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, memes, photography, pleasures, thoughts

Car Meme


Car Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

1. white and blue 68, 2. The Magic Flying Carpet, 3. Blue Heron Rayon Metallic (Blue Violet), 4. Supersonic Doubledek, 5. campus, early morning, snow, 6. frogish robot drives monster truck, 7. Tandem Flight into the Night, 8. tourist 4018, 9. IHC Hospital thru Main Rotor, 10. MGA through a river, 11. White Pegasus, 12. Spread your wings and fly away…

As I don’t drive (I never have and probably now never will) a slightly wacky, fantasy-esque, contribution this week. 🙂

The Questions & Answers:
1. What make or model was your first car? Pale blue Alfa Romeo Formula 1, circa 1960
2. What would be your dream vehicle? Magic carpet
3. What is your favorite color for a car? Metallic blue
4. What is your favorite speed to drive? Supersonic
5. Where is the stupidest place you’ve ever parked your car? In the village of War Drobe
6. Stick or Automatic? Robot-drive
7. What has been your favorite vehicle that you’ve owned? Tandem
8. How old were you when you got your drivers license? 4018
9. What is your favorite feature on a car/vehicle? Rotor blades
10. You’re going on a road trip – what vehicle would you rent if anything was available for you? MGA; and yes they did exist, quite some while before the much more famous MGB
11. Does your car have a name, if so what is it? Pegasus, unless you can think of a better name for a magic carpet!!
12. What one feature is a deal breaker in buying a car, ie: if the car doesn’t have it you won’t buy it? Wings; to go with the rotor-blades of course!

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

beliefs, thoughts

Ten Commandments

I recently came across ten commandments suggested by Osho, aka. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Indian “Holy Man” of many Rolls-Royces. Although he professed to be against any kind of commandment, “just for fun” he set out the following:

1. Never obey anyone’s command unless it is coming from within you also.
2. There is no God other than life itself.
3. Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere.
4. Love is prayer.
5. To become a nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal and attainment.
6. Life is now and here.
7. Live wakefully.
8. Do not swim – float.
9. Die each moment so that you can be new each moment.
10. Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.

While they are very “new age” what interested me was how different they are from the original Ten Commandments dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21). Although they vary in detail between different Christian and Judaic sects they are in essence:

1. I am the Lord thy God … Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image …
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honour thy father and thy mother
6. Thou shalt not murder.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
10. Thou shalt not covet …

What I find interesting, although maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise, is that the Old Testament version, for all its negativity, is about two things: what to believe and how to live in society. By contrast Rajneesh’s version is all about one’s internal conduct (as a means to attain enlightenment). But what struck me is that although these are two very different sets of “instructions”, and leaving apart structures to about a God-being, both essentially boil down to one thing: “Do as you would be done by” or in Wicca as “An it harm none, do what ye will”. Although with the Rajneesh version one has to interpret this between the lines. Which just supports my view that all religious belief boils down to this one thing: treat others as you would wish them to treat you. And indeed all seven of the major world religions do have such a tenet embedded within them.

By contrast the often though to be religious “smash the infidel” commandment is a purely militaristic and political mindset of “my tribe is better than your tribe” and seldom anything to do with true religion and philosophical belief systems.

arts, photography

Medicated Scan


Medicated Scan, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Just for fun I took the scan I used for this week’s self-portrait and mucked about with it in Photoshop and PaintShop Pro. Result: one sea blue, dis-armed hand.

science

LHC Turned On — Earth Survives

So this morning scientists turned on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. And Earth has survived. Of course it bloody has! The flaming machine hasn’t done anything yet!

As I understand it all the scientists have done so far is to turn on the power and inject the first packet of protons into the collider ring. That was never going to do any damage, even supposing damage is likely.

So what happened to these oh so destructive black holes the naysayers think the LHC will produce? Well before that might happen, the scientists have to get a proton beam circulating in both directions (not just one as they’ve done today); then focus the beams so they collide; and then do it at a high enough energy. That is many weeks, even months, away. This is a gradual process if doing things one step at a time and gradually ramping up the power. To quote CERN’s press release:

Starting up a major new particle accelerator takes much more than flipping a switch. Thousands of individual elements have to work in harmony, timings have to be synchronized to under a billionth of a second, and beams finer than a human hair have to be brought into head-on collision. Today’s success puts a tick next to the first of those steps, and over the next few weeks, as the LHC’s operators gain experience and confidence with the new machine, the machine’s acceleration systems will be brought into play, and the beams will be brought into collision to allow the research programme to begin.

Once colliding beams have been established, there will be a period of measurement and calibration for the LHC’s four major experiments, and new results could start to appear in around a year.

So don’t expect Armageddon for a year or so, and only then if the LHC doesn’t turn out to be a white elephant!

books, history, memes, personal, photography, pleasures, science, thoughts, topographical

09/09/2008 This & That Meme!


This & That Meme!, originally uploaded by kcm76.

1. Anyone for Cricket?, 2. Sooty Oystercatcher, 3. Blue Hyacinth, 4. I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, 5. Oz on bookcase 04212006 003, 6. Hoover Factory Greenford London, 7. DSC_2240, 8. Cunt Examination, 9. giving Katie the best there is and hoping she’ll be gaining back some weight …, 10. Jack and Jill Windmills in Sussex, 11. egg custard (gross), 12. Latin

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste the html into your blog or Flickr stream (the easiest way is to copy the URLs and then head over to the fd’s flickr toys link above and use the mosaic maker).

