personal

Reasons to be Grateful: 19

Experiment, week 19. This week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.

  1. Orchids. Yesterday I got my first ever orchid flower! About a year ago my mother gave me an orchid plant which had finished flowering to see if I could get it to flower again. It’s been sitting on our bedroom windowsill, receiving no special attention, all that time and has just come back into flower. This is the first flower and there are another 7 or 8 buds on this one flower spike. I never thought I would have my very own flowering orchid.

    Orchid

  2. Friends who give you a lift home at 11PM. Last evening we went to a performance of Bach’s St John Passion at Ealing Abbey with our friends Sue & Ziggy. Sam (S&Z’s eldest; just a teenager) was singing in the choir. Afterwards we went back to S&Z’s for a drink. And Ziggy volunteered to run us home at something gone 11PM. He didn’t have to; we were quite happy to get a taxi. But he insisted. Thanks, Ziggy! Much appreciated.
  3. Local Auctions. Last Thursday our local auction house, Bainbridge’s at West Ruislip, had their roughly monthly sale. We keep saying we must go to a viewing and this week we managed it. As I’ve blogged so often before, their sales contain some gloriously incongruous toot as well as some very nice pieces. Sadly not a lot of silver this time. But there were two decorative halberds. We nearly went to the sale to bid on them. But common sense got the better of us. I mean where do you put two 10 feet (3 metre) long halberds in a 1930 terraced house? The viewing was a fun hour or so though.

    4. Primroses

  4. Sunshine. I know! I know! I keep saying “sunshine”. But we’ve had such a lovely sunny week; all the buds are beginning to break; the Spring flowers are out; the birds are singing and it is definitely warmer. It really does feel like Spring. And the forecast for the next week is more of the same. We do need some rain though!
  5. Thetford Forest. On Friday we went to Norwich to see my agéd mother, as we do every few weeks. I always love driving through Thetford Forest and Elveden. I love the pine forest; there’s always something interesting to see. As usual there were plenty of muntjac grazing just off the main road; and a couple of hares loping across a field. As well as the ubiquitous pheasants and rabbits. In the afternoon we sat with my mother in the garden of the care home where there were loads of primroses in the lawn and the only sound was of birdsong!
photography, pleasures

Something for a Spring Weekend

Just in case anyone was in doubt that Spring is here … a couple of Primula spp. photographed yesterday growing in the lawn of my mother’s care home.

The first is probably a genuine wild primrose, Primula vulgaris, pin-eyed variety.

Primroses

This second is definitely a cultivated variety or hybrid of some form.

Pink Primula
Click the images for larger views.

photography

Buggered Britain 4

Another in my occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.


Click the image for a larger view

The country is in a pretty poor shape when even the pawnbrokers can’t stay in business! But then I’ve seen quite a few dodgy businesses come and go at these premises over the years.

This is by the Petts Hill bridge, near Northolt Park Station.

current affairs, environment, medical, science

Fukushima Reprise

4 Comments

There’s so much going on at the moment that I should be writing about that I’m having a hard time keeping up! Anyway here’s the next piece.

There was an interesting, and I suggest important, “Opinion” article in last week’s New Scientist (dated 17 March 2012). In it Don Higson, a fellow of the Australasian Radiation Protection Society, argues for the total revision scale on which nuclear accidents are measured and points up the lack of true comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl. Along the way he highlights the major differences between the two in health effects, adding some further important perspective on the situation.

The article itself is behind a paywall, so I hope I’ll be forgiven for reproducing some factual highlights here.

Everybody who gets cancer in Japan over the next 40 years will no doubt blame their misfortune on radiation from Fukushima Daiichi […] This would be entirely understandable but will have no basis in science […]

[T]here is no possibility that the physical health consequences of Fukushima Daiichi will be anywhere near as bad as those of Chernobyl.

