beliefs, current affairs, nudism

Stephen Gough

Interesting press release from British Naturism (BN) on the charade of the Stephen Gough case: Life imprisonment for dressing naturally. They’re right on the money. This is a farce, even if Mr Gough is being wilfully confrontational.

So “life imprisonment” is an over-reaction? No, because apparently a Scottish judge has made it clear that he will continue to be imprisoned until he gives in. Given that everyone agrees he is harmless, that is crazy and obscene treatment. Indeed I could suggest that under the international convention on human rights it amounts to (in the legal phraseology) “cruel and unusual punishment”.

Apart from the fact that Mr Gough clearly has little money, why has this case never been referred to the European Court of Human Rights?

Whether you like nudity or not, the whole affair is a disgrace of the first order.

natural history, science

Wasps

I know many people don’t like wasps. People are afraid of them because they buzz irritatingly and because we have learnt they sting — rather painfully. And yes they can be annoying little buzzers. Generally if you ignore them, they’ll ignore you; but if you annoy them they’ll order reinforcements (and yes they do — using pheromones!).

But I happen to think wasps are wonderful creatures, unless you are one of the unfortunate very few who are allergic to them (when they are actually rather dangerous).

In fact all the social insects (bees, wasps, ants, termites) are amazing for the way their colonies are run and organised. But I am especially fond of wasps, because without wasps we would not have life as we know it.

That sounds like an overstatement. And until the other day I might have agreed.


Vespula germanica, worker

First of all, what I already knew, is that wasps are incredibly useful predators. Without them we would be knee deep in creepy-crawlies. Our common European wasp species, Vespula vulgaris and V. germanica, predate caterpillars, and indeed other insect forms, which they feed to their grubs. Most of the other social wasps do this; and many of the solitary wasps parasitise caterpillars. In fact almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that preys upon it or parasitises it, making wasps critically important in natural control of pest numbers.

If you’re an insect, wasps are formidable predators with paralysing stings and razor sharp jaws. I’ve seen a common wasp catch a large bumblebee, sting/paralyse it, snip off it’s head, wings and legs and fly off with the body (which it could only just carry) — all in about 60 seconds.

Wasps will also take carrion to feed to their larvae. If you have wasps around, try leaving out small piece of red meat (raw or cooked) and if you’re lucky you can watch the wasps chopping off small chunks and taking them away. (By the way the adult wasps feed on nectar and sweet fruit which is why they become more of a nuisance in the Autumn when they look for more quick calories to keep them going.)

Wasps are also incredibly good at destroying dead wood. They use tiny slivers of wood, often chewed into paper, with which to build their nests. We have a handful of old pine logs in our garden and in a just 3 years or so the wasps have largely destroyed many of them. On a warm summer day you can watch a continual traffic of worker wasps cutting off slivers of wood and carrying them off.

All that I already knew. So now for what I didn’t know. Indeed what until recently no-one knew!

As if all the above wasn’t enough it turns out that yeasts, and especially Saccharomyces cerevisiae — that’s the common yeast we use for brewing beer, fermenting wine and proving bread — likely overwinter in the guts of hibernating queen wasps, ready to spread on the surface of fruit (especially grapes) the following summer. Yes, until very recently no one knew this, despite S. cerevisiae being scientifically very important as a “lab animal” as well as commercially (and socially!) valuable.

In a recently published piece of research (you can find fuller reports here and here) scientists worked out that many species and strains of yeasts were overwintering inside queen wasps, being transmitted in the Spring to their new larvae, which then as adults reinfected fruits. Wash; rinse; repeat.

Other mechanisms for yeast overwintering are proposed, so this may not be the only way. But it looks as if it may well be a very important way. And it is a route which was totally unknown until recently. (In fact the natural history of yeasts is generally poorly understood, despite their importance.) As always more research, and more questions, beckon.

This is why I love science. We are still making amazing discoveries like this. The more we look, the curiouser and curiouser the natural world is.

