quotes

Monthly Quotes

OK, guys & gals, time for my August collection of recently encountered quotes.

I have a difficult relationship with regeneration projects. All around me I watch as multi-million pound businesses build massive, overpriced penis extensions that loom over the patchwork of housing estates below, waiting to jizz all over them until at some stage, everyone will live on a dinghy in the Thames and have to catch eels with their toes to survive. The theme in Canary Wharf is to build empires of plate glass in which thousands of feet of marble clad floor are troubled only by a potted fig and three, uncomfortable Japanese chairs which nobody is allowed to sit on. Wealth here is measured by how much space you can squander.
[Katy Wheatley; https://katywheatley.substack.com/p/where-plaistow-patricia-meets-vera]

1. History is not there for you to like or dislike.
2. History is there for you to learn from it.
3. History offends you? Even better. Then you are less likely to repeat it.
Please read this out loud, then read it again. Then teach it to your children and grandchildren.
[Andrea Junker]

Surround yourself with people who make you happy. People who make you laugh, who help you when you’re in need. People who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through.
[Taylor Swift]

Human, the only species on Earth that shames its own body.
[Kendree Miller, Photographer]

“My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent.”
Hughnon reflected that “entirely transparent” meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn’t see them at all.
[Terry Pratchett; The Truth]

“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”
“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”
[CS Lewis; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader]

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”.
“In 1984“, Huxley added, “people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.”
In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
[Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death]

“You know why trees smell the way they do?” Murphy asked, looking up from her hammering.
“Sap?” Logan guessed. “Chlorophyll?”
Murphy shook her head. “Stars. Trees breathe in starlight year after year, and it goes deep into their bones. So when you cut a tree open, you smell a hundred years’ worth of light. Ancient starlight that took millions of years to reach earth. That’s why trees smell so beautiful and old.”
[Frances O’Roark Dowell, Where I’d Like to Be]

Tranquillity comes when you stop caring what they say. Freedom comes when you stop caring what they think.
[Marcus Aurelius]

If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans. You’ve nothing to worry about there.
[James Herriot]

Have you ever heard that patter-pitter of tiny feet? Or the dong-ding of a bell? Or hop-hip music? That’s because, when you repeat a word with a different vowel, the order is always I A O. Bish bash bosh. So politicians may flip-flop, but they can never flop-flip. It’s tit-for-tat, never tat-for-tit. This is called ablaut reduplication, and if you do things any other way, they sound very, very odd indeed.
[Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence]

Meanwhile, time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look, and feel, like shit.
[Martin Amis, The Information]

[NYT] couldn’t show any vibrators. America is a puritan country, remember? We have all these uptight evangelicals here.
[Marilyn Minter, interviewed in The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/aug/16/an-honest-depiction-of-elder-sex-marilyn-minters-best-photograph]

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
[Jimi Hendrix]

I can write down a few words and make people thousands of miles away, whom I have never met and will never meet, laugh tears of joy and cry tears of true sorrow for people who do not exist and have never existed and never will exist. If that isn’t actual literal magic I don’t know what is.
[Neil Gaiman]

amusements, beliefs

August Quiz Answers

Here are the answers to this month’s five quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.

August Quiz Questions: Mythology & Religion

  1. According to 1 Samuel 17:4, what figure stood six cubits and a span tall? Goliath
  2. What is considered the oldest Japanese religion? Shinto
  3. What is the name of the imaginary city built in the air in The Birds, the comedy written by the Greek playwright Aristophanes in 414 BC? Cloud-Cuckoo-Land – or Nephelococcygia in Greek.
  4. Which legendary king was the father of King Arthur? Uther Pendragon
  5. Guru Nanak was the founder of which religion? Sikhism

Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2022.

memes, science

Ten Things: August

2 Comments

This year our Ten Things column each month is concentrating on science and scientists.

Where a group is described as “great” or “important” this is not intended to imply these necessarily the greatest or most important, but only that they are up there amongst the top flight.