The Questions & Answers:
1. What was your favorite summertime activity as a kid? Cricket
2. What was your first pet’s name? Sooty
3. What model car did you learn to drive on? I didn’t; yes that’s right, I never have learnt to drive and I don’t want to.
4. What’s your proudest moment as an adult? I’m sorry I haven’t a clue
5. What are your top 3 hobbies (other than photography)? cats, science, books
6. Where do you call home? Greenford
7. Where did you call home at age 11 (or any age)? Waltham Cross
8. What word do you love to say? C**t
9. Where do you go to relax? Lying in the sun
10. Who was your first kiss? Jill
11. Least favorite food? Egg custard
12. Least favorite subject in school? Latin although it’s a close finish with woodwork.

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

amusements, medical, science, sexuality, thoughts

Zen Mischievous Moments #143

Yet another timely contribution from the “Feedback” column in this week’s New Scientist …

Saddle saw

MOST surprising paper title of the week has to be “Cutting off the nose to save the penis”. This article, by Steven Schrader, Michael Breitenstein and Brian Lowe appears in the August issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine. What could it possibly be about? The online journal Physorg.com’s report on the article makes things a little clearer: “No-nose bicycle saddles improve penile sensation and erectile function in bicycling police officers.”

It transpires that the traditional bicycle saddle, with its protruding nose, can cause deleterious health effects such as erectile dysfunction and groin numbness. A study of 90 bicycling police officers before and after using noseless bicycle saddles for six months found “significant improvements in penile tactile sensation” and “significant increases in erectile function”. Irwin Goldstein, editor-in-chief of the journal, found the article so rousing that he wrote an accompanying editorial entitled “The A, B, C’s of The Journal of Sexual Medicine: Awareness, Bicycle Seats, and Choices”.

You wouldn’t believe it if you hadn’t read it here first.

memes, personal, photography

Homeward Bound


Homeward Bound, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s self-portrait: 52 Weeks 28/52 (2008 week 36).

Taken in the car by the light of the streetlamps on the way home after a day out. (And no, I wasn’t driving!)

In fact we’d been to Lowestoft for the day (long trip!) as Noreen wanted to meet up with one of her aunts and discuss family history. we met Noreen’s cousin and her husband for lunch (yummy!) and then the “girls” spent the afternoon with their aunt while Tim and I amused ourselves (separately). I spent most of the afternoon on the seafront (which was cool, dull, intermittently wet and windy; with a good swell running on the outgoing tide) taking equally dull photographs. I know I saw the less interesting bits of Lowestoft, and the weather was against us, but sorry guys, the place is a dive. But it was a good day out and blew away some of the cobwebs.

beliefs, environment, food+drink, freedom of speech, history, medical, science, sexuality

Science Catch-up

I originally started off the previous post intending to write this one. So, having been diverted, here is the post I’d intended to write …

Having been “under the cosh” recently I’ve missed writing about a number of science items which have caught my eye. This is by way of a quick update on some of them.

Food Production & Agriculture
I’ve blogged a number of times about the need for a major restructuring of world-wide agriculture (see here, here and here). New Scientist on 14 June carried an article and an editorial on this subject. Sadly, being part of the “mainstream science establishment” (my term)they don’t get the need for restructuring. They see the solution only in terms of improved varieties, increased production and a decrease in food prices, with all the sterility that implies. They’re unable to see the problem in terms of overproduction of animal protein and a reduction in useful farmland due to poor methods and bio-fuel production. All very sad.

Don’t Blame it all on the Gods
The same issue of New Scientist – it was an especially interesting issue – carried a short article with the above title. I’ll let the introduction speak for itself …

Once phenomena that inspired fear and foreboding, lunar and solar eclipses can now be predicted down to the second, forecast centuries into the future, and “hindcast” centuries into the past. The person who started us down the path from superstition to understanding has been called the “Einstein of the 5th century BC”, and was known to his contemporaries as “The Mind”. He went on trial for his impious notions, was banished from his adopted home, but nevertheless influenced generations of later scholars. He was Anaxagoras, a native of Ionia in what is now Turkey, and the first great philosopher to live in Athens. Now this little-known scholar is being seen by some as the earliest known practitioner of the scientific method.

Worth searching out if you’re interested in the history of science or the Ancient Greeks.

America’s Abortion Scandal
This is the title of the third article I’ve picked from 14 June New Scientist. In the article Pratima Gupta, a (female) practicing obstetrician-gynaecologist, argues against the prevailing belief amongst US medics that abortion is always psychologically damaging for the woman. Gupta sees no evidence for this and rails against “personal moral beliefs trumping scientific evidence [and even] individuals’ personal beliefs”. What’s worse is that there appears to be covert censorship making abortion something which cannot be researched or discussed. All very interesting when put up against the case of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin whose unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, being made (as I read it) to have the child and marry the father (see here, for example).

Cut!
Finally, this time from New Scientist of 19 July, which contains an article on male circumcision; again something I’ve blogged about before (see here and here). Quite predictably there is a rumpus brewing about the medical profession’s desire for all males to be circumcised – at least in Africa and by implication world-wide – egged on by the WHO. The studies which showed such huge benefits from circumcision are being criticised for their design, for being stopped early and for their assumptions. Surveys which question people’s experience of circumcision are also highly criticised. And of course being a mainstream science journal, New Scientist totally ignore any question of human rights, abuse and mutilation. It’s about time the medical and scientific professions woke up and smelt the coffee.