Zen Mischief

Wat I did Read at Skool

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:15:00 +0000

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.

My friend Katy's post the other day about what children read at school got me to thinking about what I had to read at grammar school.

Well, sort of.

It was more like what I didn't read.

Because I have always been a slow reader (am I 10% dyslexic?) I never managed to keep up with what we were (supposed to be) reading. If we were given homework of "Read the next chapter of [insert book]" which was supposed to take half an hour, it invariably took me well over an hour — sometimes two — and I still didn't get all the nuances I was supposed to. So I was always trying to finish reading chapter 3 while the class were discussing chapter 5 (which of course I'd not read).

Add to that a level of terminal boredom with just about everything we read — I just couldn't see the point of this tedium — and it's a wonder I managed to pass GCE English Literature at all! Nevertheless I was at the top of the second set for English. I wanted to go into the top set (they did more interesting stuff) but rightly (in retrospect) my teacher said I couldn't and that I would struggle there.

So what did I have to read?

I know that for 'O' level I did:

CS Forrester, The Gun (about which I remember less than nothing)
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
And some collection of poetry including a load of crappy ballads (Sir Patrick Spens, et al.) which I still hate with a vengeance; Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which I loved; Keats's The Eve of St Agnes, which I didn't understand; Masefield's Cargoes, which is delightful; and I remember not what else.

The top set for English did some of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales instead of the CS Forrester. My teacher was right; I would have struggled with this however much I wanted to do it.

Lower down the school we did most of the classics, which I hated without exception. I recall having to read:

Dickens: Great Expectations, Pickwick Papers and A Christmas Carol
Hardy: I think Far from the Madding Crowd and probably The Mayor of Casterbridge
Buchan: The Thirty-Nine Steps
Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre
Shakespeare: Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice
And a continual selection of poetry mostly from Palgrave's godforsaken Golden Treasury which included delights like Hiawatha and Sorab and Rustum (yeuch!).

What else we read I have no clue. It has all been long forgotten, which is probably as well.

Looking back about the only bits I at all enjoyed were Pickwick Papers, the first half of Julius Caesar, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Cargoes.

To this day, with the exception of the above handful, I cannot read any of this stuff and haven't returned to it. School successfully destroyed all the so-called classics for me permanently. In fact I can, even now, read very little fiction or poetry; what I have read and enjoyed I have found for myself since leaving, and despite, school. I find life-writing and non-fiction much more amenable.

I'm still a very slow reader and have never properly mastered speed-reading, which can be a major handicap.

Do It! ... Ooooo ... More!

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:05:00 +0000

This week's photography challenge over at The Gallery is for us to write our photographic resolutions for this year.

Well as most here will know already, I don't do New Year resolutions because I see then asa self-fulfilling failure.

But that doesn't mean I don't have things I want to achieve. So what are they?

Basically this year I just want to get out and take more photographs, more often. And keep pushing he boundaries with what I try.

I'm not doing very well at it so far, but I have hopes that I might still achieve it. Can't do much less than I have so far this year!

Thoughts for a Dull Week in January

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:34:00 +0000

Even more than critical thinking or time management, what the white-collar economy requires from most workers is the ability to spend the bulk of their waking hours completing tasks of no inherent importance or interest to them, to show up every day, and to not complain overmuch about it.
[Christopher R Beha]

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
[Terry Pratchett]

A judge said that all his experience, both as counsel and judge, had been spent sorting out the difficulties of people who, upon the recommendation of people they did not know, signed documents which they did not read, to buy goods they did not need, with money they had not got.
[Gilbert Harding, died 1960]

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.
[Henry James]

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
[Attributed to Marilyn Monroe]

In Case You Missed ...

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:27:00 +0000

A few links to news and interest items you may have missed. Let's do the serious stuff first.

First off, following my tirade of 10 days ago about the proposals to change the way we keep time, here are a couple of items explaining the background to our calendar systems and why leap seconds do actually matter. One is from Scientific American blogs: The End of the Time of Earth: Why Does the Leap Second Matter?. The second is from Discover Magazine bogs: Wait just a (leap) second.

I also came across this piece on the use of seismology for forensic purposes, eg. monitoring nuclear tests. Interesting that some seismometers captured the Costa Concordia hitting the rocks.

And now for something more sublime but equally mind-boggling: some pictures of amazing libraries.

Multi-tools have a geek following. But despite what we might think they aren't new and weren't invented by the Swiss Army. The first documented ones were used by the Romans and they have developed ever since. Here's a selection from the first recorded Roman example right up to last week.

And finally from the sublime to the totally, well, crazy. Protect Your Cats And Mice With Armour. How brilliant is that!