Great Chemists

  1. Marie Curie
  2. William Perkin
  3. Rosalind Franklin
  4. Dmitri Mendeleev
  5. Amedeo Avogadro
  6. Robert Boyle
  7. Antoine Lavoisier
  8. Democritus
  9. Alessandro Volta
  10. Linus Pauling
history, ramblings

On this Day in 1923

Our monthly look at what happened 100 years ago.

On this day, 3 August 1923 …

Vice-President Calvin Coolidge is sworn in as the 30th President of the United States as a result of the sudden death of President Warren G Harding in San Francisco the previous day

Photo from PBS
amusements, beliefs

August Quiz Questions

Again this year we’re beginning each month with five pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month. They’re not difficult, but it is unlikely everyone will know all the answers, so hopefully you’ll learn something new, as well as have a bit of fun.

August Quiz Questions: Mythology & Religion

  1. According to 1 Samuel 17:4, what figure stood six cubits and a span tall?
  2. What is considered the oldest Japanese religion?
  3. What is the name of the imaginary city built in the air in The Birds, the comedy written by the Greek playwright Aristophanes in 414 BC?
  4. Which legendary king was the father of King Arthur?
  5. Guru Nanak was the founder of which religion?

Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.

amusements, personal

Unblogged July

Sat 1 If you’re like me you find whole roast duck a bit of a pain to carve. So why not joint it before cooking? Remove the legs and wings; cut down the sides to remove the spine, and then cut the crown (breasts plus) down the middle. Roast as normal, but it doesn’t take as long. And you have ready portioned pieces.
Sun 2 No cooking needed today because cold duck salad with ciabatta rolls, and summer pudding. I made the latter on Friday and we started it last night; and there’s still a piece for breakfast tomorrow. God bless whoever invented summer pudding (it seems probably a Victorian).
Mon 3 Decadence: Eating the end of the summer pudding for breakfast; with cream of course.
Tue 4 Last night’s full moon: invisible as usual due to cloud cover. It was a supermoon – appearing extra large due to the moon being at perigee. Known variously as a Buck Moon or Hay Moon (other names also apply) depending on which pagan beliefs you follow. I prefer Hay Moon as it resonates with old farming practice: haymaking in July and grain harvest in August. Modern farming has however moved things by breeding earlier ripening corn, so grain harvest is often now over by mid-July.
Wed 5 Well at long last we got some rain overnight.
Thu 6 You open a can of beer and it goes everywhere. But it was all of a piece with the day. Bah! Humbug!
Fri 7 OK, so it’s expensive, but there’s currently an abundance of summer fruit in the supermarket; and I cannot refrain from partaking. Strawberries; raspberries; nectarines; peaches; gooseberries (two varieties: green and red); blackberries; blackcurrants; cherries. So lots of (alcoholic) fruit salad and delicacies like gooseberry & strawberry crumble. What’s not to like?
Sat 8 Today was what one of my Irish friends would call a nice soft day: warm, but grey, damp in the air, some intermittent light rain. Actually not at all unpleasant.
Sun 9 A good butterfly day; the Buddleia is paying its way. Over lunch we had Comma, Red Admiral, Large White and a small very bright brown/orange something which declined to sit down and be identified but was probably either Meadow Brown or Hedge Brown. Sadly only one of each, but better than nothing. What was interesting was that the red admiral alighted on my (bare) knee of a few seconds; and although it tickled a bit you could feel the extra pressure as it took off. It’s surprising that something that small exerts enough force taking off that one can (just) feel it.
Mon 10 Tea was rather redolent of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. But instead of five loaves and two fishes, we had five buns and twelve sausages; and only two of us. No, we didn’t eat all the sausages; half will be devoured cold tomorrow.
Tue 11 So they do exist! Finally today I saw two swifts in the distance; the first this year and they’re about to leave for Africa again. We had dozens when we came here; now we have effectively none; that’s habitat destruction in action.
And also this afternoon something flew like a bullet across the garden: from the calls before and after it was sparrowhawk.
Wed 12 A day of meetings. Just like being at work.
Thu 13 Morning phone call with dentist-ette. Senior guy thinks my crown should be redone as there’s a large gap; but has stitched her up with doing it, at no charge (as it is new). She and I know there’s little tooth left to fix the crown to; so any work may have undesired consequences. In my world it’s not broken, so don’t fix it. She reluctantly agreed. My risk as if it goes tits up, it’ll cost me. So I get Monday back, and she gets at least 90 minutes to see people who really need it and are paying.
