amusements, quotes

Monthly Quotes

“All aboard for another round of monthly quotes! Room for one more on top.”
Ding, Ding!

Boris Johnson shared the medical education [2020 Ig Nobel] prize with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and a choice selection of other world leaders for demonstrating during the Covid-19 pandemic that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can.
[From the Guardian]

We must not sacrifice our civilization for the greed of the few. Recent studies suggest that the world is getting close to exceeding its carbon budget. Therefore, this budget must become the most important currency of our time.
[Dalai Lama]

It is a damn poor mind indeed which can’t think of at least two ways to spell any word.
[Andrew Jackson, 7th President of USA]

Our entire bodies and brains are made of a few dollars’ worth of common elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, enough calcium to whitewash a chicken coop, sufficient iron to make a two-inch nail, phosphorus to tip a good number of matches, enough sulphur to dust a flea-plagued dog, together with modest amounts of potassium, chlorine, magnesium and sodium. Assemble them all in the right proportion, build the whole into an intricate interacting system, and the result is our feeling, thinking, striving, imagining, creative selves. Such ordinary elements; such extraordinary results!
[James Hemmings]

Those who are always praising the past and especially the time of faith as best ought to go and live in the Middle Ages and be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.
[Stevie Smith]

Humans uniquely know that they have been born … and that they will die. We understand that we, as individuals, had a beginning, and that we will not endure for ever … [All] religion is, at its roots, at its foundations, concerned with giving us solace in the face of this frankly unimaginable – but at the some time, incontestable and unavoidable – fact.
[Prof. Alice Roberts]

People sometimes say to me, “Why don’t you admit that the hummingbird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?” And I always say, well, when you say that, you’ve also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that’s got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also mode that little worm.
[David Attenborough]

The closer you get to real matter, rock, air, fire, wood, the more spiritual the world is.
[Jack Kerouac]

What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and every thing unutterably mall or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.” If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
[Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1882]

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
[Pierre Simon Laplace, 1814]

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.
[Kurt Vonnegut]

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
[William Shakespeare, Hamlet]

How a government treats refugees is instructive – it shows how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.
[Tony Benn]

If we spent half an hour every day in silent immobility, I am convinced that we should conduct all our affairs, personal, national, and international, far more sanely than we do at present.
[Bertrand Russell]

Peace and quiet are the things a wise man should cherish.
[Taoist proverb]

ramblings

Scary Thoughts

Now this is really worrying …

If she were still alive my mother would be 105 today.
My father would have been 100 earlier this year.
And, Fates permitting, I shall be 70 in just three month’s time.

This is unreal. I mean, how have I clocked up almost three-score years and ten? I’ve not done nearly enough to warrant that length of time! I have memories of being at primary school, grammar school, and my effectively 7 years as a student, plus large chunks of the last 20 years. However there are huge parts of my working life which are an almost complete blank. I have no day-to-day memories, images, or recollections of what I was doing – at least far fewer than for other periods. Perhaps because it was tedious and boring?

Unlike many people, my brain doesn’t store video reels of incidents in my life. All I have is the occasional blurry snapshot with no soundtrack. My brain just can’t get its head round how this constitutes a lifetime.

Just keep banging those rocks together as long as possible!

amusements, memes

Ten Things: October

This year our Ten Things series, on the tenth of each month, is concentrating on things which are wackier than usual, if not by much. From odd road names to Christmas carols by way of saints and scientists. So here goes with October …

Ten Pieces of Femto Fiction

[Femto Fiction (or Micro-Micro Fiction) is that which, while looking like a short book title, with almost no imagination tells you the whole story. Genre of work in brackets.]

