Soemthing for the Weekend
All posts by Keith
You may have missed …
Another round-up of items I spotted which you may not have done …
According to the Met Office the UK’s current run of awful summers is set to continue for some years. Although they are also saying this month should be hot and sunny. Who you gonna believe?
Germ warfare, in the guise of antibiotics, may be changing the way we humans actually work.
At least one mother of my acquaintance would like words with the designer of the female reproductive equipment. Now Prof. Alice Roberts asks why childbirth is such hard labour and what science is telling us about it.
Trouble having an orgasm? Try your feet! WTF!!
On the more artistic side, the British Museum is to host an exhibition about sex in Japanese art in 2014. Excellent! We need sexuality normalised not marginalised or criminalised. Must see!
Following on from which, why are we so concerned about what might be “age inappropriate“. Surely what’s appropriate is whatever I feel like? So who cares what the neighbours or the kids think? Isn’t life there to be lived?
So modernity is nothing new; we’ve always been avant garde and there have always been old ‘uns who object to it. There was even social networking in the 17th century. Starbucks eat your heart out!
Boys… you ain’t having as much as you think you are!
So are we able to make ourselves happier? Seems we might be able to, at least up to a point.
Well we know that swearing is nothing new, it’s just that we change the swearwords occasionally. Now there’s a history of swearing.
Yes, it’s wonderful! But do we actually know what wonder is, how it works and how it contributed to civilisation? Researchers are trying to find out.
An angler reckons he’s caught a 200 year old fish off Alaska. If confirmed this will be a new record age for a fish. Just wow!
Auctionalia
Well it’s summer (allegedly) and there doesn’t seem to be a whole bunch going on to blog about. So here is one of our irregular collections of curiosities from our local auction house’s latest catalogue. As usual the eccentricity defies logic.
A full-length pastel of a girl on the seashore, by D Alvarez Gomez Domingo, signed, wearing a long white dress with a scarlet sash and holding a straw hat, modern frame
[But why was D Alvarez Gomez Domingo wearing a long white dress, with sash, and carrying a straw hat when they signed the picture?]
A small limited edition engraving of artist mice being watched by a cat, signed by the artist in the margin (illegible), two oils of cats, etc.
Three reproduction Georgian style mahogany framed wall mirrors, one with a shell and the other a Ho-ho bird surmount.
[And the third mirror? Oh and WTF is a ho-ho bird?]
A mid 20th century autograph bool (sic) with sketches, poems, photographs of the stars of the time, some signed, etc.
A pair of large George III silver shoe buckles, with openwork faceted beads between milled borders, maker’s IL, lion passant and duty marks.
[This is only one of about two dozen similar lots. Who collects this stuff?]
A musical John Peel tankard by Crown Devon, and silver plated objects including a candelabra, (sic) candlesticks, goblets, etc.
A snooker cue in metal case, inscribed on a plaque, ‘To Stumpie from Max and Buddy Bear’
[The mind boggles!]
Three shelves of mainly tribal wooden carvings including a wooden duck with brass and mother-of-pearl decoration, a lion, green painted octagonal lidded box with brass decoration, wicker lidded box, a tribal head, brass pot, etc.
A large mantel clock in exuberant pottery case … c.1900
An interesting collection of bladed weapons and associated items, 19th and 20th century, comprising 7 bayonets with 4 scabbards, a commando knife with leather scabbard, the blade signed IXL, a kris, 4 other knives with 2 sheaths, 3 powder horns, a shot flask, 2 shell cases, and gun parts
A reproduction suit of armour and four dress swords
[Anyone got a castle to decorate?]
A 4-Hatch Coaster radio controlled boat named ‘Tamara’ with a digger on the deck, in white, red and grey, approximately 40″ long, on stand
A radio controlled German WWII E-Boat, scale 1:24, approximately 57″ with three motors, also a part-built submarine approximately 67″
[These two boats are a sample of about 12 similar lots!]
A lot of old skulls, antlers and horns, and a display of small tusks
Two old tool boxes and contents, a roll of barbed wire, axle supports, a saw, level, etc.
[It’s the barbed wire that makes this a “must have” lot!]
An example of taxidermy, a mongoose struggling with an adder
A BMW motorbike combination, registration number E259 LOW, the sidecar possibly by Steil
Word: Vespiary
Vespiary
A nest or colony of wasps or hornets.
