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.
environment, science

Bugger! We've Overcooked It!

This week’s New Scientist (dated 7 January) has a rather worrying article reviewing the 1972 publication The Limits to Growth, 40 years on. (The article is behind a paywall, so I can’t link to it.)

The Limits to Growth was much reviled at the time for being far too pessimistic. But if the article is correct in it’s assertions then Limits was also pretty close to the truth and the chickens are now coming home to roost — probably before we have time to wake up and smell the coffee let alone finish building the chicken coop.

Very broadly Limits, and the article, support my contention that everything needs to be reorganised, reduced and managed — and unless we do so PDQ we’re doomed. But then it appears we may be doomed anyway.

Here are a few key extracts from the New Scientist article…

[S]imulations, far from showing growth continuing forever, or even levelling out, suggested that it was most likely that boom would be followed by bust: a sharp decline in industrial output, food production and population. In other words, the collapse of global civilisation.

[I]t is widely believed that Limits predicted collapse by 2000, yet in fact it made no such claim […] Now, with peak oil, climate change and the failure of conventional economics, there is a renewed interest.

World3 […] took what was known about the global population, industry and resources from 1900 to 1972 and used it to develop a set of equations describing how these parameters affected each other. Based on various adjustable assumptions, such as the amount of non-renewable resources, the model projected what would happen over the next century.

Assuming that business continued as usual, World3 projected that population and industry would grow exponentially at first. Eventually, however, growth would begin to slow and would soon stop altogether as resources grew scarce, pollution soared and food became limited […] [T]he human ecological footprint cannot continue to grow indefinitely.

If present growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will he reached sometime within the next 100 years. The most probable result will be a sudden and rather uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity […]

More industrial output meant more money to spend on agriculture and healthcare, but also more pollution, which could damage health and food production […] [I]n the real world there are delays before limits are understood, institutions act or remedies take effect. These delayed responses were programmed […] The model crashed because its hypothetical people did not respond to the mounting problems before underlying support systems, such as farmland and ecosystems, had been damaged […] they carried on consuming and polluting past the point the model world could sustain.

[W]here growth of population and industry were constrained, growth did level out rather than collapse […]

In some runs, they gave World3 unlimited, non-polluting nuclear energy — which allowed extensive substitution and recycling of limited materials — and a doubling in the reserves of non-renewables that could be economically exploited. All the same, the population crashed when industrial pollution soared. Then fourfold pollution reductions were added as well: this time, the crash came when there was no more farmland. Adding in higher farm yields and better birth control helped in this case. But then soil erosion and pollution struck […] Whatever the researchers did to eke out resources or stave off pollution, exponential growth was simply prolonged, until it eventually swamped the remedies. Only when the growth of population and industry were constrained, and all the technological fixes applied, did it stabilise […]

[I]n 2008 […] a detailed statistical analysis of how real growth compares to the scenarios in Limits […] concluded that reality so far closely matches the standard run of World3.

Limits took account of the fact that birth rates fall as prosperity rises, in reality they have fallen much faster than was expected [but an] updated study using World3 in 2005 […] included faster-falling birth rates. Except in the stabilising scenario, World3 still collapsed.

Bit of a bummer really. But nothing that surprises me. Still it’s depressing if you believe it. And there seems to be little we can do about it at a personal level other than consume less, breed less, be much more eco-minded and keep shouting at those we invest with power. But that’s only any good if we all — or at least a large enough percentage of us — do it. And so far we seem to be emulating ostriches. Although maybe, just maybe, the current recession and international financial chaos might be the wake-up call and our saviour. I ain’t holding my breath though.

But then I likely won’t be around to see (the worst of) what’s to come. It’s the rest of you — our children’s and grand-children’s generations — I feel sorry for because it’s our and our parents’ generations who have buggered it up for you.

Bad karma all round. 🙁

personal

Reasons to be Grateful: 8

Experiment, week 8. This week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.

