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.
current affairs, medical, thoughts

Horrible Times 19: Easing Lockdown

So our dearly unbeloved Boris thinks he’s going to end all lockdown restrictions on 21 June. All I can say is that like everything which emanates from BJ’s mouth this is either madness or fiction – and quite possibly both. Let’s take a look.
[Links to some relevant BBC News reports at the end.]

  1. Lockdown ends on 21 June. But all UK adults aren’t going to be offered their first vaccination until 31 July. When do they get their second jab? Well at least 3-4 weeks later, which takes us effectively until the end of August, or 8+ weeks after 21 June. So we have a minimum period of 8 weeks with no lockdown and with the UK not as fully vaccinated as it can be. Does not compute.
     
  2. Can we hit the 31 July target? Given that the rate of vaccination is reported to have fallen in recent days, partly due to a lack of vaccine supply, this seems unlikely. Moreover the priority sequence for those under 50 has not yet been decided. Yes, it might be possible if we get the volume of vaccine we need. But there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.
     
  3. That is ignoring that we don’t yet have very much data on the effectiveness of the current vaccines against the new variants of the virus. Nor are there updated vaccines available (or even nearly so).
     
  4. So lockdown is eased in five steps on 8 March, 29 March, 12 April, 17 May and 21 June. (The media are reporting this as four stages by lumping together the two March dates.) These appear to be the earliest dates for each round of eased restrictions. They will only happen if four conditions are met:
    • The coronavirus vaccine programme continues to go to plan
    • Vaccines are sufficiently reducing the number of people dying with the virus or needing hospital treatment
    • Infection rates do not risk a surge in hospital admissions
    • New coronavirus variants do not fundamentally change the risk of lifting restrictions

    WTF do these conditions mean? They are flabby and woolly at best. Without specific numbers against them, published up-front, they’re worthless as the government can flex them any-which-way it likes. They’re about as ethereal as mist.

  5. When they return to school, secondary school children will be required to have two Covid (lateral flow) tests a week. It seems the first three will be conducted in school but thereafter parents will be expected to administer the tests at home and report the results to the school. How many parents will (a) bother administering the tests, (b) do the tests properly, and (c) report the results accurately? This is going to end well, isn’t it!?

I’m not even going to talk about the rest of contents of each round of restriction easing. As you’ll realise from the above it is all rather academic when we don’t know the detailed baselines and criteria being used.

But what I will say is that if this timeline is adhered to, we’ll most likely have an up-tick in cases in May (as a result of schools going back) and another one in August (due to incomplete vaccine coverage).

Now don’t get me wrong. I want to see lockdown removed just as much as anyone else. But I want to see it done safely. For everyone’s sake.

Links
What’s the roadmap for lifting lockdown?
Lockdown review: What are the risks of schools, pubs and shops reopening?
Covid: When will schools reopen?
Covid: Why can’t we unlock more quickly?
Number of UK Covid vaccinations falls by a third as vaccine supply dips

current affairs, personal

Horrible Times 18: Day 350

Today is Day 350 of my lockdown. We’re rapidly approaching a year of detention, and it seems pretty certain we’ll make the full year.

No checklist of good/not so good things this time, and this is the briefest of reports. Why?

Because basically nothing changes. We still have the same patheticly incompetent government. And the same NHS which is doing heroic work despite the government’s attempts otherwise.

There’s no real news on the home front since my last report. Again everything muddles on much as for the previous 350 days.

The only significant change is that both Noreen and I have had our first Covid-19 vaccinations – I wrote about my experience here. Oh and Noreen has had shingles – now luckily gone away – and her cellulitis is resolving but slowly and the whole area of skin is still fragile.

I suggested last time that the lockdown may be over by now, but it isn’t and quite rightly in my view. The case rate needs to be down in really low figures. I might start feeling comfortable with ending lockdown when the daily new case rate locally gets down below 100 – it’s currently around 1800, down from a peak of 10,500.

I wonder what fresh nonsense can be dreamt up in time for my next report on day 365?

