nine months on (is this significant?) from starting the last round of Five Questions, I bring you another series. As always they’re bound to keep us on our toes, and I hope provide some humour as well.
Here in Series 7 we bring you more questions both profound and stupid (often at the same time) which will be answered with whatever degree of seriousness and erudition — or not — I feel like at the time.
So the five questions for Series 7 are:
- Does killing time damage eternity?
- What is your spirit animal?
- How can you drop a raw egg on a concrete floor without cracking it?
- Does thought require language?
- What character (fictional if you wish) you would like to kiss?
Unlike the last series, I promise to try to post answers are regular, weekly-ish, intervals and not leave everyone dangling for weeks between answers.
Oh, and you’re all invited to sing along — I’d like it if you all joined in! You can either answer the questions, as I answer them, by posting in the comments or by posting your answers on your own blog (in which case just leave a comment here so we can find your words of wisdom).
I’ll aim to answer, or at least attempt to answer, Question 1 in about a week’s time.
Until then, play nicely! ☺
Book Review: Come As You Are
Emily Nagoski
Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life
Simon & Schuster, 2015
If you take away only one message from this book it should be that YOU’RE NORMAL! Whatever the size and shape of your genitals and whatever your sexuality and sexual response, that’s fine. YOU’RE NORMAL!
Emily Nagoski is Director of Wellness Education and Lecturer at Smith College in Massachusetts, where she teaches Women’s Sexuality. So naturally this is a book about female sexuality. It has little to say directly about male sexuality — because the standard narrative of male sexuality is pretty well understood — although that doesn’t mean you guys won’t get quite a lot from it as it seems to me that many of the underlying principles discussed are still important to us.
In describing this book I can’t do a lot better than to quote the blurb from Amazon UK:
An essential exploration of women’s sexuality that will radically transform your sex life into one filled with confidence and joy. After all the books that have been written about sex, all the blogs and TV shows and radio Q&As, how can it be that we all still have so many questions? The frustrating reality is that we’ve been lied: to not deliberately, it’s no one’s fault, but still. We were told the wrong story. Come As You Are reveals the true story behind female sexuality, uncovering the little-known science of what makes us tick and, more importantly, how and why. Sex educator Dr Emily Nagoski debunks the common sexual myths that are making women (and some men!) feel inadequate between the sheets. For example, she shows: There is no such thing as a sex drive. Current research shows that sexuality comprises sexual brakes and sexual accelerators, which are largely determined by context. Not everybody experiences spontaneous desire. Some of us experience only reactive desire, some of us only spontaneous desire, and some of us both and that’s normal. Genital response does not always mirror mental arousal in fact, for women the overlap is just 10%. Underlying almost all of the questions we still have about sex is the common worry: Am I normal? This book answers with a resounding yes! We are all different, but we are all normal and once we learn this, we can create for ourselves better sex and more profound pleasure than we ever thought possible.
Well, yes, but a lot of that, at least in my view, is also true for men — although the balances and sensitivities are (often very) different. Which is why I say I think many guys will get something from this book, both in terms of understanding a female partner’s sexuality but also for a deeper understanding of their own. Oh and guys: YOU’RE NORMAL too.
The book is a chunky nine chapters, a couple of appendices and almost 400 pages. Nagoski’s style is chatty, friendly and easy to read, although to this Brit that style is at times irritatingly, and over-enthusiastically, American. Being a scientist and sex nerd (her description!) the book is copiously annotated and referenced, with 40 pages of notes and references — yes the content is based firmly in current scientific understanding; it is not just the author making up a theory on the fly with no supporting evidence.
I’ve been reading Emily Nagoski’s weblog, The Dirty Normal, for several years so I’ve seen most of the ideas in this book before — and indeed over the years she has honed those ideas on her blog audience. But to have all of the ideas put together, with more backup information and explanation, rather than in 1000 word “blog bites”, is still highly valuable. However what this did mean is that I didn’t get any “Wow!” moments of sudden realisation. But that doesn’t mean you won’t! Indeed I suspect most people will get some sudden insight.
So in summary … go get a copy of this book and read it. Girls, even if it doesn’t massively change your sex life you will at least have a much better understanding of how you work. And guys, you should read it too, you’re likely to get some insights into both yourself and your partner.
And remember: YOU’RE NORMAL! Just everyone varies.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆
Something for the Weekend
I feel sure most of my former colleagues will identify with this …
More Interesting Links
OK, guys and gals, here’s another round of links to articles you may have missed — and it contains all sorts of weird and interesting stuff. As usual we’ll start with the more scientific and end up with, I hope, something a bit easier.
All vertebrates have single eyes as we do. But most insects have compound eyes and they work in a rather different way to our vertebrate eyes.
We probably all know by now that our guts are host to many different microbes. But so are most other parts of our bodies. So girls, here’s a look at what lives in your vagina. And no, I don’t imagine that male parts are too much different!
And while we’re on the subject, here are 10 things you maybe didn’t know about vaginas.
So just how does one link from there to Neanderthals? Oh, right this is how! It is being suggested that hunting with wolves helped humans outsmart the Neanderthals. Which would mean we were beginning to domesticate canines a lot earlier than previously thought.
But by then the Neanderthals were turning eagle talons into jewellery (right) — that’s only some 130,000 years ago.
It seems my scepticism in the last set of links was well founded because apparently the research was NOT showing that gerbils were to blame for the plague; it was badly interpreted by journalists.
Good news for the gerbils, but it seems there’s bad news for the Celts. Apparently research on Britons’ DNA is demonstrating that the Celts are not a single genetic group.
From Celts to computer programmers … here are nine truths computer programmers know that most people don’t have a clue about.
And here are five languages which could change the way you view the world.
And continuing our recurrent theme on nudism, here’s a piece on the benefits of social nudity, especially stress reduction. (Long read)
On the other hand what could be better at reducing stress than the perfect gin & tonic?
Which actually brings us on to things historical … First off here’s a piece on the rivers of London from artist and cartographer Stephen Walter’s forthcoming book The Island: London Mapped.
Second up the history of something familiar to all Londoners, and much overlooked: the London Plane Tree.
And yet still on the history of London, here is a piece on the Elizabethan Theatre in London.
Finally something we hope doesn’t happen for many years … a look at what might happen when the Queen dies. It could be the most disruptive event in the last 70 years, but I suspect it is all a bit more planned than this article implies.
That’s all, Folks!