  1. Sparrowhawk. Earlier in the week we had a male sparrowhawk in the garden. This is something I see a few times a year. This one was fluttering about as if it was injured, although clearly it didn’t have a broken wing. It sat on the fence for a couple of minutes and looking at it I think it had just damaged a few flight feathers — maybe by being blown around in the high wind or by going headlong into a thick bush after something to eat. Anyway if flew off, albeit a bit unsteadily, across the gardens after a few minutes. Which was just as well because I didn’t much fancy trying to catch it; let alone find a vet to treat it! Like all the hawks they’re magnificent birds.
  2. CPAP Humidifier. Those of you that keep up with goings on will know that I have Obstructive Sleep Apnoea and have to use a CPAP machine overnight to prevent my airways collapsing. It’s a nuisance, but generally no more than that. One thing that does happen though is that because of my sinus trouble and general catarrhiness I do get very dried out and bunged up at nights, often because I end up breathing through my mouth. To counteract this the hospital have given me a heated humidifier to attach to the CPAP machine: basically a small water container with a tiny heating element. It’s early days, but it does seem to be make a difference. I’m getting less dried out and I’m probably sleeping better. This is good.
  3. Lamb Curry. Yes, I know I always post about curry. But I do like my hot curry. This week’s variety was Lamb and Chickpea. Made with an especially tender piece of lamb neck fillet and a big slug of Patak’s Vindaloo Paste (which I actually reckon is more like a gentle Madras; in fact I’m not sure their Madras paste isn’t hotter). Served with avocado, banana, mayonnaise (yes they really do work!) and Noreen’s special lemon rice. And a couple of beers.

  4. Sparrow Chirp. The House Sparrow is in decline, apparently. Not here it isn’t. The population of sparrows did crash about 10 years ago, but ours have steadily recovered. We regularly have at least a couple of dozen in the garden, both front and back. But then we do feed the birds. Quite often on opening the door we are assailed by the constant chirping of the sparrows — they’re social birds and they do need to keep in touch with each other; it’s the sparrow equivalent of texting! It’s lovely to hear them. But no wonder we see the sparrowhawk around!
  5. Duvet. As you’ll have noticed, I do like my sleep. And there’s nothing better than snuggling in a warm duvet, especially if one has gotten chilly going to the bathroom in the middle of the night!
quotes

English is a Pig of a Language! (Warning: Long Post)

1 Comment

I spotted this originally posted by a friend on Facebook (thanks, John!).

Called The Chaos, it is by Gerard Nolst Trenité (1870-1946) and was originally published by The English Spelling Society in 1992-3. What follows is this definitive published version.

As John says, if you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, one Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