Fri 14 Rain!
Sat 15 What a day!
(1) The Boy Cat is in hospital. The vets don’t know what’s wrong with him, so they’re keeping him in. Why is this always on a weekend or public holiday when you have to go to the 24 hour emergency vets 10 miles away?
(2) Later in the day I hosted an excellent literary society talk.
(3) And the wind has been blowing hard all day: at least force 6, gusting gale force 8.
Sun 16 More rain this evening, but much less wind.
Mon 17 Breezy, but a lovely day – and another excellent butterfly day. Sitting outside for an hour after lunch we had: three Red Admirals, a Peacock, a Comma, a Meadow Brown (I think), two Large Whites, a Hummingbird Hawkmoth, and at least one other I didn’t get to look at closely enough to identify. Plus what I think was a Blackcap singing in the bushes.
Tue 18 The Boy Cat is home. N fetched him this afternoon. He’s much better, but still a bit wobbly. From the x-rays they think there’s some area of problem on his lung; not clear if bacterial, viral or parasite. So he’s on loads of meds and if x-ray isn’t clear in a couple of weeks he has to have further scans. Already major ouch of the credit card so hoping the insurance coughs up.
Wed 19 Oh joy! Yet more meds for the Boy Cat.
Thu 20 Comes the gardener. He cut the hayfield so we now have something approaching a lawn again. And I harvested the couple of dozen stalks of wheat (and 2 or 3 of barley); it’s now hanging up to dry before being threshed.
Fri 21 The gardener when he was here yesterday lifted our potatoes. Nothing startling: we’d just stuck a handful of shooting spuds in a spare space and ignored them knowing anything we got was a bonus. Well we didn’t get a lot, but enough for a meal tonight and a few left to go in curry during the week. But how nice to have real fresh potatoes, with mud on them!
Sat 22 It’s that time of the month again … Last evening: a tiny sliver of crescent moon bright in the sky at sunset. Today: persistent fine rain all day.
Sun 23 Quite a reasonable photo of one of our foxes on the trail camera this week. It’s clearly still moulting, but otherwise looks in good condition – and as inquisitive as ever!Fox
Mon 24 Leftovers risotto for tea: a small piece of cooked steak, cooked peas & beans, cooked onion and tomato, some salad (mostly tomato), and some chicken stock. Essentially all it cost was the Arborio rice, a few flakes of Parmesan and some gas. A considerably more than acceptable free tea.
Tue 25 Boy Cat has his repeat X-rays booked for the middle of next week at our usual vets (the joys of a group practice). This prompted the senior vet to ring up to see how he was. Judging by the noise of altercation with the local alpha male 10 minutes earlier he’s fighting fit – I reckon he’s about 90%.
Wed 26 The weather people need some new, better quality, seaweed because, yet again, there was no rain. There was supposed to be rain for the last few days. Instead of which we’ve had a couple of really nice days with the buddleia awash with bees and butterflies – six red admirals at one time.
Update. No sooner had I written this that the rains came!
Thu 27 I do not understand. Yesterday we were both fine until after late lunch when No got back from the hospital. By mid-afternoon we were both feeling grumpy and out of sorts. Today I woke with a headache and feeling totally wrung out – just as if I’d had only 3 hours sleep; when actually I’d had about 7 hours. N it turned out felt much the same. And it persisted all day; sufficient that, having done nothing all day, I retired to bed early. Why I do not know; such are the mysteries of the cosmos.
Fri 28 Wonderful. You go to do a simple update (like type this entry) only to find that your site won’t load! And there are no clues; it’s guesswork to find the cause.
Sat 29 Something must have happened today, but whatever it was didn’t impinge on my consciousness.
Sun 30 Why is it that a perfectly working, good quality, biro suddenly decides to stop writing on a particular area of the piece of paper? It’ll write OK elsewhere on the page, but not here! And neither will any other biro. If the paper is coated, then it’s coated all over, so that can’t be the explanation. Sometimes it is on ordinary copier/printer paper (on which it works OK 99% of the time); sometimes on postcards or the like. The only logical explanation I can find is that there are tiny, invisible, grease marks (fingerprints?) on the surface.
Mon 31 One of the problems of getting old is that the medical stuff becomes relentless. Today I accompanied N to an appointment with her nephrologist. Last week N had a different appointment at a different hospital. Later this week we both go to the optician; then next week I have an audiology appointment. And that’s without the Boy Cat’s escapades; he has to go to the vet on Wednesday for his repeat x-rays. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.
ramblings

