A Gentleman's Domain

Meanwhile, as Count Bordovsky tried to seduce Lady Irma.....

2009-11-17T17:54:38-05:00

I see that Stephen King has published another novel. Well, it must be at least three weeks since his last one. Anyway, I saw it on the table by the door at Borders a couple of days ago. It’s called Under The Dome and like most of his books it’s a big, thick doorstop. I’ll no doubt buy it, and very likely enjoy it, when it comes out in paperback. I wonder what sort of blurb they’ll put on the paperback. It won’t be the same blurb as on the hardcover edition because there is no blurb at all. None. I’ve never seen that before. The back cover was bare, as were the inside front and back flaps. No summary of the story, no reviewer’s comment, no author bio and photo. Nothing. Maybe thy think that Stephen King’s name alone is publicity enough. Probably they are right – I’m sure the book will sell, but I do find that very pretentious indeed.

If you get a new credit card these days, one of your tasks is to choose what design you want on the front of it. Most banks offer a choice, varying from the patriotic (flags, eagles etc.) to the universal (moon, stars) by way of the environment (waterfalls, dolphins), the kitsch (kittens) and the irrational (signs of the zodiac). Some banks even allow you to have a photograph of your own on your card: yourself or a family group or you three-month old baby or your pet dog or your house. All very nice. But I just stick with the basic card with the bank’s corporate logo on it. I’m not being a curmudgeon – I just don’t see the point. Who is actually going to see the design on your card? Think about it. Your credit card sits in your wallet or purse or pocket, and when you use it you whip it out, swipe it through the reader (chip and pin technology has yet to arrive here) and then you put it back where you got it from. No one sees the picture. Yes, okay, waiters might, but since you give them your card by putting it inside the plastic folder they bring you your check in, they won’t see it till they are over at the cash desk. It’s not as though you and whoever you are paying are going to share a warm fuzzy moment as you share the pleasure of whatever design you have chosen. “Yes, I love dolphins.” “That’s right, I’m a typical Libra.” “That was a group photo taken at our family reunion last year. Not a very good one of me, because the card number goes right across my face, but you can see great-aunt Edna very well. Unfortunately, unlike the card, she has expired.” Luckily, no soul searching is needed to pick your American Express design. It’s fixed, though they do have varying backgrounds, but whether yours is green, gold or platinum is not simply a matter of your choice.

Here’s a thing. Did you know that if you pick twenty-five people at random, it is more probable than not that at least two of them will share the same birthday. In fact, even though it is not a mathematical certainty, it is a high probability. I have never understood that. With 365 possibilities (366 if you insist) I don’t see how this can be. Our mathematics teacher at school demonstrated it to us by going round the class asking our birthdates, and he hadn’t even got to the second row before he had a match. He explained to us exactly how this is so , in mathematical terms, but I am afraid that in my case it didn’t sink in. I’ll accept it, but I just don’t understand how it is so. I have come across it occasionally in books and elsewhere, and it still mystifies me. But yesterday, for fun and out of renewed curiosity, I put it to the test. I picked twenty-five of my Facebook friends at random and checked out each one’s birthday. Sure enough, I found a match long before I had examined all twenty-five profiles. Try it yourself. It will most probably work for you too, but don’t ask me how.
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Getting to the heart of the matter.

2009-11-05T21:39:04-05:00

I was at the doctor’s for a check-up yesterday, and all seems well, I’m glad to say. All the usual procedures – stethoscope, deep breath, say “ah”, cough, stand on the scale please, fill this, just a tiny little prick (in reference to taking a drop of blood from my fingertip, for the benefit of anyone who thought the doctor was being insulting and inaccurate). I also had an ultrasound of my heart.

I had had an EKG before, but never an ultrasound. An EKG, if you haven’t had one, is the procedure where they wire up your chest and then take readings on something that looks like a lie detector – lots of needles making inky tracks on a moving roll of paper. I found the whole thing interesting and relaxing when I had one, until the nurse, who was standing by the machine watching the readout, suddenly exclaimed “Oh, my God” I sat bolt upright, exclaiming “What’s wrong?” She replied: “My pen has leaked ink all over my jacket pocket.” I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved. Anyway, I digress. No EKG yesterday, but an ultrasound.

