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.
current affairs, ramblings

2015 Predictions

I thought I’d give my crystal ball a dust off and see if I could come up with a few ideas as to what might happen over the course of this brand new 2015.
What follows is the best I can interpret from the misty images I saw in the aforesaid crystal ball. They are just my ideas of what might happen based solely on hunches and gut feel; I have no inside knowledge and I haven’t been studying the form — so if you base any decision on any of this I will take no responsibility for your idiocy.
Anyway, here are my thoughts on what might transpire this year:
UK

  1. Labour win the General Election — although probably not with an overall majority; they form a government in coalition with the LibDems
  2. As a result of the new government the unions start demanding, and getting, inflation busting wage rises
  3. Theresa May beats off a challenge from Boris Johnson to become leader of the Conservative Party
  4. There is no change in UK interest rates
  5. A major household name (possibly a high street store) calls in the receivers
  6. At least one UK holiday tour operator goes under stranding several hundred holiday-makers abroad
  7. Against expectations UK inflation will be around 4% driven by higher wage settlements and spending by the new government
  8. On 31 December FTSE will close down 10% compared with 1 January
  9. UK will see at least one major plane crash and one major train crash
  10. Duke of Edinburgh dies and is given a state funeral
  11. Queen Elizabeth II becomes Britain’s longest reigning monarch
  12. The UK has a warm winter and a cold wet summer

Overseas

  1. Violence in South Africa between black tribes threatens to turn into civil war and causes a white exodus
  2. Death of President Mugabe of Zimbabwe is followed by further civil war
  3. Major epidemic will affect the developed world — could be Ebola or flu or MERS or something entirely new
  4. Australia will experience an earthquake of at least magnitude 7
  5. The Pope will issue a revolutionary encyclical, possibly on birth control, divorce or the celibate priesthood
  6. A number of international sporting bodies are proven to be driven by massive bribery and fraud
  7. The Islamic world continues to descend into total meltdown with more factional fighting, civil war and coups d’état; the exceptions are Saudi Arabia and UAE which remain relatively stable due to their oil wealth
  8. Russia continues to be belligerent over Ukraine and only their economic woes will prevent World War 3
  9. Brussels finally gets fed up with the UK’s posturing and formally asks us to leave the EU
  10. A major airline goes into liquidation

Personal

  1. I finally have to be put on insulin to control my diabetes
  2. We lose the venerable Harry the Cat (well he is over 17) but he is replaced by two kittens

It will certainly be interesting to see what really does occur. I’d be tempted to put money on none of this happening.
Do you have any good predictions for the year ahead?

personal, ramblings

Happy New Year

Here’s wishing all our friends and followers a
Happy & Prosperous New Year
May your 2015 be better than your 2014!

And welcome to another year of Zen Mischief blogging. We started back in January 2004 and since then have gone through a number of incarnations and design changes. But there are no major changes planned for this year (well at least none that I know about yet) — we’ll be continuing with the usual eccentric and eclectic mix. So please keep checking back to see what we’re up to!
Meanwhile it must be time for another glass of champagne! Hic!

amusements, natural history

Oddity of the Week: Eggs

It isn’t just birds that lay eggs, in fact there are far more egg-laying species than there are placental mammals. So naturally the eggs vary a lot and can be quite weird …
Birds
There are over 50 breeds of chicken and the colour of their eggs is dictated by genetics. All eggs start out white and any pigment is deposited during the egg’s 26-hour journey through the hen’s oviduct. What’s more, you can often predict what colour a chicken egg will be by the hen’s earlobes. (Bet you didn’t know hens even had earlobes!)


Leghorn chickens lay white eggs and have white earlobes, while chickens with red earlobes lay brown-shelled eggs — but of course there are exceptions. Araucanas lay blue-shelled eggs and when you cross them with a breed that has eggs of a different colour the dominant blue-shell gene makes the resulting eggs blue, pink or even green.
The tinamou (an ostrich relative) may have evolved bright turquoise eggs to attract other females and encourage them to lay their eggs nearby, creating a sort of safety-in-numbers strategy for avoiding predators. Curiously the tinamou’s eggs are also as shiny as Christmas ornaments.
And cassowaries have bright, almost fluorescent, green eggs.
Insects
The green lacewing creates a silky stalk on which it hangs its eggs. This keeps the lacewing larvae safe from predators — and cannibals. The insect also coats the stalks with a chemical defence against ants.
Many butterflies and moths lay beautifully sculpted and shaped eggs, like this owl butterfly egg …

Sharks
The horn shark has a spiral-shaped egg which looks like a natural drill bit and allows the mother shark to screw the egg case into hard crevices making it tough for predators to get them.

