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, words

30 Day Word Challenge: Final Summary

I promised a summary every five days of the words I’ve chosen for my 30 Day Word Challenge. Here’s the final summary.

Day 26. A word that you’d name your memoir: bumf
Day 27. A word from an inside joke: batteries
Day 28. A word that is a palindrome: rotavator
Day 29. A word with several meanings: maroon
Day 30. A word you have always liked: crenelate

So just to recapitulate, here’s my whole list.

As always, click the image for a larger view

Day 1. A word that makes you happy: picatrix
Day 2. A word that describes your best friend: callipygian
Day 3. A word you always spell wrong on the first try: occasionally
Day 4. A word that reminds you of family: dysfunctional
Day 5. A word for your favourite colour: variable
Day 6. A word you learned from a song: abaft
Day 7. A word that makes you laugh: merkin
Day 8. A word that rhymes with your name: teeth
Day 9. A word that makes you feel smart when you use it: flocculate
Day 10. A word from your favourite sport: wicket
Day 11. A word that annoys you: decimate
Day 12. A word you associate with your birth month: winter
Day 13. A word you learned recently: yellowplush
Day 14. A word with lots of syllables:
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Day 15. A word found in your favourite book: rookery
Day 16. A word that describes your pet: varmint
Day 17. A word you have to look up constantly: mondegreen
Day 18. A word you love to say: cunt
Day 19. A word with four vowels in it: constabulary
Day 20. A word you wish more people used: boscage
Day 21. A word you just made up: jamwot
Day 22. A word that is an oxymoron: childproof
Day 23. A word that would be a funny dog name: puss
Day 24. A word from a movie quote: restaurant
Day 25. A word that describes you: fat
Day 26. A word that you’d name your memoir: bumf
Day 27. A word from an inside joke: batteries
Day 28. A word that is a palindrome: rotavator
Day 29. A word with several meanings: maroon
Day 30. A word you have always liked: crenelate

I hope you enjoyed this; I certainly did!

environment, history, links, medical, natural history, science

Monthly Links

Here are our links to items you may have missed in the last month. There’s a lot this month, so let’s dive in.

Incidentally [£££] indicates the article may be behind a paywall, although most of these sites do offer a limited number of free articles so don’t ignore them.

Science, Technology, Natural World

First off, here’s an old article from New Scientist in which Roger Penrose asks What is Reality? [£££]

However there’s a warning that we should beware of Theories of Everything. [£££]

Meanwhile scientists have calculated the most likely number of alien civilisations we could contact. [Spoiler: it isn’t 42.]

Maybe the search for extraterrestrial life is why the Americans are embarking on another round of major upgrades to their U-2 spy plane. [£££]

But back to Earth … Researchers have used camera traps to complete a thorough survey of the inhabitants of African rainforest.

Surprisingly in this day and age we still don’t fully understand where eels come from. [£££]

Ecologists have tracked the astonishing migration of one particular European Cuckoo.

Equally astonishing, scientists have managed to record and translate the sounds made by honeybee queens.

After which we shouldn’t really be surprised that crows are aware of different human languages.

Health, Medicine

So out of the crow’s nest and into the fire … What you always thought you knew about why males are the taller sex is probably wrong.

It seems there is growing evidence that we should be taking seriously the potential of psychedelic drugs to treat depression. Well I’d certainly be up for trying it.

Tick-borne Lyme Disease can develop into a debilitating chronic condition. [£££] [LONG READ]

Have you ever wondered how medical students are trained to do those intimate examinations?

Environment

There’s a movement to establish fast-growing mini-forests to help fight the climate crisis.

Barn Owls are one of our most iconic species, and the good news is that they’re growing in numbers thnks to human help.

Here’s just one example of the huge amount of rarer elements in old computers which we need to recycle.

We’re used to places like Iceland using geothermal energy, but now there’s a plan to heat some UK homes using warm water from flooded mines.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Archaeologists have found clues to the earliest known bow-and-arrow hunting outside Africa.

DNA from the 5,200-year-old Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland hints at ancient royal incest.

And DNA is also being used to provide clues about the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

On health and safety in the ancient world – or maybe the lack of it!

Religious iconography always was about marketing and PR.

The Medievals had notions about the ideal shape of women which curiously don’t coincide with our modern ideals. [LONG READ]

But then the Medievals lived in a world without police, and it wasn’t quite a brutal as one might think.

Archaeologists think they’ve found London’s earliest theatre, the Red Lion.