On this Day in 1923

Our monthly look at what happened 100 years ago.

On this day, 31 July …

The cargo ship SS Lesbian was launched by Ellerman Lines from the Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson shipbuilders in Liverpool – it was named in honour of the inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos, rather than for the lesbian sexual orientation

Photo from Wreck Site
food+drink, history, links, medical, science, sexuality

Monthly Links

We bring you this month’s action-packed collection of links to items you may have missed.

Science, Technology, Natural World

When cells divide how do they accurately copy their DNA once, and only once? [LONG READ]

bat

Bats in the UK harbour coronaviruses; none apparently immediately dangerous to us, but we need to know more.

China has a mysterious wildcat, but is the Chinese Mountain Cat actually a discrete species? [££££]

On the Byzantine labyrinths that make up a cat’s nose. [££££]

In potentially good news there’s a plan to establish the UK’s first feline blood bank.

Octopuses change their skin patterns while sleeping, which suggests that they may be dreaming.

octopus

If insects actually have memories, it seems they may not survive across metamorphosis. [LONG READ]

Scientists have discovered a species of palm that flowers and fruits only underground, but they don’t yet understand how it is pollinated.

Health, Medicine

It seems that we have a gene which prevents most bird flu viruses from infecting us.

Nightmare Warning … There’s an unidentified something which causes a green hairy tongue – luckily it’s benign, just disturbing.

Sexuality

In a possible explanation of why vibrators are so effective, researchers have discovered neurons in the clitoris and penis which are especially sensitive to vibration. [££££]

One couple talk about sex in their mid-70s.

Social Sciences, Business, Law, Politics

One tax specialist is of the opinion that the UK’s Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) has a completely erroneous view of the economy. [LONG READ]

Art, Literature, Language, Music

Some rarely seen Holbein sketches of the Tudor court are going on display later this year at the Queen’s Gallery.

pest rat

When the fantasy world wants a pest do they always choose rats?

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Pendants made from bits of giant sloth indicate that humans settled in the Americas a lot earlier than previously thought.

At the same time archaeologists believe they’ve found the USA’s oldest stone tools to date. [LONG READ]

Back in the UK a rare Neolithic polissoir has been found hiding in plain sight in Dorset.

Pyramids and other remains have been discovered off the western tip of Cuba.

carnyx

The Carnyx, a brass musical instrument, was used as a psychological weapon of war by the ancient Celts.

Pompeii bread oven

Pompeii continues to provide surprises. In a current excavation archaeologists are uncovering a building containing a bakery oven (above), courtyard, a fountain and a number of frescos including one of what has (jokingly) been described as an early pizza (below).

pizza fresco

The story of Salisbury’s Medieval Giant.

London

London’s Hyde Park was once the playground of Tudor and Stuart monarchs, courtiers, and the upper echelons of society. [LONG READ]

There’s a hidden world underneath Waterloo Station, which is being revealed on its 175th anniversary prior to redevelopment.

Food, Drink

The Guardian‘s food writer, Felicity Cloake, looks at a few food rules and suggests they can be safely ignored.

Rachel Roddy recreates that Pompeii “pizza” (see above).

Do we need to be worrying about the sweetener aspartame in diet drinks? Spoiler: probably not. [LONG READ]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

A ramble around body hair and hairless bodies through the ages.

Shock, Horror, Humour, Wow!

And finally, please enjoy some highlights from this year’s Finnish Hobbyhorse Championships.

hobbyhorsing