See how you get on …

The Chaos
by Gerard Nolst Trenité

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.
Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter how it’s written).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say — said, pay — paid, laid but plaid.
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak,
Previous, precious, fuchsia, via
Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
Woven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.
Say, expecting fraud and trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,
Missiles, similes, reviles.
Wholly, holly, signal, signing,
Same, examining, but mining,
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far.
From “desire”: desirable — admirable from “admire”,
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,
Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.
Gertrude, German, wind and wind,
Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind,
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.
Have you ever yet endeavoured
To pronounce revered and severed,
Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,
Peter, petrol and patrol?
Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which exactly rhymes with khaki.
Discount, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward,
Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?
Right! Your pronunciation’s OK.
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Is your R correct in higher?
Keats asserts it rhymes with Thalia.
Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,
Buoyant, minute, but minute.
Say abscission with precision,
Now: position and transition;
Would it tally with my rhyme
If I mentioned paradigm?
Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,
But cease, crease, grease and greasy?
Cornice, nice, valise, revise,
Rabies, but lullabies.
Of such puzzling words as nauseous,
Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,
You’ll envelop lists, I hope,
In a linen envelope.
Would you like some more? You’ll have it!
Affidavit, David, davit.
To abjure, to perjure. Sheik
Does not sound like Czech but ache.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, loch, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed but vowed.
Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover.
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice,
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, penal, and canal,
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,
Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit
Rhyme with “shirk it” and “beyond it”,
But it is not hard to tell
Why it’s pall, mall, but Pall Mall.
Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor,
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
Has the A of drachm and hammer.
Pussy, hussy and possess,
Desert, but desert, address.
Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants
Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.
Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,
Cow, but Cowper, some and home.
“Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker”,
Quoth he, “than liqueur or liquor”,
Making, it is sad but true,
In bravado, much ado.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant.
Arsenic, specific, scenic,
Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.
Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,
Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.
Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,
Make the latter rhyme with eagle.
Mind! Meandering but mean,
Valentine and magazine.
And I bet you, dear, a penny,
You say mani-(fold) like many,
Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,
Tier (one who ties), but tier.
Arch, archangel; pray, does erring
Rhyme with herring or with stirring?
Prison, bison, treasure trove,
Treason, hover, cover, cove,
Perseverance, severance. Ribald
Rhymes (but piebald doesn’t) with nibbled.
Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,
Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.
Don’t be down, my own, but rough it,
And distinguish buffet, buffet;
Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,
Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.
Say in sounds correct and sterling
Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.
Evil, devil, mezzotint,
Mind the z! (A gentle hint.)
Now you need not pay attention
To such sounds as I don’t mention,
Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,
Rhyming with the pronoun yours;
Nor are proper names included,
Though I often heard, as you did,
Funny rhymes to unicorn,
Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.
No, my maiden, coy and comely,
I don’t want to speak of Cholmondeley.
No. Yet Froude compared with proud
Is no better than McLeod.
But mind trivial and vial,
Tripod, menial, denial,
Troll and trolley, realm and ream,
Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.
Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely
May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,
But you’re not supposed to say
Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.
Had this invalid invalid
Worthless documents? How pallid,
How uncouth he, couchant, looked,
When for Portsmouth I had booked!
Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,
Paramour, enamoured, flighty,
Episodes, antipodes,
Acquiesce, and obsequies.
Please don’t monkey with the geyser,
Don’t peel ‘taters with my razor,
Rather say in accents pure:
Nature, stature and mature.
Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,
Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,
Wan, sedan and artisan.
The TH will surely trouble you
More than R, CH or W.
Say then these phonetic gems:
Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.
Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
There are more
but I forget ’em —
Wait! I’ve got it: Anthony,
Lighten your anxiety.
The archaic word albeit
Does not rhyme with eight — you see it;
With and forthwith, one has voice,
One has not, you make your choice.
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger;
Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,
Hero, heron, query, very,
Parry, tarry, fury, bury,
Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,
Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.
Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,
Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners
Holm you know, but noes, canoes,
Puisne, truism, use, to use?
Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual,
Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,
Put, nut, granite, and unite
Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.
Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific;
Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
Next omit, which differs from it
Bona fide, alibi
Gyrate, dowry and awry.
Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion,
Rally with ally; yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
Never guess — it is not safe,
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.
Starry, granary, canary,
Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
Face, but preface, then grimace,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;
Ear, but earn; and ere and tear
Do not rhyme with here but heir.
Mind the O of off and often
Which may be pronounced as orphan,
With the sound of saw and sauce;
Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.
Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?
Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.
Respite, spite, consent, resent.
Liable, but Parliament.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,
Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.
A of valour, vapid, vapour,
S of news (compare newspaper),
G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,
I of antichrist and grist,
Differ like diverse and divers,
Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.
Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,
Polish, Polish, poll and poll.
Pronunciation — think of Psyche! —
Is a paling, stout and spiky.
Won’t it make you lose your wits
Writing groats and saying ‘grits’?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel
Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington, and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Don’t you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??
Hiccough has the sound of sup …
My advice is: GIVE IT UP!

So how many of you even got to the end? 🙂

sexuality, thoughts

Sex and Robots

A week or so before Christmas Kyle Munkittrick wrote what I consider to be an important post over on Discover Magazine blogs under the title The Future: Where Sexual Orientations Get Kind of Confusing.

It is important because it looks to the future and asks what sexual orientations should be acceptable and when.

The situation at present if reasonably clear. Heterosexual and homosexual relationships are both accepted as sexual orientations and as being acceptable. So are polyamory, queer and transgender relationships. As long as all the parties are consenting.

But paedophilia and zoophilia, while arguable sexual orientations are not acceptable. The difference is that in the latter neither a minor nor an animal can give consent.

This seems to provide a simple rule: sexual orientations/relationships are acceptable as long as the parties all give informed consent. Where there is not consent, then they are verboten.

But, Munkittrick asks, what of the future? A future where it is conceivable that humans may wish to have sexual relations with cyborgs and robots? Should human-robot sexual orientations be acceptable, and under what circumstances? Can a robot or cyborg give informed consent? If so under what circumstances and how would we know?

