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.
Apparently the UK government is proposing to reduce the British Library’s funding and force it to start charging researchers for use of its resources. This will have a major impact on all researchers, both independent and academic. It is also illogical as the government has insisted that access to the national museums is free, and that they provide research facilities free of charge. How then can they insist that the BL — perhaps the country’s most prestigious museum resource (its objects just happen to be books and not “stuff”) — charge for its services. This is crazy!
A petition to the Prime Minister has been set up; you can sign it electronically here: . I urge you to do so! You have to be a UK citizen to sign.
The heron sitting in the top of the hawthorn tree in our garden in North Greenford a couple of days ago. He obviously had his beady eyes on my pond fish, and I can’t blame him as it was a cold winter’s day. I felt rather sorry for him having to probably go hungry tonight when he took fright at me opening the back door, but I don’t think he’d have got any fish as they were all huddled in the deepest middle part of the pond. And it was quite amusing to watch this large, rather ungainly bird, trying to balance on those small twigs whilst not getting its feet stuck with the thorns! It’s not the best photo I’ve ever taken, but the best I got: it was almost dusk and I was taking through the study window.
“YOU cannot be serious,” tennis ace John McEnroe famously shouted when the umpire ruled one of his shots as “out”. Reader John Mulligan suspects that the patent officer felt the same way about Timothy Wace Roberts’s patent application for a “Business method protecting jokes”.
The abstract of his US patent office application 200602593306 opens: “The specification describes a method of protecting jokes by filing patent applications therefor, and gives examples of novel jokes to be thus protected. Specific jokes to be protected by the process of the invention include stories about animals playing ball games, in which alliteration is used in the punchline; a scheme for raising money for charity by providing dogs for carriage by Underground passengers; and the joke that consists in filing a patent application to protect jokes.”
We don’t know what the first jokes referred to are, but suspect the second relates to notices beside London Underground escalators saying “Dogs must be carried”. As for the third – does this mean Wace Roberts’ patent application is evidence of “prior art”, making itself invalid – or is it valid and in breach of itself?
I’m currently struggling through a nasty gastric flu bug, which meant yesterday I had time to lie in bed and watch the Six Nations Rugby Union Internationals on TV. And I realised a strange thing about modern rugby: it’s the only game I know where the referee spends the whole match telling the players how to play the game while play is in progress. In all other sports I can think of the players are assumed to know how to play the game and the referee penalises them when they transgress. In rugby the referee tells the players what to do then penalises them if they ignore him. Listening to the referee’s radio mic there is a continual chat of things like: “[ref waving arm] Offside line. Eight white your feet are behind it … [blast on whistle] … Penalty blue. Eight white, offside.” The forwards even have to be told every time how to scrummage: “Crouch … Touch … Hold … Engage”, or form a line-out: “Lads I want one metre between the lines. Three blue, that’s one meter not half a meter.”
Its a good thing rugby is a relatively slow and even-paced game of set-piece plays, little heaps of big men fighting for the ball, someone kicking the ball and occasionally a bit of open running. Can you imaging how interesting it would be for cricket umpires to run their game the same way as a rugby referee? Or the confusion that would ensue if the zebras tried telling American Football players how to play while play was in progress?
A battleworn and scarred Harry the Cat guards my laptop mouse. As is not unusual he was lying on my desk, recharging under my desklamp.
And before you say anything, yes the picture is fuzzy. I’ve been experimenting and this was taken with a pinhole on my Olympus E500 from about 9″. A cunning combination of very old and new technology.
No Friday Five this week, so we’ll have a Sunday Seven instead. My Sunday Seven is easier as it is seven answers to one question rather than having to wrote something about five questions.
I just love weird instructions for appliances so here’s another piece from Feedback in this week’s New Scientist, which I have slightly shortened:
… [X] does not tell us how he came to be in possession of a Fibre Optic Musical Animated Fairy “of unknown provenance”, but he does tell us that, despite being a retired professor of modern languages, he is baffled by the instructions that came with it for changing its bulb. …
“Operating Synopsis. If the bulb not brightness, make use of the reserve bulb elucidate as follows: 1. Turn off electrical source. 2. Fetch out the lampholder. 3. Troll the broken bulb, fetch out of it. 4. Setting in reserve bulb, troll the bulb without a reel or stagger. 5. Revert the lampholder.”
This week New Scientist printed some of the runner-up entries in their New Year Competition. The challenge was to compose a text message of no more than 160 characters, sent home by an alien who has just arrived on our planet. Of this batch I especially liked:
Too late. Another one overrun by Starbucks.
Humans are not conscious beings but remote-controlled by little boxes pressed to the head or wires plugged into their ears.
This planet, mostly harmless, is chiefly remarkable for providing the best evidence so far that the limit of 160 characters on SMS messages is a universal const
2. How old will you be? I was 56. Probably a good average. Body feels more like 76 and brain about like 26.
3. Do you prefer to throw a party or attend a party? I’m a grumpy old git so I don’t often do parties. Guess it’s partly because I didn’t get into the habit as a kid. Giving parties is stressful. And as I don’t give parties no-one invites me to theirs. Easy really!
4. Presents: take’em or leave’em? As my birthday doesn’t worry me particularly (see a couple of posts below), neither do presents. It’s nice to get them, but it isn’t essential. I’m just as happy for someone to say “happy birthday” and buy me a beer.
5. Best birthday so far? Not a clue. I’ve had a lot and not many have been sparkling — just the way my birthdays are. Had a couple of good ones as a post-grad student with friends lining up more gin & tonics on the bar than I could (un)reasonably drink!
