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

In Case You Missed …

A few links to news and interest items you may have missed. Let’s do the serious stuff first.

First off, following my tirade of 10 days ago about the proposals to change the way we keep time, here are a couple of items explaining the background to our calendar systems and why leap seconds do actually matter. One is from Scientific American blogs: The End of the Time of Earth: Why Does the Leap Second Matter?. The second is from Discover Magazine bogs: Wait just a (leap) second.

I also came across this piece on the use of seismology for forensic purposes, eg. monitoring nuclear tests. Interesting that some seismometers captured the Costa Concordia hitting the rocks.

And now for something more sublime but equally mind-boggling: some pictures of amazing libraries.

Multi-tools have a geek following. But despite what we might think they aren’t new and weren’t invented by the Swiss Army. The first documented ones were used by the Romans and they have developed ever since. Here’s a selection from the first recorded Roman example right up to last week.

And finally from the sublime to the totally, well, crazy. Protect Your Cats And Mice With Armour. How brilliant is that!

food+drink

Where's the Biscuit Barrel?

2 Comments

Kate’s Listography this week poses a simple question: What are you five favourite biscuits?

Well, because of my diabetes I’m not really supposed to eat biscuits — but I do! So here are some of my all-time favourites.

Almond Biscotti. Preferably home-made, by me.

Wagon Wheels. But they have to be the original, decent size version of my childhood and not the travesty that we are palmed off with these days.

Any Wafer Biscuit. But better if covered in chocolate! Why are these always the first to disappear from any biscuit selection?

Garibaldi. Yes, those “dead fly” biscuits. I loved them as a kid, especially the slight chewiness of the fruit.

Dark Chocolate Digestives. Well actually almost anything covered in dark chocolate. Milk chocolate will do at a pinch, but dark chocolate is so superior!

Time for tea and biscuits!

environment

I haz not Cheezburgr

There’s a small piece in the February issue of Scientific American which reflects my views on the necessity of revising our agricultural policies.

I reprint it here as it is heavily based on a SciAm weblog post by David Wogan and largely quotes from an earlier weblog post by Waldo Jaquith both of which are in the public domain.

The Impracticality of a Cheeseburger

A fast-food staple reveals the pros and cons of industrialization

What does the cheeseburger say about our modern food economy? A lot, actually. Over the past several years blogger Waldo Jaquith (http://waldo.jaquith.org) set out to make a cheeseburger from scratch, to no avail.

“Further reflection revealed that it’s quite impractical — nearly impossible — to make a cheeseburger from scratch,” he writes. “Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in spring and fall. Large mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year and would inherently involve omitting some core cheeseburger ingredients. It would be wildly expensive — requiring a trio of cows — and demand many acres of land. There’s just no sense in it”.

That the cheeseburger — our delicious and comforting every man food — didn’t exist 100 years ago is a greasy, shiny example of all that is both right and wrong with our modern food economy. Thanks to fertilizers, genetically modified crops, concentrated farming operations and global overnight shipping, much of the world was lifted out of starvation (but not malnutrition, ironically enough) because it could finally grow sufficient quantities of food with decreasing labor inputs.

But these same advances that allow food to be grown out of season and in all corners of the globe contribute to a whole host of environmental problems, from deforestation and nitrogen loading of water sources (and the resulting dead zones) to the insane quantities of water being consumed.

The “industrialization of food,” as author Paul Roberts puts it, is a relentless cycle driven by razor-thin price margins that force food processors to adopt more advanced techniques to produce even more food at lower prices. This system will only be exacerbated as food demand increases. Recently David Tilman and Jason Hill of the University of Minnesota released a study anticipating that global food demand could double by 2050. It’s doubtful that our current, impractical food economy can sustain that demand.

amusements

Convince me it isn't 1st April

The following is from New Scientist of 14 January 2012, and not 1 April!

One minute with … Isak Gerson

The spiritual leader of the world’s newest religion, Kopimism, explains why he thinks copying information is holy

Tell me about this new religion, Kopimism.
It was founded about 15 months ago. We believe that information is holy and that the act of copying is holy.

