Category Archives: ramblings

ramblings

Voluminous Expletiveness

So there I was writing a long post about the (still proposed) third runway at Heathrow Airport and the also proposed HS2 rail link from London to Birmingham and beyond.

It had taken a long time. It was almost finished. I was tidying up the wording.

At that point my browser decides to corrupt it and save the corruption.

So my text is no more. It cannot be recovered. It is a dead parrot.

Somewhere on my hard drive it is laid to rest in it’s lead coffin. Slowly decaying to electronic dust.

And I don’t have the will to spend over an hour and do it all again. With quotes. From scratch.

[Exit, weeping, pursued by a long string of expletives.]

ramblings

Being Grown-up

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So according to the Daily Telegraph today the Skipton Building Society has come up with a list of the top 50 indicators that one is grown-up.

Here’s the list:

  1. Having a mortgage
  2. Mum and dad no longer make your financial decisions
  3. Paying into a pension
  4. Conducting a weekly food shop
  5. Written a Will
  6. Having children
  7. Budgeting every month
  8. Being able to cook an evening meal from scratch
  9. Getting married

  10. Having life insurance
  11. Recycling
  12. Having a savings account
  13. Knowing what terms like ‘ISA’ and ‘tracker’ mean
  14. Watching the news
  15. Owning a lawn mower
  16. Doing your own washing
  17. Taking trips to the local tip
  18. Planting flowers
  19. Being able to bleed a radiator
  20. Having a joint bank account
  21. Having a view on politics
  22. Keeping track of interest rates
  23. Finding a messy house annoying
  24. Being able to change a light bulb
  25. Owning a vacuum cleaner
  26. Holding dinner parties
  27. Listening to Radio 2
  28. Enjoying gardening
  29. Spending weekend just ‘pottering’
  30. Mum starts asking you for advice
  31. Carrying spare shopping bags just in case
  32. Like going round garden centres
  33. Wearing coats on a night out
  34. Going to bed before 11pm
  35. Making sure mum and dad are phoned at least once a week
  36. Classing work as a career rather than a job
  37. Repairing torn clothing rather than throwing it away
  38. You iron
  39. You wash up immediately after eating
  40. Enjoy cooking
  41. Buying a Sunday paper
  42. Always going out with a sensible pair of shoes
  43. You like receiving gift vouchers
  44. Work keeps you awake at night
  45. Filing post
  46. Having a ‘best’ crockery set
  47. Being able to change a car tyre
  48. Being sensible enough to remove make up off before bedtime
  49. Being able to follow a receipt
  50. Owning ‘best towels’ as well as ‘everyday towels’

Well that’s a big fail for me then! I scored just 33 out of 50.

So if we start at a base of zero at age 18, and we assume you score 6 months for every “yes”, you would be fully grown up at age 43. Sounds about right?

On that basis I’m about 35. Which is at least more grown-up than the 25-ish my brain thinks I am.

Hmmm … I wonder if I’ll ever get to 43? No, can’t do that, maybe I’ll have to settle for 42.

ramblings

Conundrum Confused

This is weird …

Why do I keep thinking today is Saturday?

We’ve done all the things we’ve normally done on a Friday, but my brain has persisted throughout in telling me that today is Saturday.

I really don’t understand time. Or should that be consciousness? But then does anyone understand either? However you look at them, both are just weird.

current affairs, ramblings

Get out of jail free?

Now here’s a fascinating idea to play with …

The UK could be handed a “Get out of jail free” card by the Scots.

A senior Scots constitutional lawyer has suggested that “Scottish independence could see the UK kicked out of the European Union”.

Rejoining would then require a new referendum (which would likely be lost?) and if we did rejoin we’d likely lose our huge EU payments discount.

One can hope that the Scots might do us a favour, but I suspect the EU would fudge things so they didn’t … so we’ll still need an acrobatic display of pig avionics as well.