Moral: If you have wasps around, LEAVE THEM ALONE; they’re amazing little creatures which provide us some good service.

personal, ramblings

Five Questions #5

OK, so here is my answer to the last of the five questions I posed some weeks back.

For me there is nothing difficult about this one.

Question 5. Do you ask enough questions? Or do you settle for what you know?

No, I don’t ask enough questions. In my view you can never ask enough questions and anyone who genuinely seeks after knowledge of any form will always have another question to ask. But there are times when you have to settle for what you already know.

It is only by asking questions, looking for something new and pushing the boundaries that we ever make progress. That was as true for stone age man banging his rocks together to make fire as it is now. It is the fundamental of the scientific method: ask questions and don’t believe anything until you can reliably demonstrate it; be forever skeptical.

We learn and generate our views by asking the age-old question: Why? Yes children keep asking “Why?” for a reason — to gain more knowledge of how the world works. (So maybe “Because” isn’t actually a good answer, however tempting it is!)

Society’s morals, ethics and beliefs are essentially the consensus view of the majority (or at least of those in whom we invest the power to decide, eg. politicians, clergy, etc.). Progress is made by philosophers and people like me questioning this consensus view; asking why we have these beliefs; suggesting that there are other, better, ways. Sometimes our views prevail. Most times we are ridiculed. In neither case is it certain if we are right or wrong — indeed in many instances there are no right or wrong answers, just answers which currently work. When our views prevail the consensus moves, society’s beliefs change and progress is made.

Science works in the same way. There is a sum total of knowledge; think of it as a boundary. Essentially there are two types of researcher who attack this boundary, trying to move it forward, as an army moves it’s battle-front forward foot by foot, mile by mile.

There are the pioneers who forge way ahead with off-the-wall thinking: “Oh look! A happens, and so does B. I wonder if that means X97C also happens?” Sometimes it does and suddenly there is a breakthrough at the battle front.

Then there are the supporters, the completer-finishers (in Belbin terms), who come along saying: “We know A, and B, and X97C, and Z23XM. But is this also true for C, D, E … Z …?” And they fill in the gaps behind the pioneers.

Both are moving the battlefront forward in their own way. But they can do so only by repeatedly asking questions. Questions are how we learn and how we make progress. So unless you want to stagnate you cannot ask enough questions.

But there is a corollary. You can never have all the information you need to make a decision. If you did it would not be a decision but a fait accompli. Indeed you can never have enough (let alone all) information to make a decision.

But decisions have to be made; there often (especially in business) isn’t time to acquire more information, let alone all the information one would like. Management, in fact life in general, is all about making the best decision one can with the information available at the time**. The best managers get these decisions right (or at least not wrong) more often than the less good managers. Those who have successes in life make averagely better decisions for them than those who who are always stumbling from crisis to crisis in life’s basement.

[** This is also why it is pointless, and destructive, to regret something you’ve done. You made the best decision you could at the time; we all do; it would take an alien mind not to. You did your best; you cannot do more. Yes, by all means learn something from the experience, but regret serves no purpose.]

But even then there may be no right and wrong answers, because part of the available information is one’s outlook on life, and who is to say my cautious approach to investments is better or worse for me than your more risky approach is for you?

So to sum up. Keep asking those questions. But in life know when to stop, consolidate and make that decision. In searching for knowledge, just keep right on.

— ooOoo —

So there we are, five answers to five deceptively simple, but actually quite challenging, questions. Questions which have made me ask more questions, and in answering them pose yet further questions. Questions whose answers have turned into little philosophical essays. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed, maybe even been challenged by, this mini-series. I hope to do another sometime soon, when I have more questions, ideas or challenges. Meanwhile suggestions are always welcome!

photography

Gallery : Delicate

5 Comments

Delicate. That’s the theme for Tara’s Gallery this week. So, I give you …

Frosted Roses
Frosted Roses
Click the image for more views on Flickr

This was one of the first really good digital photos I took. It is February and this is our large pink rose bush. Flowers still in February? Yes, that’s not so unusual as this rose is so prolific it just flowers and flowers and flowers — and it is unusual if it doesn’t have some blooms on Christmas Day.