The egg cases of other sharks and rays — often called mermaid’s purses — come in a variety of shapes from sculpted flatfish-like to ravioli shapes. These egg cases are not like birds’ eggs in that the case is porous with both water and oxygen able to flow through to the growing embryo.
Based on Weird Animal Question of the Week: Oddest Eggs of the Animal Kingdom.

personal, ramblings

My 2014 in Summary

As last year here is a survey to summarise my engagement (or lack of it) with 2014.
BA46231. What did you do that you’d never done before?
Yoga
Have a full body massage
Got hearing aids
Injected myself with drugs (legally!)
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t make New Year resolutions (see here); but I did have some goals most of which I failed to achieve.
3. What would you like to have in 2015 that you lacked in 2014?
£2M
Good health
4. What dates from 2014 will remain etched upon your memory?
None that I can think of.
5. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I had an awful respiratory virus which floored me for over a month in February/March and again in October/November.
And then there’s the ongoing diabetes and depression.
6. What was the best thing you bought?
Gin and champagne
7. Where did most of your money go?
As far as I can tell absolutely nowhere, and certainly nowhere very worthwhile (unless you count gin and champagne!).
8. What did you get really, really excited about?
Nothing; I don’t waste effort on excitement or panic.
9. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a. happier or sadder? — sadder, ‘cos I haven’t kicked the depression hard enough in the gonads.
b. thinner or fatter? — fatter, but not by very much.
c. richer or poorer? — poorer, if only due to expensive dental treatment.
10. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Sex
Sit in the garden in the sun
11. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Been stuck to a desk
12. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Survival
13. What was your biggest failure?
Yoga
14. How many one-night stands?
None
15. What was your favourite TV program?
I’ve just not watched anything like enough TV to be able to make any sort of judgement.
16. What was the best book you read?
Two books by Alice Roberts come out top of the heap: Evolution: The Human Story (Dorling Kindersey, 2011) and The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us (Heron Books, 2014)
17. What did you want and get?
An immense amount of help and support, in all sorts of ways, from Noreen, for which I am far more grateful than I think she realises.
18. What did you want and not get?
£2m
Sanity
19. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Choose between better health and a couple of holidays.
20. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2014?
Nude when possible, clothed when necessary.
21. What kept you sane?
Did anything keep me sane?
22. Who did you miss?
I’ve no idea! I’m not conscious of having specifically missed anyone.
23. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2014:
Quality of life is more important than stressing yourself to conform to society’s expectations. But then I failed to live up to it.
24. A quote or song lyric that sums up your year:
It’ll pass, Sir, like other days in the Army.
[Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time]
25. Your hopes for 2015
Society normalises sex and nudity rather than criminalising it
Any office block which is less than half occupied for more than 3 months has to be converted into flats, or demolished and homes built on the site
Drink more champagne
Be painted or photographed nude
Have at least one 2 week holiday
My mother makes her 100th birthday
So how was your 2014? And what are you hoping for in 2015?

amusements, ramblings

The Amusements of 2014

A review of 2014 in things that have amused me during the year.
Product of the Year
In third place we have these magnificent Magical Unicorn Slippers
In second place, is something I find slightly disturbing: Cussons Mum & Me Bump Smooth & Glow Pregnancy Shampoo


But the winner is the Chinese Automatic Sperm Extractor as installed in a Nanjing hospital.

 

Auction Item of the Year (from our local auction house)
In third place we have: a set of 25 antique glass eyes in fitted case.


In second place: A Second World War papier-mâché helmet .
But pride of place must go to: An old French roll of loo paper.

 

Name of the Year
Two names stood out for me this year, and I can’t decide between them:
Rev Nims Obunge — a non-conformist minister from Tottenham.
Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, Supreme Head of the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church who died on 21 March this year.

 

Best Named Organisation of the Year goes to the US National Fenestration Rating Council who were mentioned in the 12 April edition of New Scientist.

 

Best Oxymoron
Again we have two contenders.
Finest quality recycled paper, which is the proud boast on the paper towel dispenser in the toilet at my doctors’ surgery.
And the Vegan butcher’s shop which has opened recently in New York.

 

Recipe of the Year
This is one from the archives: Christmas Candle Salad


Just what were they thinking?!??!

 

Book Titles
These are books I’ve come across (don’t ask!) during the year rather than books published during the year. Again there are several contenders, none of which, I hasten to add, have I read:
The Jewish-Japanese Sex & Cook Book and How to Raise Wolves by Jack Douglas (1972)
Rossetti’s Wombat: Pre-Raphaelites and Australian Animals in Victorian London by John Simons (2008)
You’ve Had Worse Things in Your Mouth Cookbook by Billi Gordon (1986)
But the winner has to be:
Harlequin: Prince Cherrytop and the Good Fairy Fuck, a Pantomime by George Augustus Sala (circa 1877)

 

Best Academic Paper Title
There was really only ever going to be one contender here. The prize has to go to a paper about stopping nose-bleeds with bacon, which deservedly won on IgNobel Prize:
Nasal packing with strips of cured pork as treatment for uncontrollable epistaxis in a patient with Glanzmann thrombasthenia which is available on PubMed.