Heresy Corner has a fuller report on the speculations.

ramblings, thoughts

On National Service

The rise of the most vociferous union power really only happened from the 1960s in Britain, seemingly from about the time of Prime Ministers Harold Wilson (1964-70 & 1974-76) and Ted Heath (1970-74).

This was at the time when National Service had been abolished, so the younger members of the workforce had neither been through the war nor had to do National Service. Military service would have attuned people to the taking of orders without question. But this generation didn’t have that. And they saw that there could be something they believed to be better.

Hence the rebellions of the unions against the “officer class” of the working world: encouraged by the Socialist Wilson and the fire fuelled by their dislike of the Conservative Heath. At much the same time the students, being thinkers, could see that the officers’ orders were not going to make progress towards the “something better” of their vision.

Are people more subdued and subservient out in society if they have had to do National Service and are acclimatised to taking orders rather than questioning them?

But, I suggest, it is this rise of union power which has been a large factor in getting the country into its current mess. Against the backdrop of the world economy (certainly also a factor) there has since the mid-60s been this continual running skirmish — and sometimes open warfare — between the workers/unions and the “officers of industry”, with the government sometimes taking one side or the other depending on its political ideology.

There is also an argument that the unions have stifled job flexibility. By (rightly in many cases) protecting their skilled members they may have compartmentalised job roles making it less easy for people to transition from one role to another, and thus reducing flexibility and mobility in the workplace.

Would Britain be in a better position if this warfare had not existed? If we still had National Service? And if everyone was much more attuned to take orders than question them?

I don’t know. What constitutes “better”?

We likely wouldn’t have the freedoms, the greater equalities, and the opportunities we currently do. But then again we might still have manufacturing industry and people trained in manual skills prepared to do lower-level jobs and thus have less need for immigration.

Would we? I don’t know. But it is an interesting speculation.

I would have hated National Service just as I would have hated going to public school or Oxbridge. I’m proud to have had some of the last of the good grammar school education and been given the opportunity to go to university; an opportunity I would not have had 10 years earlier. And I’m grateful for that education which has been a foundation stone of making me the awkward thinker I am, as are many of my contemporaries. In that sense where we are is a good thing; it allowed many of us to develop and break away from the grindstones. Which is why I consider it beholden on me to give back to society what I can by using both my brain and my skills to help others develop.

And it is gratifying that most of my friends and (former) colleagues – right across the age range – are doing the same thing, albeit in their own, very different, ways.

photography, pleasures, ramblings

A Curiosity of London

OK, so here’s one of the more curious of London’s accoutrements …

Buxton Memorial Fountain

It is the Buxton Memorial Fountain and you can find it in Victoria Tower Gardens, just south of the Houses of Parliament wedged between Millbank and the river.

Apparently it was originally constructed in Parliament Square but moved in the 1940s and placed in its present position in 1957. It was commissioned by Charles Buxton MP to commemorate the emancipation of slaves in 1834, dedicated to his father Thomas Fowell Buxton, and designed by Gothic architect Samuel Sanders Teulon (1812–1873) in 1865.

It surely has to go down as one of London’s more outré and colourful adornments. Not only does it have that “spire” of coloured encaustic(?) tiles, but it is carved with various animals including some very dragon-like iguanas/lizards.

Not the best of photos as it was taken on a horridly grey and, as can be seen by the puddles, rather wet Sunday morning.

ramblings

Uninspiring Weather

Yes, I know! There’s been a bit of a hiatus here.

It’s because I am not feeling inspired to write. And there doesn’t seem to be much around at the moment I feel compelled to write about.

Oh, sure, there’s plenty going on in the world. The news seems mostly about direly boring politicians as usual. That and the calamitous nature of “things”.

And there’s not a whole lot happening in my world despite seeming to be busy. Most of the efforts recently seem to have gone into making some progress on my family history. Which is good, and which is slowly paying dividends. But it isn’t something to generally enthuse other people.

But hey, we’re British! So what better to do on a wet April day that indulge in that world-famous British pastime of talking about the weather!