As far as anyone knows, no member of the public received a significant dose of radiation attributable to the Fukushima Daiichi reactor emergency […]

Chernobyl was the worst that could happen. Safety and protection systems failed and there was a full core meltdown in a reactor that had no containment […]

237 Chernobyl workers were taken to hospital with suspected acute radiation sickness; 134 of these cases were confirmed; 28 were fatal; about 20 other workers have since died from illnesses considered to have been caused or aggravated by radiation exposure […]

On top of that, it has been estimated that about 4000 people will die […] from radiation-induced cancer […]

At Fukushima Daiichi, the reactors shut down safely when struck by the magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake […] problems arose after they were inundated by a much larger tsunami than had been anticipated when the nuclear plant was designed […] The reactor containments were partially effective […]

There were no deaths attributable to radiation. Two workers received burns from beta radiation. They were discharged from hospital after two days. Two workers incurred high internal radiation exposure from inhaling iodine-131, which gives them a significant risk of developing thyroid cancer.

Doses incurred by about 100 other workers have been high enough to cause a small risk of developing cancer after 20 or more years […] About 25 per cent of the population dies from cancer whether accidentally exposed to radiation or not. This rate might be increased by an additional one or two per cent among the exposed workers […]

[T]here have been no radiation injuries to children or to other members of the public […]

[T]he amount of iodine-131 escaping from all the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi was less than 10 per cent of the amount released at Chernobyl, and the release of caesium-137, the next most important fission product, was less than 15 per cent of the Chernobyl total […]

As I’ve said before, we need to keep this in perspective.

While there are clearly many, many lessons to be learnt Fukushima should be looked on as a success story in terms of reactor design. Yes there were shortcomings in the design of the resilience, the fall-back ability, the processes and the communications. And there have been massive knock-on effects on the population and the environment — and indeed it has been argued the worst of the health effects will be the devastating mental stresses on the Japanese people (see, inter alia, this Guardian report).

But given that those reactors are 40-ish years old, and that even before March 2011 we knew a lot better how to design safe and secure reactors, this should be viewed as a (limited) success story.

beliefs, current affairs, ramblings

Marriage

There’s recently been a lot of brouhaha over the UK government’s suggestion of making marriage available to (male and female) homosexual couples.

The Christian churches are up in arms because they see it as devaluing (or worse) the sacrament of marriage.

Put plainly, this is bollox.

Neither the church, nor any other religion, owns marriage. Arguably it may have done once, in the days before developed civil government, but no longer. In almost every civilised country there is a civil marriage option available as well as a religious one. The churches may have a ceremony which they call marriage. This does not mean they own the concept or the sole rights, although it does give them the right to choose who to allow to partake in their ceremony.

A heterosexual couple can have a civil marriage, so why can’t a homosexual couple? No-one is suggesting that the churches have to be a part of this if they wish not to. They are not to be obliged to marry homosexual couples and indeed they may choose (as they do now) who can marry under their aegis. Many heterosexual couples are denied a religious marriage for a whole variety of reasons.

And of course no couple has to marry or enter into any officially sanctioned partnership arrangement. And quite right too. So a coach and horses has already been driven through marraige as originally conceived by the churches.

I fail to see a problem.

There are couples who will choose a civil marriage and couples who will choose a religious marriage. Civil marriage will be available to all; religious marriage will only be available to those who can jump some arbitrary set of church defined hurdles. Just as now.

And come couples will choose to ignore the whole idea of marriage (by whatever name) and just live together. Horses for courses, and all that.

No change, really, except that the civil marriage net is being widened.

Although there is the suggestion of an anomaly with civil partnerships. As gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has pointed out the current proposals now discriminate against heterosexuals by allowing same-sex couples the option of marriage or civil partnerships but only marriage for heterosexual couples. Which is ludicrous!

I see no purpose in continuing with the civil partnership sham. Let’s drop it altogether and have just civil marriages. Either that or we have to keep both civil partnerships and civil marriages for all.

Or of course we could just ban marriage altogether — for everyone.

For other sane views you might like to read Betty Herbert’s blog, John Bingham in the Daily Telegraph and Marie Jackson on BBC News.

photography

The Gallery : Colour

The Gallery had a week off last week, hence there was no posting. This week we’re back to normal and the theme is Colour

Hmmm … there’s so much to choose from in my Flickr photostream. So maybe we’ll play it easy and pick a recent (like last week) photo:

Red Pimula
Click the image for larger versions

This red primula was growing in the municipal flower beds about a couple of miles from home. The whole bed was a lovely splash of colour in the Spring sunshine made up of lots of shades of winter pansies and primulas — everything from pale lemons through to deep purples and bright reds.

history, words

Today's Word : Halberd

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Halberd
A military weapon, especially in use during the 15th and 16th centuries. A kind of combination of spear and battle-axe, consisting of a sharp-edged blade ending in a point, and a spear-head, mounted on a handle five to seven feet long.
By transference, a soldier armed with a halberd; a halberdier. [Below left]
Halberds are still currently carried by the Papal Swiss Guard.