From the Latin vesp, a wasp and formed by analogy with apiary.
The first use recoded by the OED was in 1817.
Weekly Photograph
My randomiser for choosing this week’s photograph has fallen again on something from our break in Rye with our friend Katy (and her lovely kids) at the end of summer 2010. There’s no special story about this shot; it was just a sheep grazing peacefully near Old Romney church.
Click the image for larger views on Flickr
Sheepie
Old Romney, Kent; 31 August 2010
Oxenhope Straw Race
After a brief hiatus, largely because there wasn’t a lot happening worthy of our interest, we bring you the Oxenhope Straw Race which is on 7 July.
The Oxenhope Straw Race takes place every summer in the Pennine village of Oxenhope, near Keighley. It was started by two men who made a bet about racing from one pub to the next carrying a bale of straw. The money is raised for charity by teams collecting sponsorship for completing the course, often in fancy dress, whilst carrying a bale of straw and visiting each of the local pubs in the village; £300,000 has been raised date.
This looks like a fund day out with a real carnival atmosphere! There’s more information and entry forms at www.strawrace.com.
Something for the Weekend
“It’s true I didn’t make you as smart as woman,
so here’s a little something to do your thinking for you”
Weekly Photograph
I spotted this one Saturday on the way out of central London, parked by the side of the A40 at Acton. What more can one say?
Click the image for a larger view on Flickr
Junk?
Acton, London; 22 June 2013
Words: Atheism, Secularism and Humaism
Today let’s look at three words which seem to be becoming increasingly misunderstood and misused: atheism, secularism and humanism.
Atheism
1. Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of God or gods.
2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
Secularism
1. The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education.
2. The doctrine that morality should be based solely on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life, to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God or in a future state.
Humanism
1. A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centres on humans and their values, capacities and worth.
Hence one can be a secularist without being an atheist, although the reverse is I suspect rather difficult. While atheists are generally secularists, at least in Europe so are most believers because they know their own freedom of belief depends on freedom from the belief of others. Humanists are by definition atheists.
Atheism challenges belief but secularism challenges religious privilege. Humanism replaces a belief in god(s) with a belief in Homo sapiens.
And yes, for the record I am both an atheist and a secularist. I’m also a humanist but not one who identifies with humanism as an organised belief system, a là British Humanist Association — I don’t do organised belief systems!
More Links …
OK, so here’s another round of links to items which may be of passing interest and which caught my eye (and brain). Hopefully they might interest you too …
Journalist Carole Cadwalladr reports on the somewhat unexpected side-effects of having her whole genome sequenced and finding out some of what it means.
What happens when you research TB? Australian Journalist Jo Chandler finds out the hard way and gets very lucky.
Unearthing the secrets of the Crusaders: how a castle toilet still holds evidence of their parasites.
We know that a large percentage of drug trial results are never published, usually because they don’t agree with what the trial wanted to find. Now some experts are having another go at finding a way to force publication.
Seems that plants have body clocks and that your cabbage lives on in your fridge. I suppose this shouldn’t be too surprising although it is slightly scary and seriously weird! As Elizabeth Berry said Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables. They probably get jet-lagged, just like people.
Talking of food, there are many wacky notions that ingredients added to our food are poisoning us. Pharmaceutical chemist Derek Lowe does a hatchet job on some of the claims.
Man plays at being God and fails. Prepare to be surprised at some of the world’s ten most invasive fish species.
So just why are scientific names so important?
Are you a native English speaker? And interested in the language? Then you can contribute to the understanding of English dialects by taking part in the Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes.
Here’s a piece from British Naturism on how the proposed Anti-Social Behaviour Bill is a threat to everyone’s lifestyle. Needless to say BN are most concerned about naturism, but it goes much, much wider than that because of the poor wording.
A short but thoughtful piece from ICUK (who are my ISP) on the challenges of internet filtering.
Oh dear, the Chief Rabbi is lamenting the decline in the intellectual quality of atheists. The Heresy Corner isn’t impressed with the intellectual qualities of the Chief Rabbi and takes him apart limb by limb.
Now this is seriously and brilliantly insane: armour for your guinea pig!
And finally, did you ever wonder what else you could use that penis cake mould for? Wonder no more!
Enjoy your cake!