If we thought Medievals had odd ideas, then Enlightened Man (in 17th and 18th centuries) was in many ways stranger; shaving and periwigs were the least of it. [LONG READ]

London

On the first few hundred years of Westminster Abbey. [LONG READ]

From Tudor times Protestants have been intermittently persecuted in mainland Europe, and escaped to Britain. Here’s a piece on the history of the Huguenots in London. [LONG READ]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

Is it OK for your kids to see you naked? Here’s an uptight American article which nonetheless concludes it is OK, as we all know.

amusements, memes, words

30 Day Word Challenge: Days 21 to 25

I promised a summary every five days of the words I’ve chosen for my 30 Day Word Challenge. Here’s summary #5.

Day 21. A word you just made up: jamwot**
Day 22. A word that is an oxymoron: childproof
Day 23. A word that would be a funny dog name: puss
Day 24. A word from a movie quote: restaurant
Day 25. A word that describes you: fat

As always, click the image for a larger view

** Actually I cheat slightly: I made up this word some while back. In case you’re wondering a jamwot is an endangered South American arboreal capybara.

Remember, daily posts on Facebook and another summary in five days time.

amusements, memes, words

30 Day Word Challenge: Days 16 to 20

I promised a summary every five days of the words I’ve chosen for my 30 Day Word Challenge. Here’s summary .

Day 16. A word that describes your pet: varmint
Day 17. A word you have to look up constantly: mondegreen
Day 18. A word you love to say: cunt
Day 19. A word with four vowels in it: constabulary
Day 20. A word you wish more people used: boscage

As always, click the image for a larger view

Remember, daily posts on Facebook and another summary in five days time.

quotes

Monthly Quotes

Here’s this month’s collection of recently encountered quotes.

Humans construct stories to wrangle meaning from uncertainty and purpose from chaos. We crave simple narratives.
[Ed Yong; “Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing”; The Atlantic; 29/04/2020; https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/]

And the desire to name an antagonist … disregards the many aspects of 21st-century life that made the pandemic possible: humanity’s relentless expansion into wild spaces; soaring levels of air travel; chronic underfunding of public health; a just-in-time economy that runs on fragile supply chains; health-care systems that yoke medical care to employment; social networks that rapidly spread misinformation; the devaluation of expertise; the marginalization of the elderly; and centuries of structural racism that impoverished the health of minorities and indigenous groups.
[Ed Yong; “Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing”; The Atlantic; 29/04/2020; https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/]

The relationship between sound and time is one woven deep in our culture.  Andrew Marvell, in To His Coy Mistress, hears “time’s winged chariot”. Justice Shallow has heard “the chimes at midnight”.  Anthony Powell writes of A Dance to the  Music of Time.  Nineteen Eighty-Four opens with the brilliantly unheimlich detail of the clocks “striking thirteen”.  And TS Eliot, in The Waste Land describes London commuters flowing “up the hill and down King William Street,/To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours/With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine”.  Time is, as scientists know, a very strange thing indeed.
[Sam Leith; TLS; 6 June 2020]

Technological advances in the detection of radiation, from X-rays to optical light to radio waves, and great improvements in computing power and storage [allowed scientists] to deal with the vast amount of data they produced. The technology was by and large developed for other purposes – it is what gave us people walking about looking at their smartphones instead of where they are going – and was adapted by inventive astronomers for cosmological tests.
[Prof. Jim Peebles; New Scientist; 6 June 2020]

We haven’t been issued a guarantee that we can make sense of the physical world around us … But lest there be doubt about how well physics has been doing so far, consider how successfully scientists and engineers can command the behaviour of electrons, atoms and molecules, as well as electric and magnetic fields, in cellphones. All of this has been done based on incomplete approximations.
… … …
My point is that all of physics is incomplete. I certainly don’t mean wrong, I mean that it can all be improved. Maybe there is a final theory of physics, or maybe it is approximations all the way down.
[Prof. Jim Peebles; New Scientist; 6 June 2020]

She drew the epigraph from Proust: “Les gens du monde se représentent volontiers les livres comme une espèce de cube dont une face est enlevée, si bien que l’auteur se dépêche de ‘faire entrer’ dedans les personnes qu’il rencontre”.  (“Society people think that books are a sort of cube, one side of which the author opens the better to insert into it the people he meets”.)
[Angela Thirkell]

Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you
could be cured with a hot bath,
says God through the manhole covers,
but we want magic, to win
the lottery we never bought a ticket for.
(Tenderly, the monks chant,
embrace the suffering.) The voice never
panders, offers no five-year plan,
no long-term solution, no edicts from a cloudy
white beard hooked over ears.
It is small and fond and local. Don’t look for
your initials in the geese honking
overhead or to see through the glass even
darkly. It says the most obvious shit,
ie. Put down that gun, you need a sandwich.
[Mary Karr; VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God]

Some believed eels were born of sea-foam, or created when the rays of the sun fell on a certain kind of dew that covered lakeshores and riverbanks in the spring. In the English countryside, where eel fishing was popular, most people adhered to the theory that eels were born when hairs from horses’ tails fell into the water.
[Patrik Svensson; The Book of Eels]

More next month. Be good!

thoughts

Imagine All the People …

2 Comments

My friend Ivan, over on his Restored World blog and under the above headline, has suggested the world he would like to awake to in 2030. It is worth reading as it captures many of the things which should result from my earlier posts on Reforming Society and Environmental Reform.

