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.
links, science

More Things You May Have Missed …

Another round in our series bringing you links to items you may have missed and which may amuse. In no special order …

So common sense seems to be filtering into government circles with the announcement that there may (notice only may) be a way to vaccinate badgers against bovine TB rather than slaughtering them.

Just so you’re no longer confused, here’s an interesting article on the non-difference between “skeptic” and “sceptic”.

Seems that a lot of those wonderful medieval stained-glass windows in Canterbury Cathedral are early 20th century fakes. My father — brought up in Canterbury — must be having apoplexy in his grave.

I’ve mentioned the Wellington Arch, at Hyde Park Corner, before (here and here). They currently have an exhibition about Egyptian architecture.

Apparently Australian Fairy-Wren chicks have to sing the right password to get fed by their parents. Even more amazingly the female bird teaches them their specific password before they hatch. Mums, what did you teach your child before birth?

Randall Munroe’s brilliant web comic XKCD which often takes a wacky look at science and logic. This week he has produced a blueprint style explanation of the workings of a space rocket in very simple language even readers of The Sun can understand.

Victoria Moore in the Telegraph asks how discerning drinkers can (still) be drinking Beaujolais Nouveau. Well I’ll tell her: we’re not all wine snobs and some of us actually drink it because we enjoy it; we don’t all like thick heavy red wines all the time.

Some while back we reported that archaeologists had found the remains of some old bras under the floor in a medieval Austrian schloss. The bras have now been dated to the late 15th century. Here’s the low down (or should that be the “prominent points”?) on the investigations so far.

Finally, following on from last week’s report of the investigations into the wildlife of the navel, Rob Dunn’s team are making their whole dataset available online so that others can look to see what they can discover from it. So if you fancy some scientific data mining, and maybe getting your name on a discovery, hare’s your chance. All are welcome.

More anon …

words

Word: Djinn

Djinn or jinn.

In Islamic mythology (including the Quran) an order of spirits lower than the angels which is said to have the power of appearing in human and animal forms and which can to exercise supernatural influence over men. Together, the djinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of God.

In Islamic theology djinn are said to be creatures with free will, made from smokeless fire by Allah just as humans were made of clay etc. This free will allows them to do as they choose thus, like humans, the djinn can be good, evil or neutrally benevolent. They are usually invisible to humans, and humans do not appear clearly to them. They have the power to travel large distances at extreme speeds.

Commonly used as the singular to denote an individual spirit.

Like many words it seems to have it’s origins in English in the latter part of the 17th century, I suppose reflecting the increasing importance of international trade and travel. Due to The Thousand and One Nights, and hence Aladdin and pantomime, they are now best known as genies residing in lamps and bottles.

history

Are the Nazis Winning?

Well no clearly they’re not in the strictest sense; they were almost obliterated in WWII. For which we should all be hugely grateful.

However over at Hardcore Zen, Brad Warner (Sōtō Zen priest, author, blogger, Godzilla enthusiast and punk rock bass guitarist) has an interesting take on Nazi Germany which I’d not previously thought about.

Nazi-ism is the antithesis of Buddhism in a lot of ways. One of the least obvious, though probably the most important is that Nazi-ism was completely goal oriented … They wanted a better world, a world unified and at peace.

The Nazis set their sights on a goal. And they were willing to do all sorts of nasty things to make that goal happen. The goal was important. What needed to be done to achieve it was secondary. But goals are problematic. They never really turn out the way you imagine them.

Ironically many of the goals the Nazis were trying to accomplish have come to pass, though not in the ways they would have envisioned or liked. Europe is unified. There is a single currency throughout most of the continent. There is even a common language spoken by people all over Europe. That the language is English and not German, the currency is the Euro and not the Deutsche Mark and the union is presided over from Brussels rather than Berlin might have made them cringe. But many of their major goals have been achieved. That the Nazis themselves had to be destroyed in order that their goals could be achieved probably didn’t fit Hitler’s master plan. But that’s how goal-oriented practice works.

And he’s right, give or take a few local difficulties and a varying value of “better”. No real wonder then that large numbers in this country are very anti the European Union.

None of which, of course, justifies Hitler’s ways and means. Ever!

personal, photography

Gallery: The Eighties

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Bravery. That’s what’s called for, at least for many, to do Tara’s Gallery this week. Because the theme is The Eighties. So there’s megatons of opportunity for embarrassment.

Not from here though, as I don’t have much by way of photos from the 80s — at least not scanned or readily to hand — and besides we’ve never been ones for taking loads of snapshots of each other. However I have found these …

kcm76 and Parents, 1984
This first (from 1984) is me (centre left) with my parents at the private view of Jolly Hockey Sticks, an exhibition centred around girls school stories curated by Noreen at what is now the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green.

Note my already spreading waistline and the Young’s brewery tie. I’m only surprised I don’t obviously have a glass of wine: I would have needed it because this was time when we were paying 17½% interest on our mortgage (3% above base rate). But we survived and even paid the mortgage off several years early. Oh for the “good old days”, formerly known as “these trying times”!


This is the little terraced house I was brought up in during the ’50s and ’60s. It’s seen here in the estate agent’s mugshot from when my parents sold it and moved to Norwich in 1988. Built around 1937 these were the late-30s equivalent of the Victorian “2-up, 2-down”.

Note the state of the garden wall! Those walls were forever falling down as they had poor foundations and were apparently built on an old field ditch!