  1. Gothic Pricks [horror]
  2. Christmas Goose [erotica]
  3. Feel the Mistletoe [romance]
  4. A Strangely Beaked Bird [thriller]
  5. Educated Derelict [autobiography]
  6. Pubic Overtures [erotica] (right)
  7. Duck Shooting in Venice [autobiography]
  8. A Case of Yellow Haddock [detective]
  9. French Knickers [romance]
  10. Admiral Horatio Leftsmith [fiction]
amusements, science

Science Limerick

I’ve just come across this tetra-Limerick which I’d not seen before. It amused me today, in a science-y way …

It filled Galileo with mirth
To watch his two rocks fall to Earth.
He gladly proclaimed,
“Their rates are the same,
And quite independent of girth!”
 
Then Newton announced in due course
His own law of gravity’s force:
“It goes, I declare,
As the inverted square
Of the distance from object to source.”
 
But remarkably, Einstein’s equation
Succeeds to describe gravitation
As spacetime that’s curved,
And it’s this that will serve
As the planets’ unique motivation.
 
Yet the end of the story’s not written;
By a new way of thinking we’re smitten.
We twist and we turn,
Attempting to learn
The Superstring Theory of Witten!

Found at Brownielocks.

amusements, environment, history, links, medical, science

Monthly Links

Once more unto the breach, dear comrades, to bring you this month’s selection of links to items you may have missed the first time round. And an e-glass of e-ale to anyone who can knit the links into a coat of mail!

Science, Technology, Natural World

Let’s begin with another look at why wasps are so annoying, but yet so useful.

Oh and for anyone wanting to scare their visitors, you can buy a roughly five times life-size model of an Asian Giant Hornet (aka. “murder hornet”).

If you never understood why mathematics is so fascinating, take a look at odd perfect numbers. [LONG READ]

And changing topic again, scientists think they’ve found phosphine gas in Venus’ upper atmosphere, and say this could be a sign of life (albeit microbial life). Meanwhile Derek Lowe explains about phosphine but remains somewhat sceptical of the latest results.

Health, Medicine

The logistics around distribution of any vaccine (well any drug really) are complex, especially when one gets into the realm of Cold Chain Distribution.

But then we need to keep our feet in the real world as no vaccine will work by magic and return us to normality.

Girls: have you ever needed to pee standing up and envied us men our flexible hose? If so, the Shewee may be your friend.

Environment

Rewilding as an environment improvement method is taking time to get going, but not if one maverick Devon farmer has anything to do with it.

Social Sciences, Business, Law

So who thinks Scottish bank notes are legal tender in England? Spoiler: they aren’t! And what is legal tender anyway?

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

There’s some new archaeology at Pompeii which is uncovering more of its past.

Medieval sermons were one of the most effective and wide-reaching forms of propaganda, but that only works if they are in the vernacular. [LONG READ]

The people of medieval Europe were devoted to their dogs. [LONG READ]

Transport until the early part of the 20th century was largely dependent on the horse: either being ridden or pulling a wagon of some description. Here’s a look at horse transport in Victorian times.

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

Oliver Burkeman, writing his last regular column for the Guardian, talks about his eight secrets for a fulfilled life.

If you’re dreading a long, dark winter lockdown, then maybe the Norwegians have something for you.

So what does your cat mean by “miaow”? A Japanese vet is apparently earning a fortune telling people what their cats are saying. Personally I thought we had a fairly good idea!

Shock, Horror, Humour, Wow!

Magawa, an African giant pouched rat, has been awarded a gold medal for his work detecting landmines in Cambodia. I must say he’s a rather handsome animal, and well deserving of his apparently upcoming retirement.

And finally, what is the connexion between frozen shit and narcissists’ eyebrows? Yes, of course, it’s this year’s Ig Nobel prizes.

environment, science

Nuclear Power

Although I’ve not written about nuclear power for a long while, long-standing readers will know my conviction that we have to invest in nuclear technology. I see no other way in which we can generate sufficient electricity, even for reduced demand, from renewable resources – important though these are.

Now I would never pretend that nuclear power doesn’t have it’s challenges. Regardless of what type of reactor is chosen, the technology is hard, decommissioning is hugely expensive, and there is the problem of what to do with the nuclear waste. However these are largely soluble problems: see for instance my posts Nuclear Power Redux and Better Nuclear Power.

