ramblings

Awareness Days etc.

As you may have noticed, there has been a bit of a hiatus in my postings of interesting awareness days/weeks, curious festivals etc. There are two reasons for this. The first is that there don’t seem to be quite so many happening in the the last few weeks.



Secondly I have been thinking about how I select what to write about and updating the rules I use. Going forward this may mean slightly fewer postings, but hopefully about better quality events. Although the rules are not rigid I will mostly be obeying the following:

  1. The event must be either UK-based or international in nature
  2. I will not cover anything medical, literary, social welfare-related, or to do with schools; nor will I cover music festivals.
  3. And I will not cover anything overtly commercial. (Some events are run by companies as a cover for marketing, eg. National Shed Week, and will not be covered. Sponsorship is fine but the event needs to be independent of a single commercial entity.)
  4. The event must have a functional and useful website, to which people can be referred for further information. (I’ve found that far too many don’t!)
  5. The event has to engage my interest in some way, however marginal.

There will of course be exceptions. After all, I make the rules round here!

And I’m open to suggestions as to what to include.

Thank you!

links

You may have missed …

Another round-up of items I spotted which you may not have done …

According to the Met Office the UK’s current run of awful summers is set to continue for some years. Although they are also saying this month should be hot and sunny. Who you gonna believe?

Germ warfare, in the guise of antibiotics, may be changing the way we humans actually work.

At least one mother of my acquaintance would like words with the designer of the female reproductive equipment. Now Prof. Alice Roberts asks why childbirth is such hard labour and what science is telling us about it.

Trouble having an orgasm? Try your feet! WTF!!



On the more artistic side, the British Museum is to host an exhibition about sex in Japanese art in 2014. Excellent! We need sexuality normalised not marginalised or criminalised. Must see!

Following on from which, why are we so concerned about what might be “age inappropriate“. Surely what’s appropriate is whatever I feel like? So who cares what the neighbours or the kids think? Isn’t life there to be lived?

So modernity is nothing new; we’ve always been avant garde and there have always been old ‘uns who object to it. There was even social networking in the 17th century. Starbucks eat your heart out!

Boys… you ain’t having as much as you think you are!

So are we able to make ourselves happier? Seems we might be able to, at least up to a point.

Well we know that swearing is nothing new, it’s just that we change the swearwords occasionally. Now there’s a history of swearing.

Yes, it’s wonderful! But do we actually know what wonder is, how it works and how it contributed to civilisation? Researchers are trying to find out.



An angler reckons he’s caught a 200 year old fish off Alaska. If confirmed this will be a new record age for a fish. Just wow!

amusements

Auctionalia

Well it’s summer (allegedly) and there doesn’t seem to be a whole bunch going on to blog about. So here is one of our irregular collections of curiosities from our local auction house’s latest catalogue. As usual the eccentricity defies logic.

A full-length pastel of a girl on the seashore, by D Alvarez Gomez Domingo, signed, wearing a long white dress with a scarlet sash and holding a straw hat, modern frame
[But why was D Alvarez Gomez Domingo wearing a long white dress, with sash, and carrying a straw hat when they signed the picture?]

A small limited edition engraving of artist mice being watched by a cat, signed by the artist in the margin (illegible), two oils of cats, etc.

Three reproduction Georgian style mahogany framed wall mirrors, one with a shell and the other a Ho-ho bird surmount.
[And the third mirror? Oh and WTF is a ho-ho bird?]

A mid 20th century autograph bool (sic) with sketches, poems, photographs of the stars of the time, some signed, etc.



A pair of large George III silver shoe buckles, with openwork faceted beads between milled borders, maker’s IL, lion passant and duty marks.
[This is only one of about two dozen similar lots. Who collects this stuff?]

A musical John Peel tankard by Crown Devon, and silver plated objects including a candelabra, (sic) candlesticks, goblets, etc.

A snooker cue in metal case, inscribed on a plaque, ‘To Stumpie from Max and Buddy Bear’
[The mind boggles!]

Three shelves of mainly tribal wooden carvings including a wooden duck with brass and mother-of-pearl decoration, a lion, green painted octagonal lidded box with brass decoration, wicker lidded box, a tribal head, brass pot, etc.

A large mantel clock in exuberant pottery case … c.1900

An interesting collection of bladed weapons and associated items, 19th and 20th century, comprising 7 bayonets with 4 scabbards, a commando knife with leather scabbard, the blade signed IXL, a kris, 4 other knives with 2 sheaths, 3 powder horns, a shot flask, 2 shell cases, and gun parts

A reproduction suit of armour and four dress swords
[Anyone got a castle to decorate?]

A 4-Hatch Coaster radio controlled boat named ‘Tamara’ with a digger on the deck, in white, red and grey, approximately 40″ long, on stand

A radio controlled German WWII E-Boat, scale 1:24, approximately 57″ with three motors, also a part-built submarine approximately 67″
[These two boats are a sample of about 12 similar lots!]

A lot of old skulls, antlers and horns, and a display of small tusks

Two old tool boxes and contents, a roll of barbed wire, axle supports, a saw, level, etc.
[It’s the barbed wire that makes this a “must have” lot!]

An example of taxidermy, a mongoose struggling with an adder



A BMW motorbike combination, registration number E259 LOW, the sidecar possibly by Steil

words

Word: Vespiary

Vespiary

A nest or colony of wasps or hornets.



From the Latin vesp, a wasp and formed by analogy with apiary.

The first use recoded by the OED was in 1817.

topographical

Oxenhope Straw Race

After a brief hiatus, largely because there wasn’t a lot happening worthy of our interest, we bring you the Oxenhope Straw Race which is on 7 July.

The Oxenhope Straw Race takes place every summer in the Pennine village of Oxenhope, near Keighley. It was started by two men who made a bet about racing from one pub to the next carrying a bale of straw. The money is raised for charity by teams collecting sponsorship for completing the course, often in fancy dress, whilst carrying a bale of straw and visiting each of the local pubs in the village; £300,000 has been raised date.



This looks like a fund day out with a real carnival atmosphere! There’s more information and entry forms at www.strawrace.com.

beliefs, words

Words: Atheism, Secularism and Humaism

Today let’s look at three words which seem to be becoming increasingly misunderstood and misused: atheism, secularism and humanism.

Atheism
1. Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of God or gods.
2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.

Secularism
1. The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education.
2. The doctrine that morality should be based solely on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life, to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God or in a future state.

Humanism
1. A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centres on humans and their values, capacities and worth.

Hence one can be a secularist without being an atheist, although the reverse is I suspect rather difficult. While atheists are generally secularists, at least in Europe so are most believers because they know their own freedom of belief depends on freedom from the belief of others. Humanists are by definition atheists.

Atheism challenges belief but secularism challenges religious privilege. Humanism replaces a belief in god(s) with a belief in Homo sapiens.


And yes, for the record I am both an atheist and a secularist. I’m also a humanist but not one who identifies with humanism as an organised belief system, a là British Humanist Association — I don’t do organised belief systems!