Now, I knew all about taking ultrasounds of pregnant women, to ensure that all is well inside -- in fact the first time I ever saw my daughter she was a grey shape among many on a cathode ray screen in a doctor’s office in London. What I wasn’t aware of is just how many applications ultrasounds have now, and are a much used alternative to X-Rays, without all that nasty radiation. So anyway, I let the technician stick a few electrodes to my chest, lay on my left side and he put what looked like a small electric shaver against my skin. There was no sensation at all, other than a slight metallic coldness.

I was facing the wall, away from the machine itself so I couldn’t see the screen – no clumsy cathode ray tubes these days, but a laptop with a lot of extra buttons. But I could hear my heart very well. Now, I always thought, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that a heart sounded pretty much like hearts do on TV dramas – a steady beat, not quite like a drum, but certainly sharp and percussive. Not so! A beating heart sounds like someone walking across a very muddy field in boots. There is far more sloshing and squelching than beating involved. In fact, I was alarmed for a moment. “Is it supposed to sound like that?” I asked the technician. “Yup!” he replied.

I reflected that if I were an ultrasound technician I might have a metronome concealed behind the laptop so that the patient could hear a steady beating, and feel reassured that this was a proper heart-like sound. And if I felt in whimsical mood I could reach out and stop the metronome and at the same time say “Uh oh!” What laughs the patients and I could share together!
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It is torture. End of story.

2009-10-30T19:41:52-04:00

This has been around for a bit, but here it is for the benefit of those who haven’t seen it before.

I’ve been an admirer of a lot of Christopher Hitchens’s writing, and I agree with many, though certainly not all, of his opinions. He is a highly entertaining and enlightening humanist and anti-theist writer and debater, among other things. He admits to having been a Trotskyist in his youth, though like many of the radical left has mellowed somewhat with age. To the surprise of many, he is an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq. That does not mean that he sacrifices his other values. He was critical of the practice of torture by waterboarding, and he arranged to be waterboarded himself, to see what it was like. Ths shows what happened, and he gives his own conclusions afterwards.
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He has challenged other political commentators, notably Sean Hannity, to try it themselves, but as far as I know, no one has dared.
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Think again, lady!

2009-10-22T19:06:45-04:00

Here's a wonderful, almost sad, example of self delusion. I don't know who wrote the letter but it is pretty certain from what she says that she is from blue-collar, silent minority, Middle America. I've no idea how it all ended, when the mother realized what was what and had to use the G-word to describe her son. I hope it turned out well -- I suspect it didn't.

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Two Die At Spiritual Retreat Taking New Age Quack Cures

2009-10-09T19:15:52-04:00

It is incredible that in this day and age, people still believe in this sort of unproven, superstitious drivel. This place apparently provided '...healing carried out by harnessing the consciousness of a dolphin, or "vortex experiences"...in which participants "experience our human energy system interacting with the earth".' And it is not incredible at all that there are people waiting to take large sums of money from the gullible for providing these "cures". To counteract this sort of crap, there is The Enemy Of Reason which is well worth watching all the way through if you can. The first episode starts at http://bit.ly/KQ7fu

A Strange Prohibition

2009-09-26T21:44:51-04:00

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But what if I want to buy some on Tuesday?
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Four "classic" books

2009-09-24T16:41:06-04:00

My lovely friend Julie at Thinking About… posed an interesting question. If you had to choose four books published before 1970 (an arbitrary but harmless date), what four would you choose? This was actually easier than I thought. Sadly rejecting

Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Seven Minutes by Irving Wallace
Diary Of A Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith
and even My Early Life by Winston Churchill,

I decided on the following:

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Thank You, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
The Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham
Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser

Agreement or arguments, anyone?
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Hooray for Dawkins!

2009-09-18T16:23:57-04:00

An excellent speech and, as usual, highly entertaining.

Thursday Thirteen #89

2009-09-16T22:13:22-04:00

Last week I listed thirteen movies I have never seen. This week it's TV programs. They are all pretty mainstream, and all are successful, but I have never felt any inclination to watch them. They neither interest nor attract, so I don't bother.

Thirteen TV Shows I Have Never Seen

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American Idol

CSI (any of them)

The Biggest Loser

Entourage

Oprah

Will And Grace

Numb3rs

Survivor

Grey's Anatomy

The View

Bones

Southland

Everybody Loves Raymond
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Thursday Thirteen #88

2009-09-10T02:04:02-04:00

Either due to disinclination, lethargy or lack of opportunity, here are

Thirteen Movies I Have Never Seen

E.T.