Thinking about this is important, not just for the future but because it helps us understand our present moral position. [For instance, how and why does incest fit the model?]

It also begs the question of whether we should be worrying about our relationship with our dildo, vibrator or blow-up doll! 🙂

Go read the full article!

beliefs, food+drink

Wassail!

Tonight is Twelfth Night. According to the OED Twelfth Night is the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany; this was formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking. This is predicated on the medieval custom of starting each new day at sunset, so that Twelfth Night precedes Twelfth Day Which would be Epiphany, 6 January).

Tradition has it that if you don’t take your Christmas decorations down by Twelfth Night they have to stay up all year or you bring bad luck upon yourself. Although there does seem to be a “lease break” at Candlemas (2 February).

In many parts of England, especially the southern cider-making counties, one of the Twelfth Night traditions is Wassailing the apple trees to ensure a good crop the following autumn. In fact the term Wassail, by association, has at least there uses: the celebration of the apple trees, the hot mulled punch which is drunk at such occasions, and as a toast. All derive from the Middle English wæs hæl, meaning literally “good health”. To quote Wikipedia:

In the cider-producing counties […] wassailing refers to a traditional ceremony that involves singing and drinking the health of trees in the hopes that they might better thrive. The purpose of wassailing is to awake the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the Autumn. The ceremonies of each wassail vary from village to village but they generally all have the same core elements. A wassail King and Queen lead the song and/or a processional tune to be played/sung from one orchard to the next, the wassail Queen will then be lifted up into the boughs of the tree where she will place toast soaked in Wassail […] as a gift to the tree spirits […] an incantation is usually recited […]

The words of the incantation and any associated carol(s) vary, for instance there is:

Here’s to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats-full! Caps-full!
Bushel, bushel sacks-full!
And my pockets full, too! Hurra!

The one I prefer is the ancient Gloucetershire Wassail which begins

Wassail! wassail! all over the town,
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown;
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree;
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee.

There’s also this Wassail carol, which is more often these days sung as a Christmas carol (which it never was!):

Here we come a wassailing among the leaves so green
Here we come a wandering so fair to be seen
Love and joy come to you and to your wassail too
And the Gods bless you and send you a happy New Year
And the Gods send you a happy New Year
We are not daily beggars that beg from door to door
We are your neighbour’s children whom you have seen before
The Gods bless the master of this house, likewise the mistress, too
And all the little children that round the table go.

Needless to say the details vary from place to place. The Wassail punch may be cider, beer, wine or mead based. As one is thanking and encouraging the apple trees my gut feel is that the punch should be either cider based or contain apple in some other form. I also recall that some traditions use cake rather then toast and some have bonfires. You can also indulge in making a lot of noise (like banging on tin buckets, blowing horns etc.) in order to drive away the evil spirits.

So if you want to go out tonight and wassail your apple tree(s) then as long as you stick to these rough principles, and don’t drink all the punch before the apple trees have their share, you don’t seem to be able to go far wrong. Just remember that if you want to dance round the tree as well, you’d better go deosil (clockwise) but as it is a few days away from full moon you will probably be excused doing so sky-clad — although there is nothing saying you can’t should you wish!

Wassail!

science, thoughts

More on the Calendar

Following up on my post of a couple of days ago, I saw a further article in Wired about the proposed new Hanke-Henry Calendar.

What is interesting is that when I looked at this Wired article, they had a poll asking whether readers wanted to retain the existing Gregorian calendar or change to the HH version. To my surprise almost two-thirds for the almost 20,000 voting said they would prefer the new Hanke-Henry Calendar.

Hmmm … Maybe! I bet if we went there most of this support would vanish. Such, in my experience, is the way of people.

While I think the Hanke-Henry Calendar is interesting, and would probably support it, I continue to have two reservations.

Firstly, it starts the year (and therefore every week) on a Sunday which, as I mentioned before, is counter to the international standard on dates (ISO 8601) — but when did that ever matter to Americans? However this is really easily fixed by starting the year on a Monday, although that does mean the new calendar couldn’t be introduced until 2018 without moving the names of the days. I see no problem with a 2018 start date as that will give everyone time to adjust.

(Out of interest, using Henry & Hanke’s method Christmas Day would always be on a Sunday, whereas using my Monday method Christmas Day would always be on a Monday.)

