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

Coming up in March

Interesting events an anniversaries in the month ahead.
4 March
Shrove Tuesday, and therefore Pancake Day. Traditionally this was the feast to eat remaining winter food stocks on the last day before the fasting of Lent. It was also the day when the penitent went to confession (hence “shrove” from “shriven”) in preparation for Lent.


Pieter Bruegel the Elder; The Fight between Carnival and Lent (detail)

5 March
The day after Shrove Tuesday is therefore Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.
8 March
International Women’s Day. Find out more at www.internationalwomensday.com
11 March
This day in 1984 saw the beginning of the National Miner’s Strike in which Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher defeated the Miners’ Unions and effectively killed the British coal industry.
14-23 March
National Science & Engineering Week is a ten-day national programme of science, technology, engineering and maths events and activities across the UK aimed at people of all ages. Find more at www.britishscienceassociation.org/national-science-engineering-week.
21 March
Spring (Vernal) Equinox and the pagan festival of Ēostre (which the Christian church subsumed into Easter and made a moveable feast).
21 March
Composer Modest Mussorgsky was born this day in 1839.
25 March
Lady Day or the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin. It is the first of the four traditional English quarter days when servants were hired and rents were due.
26 March
The UK Driving Test was introduced on this day in 1934.
30 March
Mothers’ Day in the UK, which is always celebrated on the fourth Sunday in Lent.
31 March
Paris’s Eiffel Tower was opened this day in 1889.

words

Word: Grenade

Grenade
1. A pomegranate. (Now obsolete)
2. A small bomb or explosive missile that is detonated by a fuse and thrown by hand or shot from a rifle or launcher.
3. A glass container filled with a chemical such as tear gas that is dispersed when the container is thrown and broken.


The word is derived from the French grenade, and Spanish & Portuguese granada, a pomegranate, which the original grenades were supposed to resemble.
Hence grenadine, a syrup made from pomegranate, the island of Grenada, and the Grenadier Guards.
The OED records the first English use (with meaning 1) in 1532.

links

Your Interesting Links

Another round-up of links to articles you may have missed.
To state the bleeding obvious, the weather’s been terrible on both sides of the Atlantic for months. Here’s a look at why.


Rob Dunn on the interesting idea that we invented agriculture to feed our need for beer — and bread came later.
Raspberry Crazy Ants are taking over. They’re even vanquishing the dreaded Fire Ant.
Meanwhile here’s another item on the curiosity of half-siders: chimeric birds.
While on things that shouldn’t be here’s another round in the debate about the over diagnosis of breast cancer and the associated risks.
Changing tack completely, there is growing evidence that cats, dogs and indeed some other mammals have some ability to see in the ultra-violet. Two reports: here and here.
And while on cats, there is an very odd link between people who get bitten by cats and depression. Cause and effect? Well who knows.
Is it a toilet? Is it a planter? Yes it’s a PPlanter and it grows bamboo! Not a new idea, but perhaps a more practical version than previous attempts.
I’d never really though about the ways in which religions can be science-friendly, because generally I think religions aren’t science-friendly. However here’s a suggestion that Buddhism is the most science friendly religion. (Well that assumes Buddhism is a religion, which strictly it isn’t.)
On religion, some scientists have suggested that the image on the Turin Shroud may have been created by an earthquake in 33AD.
Here’s a long, and emotional, read on the ghosts afflicting the survivors of the Fukushima tsunami. Not safe for bedtime reading.
We’ve all seen coloured squiggles and lines on pavements … here’s something about what they mean.
You all probably know this, but I didn’t … An American High School English teacher of my acquaintance has a useful take on understanding Shakespeare.
After which it’s all downhill …
A young lady at America’s Duke University does porn acting to pay for university — and why shouldn’t she if she wants to? Here’s her story on why and what it means for her.
Does equality kill sex? It seems it might.

Can couples really get stuck together during sex?
And finally one to ponder … cannabis flavoured condoms.

words

Oddity of the Week: Freelance

Sir Walter Scott coined the word “freelance” in Ivanhoe, using it to refer to a mercenary knight with no allegiance to one particular country and who instead offers his services for money.
From ‘A’ to ‘ampersand’, English is a wonderfully curious language; Guardian; 15/02/2014

natural history, photography

Weekly Photograph

In this week’s photograph you get four for the price of one.
Four shots of the same tiny insect. It was probably a member of the Braconidae, possibly Apanteles glomeratus or as the body looks “waisted” one of the Ichneumonidae. Head and body about the size of a British black ant (so around 4-5mm?). Antennae and ovipositor are each roughly the same length as the body. Legs definitely reddish. It liked walking about (it was quick too) making it quite a challenge to photograph.