And this image started a new tradition for us. We used it for our first home produced Christmas card in 2005. We now have our own Christmas cards printed, as large postcards, each year: it can be cheaper than commercial cards, people get something special (usually something I’ve taken that year) and there are no envelopes to fiddle with. Wins all round!

You can see our other Christmas card images on Flickr.

current affairs

Milking the Farmers

Does anyone else find this charade about the price dairies pay farmers for milk somewhat curious?

According to today’s Telegraph the four largest dairies — Robert Wiseman, Arla, First Milk and Dairy Crest — have all now cancelled a 2p/litre cut in what they pay farmers for milk.

Isn’t it curious that they all planned essentially the same cut, at the same time? And have now all rescinded it?

(OK, the latter is supposedly in response to the farmers’ protests.)

They’re still paying the farmers below production cost. So GOK how the farmers make ends meet. Presumably they have to find a way to cross-subsidise their milk production. But it beats me why anyone would want to produce a product on which they can’t make a profit. By rights the UK farmers should not be producing milk at all. But then I’m not a farmer.

Does this whole thing have the smell of a cartel amongst the dairies, because it certainly looks that way? And that makes one wonder what role the farmers (despite all their quite justified protest) and the supermarkets have in this.

Hmmm … Dirty tricks in agri-business again? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 37

Experiment, week 37. We’ve completed another week done in my continuing experiment in documenting five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week.

This week’s selection is for Sue, who challenged me to write one of these posts without mentioning food!

  1. Wood Smoke. I love the smell of wood smoke and bonfires. It always takes me back to my childhood and especially to scout camp. Those were good days! What is it that makes smells so evocative?
  2. Family Reconnections. What a brilliant week! I seem to have managed to put another bit of the family back together! My paternal grandfather skipped bail during the war and ended up having another three children by his mistress. (They never married as my grandmother wouldn’t give him a divorce.) I knew of my half-aunts’ existence when I was young and even met the eldest (who is about 7 years older than me; the other two are with a year of my age). But as with my father’s family contact was lost. I finally managed to trace the middle of the three sisters (family history forensics again!) and wrote to her in the hope that I could fill in some of the gaps on the family tree. She rang me last Sunday and I’ve now spoken with all three sisters; they’re all delighted to be back in touch after 40-odd years and longing to know more about their father. They’re spread around England so we’re planning to meet in October when they can all come to London. An interesting day beckons!
  3. New Glasses. I got my new glasses on Monday. Although my prescription hasn’t changed a lot, it was time for a new pair. They’re rimless and crystal clear. My optician was slightly concerned that they’ve had to change the make of lenses (what I have had for the last few pairs are no longer made) and that I might find these difficult to adjust to. But I’ve never had problems with varifocals and I adjusted to these instantly; not even any of this looking slightly fuzzy for a few hours. And they are such light titanium; they feel so fragile even compared with my old pair of gold frames, which weren’t exactly substantial. Mind you my wallet hurt a bit at £560! The frames weren’t expensive either, even with the surcharge for extra precision engineering for rimless. It’s the high spec, hard plastic, photo-chromic lenses that do the damage! But I’m blind without my glasses, and they’re so comfortable I don’t know I’m wearing them, so it is a good investment every few years.
  4. Sitting in the Garden. Isn’t it wonderful to have had some decent summer weather and been able to sit in the garden! Even more wondrous was the fact that the other evening it was so quiet: no noisy neighbours’ children, no planes escaping from Heathrow, no lawnmowers, and even very little traffic on the nearest main road. It was really quiet. Almost eerily so. Would it were like this more often.
  5. Wood Pigeons. Yes, wood pigeons! Columba palumbus. Not those scruffy feral pigeons (although I don’t dislike them). We’ve had wood pigeons round for years and their rather sleepy, slightly husky sounding call — coo-cooo-coo, coo-coo — is something else that takes me back to my childhood and camping with my parents at Rye when I would have been about four or five.