Meanwhile remember the mantra:

HANDS – FACE – SPACE

And stay locked in your cell.

amusements, quotes

Monthly Quotes

Actually not quite such sparse pickings as I first thought for this month’s collection of miscellaneous quotes. We’ll start with a long one, and end with a short one.

When I was at one of my lowest (mental) points in life, I couldn’t get out of bed some days. I had no energy or motivation and was barely getting by. I had therapy once per week, and on this particular week I didn’t have much to ‘bring’ to the session. He asked how my week was and I really had nothing to say.
“What are you struggling with?”, he asked.
I gestured around me and said, “I dunno man. Life.”
Not satisfied with my answer, he said, “No, what exactly are you worried about right now? What feels overwhelming? When you go home after this session, what issue will be staring at you?”
I knew the answer, but it was so ridiculous that I didn’t want to say it. I wanted to have something more substantial. Something more profound. But I didn’t.
So I told him, “Honestly? The dishes. It’s stupid, I know, but the more I look at them the more I CAN’T do them because I’ll have to scrub them before I put them in the dishwasher, because the dishwasher sucks, and I just can’t stand and scrub the dishes.”
I felt like an idiot even saying it. What kind of grown ass woman is undone by a stack of dishes? There are people out there with actual problems, and I’m whining to my therapist about dishes?
But my therapist nodded in understanding and then said, “RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE.”
I began to tell him that you’re not supposed to, but he stopped me.
“Why the hell aren’t you supposed to? If you don’t want to scrub the dishes and your dishwasher sucks, run it twice. Run it three times, who cares?! Rules do not exist, so stop giving yourself rules.”
It blew my mind in a way that I don’t think I can properly express. That day, I went home and tossed my smelly dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher and ran it three times. I felt like I had conquered a dragon.
The next day, I took a shower lying down. A few days later. I folded my laundry and put them wherever the fuck they fit. There were no longer arbitrary rules I had to follow, and it gave me the freedom to make accomplishments again.
Now that I’m in a healthier place, I rinse off my dishes and put them in the dishwasher properly. I shower
standing up. I sort my laundry.
But at a time when living was a struggle instead of a blessing, I learned an incredibly important lesson:
“THERE ARE NO RULES. RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE!!!”
[Quoted by @VodkaAuntTBH, @VodkaAuntTBH]

You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese.
[Kathryn Paulsen, The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft, 1971]

In the early modern period (roughly 1450-1750) the creation of the universe was also thought of by some in terms of cheesemaking: “all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels.”
[Tabitha Stanmore, “The spellbinding history of cheese and witchcraft”, https://theconversation.com/amp/the-spellbinding-history-of-cheese-and-witchcraft-153221]

We all get heavier as we get older, because there’s a lot more information in our heads. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Expertise – the wisdom based on experience that allows people to give sensible guidance about what to do and what not to do.
[Roger Kneebone in New Scientist; 6 February 2021; https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933200-300-how-to-be-an-expert-what-does-it-really-take-to-master-your-trade/ (£££)]

In medicine, there’s the mantra that a surgeon knows how to operate, a good surgeon knows when to operate and a really good surgeon knows when not to operate.
[Roger Kneebone in New Scientist; 6 February 2021; https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933200-300-how-to-be-an-expert-what-does-it-really-take-to-master-your-trade/ (£££)]

Becoming an expert has a beginning, but it doesn’t have an end … It is a continuous progression.
[Roger Kneebone in New Scientist; 6 February 2021; https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933200-300-how-to-be-an-expert-what-does-it-really-take-to-master-your-trade/ (£££)]

I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.
[Mark Twain]

We have multiple backup redundant overlapping mechanisms to make sure that we eat food, because every organism in the past that didn’t do an effective job of that is no longer with us. Our ancestors were the other guys.
[Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline]

Sometimes I’m truly amazed at what humans can do. We’re all set up to just eat and reproduce and fight off a couple predators and some time goes by and we decide to go out and put self-driving cars and helicopters on a planet 200 million km away. Because we want to know things.
[Katie Mack; @AstroKatie]

I am getting tired of being part of a major historical event.

current affairs, medical

Social Murder?

