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.
amusements, books

Towel Day

Saturday 25 May is Towel Day.

What, I hear you exclaim, is Towel Day? Yes, that’s right it is the day on which we are encouraged to carry a towel in tribute to the late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. On 25 May 2001, two weeks after Douglas Adam’s untimely death, his fans carried a towel in his honour. And they have done so every year since.

If you’ve already read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy you’ll know the importance of your towel. If not, the book will explain why a towel is the most important item a space-travelling hitch-hiker (indeed probably any of us — just ask Linus!) can have.

Your towel is extremely practical: you can use it to keep warm, to lie on, to sleep on and to use as a mini-raft as you sail down the River Moth! Of course your towel is also a trusty companion and thus extremely important for a host of psychological reasons.

Towel Day isn’t just a day for doing the obvious: carrying a towel. There are also lots of events, all listed over on the Towel Day website at http://towelday.org/.

quotes

Quotes …

A few more recently encountered quotes …

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
[Sir Peter Medawar]

It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
[GH Hardy]

It is not wrong to question things … The fact that you’re asking questions shows that you’re five levels of wisdom above the idiot who’s objecting to you asking the questions.
[Josh Tolley]

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colourful life imaginable.
[Robert Pattinson]

High level concepts such as intentions, meanings, thoughts, and so on, which we associate only with minds, must have had evolutionary precursors in a more or less gradual sequence. The problem is that we do not have a clear concept of what the simplest “intention”, “meaning”, or “thought”” might look like. This is because psychology has traditionally been defined by only highly evolved “mental” activity, so that even though we study brains at the cellular or even molecular levels, there is the tacit belief that no real psychology can exist at a simple level.
[Howard Pattee, “Cell Psychology: An Evolutionary Approach to the Symbol-Matter Problem” (1982 paper) in Pattee & Rączaszek-Leonardi (eds), Laws, Language and Life (2013)]

After we invented software we could see that we were surrounded by software. DNA is a universal programming language and biology can be thought of as software archaeology – looking at very old, very complicated software.
[Gregory Chaitin, mathematician]

Cat. (noun) A small domesticated carnivorous mammal (Felis catus), with soft fur, a short snout, and retractile claws. Thought to be entirely solar powered.
[unknown]

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
[Robert Heinlein]

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.
[Fran Lebowitz]

food+drink

English Wine Week

Saturday 25 May is the start of English Wine Week, which runs until Sunday 2 June.

Wine has been produced in this country since the time of the Romans, and possibly even earlier. And there are still over 400 wineries in the UK — an astonishing number for a country which isn’t supposed to be able to grow grapes.

We all know that a glass or two from a lovely bottle of wine can put the special touch to an evening with friends or family, whether at home or at a nice restaurant. And I know from experience English wine is as good as any in the world, although not made in such large volumes — there are even English champagne-type wines.


Over recent years it has become easier to find English wine, with many vintners and supermarkets stocking it, although their ranges are often still limited. But it is well worth seeking out and Waitrose are apparently one of the few big retailers championing the cause.

There are a lot of English Wine Week events across the country; they’re all listed, along with more information at www.englishwineproducers.co.uk/news/events/?eww=1 and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/EnglishWineWeek2013.

photography

Weekly Photograph

Each week when I choose my weekly photograph I try to do it at random from those I’ve posted over the years on Flickr. This week the dice fell on a crazy self-portrait I did some years ago when I was doing a self-portrait a week project.

Click the image for a larger view on Flickr
Hockneylated & 13 Artists
Hockneylated & 13 Artists
Self-portrait; January 2009

The 13 artists referred to are given in the original caption:

This week’s self-portrait: 52 Weeks 46/52 (2009 week 02).
I think the time has come to do another 13 things, so here are 13 painters I admire:
1. David Hockney
2. Nicolas Poussin
3. MC Escher
4. Leonardo da Vinci
5. Hans Holbein
6. Albrecht Durer
7. Eric Gill
8. Willem van de Velde the Younger
9. My mother
10. Rembrandt
11. Mark Boxer
12. Osbert Lancaster
13. Pieter Bruegel the Elder

beliefs

World Goth Day

As every year Wednesday 22 May is World Goth Day — a day where the goth scene gets to celebrate its own being, and an opportunity to make its presence known to the rest of the world.