Why make a religion out of file-sharing?
We see ourselves as a religious group, so a church seemed like a good way of organising ourselves.

Was it hard to become an official religion?
We have had this faith for several years and one day we thought, why not try and get it registered? It was quite difficult. The authorities were quite dogmatic with their formalities. It took us three tries and more than a year to get recognised.

What criteria do you have to meet to become an official religion?
The law states that to be a religion you have to be an organisation that practises moments of prayer or meditation in your rituals.

What are the Kopimist rituals?
We have a part of our religious practices where we worship the value of information by copying it.

You call this “kopyacting”. Do you actually meet up in a building, like a church, to undertake these rituals?
We do meet up, but it doesn’t have to be in a physical room. It could be on a server or a web page too.

Do certain symbols have special significance in Kopimism?
Yes. There is the “kopimi” logo, which is a K written inside a pyramid, a symbol used online to show you want to be copied. But there are also symbols that represent and encourage copying, for example, “CTRL+V” and “CTRL+C”.

Why is information, and sharing it, so important to you?
Information is the building block of everything around me and everything I believe in, Copying it is a way of multiplying the value of information.

What’s your stance on illegal file-sharing?
I think that the copyright laws are very problematic, and at least need to be rewritten. I would suggest getting rid of most of them.

How many church members are there?
Around 3000. To join you just have to read our values and if you agree with them, then you can register on our website, at kopimistsamfundet.se

Is there a deity associated with Kopimism?
No, there isn’t.

Does Kopimism have anything to say about the afterlife?
Not really. As a religion we are not so focused on humans.

It could be a digital afterlife.
Information doesn’t really have a life. I guess it can be forgotten, but as long as it is copied it won’t be.

PROFILE. Isak Gerson is a philosophy student at Uppsala University, Sweden. Together with Gustav Nipe — a member of Sweden’s Pirate party — and others he has founded the Church of Kopimism, which last week was recognised as a religion by the Swedish government.

history, personal, ramblings

Families

Yesterday I ended up spending a large part of the day immersed in my family history. It all started because Noreen (who has done at least as much work on my family as her own) noticed that one of the files we had from my mother had a birth certificate in it.

We have three crates of stuff from my mother, much of which is organised as a family timeline and history in ring binders, all of which has been refiled. But we realised we hadn’t been through the miscellaneous files for certificates, which I prefer to file separately. We started on the crate of miscellaneous files thinking we’d find a couple of certificates. We found a couple of dozen!

In entering all the certificate data into my family tree app I came across a death certificate for my g-g-g-grandfather, one James Gambridge (born ca.1789, died 1857) which records his occupation as “Cook on Her Majesty’s Ship Victory”. No this is too good to be true! He would have been about 16 at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar (in 1805). Is it possible he served under Nelson at Trafalgar?


Answer: No.

The crew (an incredible 850 officers and men) on HMS Victory at Trafalgar is well documented. And James Gambridge isn’t amongst them. (Nor is there a James Cambridge, the ‘G’ often being mis-transcribed as a ‘C’.) Now one shouldn’t always believe what is given even on certificates, and this rang alarm bells.

Yet I knew James Gambridge’s occupation was given as “Gunner” on his daughter Sarah Ann’s (my maternal g-g-grandmother) marriage certificate (in 1848). So maybe he was an enlisted sailor. Hmmm … more work required.

Then, talking over dinner, Noreen made an almost throw-away comment: “Of course there’s also Leading Seaman Albert Edward T Hicks of Dover who on the 1901 census is shown as serving on HMS Victory at Portsmouth”. What?

Now the Hickses are my father’s mother’s family and, yes, they come from Dover. “Oh yes”, says Noreen, “he’s one of yours”.