 

Headline
There have been just so many wonderful headlines during the year, but I managed to whittle the list down to these three:
‘Penis soup is something I’ll treasure for ever’: Adventurer Simon Reeve reveals the most stomach-churning dishes he’s encountered, Independent, 2 February
Warwickshire man nose-pushes Brussels sprout up Snowdon, BBC News, 2 August
But by a short head the winner is
Mick Jagger has 19-million-year-old species of ‘long-legged pig’ named after him, Guardian, 11 September

 

Best Named Animal
Magistrate Armhook Squid (Berryteuthis magister)

 

Sport of the Year
Again there are three contenders:
Wheelchair Curling — I still can’t work out how you get curling tongs large enough.
Underwater rugby, BBC News, 24 May
But best of all was Penny farthing bicycle polo, again BBC News, 24 May

 

Best Research Project
What Happens When You Play Music Through A Squid?

 

And finally …
Best Tweet
Yellow snow warning for Wales, @BBCNews on Twitter, 26 December
I guess the culprit must be all those sheep!

 

Let me know your favourite amusements of the year — and don’t forget to start collecting for 2015!

history, photography

Weekly Photograph

This week another from our trip, last May, round Oxfordshire villages in search of ancestors. This archway — which looks to be Tudor in date — is in a hedge across the middle of the graveyard of Churchill’s old church. It really does just lead from one piece of churchyard to another and appears to be of absolutely no significance, beyond being rather splendid.

Archway to Nowhere
Archway to Nowhere
Churchill, Oxfordshire; May 2014
Clink the image for larger views on Flickr

uncategorized

Book Review: Gilbertine Rite

Reginald Maxwell Woolley
The Gilbertine Rite. Volume I Containing (i) the Ordinal and (ii) the Office of St Gilbert
Henry Bradshaw Society, 1921; digitally remastered 2010
Reginald Maxwell Woolley
The Gilbertine Rite. Volume II Containing (i) the Kalendar and (ii) the Missal
Henry Bradshaw Society, 1922; digitally remastered 2010
These are two somewhat esoteric (print-on-demand) paperback volumes which have been on my wanted list for several years and which I was given for Christmas.
The Gilbertines were an interesting monastic order, founded on a Cistercian model in 1130 by St Gilbert of Sempringham — Sempringham in Lincolnshire being their head house. They were the only entirely English monastic order, ultimately with 26 houses which survived until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century — whereupon Robert Holgate (right), the last Master of the Order became Bishop of Llandaff and in 1545 Archbishop of York.
The Gilbertines are interesting also because most of their monastic houses were mixed, although the monks and nuns did live in separate houses. It is also known from damage to the excavated skeletons of monks and from some of the few remaining records that the monks played football.
These two volumes reconstruct from several remaining medieval Gilbertine liturgical manuscripts the monastic rites of the Gilbertine Order. Volume I contains an introduction of some 45 pages which details the layout of the documents and discusses their dating in much detail.
The remainder of volume I and the whole of volume II (around 400 pages in total) consist of a straight transcription of the Latin text of the documents. There is no English translation, so one is reliant on one’s poor, 50 year old school Latin and some remaining knowledge of the rites of the Catholic Church to divine what is going on. And like all missals it takes quite a bit of working out what actually fits with what; nothing is linear and common sections appear just the once.
Have I read all of these two volumes? Well I’ve read the whole of the introduction, but sadly my Latin just isn’t good enough for the liturgy, although I have looked at large parts of the volumes and worked out roughly what’s going on.
They are really only for anyone with an interest in liturgy, the Gilbertines or medieval ecclesiastical history — and someone with a good grasp of medieval Latin.
Nevertheless they are nice, esoteric things to have!
Overall Rating (for the average reader): ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall Rating (for the specialist reader): ★★★★☆

links

Your Interesting Christmasy Links

Needless to say a lot of Christmas related links have appeared in the last week or so. Here’s a selection, with a few less Christmasy ones.
First one that is merely seasonal … five common misconceptions about ‘flu and why, especially if you’re at risk, you should get a ‘flu shot.
A little of the chemistry underlying what makes mulled wine so good.
Apparently we’re drinking Champagne out of the wrong glasses — something Champagne growers have always known!
Turkey has been our festive meat for much longer than we imagine — basically since quite soon after Columbus discovered the New World.
We’ve all heard of the Sugar Plum Fairy, but what are Sugar Plums anyway? Rebecca Rupp investigates.
Bourbon. The French Royal family? Biscuits? Whiskey? Well yes, all of those, but is there a connection?
The holly bears a berry. It also bears small flowers on separate male and female trees and is an important resource for wildlife — which is why we have several hollies in our garden.
Forks as eating implements are a recent introduction, at least compared with knives and spoons. Rebecca Rupp, again, looks at the history of both table manners and the fork.


It seems unlikely now, but there used to be quite a few pubs London Underground stations. I certainly remember the one at Sloane Square which survived until 1985, although I’m not sure I ever managed to have a pint there.
We’re now definitely descending into the rather less seasonal …
An official inquiry has highlighted the plight of British public libraries which are withering on the vine in the face of local authority funding cuts.
Most will have heard of Project Gutenberg but there are many other websites offering legal downloads of literature.
David Shariatmadari in the Guardian takes a sideways look at 10 diktats from Brussels that are (not?) ruining life in Britain.
We all know that life isn’t fair, but apparently that’s not the problem.
And finally, a splendid summary of why you should never mess with an engineer.
Happy New Year to you all!