Ivan asks that we think about what should be added to his list of 13 items, and I thought I would do that here. None of my thoughts should come as a great surprise to regular readers.

Ivan’s list seems to concentrate on the physical: things which have to tangibly happen, like energy generation. But what I think is missing are a number of important attitudinal shifts.

Perhaps least of these, in my mind, is that humanity becomes much more open about sex and nudity. I have a whole page here On Nudity and Naturism (and sexuality) as well as having blogged about it many times, most recently here.

Something that Ivan implies, but doesn’t state explicitly, is to my mind one of the two most important aspects. We need to have ethical government. Without it few of Ivan’s desires will come about because there will be insufficient drive to make them happen, so we’ll be stuck in the current dysfunctional consumerist and money-oriented society. That is a big paradigm shift which I believe will enable everything else, rather than flow from Ivan’s ideas.

The other essential paradigm shift seems to me to be for there to be a shift in the whole mindset of Joe & Josette Public and John & Jane Doe. The current mindset is entirely selfish and childish. We’re seeing it with Donald Trump in the USA, and Boris Johnson in the UK. Both are interested only in what they want (ie. money and selfish power) and are essentially behaving as adolescent-brained six-year-olds: “Me invincible! Me want! Me! Me! Me! Now! Now! Now!”. And I’m sad to say that the vast majority of the populous, at least in the developed world, is exactly the same. This mindset has to undergo a complete paradigm shift to one which is much more ethical if there is going to be ethical government and any possibility of Ivan’s wishes coming to fruition.

[Incidentally, there’s a useful summary article on Ethics: paradigm shifts that need to be made for the transition from Pierre Calame, Chairman of the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation for Human Progress.]

As I keep saying: it ain’t going to be easy. While it is good to look at the concrete, physical, changes one desires they aren’t going to happen without these two major paradigm shifts. And in any programme of change the paradigm shifts are always the hardest thing to achieve.

Wish us luck – we’re going to need it.

personal, ramblings

Horrible Times 10

Today is Day 100 of my house arrest. Nothing much has changed since my last report on day 80 – and that includes the stupidity of the British public and the government.

Things are sort of muddling along here in their own desultory lockdown way with not a lot getting done except procrastination. Basically with no extra-mural excitements (where there ever any?) the depression is exerting its muscles. It’s all very demoralising.

Anyway, here are a few things (good and not so good) that have happened since my last report.

Good Not So Good
  • Finally managed to get the watering system set up for all the tubs on the patio, plus the tomatoes and marrows.
  • The quality of English strawberries and asparagus has been outstanding this year.
  • The willingness of the Kent Family History Society hive mind in helping me unlock one of the mysteries in my family history.
  • On a whim I ordered some peonies from Waitrose Florist. Not only were they available for next day delivery but they were really stunning. (Sorry no photo, see depression above.)
  • I’ve been cutting my hair really short. After an initial close shave it’s grown back and is now being kept at 10-15mm. Unexpectedly I actually like it.
  • As mentioned above, the depression doesn’t get any better, and neither does my back. So I’m still failing to mow the lawn – but Noreen has managed to do it twice.
  • How have the last couple of months been so windy? It’s very un-summery.
  • Unusually a couple of weeks ago our supermarket delivery was 45 minutes after the booked slot. Irritating because it was lunchtime.
  • Everyone going on about BLM and statues. Just don’t get me started.
  • I’ve got an annoying little stye in my right eye.
Boy Cat in the Grass
Boy Cat chasing grass and enjoying the sunshine with the humans
[Click the image for larger view on Flickr]

I hope to provide a further progress report on either Day 120 (Thursday 9 July) or Day 125 (Tuesday 14 July). Meanwhile, have fun!

amusements, memes, words

30 Day Word Challenge: Days 11 to 15

I promised a summary every five days of the words I’ve chosen for my 30 Day Word Challenge. Here’s summary .

