photography

Weekly Photograph

This week’s photo is from the shorty holiday we had in Rye in September 2010 with our friend Katy and her kids.

I found a lot of very flat stones on the beach at Rye Harbour which I assume are due to them coming from thin beds of sedimentary rocks in the cliffs further along the coast, although some was clearly brick or concrete. I was interested by the variety of colours and textures.

Stone Pile
Stone Pile
Rye, September 2010
It’s also surprising what can be pressed into service as a backcloth. I had to use something other than the scruffy patio table at our rental house, and a black t-shirt (complete with white cat’s hairs), although not ideal, did the job.

links

You may have missed …

Our irregular round-up of links to interesting (well to me, anyway) items you may have missed. In no special order …

First up an oldish item from Physicist Sean Carroll on what is science, what is not science, how we can tell, and how we examine he world about us.

“Bring us a shrubbery”. Researchers have found that the greener (plant-wise) an area the lower the crime rate.

Now here’s a puzzle. How does Polynesian DNA mysteriously show up in a Brazilian tribe on the wrong side of South America? Even the researchers find their conclusions unsatisfactory.

OK, so does penis size really matter? Men always think it does. Women tell us it doesn’t. Turns out both are right — just.

Your time machine should be delivered this week. So ready for your trip back to Tudor times researchers have written the Good Pub Guide for the 16th century.

Sheep. Real sheep. Artificial sheep. On roundabouts!? Well why not?

There are a lot more cat species than we usually realise. Here’s a list of the six most endangered feline species. They could easily have made that a list of a dozen.

Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum is the British Museum’s latest blockbuster exhibition which is getting rave reviews. I’m hoping to get to it this week.

Travelling on business? Finding you’re lonely in your hotel? Why not hire a goldfish?

Dig a hole almost anywhere in central London and you’ll find something historically interesting. There’s a huge construction site at Bank where the archaeologists are recovering literally thousands of pieces of Roman London from building timbers to shoes.

Finally one for the ladies. A French researcher has come to the conclusion that girls may as well throw away their bras because they don’t actually do any good, regardless of the size or shape of what you put in them. Maybe that’d be good for use men too? ☺

food+drink

Pasta with Chorizo

Another rather super past recipe I did for this evening’s dinner. I thought it would work well, having had something of the sort in a restaurant long ago, but I was surprised how good my version really was.

Like most of my recipes it is quick and easy and almost infinitely variable; indeed it is really only a variation on the pasta with prawns and pasta with bacon I’ve done before — but this is definitely more restaurant-y.

Pasta with Chorizo

Preparation Time: 10-15 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients (for 2 as a main course)
200g fresh linguine (or pasta of your choice)
200g uncooked chorizo (I had bought this as a pack of 4 sausages)
medium onion
dozen-ish cherry tomatoes (I actually had the end of some leftover onion & baby plum tomato salad plus about half a small tub of smoked cherry tomatoes)
as much garlic as you like
juice of a lemon
generous handful of fresh parsley
salt, pepper, olive oil and parmesan
(You can add sliced mushrooms, olives, etc. if you wish but this really doesn’t need it.)

Method
Cook the pasta; you want the pasta ready before you cook the rest of the ingredients (you don’t want to be waiting on the pasta and overcooking the chorizo).
While the pasta cooks, finely chop the onion, garlic and parsley; cut the chorizo into 3-5mm slices.
When the pasta is done, or almost so, sauté the onion, garlic, tomatoes and chorizo in a little olive oil. You need to cook the chorizo and get the onion translucent which will take about 5 minutes.
Add the lemon juice and season with a small amount of salt and pepper. Stir.
Now add the pasta and mix everything together to get the chorizo distributed and the pasta coated in sauce.
Add the parsley and mix, cooking for another a minute or so.
Serve with parmesan and a robust red wine.