Terminator

The Princess Diaries

Apocalypse Now

The Sound Of Music

The Passion Of The Christ

The Lion King

Reservoir Dogs

The Wizard of Oz

Gandhi

Toy Story

It's A Wonderful Life

Dances With Wolves

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Dutch talk show host loses it

2009-08-30T17:14:30-04:00

This is Dutch talk show host Erik Hartman losing it during a live broadcast of his show "Boomerang" -- I should say, former talk show host because he was fired after this incident. I have heard that this was faked, but I hope it wasn't. Make up your own minds. Either way, it's funny!
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Designer Offenses

2009-08-23T18:26:23-04:00

I see in the news that the French and Italian governments are proposing to prosecute tourists who buy counterfeit designer goods. I’m not sure if this means that you will be prosecuted if you buy counterfeit goods in Paris or Rome or Milan or wherever, or if you’ll get nicked at the airport when you ome back from the Far East with a fake Gucci handbag. Either way, it’s what we in the real world call bloody stupid.

My own view had always been that people who spend hundreds, or even thousand, of dollars (or pounds or euros) on something because it has its label on the outside, have far more money than sense. Guess what – your five thousand dollar watch and my twenty-five dollar watch both tell the same time. You just stand to lose a lot more when all that wasted money you have strapped to your wrist gets lost or stolen. On Judge Judy recently (yes, I watch that show every day and I’m not ashamed to admit it – much) there was a case of a young man who had a Luis Vuitton bag stolen in a nightclub. It was worth fifteen hundred dollars. What could that overpriced bag do that one a tenth of the cost couldn’t – except proclaim the owner as an idiot?

We often hear that counterfeiters are costing the fashion and jewellery industries tens of millions of dollars a year. I often wonder how this figure is reached. I bought a fake Rolex in Bangkok many years ago for the equivalent of about twenty-five dollars. The real thing would have cost me ten thousand dollars. Now, does Rolex claim that they were swindled out of ten thousand dollars when I bought the knock off? Do they really believe that if I have not been able to buy a fake, I would have bought a real one? Bollocks! If I ever even contemplate spending that sort of money on a watch, please have me locked up in the nearest loony bin.

People who buy fake designer goods do so for fun, devilment, many reasons. What they are not doing is buying fakes when they have the money and inclination to buy the genuine articles. People who want t buy fakes, buy fakes. People who want to spend a fortune on genuine designer goods will do so. They are two separate types of person, and never the twain shall meet. That’s why these proposed laws are a stupid idea, and it seems I am not alone in thinking this. One thing you can be sure of – the enormous counterfeiting industries in East Asia won’t even blink.
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Unmasking oppression

2009-08-16T03:26:21-04:00

I see the French have come up with another good idea: banning the burka. It seems consistent with their current national mindset. They have, after all, banned all religious symbols in schools and even though France is a country with a large population of observant catholics, they do seem to have the right idea in the main – that apart from in church on Sundays, if you have to do religion then you do it privately at home, like stamp collecting or cake baking, and you shut up about it.

So a woman in pubic in a burka runs contrary to that. The surprising thing is how many people whom one would have thought would object, seem curiously silent, or at least mealy mouthed. If it’s an ethic custoim, apparently, it’s racist to criticise it. No western democracy would stand for the idea of seeing women in public wearing handcuffs and keg irons, with signs round their necks saying “My husband can rape me with impunity. My husband may assault me with impunity. My husband may abandon me any time he wishes.” But for some reason when they do wear this sign, i.e. the burka, the liberals vanish, the feminists find something else to occupy their thoughts. I find it mystifying. A woman in Somalia was sentenced to be flogged for wearing trousers. I would have thought that the protests from the west would have been deafening. But no, just a grumble or two. For those of us who are revolted by this, it’s very frustrating.

Pat Condell says it much better than I can.
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The Joy of Swearing

2009-08-07T19:20:40-04:00

My lovely friend Tina from Texas posted this at her site and I liked it so much I thought I'd help circulate it here. Needless to say, I agree with everything Stephen Fry says. Fucking brilliant!