There you are, Sue, no mention of food at all! 🙂

personal, ramblings

Antidotes to Anti-Fat

Overweight? Under tall? P’ed off with being abused for it? Then read on.

Oh and if you’re someone who abuses the overweight (or indeed any other minority), you’d better read on too!

A few days ago I came across a blog post from last September at Crazy Beautiful by Dianne Sylvan, titled Ten Rules for Fat Girls. In it she admits to being obese, but she is not ashamed of it and is seriously annoyed by all those who give her abuse because of it. And she goes on to give other overweight girls some thoughts and ideas on how to be more comfortable with the way they are. Between these thoughts Dianne Sylvan is typically hard hitting:

I’m fat … There’s no concealing this fact. My fat is out there. It speaks. And it says “I am lovable and worthy just like I am, and fuck you if you disagree.” I’ve … gotten comfortable with the idea that people can look like anything and it’s all good.
…
You have sovereignty over your body and that means it is no one’s responsibility but your own.
…
How is discrimination and making people loathe themselves going to make them healthier? Obviously this doesn’t work or the number of overweight people would be rapidly declining, wouldn’t it … Has hate ever made anyone a better person?
…
That claptrap about obese people being a strain on the economy is nonsense; cancer costs millions of dollars to research and treat but nobody’s suggesting we let cancer patients die to save money. (Well actually in the UK we do — Ed)
…
Statistics show that weight loss fails over the long-term 95% of the time. How many conditions can doctors get away with prescribing something with only a 5% success rate? Yet dieting is considered a panacea. You know what else has a 5% success rate in treating disease? Bleeding someone to let the evil humours out.
…
It’s also assumed … that everyone knows what’s best for you but you.
…
I’ve heard quite a few thin women say things like … “getting fat would be the worst thing.” … Oh? Worse than child abuse, genocide, homophobia, or being allergic to chocolate? Worse than being an asshole? Worse than treating people like crap because of how they look? Is being fat worse than being an ignorant bigot? Worse than being a murderer? Worse than drowning kittens? Amebic dysentery? Losing a loved one? Losing a limb?

Well that’s enough. I’m sure you get the picture.

But do you know what’s interesting about this? It is just as relevant to men as to women. Men get abuse too, although maybe not as much as women. Men get bullied by doctors. I’ve even been bullied by a consultant neurologist FFS, who is an acquaintance — and I’m not even a patient of his! To this day I don’t know how I remained polite to him.

Yes, I’m obese. I know I am obese and I admit it. It doesn’t make me any less me. Or any less intelligent. Or any less able to know what works/is good for me. Or any less able to punch you in the throat.

OK, I don’t like being overweight or as horribly unfit as I am; I’m all too well aware of the consequences of my diabetes to be happy about it. And being “too big” can be horribly inconvenient. But it is also horrendously difficult to do much about it. In my case it is all tied up with my depression. It appears the whole caboodle goes back into my childhood, and despite hypnotherapy I’ve not yet been able to unbundle everything.

Yes, I have lost some weight but very slowly. At my heaviest I was 155kg and, after some ups and downs, I’m now down to about 138Kg. That’s still too much for my liking. But even if I lose a lot more I will never be a small bloke. I’m big boned and well built, naturally. It runs in my father’s family. We aren’t small people. And despite all the sport I played when younger, I’m not naturally athletic. So even if I’m not obese I’ll always be heavy and I’ll never be more than just about averagely fit.

But do you know what? The more people go on about my weight, the more resistant I become to doing anything about it. Having my weight thrust forever into the front of my brain is just so destructive. You end up thinking about nothing else. You cease to be you. It puts you under some huge stresses. If you allow it to, it takes over your life. And that makes the depression worse. And so we start the cycle all over again.