Where's the Biscuit Barrel?

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:39:00 +0000

Kate's Listography this week poses a simple question: What are you five favourite biscuits?

Well, because of my diabetes I'm not really supposed to eat biscuits — but I do! So here are some of my all-time favourites.

Almond Biscotti. Preferably home-made, by me.

Wagon Wheels. But they have to be the original, decent size version of my childhood and not the travesty that we are palmed off with these days.

Any Wafer Biscuit. But better if covered in chocolate! Why are these always the first to disappear from any biscuit selection?

Garibaldi. Yes, those "dead fly" biscuits. I loved them as a kid, especially the slight chewiness of the fruit.

Dark Chocolate Digestives. Well actually almost anything covered in dark chocolate. Milk chocolate will do at a pinch, but dark chocolate is so superior!

Time for tea and biscuits!

I haz not Cheezburgr

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:44:00 +0000

There's a small piece in the February issue of Scientific American which reflects my views on the necessity of revising our agricultural policies.

I reprint it here as it is heavily based on a SciAm weblog post by David Wogan and largely quotes from an earlier weblog post by Waldo Jaquith both of which are in the public domain.

The Impracticality of a Cheeseburger

A fast-food staple reveals the pros and cons of industrialization

What does the cheeseburger say about our modern food economy? A lot, actually. Over the past several years blogger Waldo Jaquith (http://waldo.jaquith.org) set out to make a cheeseburger from scratch, to no avail.

"Further reflection revealed that it's quite impractical — nearly impossible — to make a cheeseburger from scratch," he writes. "Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in spring and fall. Large mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year and would inherently involve omitting some core cheeseburger ingredients. It would be wildly expensive — requiring a trio of cows — and demand many acres of land. There's just no sense in it".

That the cheeseburger — our delicious and comforting every man food — didn't exist 100 years ago is a greasy, shiny example of all that is both right and wrong with our modern food economy. Thanks to fertilizers, genetically modified crops, concentrated farming operations and global overnight shipping, much of the world was lifted out of starvation (but not malnutrition, ironically enough) because it could finally grow sufficient quantities of food with decreasing labor inputs.

But these same advances that allow food to be grown out of season and in all corners of the globe contribute to a whole host of environmental problems, from deforestation and nitrogen loading of water sources (and the resulting dead zones) to the insane quantities of water being consumed.

The "industrialization of food," as author Paul Roberts puts it, is a relentless cycle driven by razor-thin price margins that force food processors to adopt more advanced techniques to produce even more food at lower prices. This system will only be exacerbated as food demand increases. Recently David Tilman and Jason Hill of the University of Minnesota released a study anticipating that global food demand could double by 2050. It's doubtful that our current, impractical food economy can sustain that demand.

Convince me it isn't 1st April

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:22:00 +0000

The following is from New Scientist of 14 January 2012, and not 1 April!

One minute with ... Isak Gerson

The spiritual leader of the world's newest religion, Kopimism, explains why he thinks copying information is holy

Tell me about this new religion, Kopimism.
It was founded about 15 months ago. We believe that information is holy and that the act of copying is holy.

Why make a religion out of file-sharing?
We see ourselves as a religious group, so a church seemed like a good way of organising ourselves.

Was it hard to become an official religion?
We have had this faith for several years and one day we thought, why not try and get it registered? It was quite difficult. The authorities were quite dogmatic with their formalities. It took us three tries and more than a year to get recognised.

What criteria do you have to meet to become an official religion?
The law states that to be a religion you have to be an organisation that practises moments of prayer or meditation in your rituals.

What are the Kopimist rituals?
We have a part of our religious practices where we worship the value of information by copying it.

You call this "kopyacting". Do you actually meet up in a building, like a church, to undertake these rituals?
We do meet up, but it doesn't have to be in a physical room. It could be on a server or a web page too.

Do certain symbols have special significance in Kopimism?
Yes. There is the "kopimi" logo, which is a K written inside a pyramid, a symbol used online to show you want to be copied. But there are also symbols that represent and encourage copying, for example, "CTRL+V" and "CTRL+C".

Why is information, and sharing it, so important to you?
Information is the building block of everything around me and everything I believe in, Copying it is a way of multiplying the value of information.

What's your stance on illegal file-sharing?
I think that the copyright laws are very problematic, and at least need to be rewritten. I would suggest getting rid of most of them.

How many church members are there?
Around 3000. To join you just have to read our values and if you agree with them, then you can register on our website, at kopimistsamfundet.se

Is there a deity associated with Kopimism?
No, there isn't.

Does Kopimism have anything to say about the afterlife?
Not really. As a religion we are not so focused on humans.