While it’s true that most goths prefer night time World Goth Day lets them parade the black look proudly in the sunlight!


Goths are often met with criticism and fear. But despite their dress, they’re just like everyone else and judging someone based on the way they look means missing out on getting to know some great people. Consequently because of the stigma attached to being a goth, many have struggled to get friends and family to accept them as they are.

World Goth Day is the day they come out in the light to proudly proclaim their way to the rest of the world, and to show us some of the fun things we’re missing.

And there’s lots more information over at http://worldgothday.com/.

ramblings

Approaches to Life

Here’s another that I encountered meandering the interweb. It’s something good to try to live up to.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.
Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good.
Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

food+drink

National Vegetarian Week

Hot on the heels of British Tomato Week, 20-26 May is also National Vegetarian Week.

National Vegetarian Week, which is all about how surprisingly simple it is to go vegetarian, is the annual awareness-raising campaign promoting inspirational vegetarian food and the benefits of a meat-free lifestyle.

Despite popular misconception, vegetarian food needn’t be dull, boring and tasteless; quite the opposite, good veggie dishes can be just as tasty, nutritious and fulfilling as any meat dish. As an example see my recipe for Veggie Crumble.


There are many reasons for being vegetarian from not liking meat right through to not liking to kill animals. For some it is a lifestyle choice; for others it is a matter of religion and for a few it is a medical necessity.

While I’m not veggie, and I doubt I could ever be 100% veggie, I do enjoy and we often choose to cook vegetarian dishes — and as regular readers here will know, we like our food! So I’d say that if you’ve ever even considered being vegetarian, then now is the time to try it. You might like it!

You can find details of National Vegetarian Week, including some more easy recipes, over at http://www.nationalvegetarianweek.org/.

food+drink

British Tomato Week

British Tomato Week, which runs from 20 to 26 May, is a celebration of the range and quality of British tomatoes.

Sponsored by the Tomato Growers Association, British Tomato Week offers imaginative events but with a serious message: British tomatoes offer a fantastic range of healthy, wholesome fruit bursting with flavour and nutrients. And yet 4 out of 5 tomatoes eaten in the UK are imported.

Commercially tomatoes are grown in glasshouses to protect them from the cold and concentrate the sunshine they need. Amateur gardeners, of course, often grow tomatoes outside.

Tomatoes aren’t just those round, red, golf-ball sized fruits you find in the supermarket; there is a wide range of varieties! They come in all sizes, from small, sweet, cherry-sized fruits to deliciously large beefsteak tomatoes the size of a large fist. And in a range of colours from very pale yellow to deep red and even green.

Added to which tomatoes are actually incredibly good for you. They are a good source of Vitamins A, C and E, the natural plant pigments beta-carotene and lycopene, and also flavonoids … all of which have accepted health benefits.

Find more information on the British Tomato Growers Association website at .

medical

Walk to School Week

Monday 20 to Friday 24 May is Walk to School Week.

The aim of Walk to School Week, which has been going since 1995, is simple: to encourage all parents, children and young people to make walking to school part of their daily routine.

I know when I was a kid I lived a mile from my junior school and subsequently a mile in the other direction from my grammar school. And I walked to school; in fact for much of the time I came home for lunch so walked about 4 miles a day. (OK, I admit I was a lazy teenager and sometimes got the bus to school, but that depended on being in funds as I didn’t get extra allowance for bus fares.)

Walking is good for us and we almost all walk far too little (guilty as charged!). Far too many children get taken, even short distances, to school by car. Parents get scared (usually unnecessarily) of kids being molested or abducted, parents are in a hurry to get to work themselves, or I’m sure in many cases they’re just plain lazy.

But as always there are many benefits to walking: save petrol — and thus save money and the environment — improve health but getting more exercise; and parents walking children to school are spending quality time with their kids, and maybe even teaching them things about the world around them. Get into the walking habit and hopefully it will stay with you for life.

As always there is more information on the Walk to School website at www.livingstreets.org.uk/walk-with-us/walk-to-school.