Murder is an emotive word. In law, it requires premeditation. Death must be deemed to be unlawful. How could “murder” apply to failures of a pandemic response? Perhaps it can’t, and never will, but it is worth considering.

Thus opens an interesting and thought-provoking editorial from Kamran Abbasi in BMJ (PDF) on 4 February. As always I bring the tl;dr key points.

When politicians and experts say that they are willing to allow tens of thousands of premature deaths for the sake of population immunity or in the hope of propping up the economy, is that not premeditated and reckless indifference to human life?
… … …
At the very least, covid-19 might be classified as“social murder,”as recently explained by two professors of criminology.
… … …
If not murder or a crime against humanity, are we seeing involuntary manslaughter, misconduct in public office, or criminal negligence?
… … …
More than a few countries have failed in their response to the virus; the global missteps are many and well documented by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
… … …
But the global picture does not absolve individual leaders and governments from responsibility.
… … …
[M]uch of the media is complicit too, trapped in ideological silos that see the pandemic through a lens of political tribalism, worried about telling pandemic truths to their readers and viewers, owners, and political friends … truth has become dispensable as politicians and their allies are allowed to lie, mislead, and repaint history, with barely a hint of a challenge.
… … …
The most important lessons from this pandemic … are less about the coronavirus itself but what it has revealed about the political systems that have responded to it.

However necessary, basically nothing is going to happen.

personal, ramblings

Happy Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year

The Chinese zodiac is based on the lunar calendar that assigns an animal (and its reputed attributes) to each year in a repeating 12-year cycle, with the year beginning on a variable date in January or February. Originating from China, the zodiac and its variations remain popular in many East and Southeast Asian countries.

Both the Chinese and Western Zodiacs share the characteristic of having the cycle divided into 12 parts, with the ruler of each defining the personality or events of the person born under that sign. But there are major differences too. The Chinese Zodiac does not correspond to celestial constellations, and it has a 12 year cycle rather than a 12 month cycle.

The year beginning today, 12 February 2021, is the Year of the Ox; more specifically the Metal Ox. Oxen used to be capable farming tools in an agricultural society, and thus became the symbol of diligence, persistence, and honesty. In Chinese astrology, Ox is a faithful friend that made great contributions to the development of the society. Like the Ox, people born in the Year of the Ox are industrious, cautious, hold their faith firmly, and always glad to offer help.

Tradition has it that the Ox ranks second in the Chinese zodiac because it helped the Rat but was later tricked by it. The myth goes that the Jade Emperor declared the order of zodiac would be based on the order of arrival of 12 animals. Ox could have arrived the first but it kindly gave a ride to Rat. However, when arriving at the finish, Rat jumped ahead of Ox, and thus gained first place.

Also on this day, 12 February:

Execution of Lady Jane Grey, in 1554, she was only 16 (or maybe 17) years old. She was Queen for 9 days in July 1553 following the death of Edward VI and following the intentions of his will; however the Privy Council changed sides and put Mary Tudor on the throne. Having been held in the Tower of London, Lady Jane Grey was subsequently executed as she was seen to be a treat to Mary.

Birth of Abraham Lincoln in 1809. 16th President of USA, March 1861-April 1865. Having lead the North through all but the last few weeks of the American Civil War, Lincoln was assassinated on 15 April 1865.

Happy Chinese New Year

amusements, memes

Ten Things: February

This year our Ten Things series – which surprisingly appears on the tenth of each month – continues concentrating on the amusing, both real and fictional. So this month we have …

Ten Strange Modern Jobs

  1. Snake Milker
  2. Animal Colourist
  3. Penetration Tester
  4. Teddy Bear Surgeon (see right)
  5. Digital Prophet
  6. Cheese Sprayer
  7. Oyster Floater
  8. Toilet Sniffer
  9. Hairapist
  10. Bike Fisherman
food+drink

Armagnac

Realising before Christmas that there was a deficiency in the drinks cabinet I was looking for a bottle of good, but not outrageously expensive, brandy.

I don’t know why, but for many years I have always veered towards Armagnac rather than Cognac (or even Calvados). It’s probably just down to quirkiness, and wanting to do things slightly unusual.