Now my g-g-grandfather was a certain Jabez Hicks of Dover, sometime mariner. And we know his son James Albert (1847-1888; not in my direct line) was also a mariner. Noreen is even more fascinated by this family than I am and has established that James Albert had a son Albert Edward Thomas (b. 1875). Both James Albert and his wife died quite young and it seems that the five surviving children were parcelled out around their aunts and uncles (who were likely also their god-parents).

Young Albert Edward was sent to live with his uncle Edward Israel Hicks and on the 1891 census is at the Royal Naval School at Greenwich. So much can be established from census records etc. (Albert Edward Hicks is quite common as names go, but Albert Edward T Hicks isn’t.) And hence Noreen’s discovery of Albert Edward T Hicks on HMS Victory at Portsmouth on the 1901 census.

This I now start to think I don’t believe.

So let’s see what, if anything, the National Archives come up with. God bless this new-fangled internet thingy ‘cos I can do this from home on a Saturday evening!

So after a bit of grubbing around — and much swearing at the awful slowness of the National Archives’ website — lo and behold I can find a Naval service record for Albert Edward Thomas Hicks of Dover. And the document is available for download (for the cost of a pint of beer).

He joined up for 12 years on his 18th birthday in December 1893 as a ship’s boy. He eventually retired from the Navy in October 1919 as a Petty Officer on HMS Lupin (almost 26 years service). He served several tours on HMS Victory (as well as, inter alia, HMS Hood (1891) and HMS Pembroke) and throughout the First World War. Absolutely amazing.

But following the same pattern I cannot find any service record for James Gambridge — and all the records are supposed to be there. One last desperate effort: let’s just do a general search for him, forget about targeting naval records. Wow! And there is a James Gambridge who served in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines between 1804 and 1839. Now this doesn’t quite fit as quoted ages etc. don’t properly match and I don’t yet have the full document (it isn’t one that’s online) to check it all. But yes, it may be a possible fit.

I never knew I had forebears in the Navy, let alone dreamt that they may have served on HMS Victory (albeit not at Trafalgar). And now I find I may had had two such. And both sides of the family. Wow!

Now I need to find more about my paternal grandfather’s service in WWI and WWII, which isn’t proving easy. I know he served as RAF barrage balloon ground crew in WWII. And in WWI he was a conscientious objector but volunteered to serve in the RAMC as a stretcher bearer at the front. How brave is that!

personal

Reasons to be Grateful: 10

Experiment, week 10. This week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.

  1. Sleep. I like my sleep; I always have done. But for some reason my sleep pattern seems to be easily disrupted these days with too many nights when I either can’t get to sleep or, more often, when I wake up in the wee small hours and can’t get back to sleep. But this week I have had several good sleeps to make up for the bad ones, and I feel so much better for it.
  2. Central Heating. Last weekend our central heating boiler decided to stop working. Although we have a warm house, boy did it cool down quickly. But we survived; indeed it took both of us back to our childhoods in unheated houses when one heated one room and were glad to snuggle down in bed and get warm. And fortunately we have a backup immersion heater (so there was always piping hot water) and a gas fire in the front room so we could heat that room and watch TV accompanied by two cats and two laptops. Anyway the boiler got fixed during the week and it’s great to have an all-round warm house again — I was surprised how quickly the house did warm up too.
  3. Jake. Earlier in the week we went to see the Patron of the Anthony Powell Society. I knew his cat, Jake, had been under the weather recnetly but was gald to see he was back to his old self. Jake like attention. He also likes sitting on people. Not on their laps but draped across their chest and shoulders. I think I spent half the time we were there with this large tabby cat draped in vrious poses across my torso.
  4. Prof. Alice Roberts. As I posted on Friday I’m delighted that Alice Roberts has been appointed as Professor of Public Engagement in Science at University of Birmingham. Yes, OK, I’ll admit it: I think Alice is very sexy. She is also an excellent scientist and a brilliant communicator so this is a well-deserved appointment.
  5. HMS Victory and the National Archives. I’m going to write a separate post about this, so come back later for another instalment.
food+drink

Pasta with Bacon & Tomato

Here’s another quick, easy and almost infinitely adaptable teatime recipe. This makes a dry-ish pasta dish as there is nothing except the reduced tomatoes to make any sauce.