So I try not to dwell on it. I try not to let it take over. I try, in my quiet way (quiet? me?) to be sensible about food. But it seems to me the whole cycle isn’t well enough under control for anything to be quickly and easily alleviated. Which is why I’m trying hypnotherapy. But it is all slow going.

Meanwhile anyone who wants to abuse me about my weight had just better not. They don’t know — they cannot know — what is happening within me (FFS even I don’t know a lot of the time), nor how actually destructive their comments are. Besides it is really none of their business. It’s my concern, and mine alone.

At the end of the day, I’m me. All the way through. For better, for worse; until death do us part. And do you know something else? Nature probably made me that way for a reason. Whether you like it or not, do me the respect of not trying to change me.

food+drink

A Beer for the Day

Noreen made a nice discovery the other day. Marks & Spencer are currently selling what they brand as “Southwold Blonde” beer in 500 ml bottles. As beer aficionados will realise this is brewed by Adnams — my all time favourite brewers. As it is also labelled “Seasonal Guest” I assume it is a limited edition/short run product for the summer.

Anyway madame bought me a couple of bottles, which I generally ruined this evening by drinking them with a steamingly hot Lamb Sag Aloo Madras — steaming hot because I put in a whole large Scotch Bonnet chilli. However the beer was not totally ruined and I managed a good tasting before attacking the curry.

Verdict? Very, very nice.

As the bottle says it is made using a blend of East Anglian malted barley and wheat. Boadicea and First Gold hops from England and Nelson Sauvin from New Zealand combine to create the subtle citrus notes and refreshing flavour.

And citrus notes it certainly has in abundance. It is really rather like a clear, slightly darker, English Hoegaarden. A most excellent drink, very refreshing and totally recommended.

Oh and it stands up well to being abused by a hot curry.

personal, ramblings

Five Questions #4

OK, so here is my answer to the fourth of the five questions I promised I would answer.

This one is tricky. Not because I find it hard to answer but because it produces an inner conflict in all of us.

Question 4. When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards and just do what you know is right?

Answer: Now.

Why?

Well to start with see the answer to question two above.

Secondly because in my view it is more ethical. Risk and reward imply a conscious choice to do something which is not optimal and not what your inner morality says should be. And shouldn’t we all be following our inner ethics?

My belief is that we all have that inner morality, even underlying all our religious, political and sociological superstructure of beliefs; and underlying our selfish desires. It is nothing to do with man-made constructs of belief; it’s to do with an inner respect of life.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. And it certainly doesn’t mean I always get it right — much as I would like to. We all end up making greater or lesser compromises for a whole variety of reasons. But if we’re true to our underlying ethics we likely shouldn’t except perhaps in the pursuance of purely staying alive (and maybe sometimes not even then).

Do murderers (think, say, the Krays) really deep, deep down not know what they’re doing is wrong? Do bankers who make vast profits on the back of screwing peoples’ mortgage rates and businesses not understand, deep down, the lack of ethics in what they’re doing? I feel sure they do know these things. They may be brainwashed so they can’t allow that knowledge out, but I think it is there somewhere. Had they listened to that inner ethics early on maybe they wouldn’t have ended up where they did. And maybe the world would be a better place. Who knows.

Ultimately I think there is good, ethical, behaviour in all of us if we can but recognise it. But yes, that can be hard because in other ways we are wired to be selfish — because being selfish is a good personal survival strategy and at the first level evolution and “survival of the fittest” mean that we have to strive to survive and produce offspring. And remembering Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that is deeper rooted than our sense of ethics.

So yes, it’s hard and can be uncomfortable, but in a society where we don’t have to literally fight for food and shelter surely we should strive to rise above our “animal instincts” and listen to our inner morality and ethics.

Perhaps it is best summed up in the words of my late friend Jim Duggan: Let your conscience be your guide. Not your ego or your bank balance.

And I fail just as much as the next person!