Compare with …

Pike
A weapon consisting of a wooden shaft, typically 14 to 15 feet long, with a pointed head of iron or steel; formerly the chief weapon of a large part of the infantry; superseded in 18th century by the bayonet.
A soldier armed with a pike is generally a pikeman. [Below right]
Possibly the best way in the UK to see pikes and pikemen is either at a Civil war re-enactment or at London’s Lord Mayor’s Show on the second Saturday in November.

And of course there is then …

Spontoon
A species of half-pike or halberd carried by infantry officers in the 18th century (from about 1740); generally 6 to 7 feet in length.  

personal

Listography : I'm a What?

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This week’s Listography is a pretty open-ended “challenge” as we’re invited to complete the sentence “five reasons I know I’m a …”. So how to finish that statement? I know, with the word “intellectual”.

That sounds conceited but it isn’t. We all have different skills. Mine happen to involve brain power. But I’m absolutely crap at anything manual: I have 10 left thumbs. I cannot even saw a piece of wood straight!

So here are five reasons I know I’m an intellectual:

1. I have a science doctorate (on the boundaries of physics and chemistry) but I also run a literary society. Although I have a broad understanding of science, medicine, history, language etc. I’m not a polymath: for a start I’m useless at foreign languages!

2. I see three sides of every argument before you even tell me one. And I see through management and marketing bullshit like a knife through butter.

3. I can sit in a health education session and realise my brain is bigger than the sum of all the others in the room, including the trainer. Not necessarily an advantage as it means I struggle to suffer people who don’t use what they’ve got, especially when they then also don’t believe what you tell them. I’m useless at manual things, but I do have to try sometimes. I expect other people to do the same with their brains.

4. I don’t need mental crutches like religion. I can think, and read, and argue. I can do morality without having it imposed from outside. I know there is no such beast as “natural justice” and that life isn’t fair. I can deal with it.

5. My hypnotherapist struggles to get stuff into, or out of, my subconscious. My conscious brain is so fast and so analytical that whatever he does it goes “Oh, he’s doing X. That’s interesting. I wonder if he’ll do Y now? Or does it mean Z? And I wonder how that fits with A?” rather than just going “La-la-la, isn’t that pretty”!

Which doesn’t make for an easy ride; in fact it can be downright depressing and demoralising. But then who said it was supposed to be easy?

current affairs, links, ramblings

So You Missed … ?

More links to things you may have missed. Let’s start with some important items I should write whole blog posts about but just can’t stomach today.

Like I commented on Facebook, this first isn’t just wrong, or bizarre, or cruel, it’s obscene (and that’s not a word I use lightly or often). Georgia Rep Wants To Force Women To Carry Stillborn Fetuses … Like Cows Do. Maybe these loonies should be made to wear a stinking albatross round their necks. As has been said elsewhere if men had to endure half the things they impose on women better ways would soon be found, or minds changed. What price Christian charity? Again! Seethe!

Next, here’s an interesting alternative take on the validity (or not) of modern Christian claims of persecution. As it’s from the National Secular Society it’s probably as biased in the opposite direction! Caveat emptor!

Both of which remind me of this cartoon …

And while we’re on the church, let’s have an interesting sideways look from Friday’s FT, which shows just how bizarre is the Cathodic church’s attitude to gay marriage.

And here’s a worrying judgement handed down by the European Court of Human Rights, supporting the UK courts’ decisions, which appears to give the police carte blanche to do almost anything they like on the streets to restrict liberty, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association. Very, very worrying.

And a final rant for today … this confirms what I maintained the other day that water companies are losing vast amounts of their water through leaks — possibly as much as 25%!

So now for an interesting piece of science. Apparently your soul is in your eyeballs. Yes really. Well actually it does make sense and does seem to agree with one’s intuitive experience.

So how do we think about nothing? This gives two totally different approaches.

And finally something rather splendid: an old church converted into a modern bookstore.

It takes the Dutch to find some good in Christianity. 🙂