Secondly, and more seriously, while Henry & Hanke do away with the annoyance of leap years and leap days, they have to introduce an alternative to ensure the calendar keeps roughly in line with solar time as the years pass. So they introduce the leap week — an extra week added at the end of the year every 5 or 6 years. That’s fine, but is it every five years, or every six? Actually it is some arcane combination; there is no good (read, easy for Joe Public) method for determining when to add the leap week.

According to the Wired article the leap week is “inserted into years starting or ending on a Gregorian-calendar Thursday” which “would almost perfectly account for Earth’s 365.2422 day-long orbit around the sun”. This is unutterable madness! Why base the leap weeks on the “old” calendar we’re replacing?

Currently there is a simple method for calculating what is a leap year. A method which Joe Public is capable of understanding. But the Hanke-Henry system would leave people with no clue as there is no simple pattern to what would be leap week years. How many people are going to keep track of the “old” calendar just to calculate leap week years? Answer: none! Within a few years people will have no clue when leap week years are (the calculation is arcane, to say the least), just as now almost no-one can calculate when Easter falls despite that it follows a simple rule.

But I reckon this too can be pretty well fixed with a simple algorithm. How about this? … In the new calendar every year is 364 days (52 seven day weeks), except when the year is divisible exactly by 5 when you add the leap week unless it is also a century or half-century year. So years 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020 and so on would be leap week years; but not 2000, 2050, 2100, 2150 etc. According to my calculation that runs about as close as this calendar can to true, being just a couple of days out after 500 years. That’s about as good as you’re going to get given that with a 7 day leap week system the variations from true solar time can be up to a week or so. This way people will know very easily what are leap week years and what aren’t. No need to perpetuate the calendar we’ve tried to replace.

(Actually after 500 years the calendar is maybe lagging solar time by slightly too much, on average, so you might want to add back the leap week in 2500. But that is maybe a refinement too far at this stage.)

Now who would like to sort out the moveable feat known as Easter? Shall we just adopt the Pagan feasts?

food+drink, quotes

Gastronomy


“Should not the supreme aim of gastronomy be to untangle the confusion of ideas that confront mankind, and to provide this unfortunate biped with some guidance as to how he should conduct himself and his appetites? Buffeted continually by the studies of scientists, the inventions of dieticians, the fashions of restaurateurs and the disguised marketing campaigns of a thousand trade associations, his own tastes are often his last point of reference. The tyranny of political correctness, undermining him further, makes of him a man who avoids endangered species, factory farming, deforestation, genetic modification and inhumane slaughter. If he is unfortunate enough also to have a religion, then he will probably live the meanest of lives in the most tightly fitting of gastronomic straitjackets. By walking such a culinary tightrope, he believes that he will reap his rewards in long life, good health, moral superiority and in heaven hereafter. Yet all around him our unfortunate sees good vegetarians pushing up daisies, teetotallers’ hearts tightening and sugarphobes queueing in dentists’ waiting rooms. Reader, recognise that all your years of abstinence and your naive trust in low-fat yoghurt have not saved you from a pot belly, heavy jowls and an inadequate sex drive. A life of dieting has rendered your face pinched and furrowed from harsh judgement of your fellow diners and your evenings long and lonely.”

From “Boned Stuffed Poussins à la Marquis de Sade”, one of many excellent pastiches in Mark Crick, The Household Tips of the Great Writers. With thanks to Katyboo for the post-Christmas present!

words

A Word in Your Ear

Raree Show

1. A show contained or carried about in a box; a peep-show.

2. A show or spectacle of any kind.

3. Spectacular display.

According to the OED the word dates from 1681 and “is formed in imitation of the foreign way of pronouncing rare show” (Johnson). It has also been suggested that raree may represent rarity but Johnson’s statement is probably the correct one given that the early exhibitors of peep-shows appear to have been usually Savoyards, from whom the form was no doubt adopted. Recall that the diarist Samuel Pepys observed a marionette show featuring an early version of Punch & Judy (not quite a peep show but not unlikely they derive from the same tradition?) in London’s Covent Garden in May 1662. This was performed by an Italian puppet showman, Pietro Gimonde (aka. Signor Bologna).