One thing nuclear doesn’t have, though, is an excess of deaths compared with any other power source. In fact nuclear power is the gold standard to be beaten.

Estimates from Europe Union, which account for immediate deaths
from accidents and projected deaths from exposure to pollutants.
(And this does not include fatality rates in countries like China where
cheap coal and poor regulation cause considerably more fatalities.)

A large part of the reluctance to embrace nuclear power is down to the fact that people are generally scared of it. Why? Because they can’t see it and they don’t understand it – so it is very scary! Back in the day people were frightened of electricity because they couldn’t see it and it appeared to be magic – see, for example, this from America in 1900.

It’s a bit like being in a strange, unlit, house overnight and hearing a very odd, creaky, noise. We’d all find that a bit scary. But if we can see the bedroom door swinging on its hinges in the draught it isn’t anywhere nearly as frightening.

So a couple of days ago I was interested to see a BBC News piece by their Chief Environment Correspondent, Justin Rowlatt, under the headline Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?. [See also this article from Harvard University (from which the above graphic is taken).]

In the article Rowlatt makes the case that nuclear energy is nothing like as dangerous as we think it is, even when we account for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima. He ends by saying:

But here’s the thing: if we were a bit less concerned about the risks of low levels of radiation then maybe we could make a more balanced assessment of nuclear power.

Especially given that coal-fired power stations routinely release more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear power stations, thanks to the traces of uranium and thorium found in coal.

And, since we are talking about worrying about the right things, let’s not forget the environment.

Taking a more balanced view on the risks of radiation might help all those anxious climate scientists I mentioned at the start of this piece sleep a bit easier in their beds at night.

I’ll leave it up to you to read the rest of the article.

personal

Horrible Times 14: Day 200

Well I promised I would write again at day 200 of Covid isolation, and here we are. That’s over 6 months of house arrest and confinement to barracks.

Well not quite, as I have been out beyond the front gate twice in the last month: on both occasions to go to the dentist to get a broken tooth fixed. And what a surreal experience that was, with the dentist and nurses all bedecked in space-suit style PPE. It was all approached very professionally and efficiently: obviously they’re finding it hard but they’re managing and seem able to be their usual cheerful selves (at least outwardly to patients). It’s good too that I’ve had the same excellent dentist for around … I can’t remember but it must be at least 15 years and maybe more. So we know each other well; I might have been rather more worried if I’d had to encounter someone totally new.

Back in the real world we’re now undoubtedly seeing the second wave of Covid-19 infections. I find this no surprise at all: restrictions have been lifted; the unthinking section of the population thinks it’s all over and have gone back to drinking and socialising; they also all went on holiday to Spain for more drinking and shagging, and to bring back more infections; and now the schools have gone back. Who would have guessed this was going to produce a second spike? Clearly not our apology for a government, who couldn’t find their way out of a wet paper bag – I doubt they could even lie their way out of said wet paper bag, at least not without managing to break the law or piss off everyone as well.

But enough of my ranting. Here are a few things (good and not so good) that have happened since my last report on day 150.