Click the image for larhger views on Flickr
Ichneumon Fly?
Ichneumon Fly?
Greenford; July 2009

words

Oddity of the Week: Ampersand

Until as recently as the early 1900s, “&” was considered a letter of the alphabet and listed after Z in 27th position. To avoid confusion with the word “and”, anyone reciting the alphabet would add “per se” (“by itself”) to its name, so that the alphabet ended “X, Y, Z and per se &”. This final “and per se and” eventually ran together, and the “ampersand” was born.
From ‘A’ to ‘ampersand’, English is a wonderfully curious language; Guardian; 15/02/2014

current affairs, environment

Farming Floods

Yet again George Monbiot has applied his pitchfork to the tender parts of the government’s environmental policy. Yet again it is all to do with flooding. Here is the large part of his article in the Guardian of 17 February — he says it all so much more succinctly than I could.
How we ended up paying farmers to flood our homes
This government let the farming lobby rip up the rulebook on soil protection — and now we are suffering the consequences.
It has the force of a parable. Along the road from High Ham to Burrowbridge, which skirts Lake Paterson (formerly known as the Somerset Levels), you can see field after field of harvested maize. In some places the crop lines run straight down the hill and into the water. When it rains, the water and soil flash off into the lake. Seldom are cause and effect so visible.
That’s what I saw on Tuesday. On Friday, I travelled to the source of the Thames. Within 300 metres of the stone that marked it were ploughed fields, overhanging the catchment, left bare through the winter and compacted by heavy machinery. Muddy water sluiced down the roads. A few score miles downstream it will reappear in people’s living rooms. You can see the same thing happening across the Thames watershed: 184 miles of idiocy, perfectly calibrated to cause disaster.


Mud (aka. silt) pours straight off this field near the source of the Thames.
Photograph: George Monbiot

Two realities, perennially denied or ignored by members of this government, now seep under their doors. In September the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, assured us that climate change “is something we can adapt to over time and we are very good as a race at adapting”. If two months of severe weather almost sends the country into meltdown, who knows what four degrees of global warming will do?
The second issue, once it trickles into national consciousness, is just as politically potent: the government’s bonfire of regulations.
Almost as soon as it took office, this government appointed a task force to investigate farming rules. Its chairman was the former director general of the National Farmers’ Union. Who could have guessed that he would recommend “an entirely new approach to and culture of regulation … Government must trust industry”? The task force’s demands, embraced by Paterson, now look as stupid as Gordon Brown’s speech to an audience of bankers in 2004: “In budget after budget I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers.”
Six weeks before the floods arrived, a scientific journal called Soil Use and Management published a paper warning that disaster was brewing. Surface water run-off in south-west England, where the Somerset Levels are situated, was reaching a critical point. Thanks to a wholesale change in the way the land is cultivated, at 38% of the sites the researchers investigated, the water — instead of percolating into the ground — is now pouring off the fields.
Farmers have been ploughing land that was previously untilled … leaving the soil bare during the rainy season. Worst of all is the shift towards growing maize, whose cultivated area in this country has risen from 1,400 hectares to 160,000 since 1970.
In three quarters of the maize fields in the south-west, the soil structure has broken down to the extent that they now contribute to flooding. In many of these fields, soil, fertilisers and pesticides are sloshing away with the water. And nothing of substance, the paper warned, is being done to stop it …
Maize is being grown in Britain not to feed people, but to feed livestock and, increasingly, the biofuel business. This false solution to climate change will make the impacts of climate change much worse, by reducing the land’s capacity to hold water.
The previous government also saw it coming. In 2005 it published a devastating catalogue of the impacts of these changes in land use. As well as the loss of fertility from the land and the poisoning of watercourses, it warned, “increased run-off and sediment deposition can also increase flood hazard in rivers”. Maize … is a particular problem because the soil stays bare before and after the crop is harvested, without the stubble or weeds required to bind it. “Wherever possible,” it urged, “avoid growing forage maize on high and very high erosion risk areas.”
The Labour government turned this advice into conditions attached to farm subsidies. Ground cover crops should be sown under the maize and the land should be ploughed, then resown with winter cover plants within 10 days of harvesting, to prevent water from sheeting off. So why isn’t this happening in Somerset?
Because the current government dropped the conditions. Sorry, not just dropped them. It issued … a specific exemption for maize cultivation from all soil conservation measures … The crop which causes most floods and does most damage to soils is the only one which is completely unregulated.