I remember my mother doing this in a frying pan when I was a kid and the only pasta available was quick cook macaroni.

Use suitable quantities for the number of people being fed and how hungry they are.

Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes

You will need …

  • Pasta, preferably fresh
  • Bacon, cut into 1cm wide strips
  • Onion
  • Garlic, more or less to taste
  • Tomatoes, one or two per person, fresh but over-ripe is fine
  • Olive Oil
  • Fresh Herbs of your choice, if available
  • Black Pepper
  • Parmesan Cheese


This is what you do …

  1. Put the pasta on to cook. When it’s done drain and put it aside to keep warm. (You can cook the pasta while the tomato/bacon cook if you like but that’s too much for my simple mind!)
  2. While the pasta cooks chop the onion, garlic, bacon, herbs and tomatoes.
  3. In one pan cook the tomato in a small amount of oil. You want it to start cooking down and beginning to fall apart; you don’t want it very wet. If it does too quickly then just take it off the heat.
  4. In another pan sauté the onion and garlic in some oil until the onion is translucent.
  5. Then add the bacon to the onion and continue frying.
  6. When the bacon is cooked to your liking add the tomato, herbs, some pepper and the pasta.
  7. Stir it all together and cook for another few minutes to allow the flavours to mingle and ensure everything is hot through.
  8. Serve with the grated/flaked Parmesan Cheese and a robust red wine.

Notes …

  1. Like most of my other recipes you can adapt this almost infinitely. For instance leave out the tomatoes and add mushrooms along with the bacon. Or you can use spinach instead of tomatoes.
  2. Bacon offcuts work well for this.
  3. You can substitute prawns, anchovies, smoked salmon, Parma ham or even kidney beans for the bacon. In fact I often do this without the tomato and with prawns and lemon instead of bacon.
  4. If using fish then you might want to add some lemon juice and/or zest.
  5. If you want this really dry then leave out the tomatoes.
  6. Short pasta works better as I find spaghetti and linguine are difficult to stir well into the mixture. Fusilli or macaroni work well.
current affairs, science

Good News Day

In its own little way today is a good news day …

First I noticed that yesterday the International Telecommunication Union have been unable to agree the change to abandon leap seconds (see my post here) and a decision has been postponed until at least 2015. Hopefully that will give some time for sense to prevail.

Then today it has been announced that the parliamentary bill to move the UK’s clocks forward an hour permanently (well for a three year trial) has run out of time and is now unlikely to happen. (See my much earlier post about GMT here.)

But perhaps best of all, courtesy of Facebook and YouTube, I learn that one of my “heroes”, the most excellent Dr Alice Roberts has just been appointed as Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. While this has to be a loss for the medical profession it is a brilliant appointment which is well deserved. There’s nothing on the news channels yet, but I’m sure there will be. Alice joins an illustrious band of UK scientists including, inter alia, (the much hated by me) Richard Dawkins, mathematician Marcus du Sautoy and physicist Jim Al-Khalili who all hold/have held Chairs in the Public Engagement or Understanding of Science.

Time to crack open … a mug of tea! 🙂

amusements, medical, science

You've Got What?!?!?!

One of my less endearing qualities is a lay-scientist’s interest in emerging infectious diseases (of plants and animals). And as such I follow ProMED which disseminates reports of these things from around the world to the scientific community.

And are there some strange and amusingly named diseases out there. So I was amused, but not surprised, this morning to see a report of Wobbly Possum Disease in New Zealand. If you wrote it in a novel, or indeed a comedy script, no-one would believe it! But what would you call a disease which makes possums, well, wobbly?

Others that always amuse me for their names are Astrakhan Spotted Fever (which affects humans), Flaccid Trunk Disease (of elephants), Lime Witches’ Broom Phytoplasma (affecting citrus trees) and O’nyong-nyong Fever (also affecting humans).

Yes, it’s a strange world we live in!