It could be a digital afterlife.
Information doesn't really have a life. I guess it can be forgotten, but as long as it is copied it won't be.

PROFILE. Isak Gerson is a philosophy student at Uppsala University, Sweden. Together with Gustav Nipe — a member of Sweden's Pirate party — and others he has founded the Church of Kopimism, which last week was recognised as a religion by the Swedish government.

Families

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:40:00 +0000

Yesterday I ended up spending a large part of the day immersed in my family history. It all started because Noreen (who has done at least as much work on my family as her own) noticed that one of the files we had from my mother had a birth certificate in it.

We have three crates of stuff from my mother, much of which is organised as a family timeline and history in ring binders, all of which has been refiled. But we realised we hadn't been through the miscellaneous files for certificates, which I prefer to file separately. We started on the crate of miscellaneous files thinking we'd find a couple of certificates. We found a couple of dozen!

In entering all the certificate data into my family tree app I came across a death certificate for my g-g-g-grandfather, one James Gambridge (born ca.1789, died 1857) which records his occupation as "Cook on Her Majesty's Ship Victory". No this is too good to be true! He would have been about 16 at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar (in 1805). Is it possible he served under Nelson at Trafalgar?

Answer: No.

The crew (an incredible 850 officers and men) on HMS Victory at Trafalgar is well documented. And James Gambridge isn't amongst them. (Nor is there a James Cambridge, the 'G' often being mis-transcribed as a 'C'.) Now one shouldn't always believe what is given even on certificates, and this rang alarm bells.

Yet I knew James Gambridge's occupation was given as "Gunner" on his daughter Sarah Ann's (my maternal g-g-grandmother) marriage certificate (in 1848). So maybe he was an enlisted sailor. Hmmm ... more work required.

Then, talking over dinner, Noreen made an almost throw-away comment: "Of course there's also Leading Seaman Albert Edward T Hicks of Dover who on the 1901 census is shown as serving on HMS Victory at Portsmouth". What?

Now the Hickses are my father's mother's family and, yes, they come from Dover. "Oh yes", says Noreen, "he's one of yours".

Now my g-g-grandfather was a certain Jabez Hicks of Dover, sometime mariner. And we know his son James Albert (1847-1888; not in my direct line) was also a mariner. Noreen is even more fascinated by this family than I am and has established that James Albert had a son Albert Edward Thomas (b. 1875). Both James Albert and his wife died quite young and it seems that the five surviving children were parcelled out around their aunts and uncles (who were likely also their god-parents).

Young Albert Edward was sent to live with his uncle Edward Israel Hicks and on the 1891 census is at the Royal Naval School at Greenwich. So much can be established from census records etc. (Albert Edward Hicks is quite common as names go, but Albert Edward T Hicks isn't.) And hence Noreen's discovery of Albert Edward T Hicks on HMS Victory at Portsmouth on the 1901 census.

This I now start to think I don't believe.

So let's see what, if anything, the National Archives come up with. God bless this new-fangled internet thingy 'cos I can do this from home on a Saturday evening!

So after a bit of grubbing around — and much swearing at the awful slowness of the National Archives' website — lo and behold I can find a Naval service record for Albert Edward Thomas Hicks of Dover. And the document is available for download (for the cost of a pint of beer).

He joined up for 12 years on his 18th birthday in December 1893 as a ship's boy. He eventually retired from the Navy in October 1919 as a Petty Officer on HMS Lupin (almost 26 years service). He served several tours on HMS Victory (as well as, inter alia, HMS Hood (1891) and HMS Pembroke) and throughout the First World War. Absolutely amazing.

But following the same pattern I cannot find any service record for James Gambridge — and all the records are supposed to be there. One last desperate effort: let's just do a general search for him, forget about targeting naval records. Wow! And there is a James Gambridge who served in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines between 1804 and 1839. Now this doesn't quite fit as quoted ages etc. don't properly match and I don't yet have the full document (it isn't one that's online) to check it all. But yes, it may be a possible fit.

I never knew I had forebears in the Navy, let alone dreamt that they may have served on HMS Victory (albeit not at Trafalgar). And now I find I may had had two such. And both sides of the family. Wow!

Now I need to find more about my paternal grandfather's service in WWI and WWII, which isn't proving easy. I know he served as RAF barrage balloon ground crew in WWII. And in WWI he was a conscientious objector but volunteered to serve in the RAMC as a stretcher bearer at the front. How brave is that!

Reasons to be Grateful: 10

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Experiment, week 10. This week's five things which have made me happy or for which I'm grateful.