It’s supposedly the wettest April on record in the UK. Well, yes, the weather has been dire for the last month. Today it’s blowing half a gale and peeing down with rain. AGAIN! SE England has reportedly had over 40mm of rain in the last week and over 140mm this month — that’s well over twice the April average. And the forecast is that there’ll be no let-up in May.

Which sort of disinclines one to venture out unnecessarily.

And there won’t be anything by way of a fruit crop this year. Our apple and cherry trees have been in bloom for the last week, and are almost over. It’s not been a week for bees to be out and about pollinating the flowers. Except perhaps for a couple of sunny mornings.

And what of the drought? Well yes, we still have a drought. A month’s heavy rain won’t refill the aquifers or the reservoirs overnight, although it will help. That takes time.

And once there is drought the soil dries out and the subsequent rain just runs off rather than soaking through properly. Hence we get flash floods and swollen rivers. Travelling to the south coast a few days ago it was noticeable that every river was in spate.

Drought we certainly do have. There is an area of our garden which usually has standing water after any significant rainfall, and it is noticeable that the standing water hasn’t been there until this morning. Our houses were built in 1930 on what was previously farm/park land. We suspect that where we get standing water is where the builders likely backfilled a field ditch with rubble but the ditch still runs with water from a small nearby spring. Dowsing certainly tells us there is running water there.

But how do we have a drought? I ask because my fish pond is overflowing and has been most of the winter. The water level is usually down by 2 or 3 inches by the Spring. But not this year; if anything it has been consistently 2 to 3 inches higher than normal, and overflowing, with no effort on my part.

On the other hand the garden is looking wonderfully green with all the water. And the grass is growing like Topsy — well it was top-dressed with “home-grown” compost a few weeks ago!

But it is essentially uninspiring and demotivating all round. Where’s my summer?!

ramblings, science

Aliens, but not as we know them

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This is the title of an interesting article by Ian Bogost in the 7 April 2012 issue of New Scientist. In it Bogost posits the question: Are everyday objects, such as apple pies or microchips, aliens?

Answer: It depends how you think about what it’s like to be a thing.

I can’t link the article as it’s behind a paywall, but here are a few salient snippets.

[E]verything is an alien to everything else. And second, the experience of “being” something else can never be verified or validated …

[W]hy should we be so self-centred as to think that aliens are beings whose intelligence we might recognise as intelligence? … a true alien might well have an intelligence that is, well, alien to ours …

[L]et’s assume they are all around us, and at all scales – everything from dogs, penguins and trees to cornbread, polyester and neutrons. If we do this, we can ask a different question: what do objects experience? What is it like to be a thing? …

[W]hy is it so strange to ponder the experience of objects, even while knowing objects don’t really have “experiences” as you or I do? …

This kind of engagement will necessitate a new alliance between science and philosophy … From a common Enlightenment origin, studies of human culture split. Science broke down the biological, physical and cosmological world into smaller and smaller bits in order to understand it. But philosophy concluded that reason could not explain the objects of experience but only describe experience itself …

Despite this split, science and philosophy agreed on one fundamental: humanity is the ruler of being. Science embraced Copernicus’s removal of humans from the centre of the universe, but still assumed the world exists for the benefit of humankind … Occasionally animals and plants may be allowed membership in our collective, but toasters or [electronic components] certainly aren’t …

[W]hat if we decide that all things are equal – not equal in nature or use or value, but equal in existence? … then we need a flat ontology, an account of existence that holds nothing to be intrinsically more or less extant than anything else …

Thomas Nagel … famously asked what it was like to be a bat, concluding the experience could not be reduced to a scientific description of its method of echolocation. Science attempts to answer questions through observation and verification. Even so, the “experience” of all objects, from bats to Atari computers, resists explanation through experimentation …

The world is not just ours, nor is it just for us: “being” concerns microchips or drilling rigs as much as it does kittens or bamboo.

So perhaps the people who apologise to things when they throw them away aren’t quite so mad after all!?