When soil enters a river we call it silt. A few hundred metres from where the soil is running down the hills, a banner over the River Parrett shouts: “Stop the flooding, dredge the rivers.” Angry locals assail ministers and officials with this demand. While in almost all circumstances, dredging causes more problems than it solves, and though, as even Owen Paterson admits, “increased dredging of rivers on the Somerset Levels would not have prevented the recent widespread flooding”, there’s an argument here for a small amount of dredging at strategic points.
But to do it while the soil is washing off the fields is like trying to empty the bath while the taps are running.
So why did government policy change? I’ve tried asking the environment department: they’re as much use as a paper sandbag. But I’ve found a clue. The farm regulation task force demanded a specific change: all soil protection rules attached to farm subsidies should become voluntary. They should be downgraded from a legal condition to an “advisory feature”. Even if farmers do nothing to protect their soil, they should still be eligible for public money.
You might have entertained the naive belief that in handing out billions to wealthy landowners we would get something in return. Something other than endless whining from the National Farmers’ Union. But so successfully has policy been captured in this country that Defra … now means Doing Everything Farmers’ Representatives Ask. We pay £3.6bn a year for the privilege of having our wildlife exterminated, our hills grazed bare, our rivers polluted and our sitting rooms flooded.
Yes, it’s a parable all right, a parable of human folly, of the kind that used to end with 300 cubits of gopher wood and a journey to the mountains of Ararat. Antediluvian? You bet it is.
A fully referenced version of this article can be found at www.monbiot.com/2014/02/17/muddying-the-waters/
From www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/17/farmers-uk-flood-maize-soil-protection
Now tell me, please, why there is no need to reform agricultural practices?

amusements

More Auction Oddities

Yet another collection of strangenesses from our local auction house. This collection is garnered from two recent sales. Just marvel at the weirdness of it all!
A half mannequin and two busts.
A large lot comprising Technics and JVC hi-fi, a shredder, a workman’s luminous jacket, plastic piping, modern ceiling lights, shelf unit, a mitre saw, a child’s duvet, cushions and tent equipment, etc.
A collection of Dinky model planes, including “Empire Flying Boat”, “Ranger Bomber” and “York”, an Astra model canon, 2 brass combs, a can of American wartime pure Dried Whole Eggs, unopened, and a Dried Machine Skimmed Milk, unopened, 2 bobbins, thimbles, lead soldier figures and a game of peg patience etc.
Why? Just why?
Costume jewellery, a silver-backed dressing table set, Wade rabbit and trough, small books on Freemasonry, two Oxo tins full of cotton reels, etc.
Two decorative portrait miniatures of elegant ladies in piano key frames …
A carton of old leather handbags and a box of old railway track, a tinplate lorry, a racing car, beads, etc.
An interesting accumulation of items including decorative scent bottles, Art Deco glasses, an old French roll of loo paper, cake decorations, a carved box, a crocodile spectacle case, purses, etc.
WTF with old French bog roll?
A carton of old tins and pipes, including Lions [sic] French Coffee, and a Milady tin of mainly bronze coins.
A collection of old boxes including a mirror and brush box, jewellery boxes, a clockwork spit, miscellaneous jewellery, a Robert Held art glass paperweight set with a diamond, an old paste pot the lid entitled ‘A Letter From The Diggings’, a set of weights, large tile, etc.
An album of mint gutters and traffic lights GB 1948-2005.
Very sad, but yes I do know what this means!
Five unused tortoiseshell style handbag frames.
A pair of lorgnettes, two monocles, a folding comb, and a pick.
A quantity of unboxed Matchbox cars and vans including Mercedes 300 SE, Ford pick-up and Lamborghini Mivra, a Ford Consul, Corgi car and a Husky walk-through van, a boxed Matchbox Y-12 1909 Thomas Flyabout, a tribal club and two boomerangs.
A pair of antlers.
A mounted claxton [sic] on a wooden base and a clear bottomed pewter tankard.
A zither by the Anglo American Zither Co.
Guinness ware comprising five jugs in sizes and three flagons in sizes
Two Beswick wall ducks
A substantial and interesting Victorian carved dark oak dresser, the large panelled back carved with an armorial of four rampant lions, dinosaurs and dragons, and biblical scenes and a portrait, supporting display shelves above a carved base with three frieze drawers and cupboard