I was surprised how well the chorizo and lemon worked; I had thought it would but it was even better than I expected with the lemon counteracting the fattiness of the chorizo. The tomatoes, which had only just disintegrated, made a lovely light sauce — just enough to coat the pasta and no more.

quotes

Quotes

Another of our irregular round-ups of quotes which have interested or amused …

My religion is simple. My religion is kindness.
[The Dalai Lama]

Earth has boundaries, but human stupidity is limitless.
[Gustave Flaubert]

Women and cats will do as they please. Men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
[anon]

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.
[Marilyn Monroe]

I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.
[Harry S Truman]

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.
[Eugene McCarthy]

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
[Albert Einstein (allegedly)]

The ultimate source of my mental happiness is my peace of mind. Nothing can destroy this except my own anger.
[Dalai Lama]

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
[Leonardo da Vinci]

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
[Annie Dillard]

And I still like …

These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.
[Borges; Essay “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins”]

beliefs, nudism

Dress

Seen today on Facebook …

How to dress for your shape: are you human-shaped? play up your confidence and natural sex appeal by wearing whatever the fuck you want.

Life Tip: As the weather gets warmer, continue to wear whatever the fuck you want. Flaunt everything or keep it cool under cover. Dress to make yourself feel rad.

How to get a bikini body:put a bikini on your body

Want sexy own-the-beach summer legs? shave, or don’t because they’re your fucking legs.

The only thing to add is: Or wear nothing at all! ☺

beliefs, nudism

On the Offensiveness of Vaginas

A few days ago Naturist Vision fired a loud warning shot across the bows of all of society. In a post entitled Vaginas and Nudity the author points out that words such as “vagina”** must not be ostracised from the vocabulary just because a few puerile prudes deem it offensive. It’s a short article, but here is it’s essence:

[…] Michigan State Representative Lisa Brown’s use of [vagina] led to her censure. In the aftermath a state representative declared the word “vagina” so offensive that he wouldn’t say it in mixed company.

Now [a male] Idaho High School science teacher […] is being investigated for saying “vagina” during a sophomore science class […]

[…] it is time for us to pay attention. That our society finds the proper term for any body part offensive suggests we need to redouble our efforts to educate the public about body acceptance. That the “offensive” word refers to a specifically feminine body part is more evidence of the misogyny [in] our society.

We must find a way to normalize words that describe our bodies. Teaching our children to refer to their genitals as “wee wee” or “pee pee” […] is a huge mistake. Bowing to a misinformed public who prefers not to hear words like “penis” and “vagina” is another.

The underlying message is that women are bad, sex is bad and our bodies are bad. Turning the vagina into [something] whose name shall not be spoken can only have disastrous effects on our society as a whole […]

[…]

It stands to reason that if people are offended simply by hearing the word “vagina” they certainly wouldn’t want to see one live and in person!

OK, so this is religiously prudish America and the post is partly about the loss of rights to nudity and nudism. That makes the general thrust no less apposite, in America or the UK, or indeed anywhere else.

It is becoming increasingly important, as I observed again the other day, that nudity and sexuality are normalised, not marginalised and criminalised, and that this would actually be to the benefit of the whole of society.

** For now we’ll gloss over the fact that most times folks use “vagina” they actually mean “vulva”.

food+drink, ramblings

National Bread Week

Where would we be without bread? In one form or another, bread consumed by very many people the world over, so eating it during National Bread Week (16-22 April) is something most of us will do without even thinking about it.


Whilst no-one is absolutely sure when the first bread was made, man has been eating it in some form since 10,000 BC. Certainly the ancient Egyptians were making leavened (raised) bread with yeast by 3000 BC and it is thought that the workers who built the pyramids were paid in bread. Not surprising therefore bread has earned the title “staff of life”. Indeed, for many throughout the ages, bread has been a staple of their diet and so important, that laws concerning bread have existed for hundreds of years.

The purpose of National Bread Week is to celebrate the ‘roll’ that bread plays in our daily diet. The week will help to promote the nutritional benefits of bread and raise awareness of its part in a healthy balanced diet.

Having said that if you want to find more information or events you’ll have to do some searching as there appears to be no central website — which is missing a big trick!

amusements, ramblings

5th Annual Tweed Run, London

This Saturday, 13 April, sees the 5th Annual Tweed Run through London.

It is a celebration of old fashioned values as up to 400 ladies and gentlemen cycle through central London in high fashion and on a range of antique velocipedes.

You need permission to cycle along with them – and all the tickets have been allocated. Although the exact route is not published in advance (why?) the following viewing points are suggested (times are approximate):

12:00 Marylebone High Street
12:30 Regent Street / Savile Row
13:00 Piccadilly Circus
13:30 Houses of Parliament
14:00 Trafalgar Square


More information on the Tweed Run website at http://tweedrun.com/.