Day 11. A word that annoys you: decimate
Day 12. A word you associate with your birth month: winter
Day 13. A word you learned recently: yellowplush
Day 14. A word with lots of syllables:
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Day 15. A word found in your favourite book: rookery

As always, click the image for a larger view

Remember, daily posts on Facebook and another summary in five days time.

personal, photography, pleasures

Pictures of My Life

Over on my Twitter, I was challenged by Glynis Paxton to post seven pictures of my life. The rules were simple: one picture a day for a week; no people; no explanations; each day nominate one person to do the same.

Here are the seven photographs (all taken by me) I chose, in the order I posted them. Those who know me well will say they don’t reflect what I do and am. But each of them tells a story, or several, which I’ve noted below each image.
[Click the images if you want large views on Flickr]

Day 1

Office Varmint, Resting
This is our cat Tilly when she was much younger dozing on my desk. These are two things which are central to my life: cats and my desk. Apart from my student years and 20s I’ve always lived with cats; we had cats at home and as soon as Noreen and I got our own house we re-homed our first two cats (all our cats have been re-homes). My desk in the study is where I worked for much of the last 10 years before I retired (trips into an office dwindled to about one day a fortnight), from where I ran the Anthony Powell Society for 18 years, and where I still spend much of my time.

Day 2

Mermaid Inn, Rye
Although I’ve never stayed in the Mermaid Inn at Rye (it’s very expensive) I have drunk there and it does trigger a number of memories and many stories. I love Rye, and have known it since I was about 4 years old and it is one of those places I love and immediately feel at home. The heart of the town (the area around the church and Mermaid Street) is still picturesque. Over several years we stayed at the upmarket B&B opposite the top of Mermaid Street (50 yards beyond the photo) and became friends with the then owners. The half-timbered building also speaks to a love of history and old buildings, as well as photography.

Day 3

Crab Spider (Misumena vatia) with Prey
I found this spider whilst doing some tidying up in the garden this Spring. I’ve never seen one before, so it was an interesting discovery for someone interested in the natural world. My new, expensive, camera meant I could get this capture easily without scaring the spider away. Although I’m not a great gardener (I blame my bad back) I do enjoy the garden full of trees and shrubs as somewhere for the local wildlife – from spiders to foxes.

Day 4

Deckchair Love
I called this photograph “Deckchair Love”. It is another which encapsulates a couple of “stories” besides photography. It was taken at Lyme Regis which is another place we both love and have stayed quite a number of times; and it was here that in Summer 1983 I started my recovery from Glandular Fever. In fact we like almost the whole of the South Dorset and South Devon coast. This also reflects my slightly zany sense of humour (hence, in part, the title of this blog).

Day 5

71 Rolvenden
This is the cottage in Rolvenden, Kent where my great-grandfather Stephen Marshall (the youngest of five children) was born in November 1849. Until he moved away (to Ashford and then Ramsgate) the Marshall line had lived around the Rolvenden, Benenden, Biddenden triangle at least since 1700. They were AgLabs so moved around depending on where the work was. This is another area I love, spreading from the Weald across to Rye, the Romney Marsh and Dungeness.

Day 6

Dendrobium
My final photograph is of a Dendrobium orchid. I like having houseplants, and orchids have both pretty and long-lasting flowers. Contrary to popular belief, Phaelanopsis orchids especially are not that difficult; if you buy (or are given) one don’t throw it out when it finishes flowering as they are easy to get to flower again (see my instructions).

Day 7

Stondon Massey, Essex churchyard
This is Stondon Massey churchyard in Essex. It is one of those quiet, country churchyards full of dappled sunshine and birdsong. It’s an area which includes another of my favourite churches, Greensted-juxta-Ongar. And I was brought up not far the other side of Epping Forest and the county boundary at Waltham Cross – somewhere else steeped in history which I should write about properly. But Stondon Massey is more than this. It was where one of my “heroes”, the Tudor composer William Byrd (c.1540-1623) retired in his early 50s. Byrd was a member of the Chapel Royal while being a recusant Catholic (he was fined a number of times) and Stondon Massey was close to Ingatestone Hall, home of his Catholic patron Sir John Petre. Byrd’s sacred works are the most magical music of that period. He may be buried at Stondon Massey; no-one is certain.

So there you are. Something about lots of bits (but by no means all) of me and my life captured in seven of my photographs.

amusements, memes, words

30 Day Word Challenge: Days 6 to 10

I promised a summary every five days of the words I’ve chosen for my 30 Day Word Challenge. Here’s summary .

Day 6. A word you learned from a song: abaft
Day 7. A word that makes you laugh: merkin
Day 8. A word that rhymes with your name: teeth
Day 9. A word that makes you feel smart when you use it: flocculate
Day 10. A word from your favourite sport: wicket

As always, click the image for a larger view

Remember, daily posts on Facebook and another summary in five days time.