Floss Cat
And finally this is the first cat Noreen and I had. Well Floss (not our choice of name, he was a rescue) and Pickle came at the same time almost as soon as we had our own house in 1981. This is a serendipitous capture from sometime in the early/mid-80s. The cats didn’t wear collars for very long: they rubbed the fur off their necks and the bells were useless at stopping them chasing birds as they just learnt to run with their chins down to muffle the sound!

words

Word of the Year: Omnishambles

Yep that’s right.

Omnishambles has been declared word of the year. And not by me, but by the Oxford English Dictionary.

I’m sure that we can all guess it means “a situation which is shambolic from every possible angle”. Oh, yes, just like the BBC!

As a word I don’t like it. It is too long, too contrived, too, well … shambolic. But I have to admit it is pretty well descriptive of our times. Think just this last few weeks of Jimmy Savile, the latest BBC “McAlpine” fiasco, Abu Qatada, Abu Hamza, Italian earthquake scientists. And they’re only the ones I can think of immediately.

What I find even more amusing is that good old(ish) word (first recorded 1865 according to the OED) pleb was also shortlisted for word of the year. Now that would have been a even better choice, if only to cock-a-snook at a few people!

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 52

Through the haze of whatever lurgy is trying its best to sink me at the moment here’s my contributions for week 52 of my experiment in documenting five things each week which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful.

  1. Autumn Colours. Although the leaves are beginning to fall quite quickly now we’ve had a frost or two, there’s still some glorious autumn colour around (and a surprising amount of green too) — which looks wonderful on a nice sunny day like today. These photos were taken earlier today in our garden.

    2. Acer Leaf

  2. Baked Ham & Red Cabbage. Earlier in the week we had a baked gammon joint. And delightfully flavoursome, tender and succulent it was too! |To accompany it there was red cabbage: sliced and braised with some onion and cooking apple and then simmered slowly with a glass or two of red wine. Add pepper, caraway seeds, garlic to taste. A most excellent winter warmer veg.
  3. Wasps. Yep we’ve still got our wasps around. Not so many now it is colder, but still the odd few in the house, with more in the attic. They’re mostly a mix of queens and workers, although I’ve seen at least one drone this week.
  4. Rump Steak. Also earlier in the week we had a couple of really juicy and tender pieces of rump steak, courtesy of Waitrose. They have to have been some of the best pieces of steak I’ve ever had, they were just so tender.

    5. Rose Hip

  5. Squirrels. And finally our resident squirrel, we discovered this afternoon, actually is resident — it has build it’s nest in the ivy at the top of our hawthorn tree. While in the garden we saw it running through the trees and Noreen spotted it sitting in its drey, a pair of ears and a beady eye poking over the edge! I like squirrels, despite that they are only tree rats, and I feel honoured to have one nesting in the garden.
current affairs, links, science

Another Catch-up

More links to things which amused or interested me and which may do the same for you. This edition isn’t all science; we start off being rather more light-hearted …

Everyone seems to be flapping about some fungus which is attacking ash trees in the UK. Apparently some government minister is suggesting we should stop it spreading by washing our children. Whatever next?


Meanwhile in Egypt the Copts have used a boy child to to select their new Pope. I love the way they wear a combination of table runners and lampshades! Makes the new Cantuar look very tame. But what I didn’t know is that Egyptian Copts are internationally well known and influential; Boutros Boutros-Ghali (former UN Secretary-General) and Sir Magdi Yacoub (heart transplant surgeon) are among their number.

Not to be outdone, IanVisits looks at two churches in London’s East End and wonders what London would have been like if a Victorian mega-rail project had come off.

And talking of Victorians, a rare books dealer has stumbled upon what is thought to be an authentic Tenniel Alice in Wonderland chess board. And of course he’s trying to cash in.

Finally before the science stuff, nambawan pikinini bilong Misis Kwin (aka. Prince Charles) has been in Papua New Guinea brushing up on his Tok Pisin. The Guardian gave us a guide to this hoot of a language.

When he gets back home Prince Charles will soon be being tested by his doctor for dementia, as will we all. I can’t see why Brenda and Phil the Greek should be excluded though; I would have thought the latter is a cut and dried diagnosis.

Slime molds. They’re slimy, and brainless (yes, there’s a link there somewhere!), and it seems surprisingly intelligent. Though I guess the latter depends in the value of intelligent as well as the price of eggs.

But as far as I know, no-one has yet found slime molds growing in a navel. Rob Dunn and his team have spent two years finding all manner of other life though, including Carl Zimmer. And for their next trick … arm-pits!

While on noxious substances, Puff the Mutant Dragon writes interestingly (well to me anyway) about the chemistry behind wacky-baccy.


Be afraid! Be very afraid! There’s another new pest on the way. It seems Asian hornets, Vespa velutina, (not to be confused with the Asian or Japanese Giant Hornet, Vespa mandarinia, which is altogether bigger) have established themselves in France and are heading for the UK. They munch on honey bees (as if bee-keepers needed anything more to worry about) and they have a nasty sting!

Finally something cool for those interested in space junk. NASA has launched an app which will email or text you when the International Space Station is due to be passing over your head, so you know when to look up.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

photography

Buggered Britain 14

Another instalment in my occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.

These were spotted yesterday lurking on a street corner near home. It seemed to sum up all that is currently buggered about Britain: binge drinking, life on the street, emptiness, lack of concern/consideration for others … It’s only a wonder one of the bottles wasn’t smashed.

Buggered Britain 14

photography

Gallery: Autumn

I don’t recall why I didn’t contribute to Tara’s Gallery last week, apart that is from being too busy, but we’re back this week for the theme of Autumn.

So first here are two taken last year in our garden …

Crab Apples

Autumn Oak
… and one I took yesterday of a tree in the street close to my house …

Autumn Yellow
… on what was a glorious clear Autumn morning.