TariquetAnyway I chanced to look at Armagnac, and came across Armagnac XO Domaine Tariquet, which sounded worth trying. At the very least we’d have something reasonable for adulterating trifle etc.!

It was definitely worth trying, in fact for me it is a superb find. Although at first you may think it is an ordinary brandy it is not the all too common “fire water”. It is light, in both colour and intensity – unlike much easily available Cognac and even Janneau Armagnac. However don’t just gulp it down; it has to be savoured.

Now I’m not generally one for getting all the subtleties of aroma and bouquet from wine and spirits. I like wine; I enjoy the way wines differ and have overall different bouquet and flavour – but I don’t generally get the hints of plum, pear, walnut, or fresh tarmac, so beloved of wine writers. My palate is not that sophisticated; it is more “big picture” than fine detail.

But cup your glass of Tariquet in your hands to warm it slightly – as you should with all brandy (this is why brandy glasses are the shape they are!). The warmth releases all the more subtle aromas. And coming from the Tariquet is a divine waft of incense; proper church incense.

You know when you walk into an old church – Roman, Orthodox or High Anglican – there is this pervading aroma of incense? A background misty aromaticity of incense used over the years which emanates from the very fabric of the building? That is what I get from Tariquet. For me it is simply divine.

Armagnac XO Domaine Tariquet is available from Waitrose and many good wine merchants.

amusements, memes

Things to Think About: February

This year we’re beginning each month with a (potentially logical) oddity to think about, and to keep the brain cells active. This month:

If you rip a hole in a net, there are actually fewer holes in it than there were before.

Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

environment, food+drink, history, links, medical, natural history, science

Monthly Links

OMG! Just what is going on round here? We’re already at the end of January! That means it is only 328 days to Christmas, so better start that shopping now. But before you do here is my monthly collection of links to items you may have missed.

Science, Technology, Natural World

First of all here’s yet another look at whether the universe was made just for us.

Much more fun though here is a physicist who is unravelling the knotty problem of knitting.

Meanwhile scientists are still trying to work out what is causing the exploding craters in Siberia. [LONG READ]

Scientists think they have finally solved the mystery of why wombats shit cubes.

Here’s another apparent oddity: some eagle rays in New Zealand have produced young despite no obvious male input.

London’s Natural History Museum finds 3800-year-old beetles preserved in a long-neglected bogwood specimen.

XKCD provides a remarkable insight into the world of bird and dinosaur evolution.

Health, Medicine

As usual I am avoiding all the articles on Covid-19, ‘cos you hear enough of that without me adding to the deluge.

However it is interesting to understand how we cope (or not) during a year without hugs.

Sexuality

Apparently we shouldn’t do it just before going to sleep.

Environment

There are all sorts of projects wanting to reintroduce lost species to the UK. We know about wolves and beavers, but now there’s a project which wants to reintroduce lynx to the Scottish Highlands.

There is also a movement to bring back Britain’s wonderful flower meadows.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

A drawing of a pig in Indonesia may be one of the oldest cave paintings ever found.

There is increasing evidence that in ancient times female warriors were not uncommon. The first from Science News and the second from the New York Times.

Here’s Going Medieval on slavery, propaganda, and the politics of history. [LONG READ]

Leprosy was a feared disease in medieval times, but the leper had a conflicted existence of both good and evil.

What do you do when there isn’t a common, stable currency? Well, of course, you use eels?

While sodomy was considered more sinful, clerical sodomy presented considerably fewer challenges to the Medieval Church than clerical marriage.

Here’s a short history of the Tudor Whitehall Palace. [LONG READ]

Food, Drink

Absinthe has never been hugely popular in the UK, and unlike many European countries it has never been banned here. Despite that it is only now that London has it’s own Absinthe distillery.

So what really are the origins of haggis? Is it truly a Scottish delicacy or did the Scots appropriate it? [LONG READ]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

This Guardian article on atheism contains some really bizarre manifestations of non-belief. [LONG READ]

And finally … The curious and spellbinding history of cheese and witchcraft.