Good Not So Good
  • So far we’ve had half a dozen marrows from our 3 plants. Some have been stuffed and eaten, and a couple used to make chutney.
  • We’ve made 5 or 6 batches of chutney: a couple of apple, red tomato; marrow; plus a small batch of crab apple cheese. (Scroll back a few posts to find my recipes.)
  • The small number of apples on our new (container planted last winter) apple trees are ripening. I picked one a few days ago; it was delicious. Harvest time coming soon.
  • I’ve been doing lots of family history, trying to untangle knots back in the 17th and 18th centuries. That’s taken me down numerous fun rabbit holes, but solved few puzzles.
  • We’ve also had great fun putting together a Christmas quiz for the Anthony Powell Society Newsletter. It’s never all literary and includes lots of general knowledge style questions. And it’s always amusing to see what sneaky questions we can think up, especially as this one will be a competition.
  • I actually quite enjoy trips to the dentist (due to a combination of a really excellent dentist and interesting conversations) but it is a treat I, and my bank balance, could happily forego.
  • We lost all our tomato plants to some sort of fungal/viral pestilence: everything went black, almost overnight. It seems to have happened to a number of people round here this year. Although we’d had some fruit this was very annoying as there was a good crop of super fruit coming along.
  • And then there’s the pestilence which is the Box Tree Moth (they destroyed our two boxes last year); but the other week I had a dark morph in the study – really quite pretty
  • We’ve remained in quarantine; and it seems we will be for the foreseeable future. This is not helping my depression at all; I’ve been especially struggling for the last couple of weeks.
  • Which is why I’m continuing to fail at writing letter (well, emails) to friends an family – some of which I should have done months and months ago. But then I never was a great correspondent.
Box Tree Moth, Dark Morph
Box Tree Moth, Dark Morph; Greenford; 6 September 2020

So what next?

Well I reckon we’ll still be in lockdown at Christmas, by which time the flu season will be in full swing and everyone will be going stir-crazy and morose at the thought of a miserable Christmas. But before that I’ll try to report again on day 250, which will be mid-November and we’ll have a much better clue as to what is actually happening.

Meanwhile, be good and stay safe!

beliefs, books

Book Review: The Little Book of Humanism

Andrew Copson & Alice Roberts
The Little Book of Humanism: Universal Lessons on Finding Purpose, Meaning and Joy
Piatkus; 2020

It’s a long time since I’ve written a book review here. That doesn’t mean I’m not reading, but it does mean I’ve not managed to finish enough books to make a review worthwhile: like always there are many books on the go, and most are cast aside at the arrival of something new.

I would never claim to be a humanist. I probably am one, but I don’t profess to know enough about humanism to feel that’s what I am. Besides I try to avoid anything which wants me to believe in some creed, however loose it may be.

So I was motivated to read the recently published The Little Book of Humanism.

Let me say straight away that this book does what it says on the tin: it is a very basic guide to many of the ideas and beliefs behind humanism. Sadly though I found it tediously wanting. It came across to me as a series of would-be-inspirational quotes strung together with some pieces of text made up of platitudes and the obvious. I don’t know Andrew Copson, but I expect more of Alice Roberts – this may not be an academic work, but Roberts can do better than this.

I expected the book to make me stop and think; to present me with deep ideas about humanism. It didn’t. All I seemed to get was a feeling I was being told things which are patently obvious. I expected something with more “bite”, and something rather more formally construed.

As so often though, that is probably very unfair of me as the book likely isn’t intended for someone like me who has spent many years thinking about what they really do believe and their personal morality. It is, I suspect, much more aimed at those who’ve maybe heard of humanism, but don’t know anything about it and who feel disillusioned with mainstream religion. For those people it is probably quite a good route into humanism, without being a dogmatic text full of formal beliefs (which humanism really shouldn’t be anyway).

What also disappointed me was the quality of the production. The copy I have, while hard-bound, looks as if it is glued rather than stitched with the cover also too lightly attached. The content is printed on very rough, off-white paper which resembles thin blotting paper – that’s commendable if the paper is recycled, but the lack of finish to the paper, and the lack of brightness, does make the book a less enjoyable read. The actual text uses a mix of serif and sans serif typefaces, in a variety of point sizes: again something which irritates. I’m also not sure “little” is the right adjective; yes the book is the size of a small paperback but it’s quite thick and chunky; I wouldn’t call it pocketable. This is partly down to the modern fetish for extraneous white space; to quote Ambrose Bierce “the covers of this book are too far apart”. Overall the production looks cheap and as such is possibly not a good advertisement for the humanist movement.

Overall I was disappointed, but maybe unfairly so.

Overall Rating: ★★☆☆☆