Sleep. I like my sleep; I always have done. But for some reason my sleep pattern seems to be easily disrupted these days with too many nights when I either can't get to sleep or, more often, when I wake up in the wee small hours and can't get back to sleep. But this week I have had several good sleeps to make up for the bad ones, and I feel so much better for it.
Central Heating. Last weekend our central heating boiler decided to stop working. Although we have a warm house, boy did it cool down quickly. But we survived; indeed it took both of us back to our childhoods in unheated houses when one heated one room and were glad to snuggle down in bed and get warm. And fortunately we have a backup immersion heater (so there was always piping hot water) and a gas fire in the front room so we could heat that room and watch TV accompanied by two cats and two laptops. Anyway the boiler got fixed during the week and it's great to have an all-round warm house again — I was surprised how quickly the house did warm up too.
Jake. Earlier in the week we went to see the Patron of the Anthony Powell Society. I knew his cat, Jake, had been under the weather recnetly but was gald to see he was back to his old self. Jake like attention. He also likes sitting on people. Not on their laps but draped across their chest and shoulders. I think I spent half the time we were there with this large tabby cat draped in vrious poses across my torso.
Prof. Alice Roberts. As I posted on Friday I'm delighted that Alice Roberts has been appointed as Professor of Public Engagement in Science at University of Birmingham. Yes, OK, I'll admit it: I think Alice is very sexy. She is also an excellent scientist and a brilliant communicator so this is a well-deserved appointment.
HMS Victory and the National Archives. I'm going to write a separate post about this, so come back later for another instalment.

Pasta with Bacon & Tomato

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:46:00 +0000

Here's another quick, easy and almost infinitely adaptable teatime recipe. This makes a dry-ish pasta dish as there is nothing except the reduced tomatoes to make any sauce.

I remember my mother doing this in a frying pan when I was a kid and the only pasta available was quick cook macaroni.

Use suitable quantities for the number of people being fed and how hungry they are.

Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes

You will need ...

Pasta, preferably fresh
Bacon, cut into 1cm wide strips
Onion
Garlic, more or less to taste
Tomatoes, one or two per person, fresh but over-ripe is fine
Olive Oil
Fresh Herbs of your choice, if available
Black Pepper
Parmesan Cheese

This is what you do ...

Put the pasta on to cook. When it's done drain and put it aside to keep warm. (You can cook the pasta while the tomato/bacon cook if you like but that's too much for my simple mind!)
While the pasta cooks chop the onion, garlic, bacon, herbs and tomatoes.
In one pan cook the tomato in a small amount of oil. You want it to start cooking down and beginning to fall apart; you don't want it very wet. If it does too quickly then just take it off the heat.
In another pan sauté the onion and garlic in some oil until the onion is translucent.
Then add the bacon to the onion and continue frying.
When the bacon is cooked to your liking add the tomato, herbs, some pepper and the pasta.
Stir it all together and cook for another few minutes to allow the flavours to mingle and ensure everything is hot through.
Serve with the grated/flaked Parmesan Cheese and a robust red wine.

Notes ...

Like most of my other recipes you can adapt this almost infinitely. For instance leave out the tomatoes and add mushrooms along with the bacon. Or you can use spinach instead of tomatoes.
Bacon offcuts work well for this.
You can substitute prawns, anchovies, smoked salmon, Parma ham or even kidney beans for the bacon. In fact I often do this without the tomato and with prawns and lemon instead of bacon.
If using fish then you might want to add some lemon juice and/or zest.
If you want this really dry then leave out the tomatoes.
Short pasta works better as I find spaghetti and linguine are difficult to stir well into the mixture. Fusilli or macaroni work well.

Good News Day

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:29:00 +0000

In its own little way today is a good news day ...

First I noticed that yesterday the International Telecommunication Union have been unable to agree the change to abandon leap seconds (see my post here) and a decision has been postponed until at least 2015. Hopefully that will give some time for sense to prevail.

Then today it has been announced that the parliamentary bill to move the UK's clocks forward an hour permanently (well for a three year trial) has run out of time and is now unlikely to happen. (See my much earlier post about GMT here.)

But perhaps best of all, courtesy of Facebook and YouTube, I learn that one of my "heroes", the most excellent Dr Alice Roberts has just been appointed as Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. While this has to be a loss for the medical profession it is a brilliant appointment which is well deserved. There's nothing on the news channels yet, but I'm sure there will be. Alice joins an illustrious band of UK scientists including, inter alia, (the much hated by me) Richard Dawkins, mathematician Marcus du Sautoy and physicist Jim Al-Khalili who all hold/have held Chairs in the Public Engagement or Understanding of Science.

Time to crack open ... a mug of tea! :-)

You've Got What?!?!?!

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:04:00 +0000

One of my less endearing qualities is a lay-scientist's interest in emerging infectious diseases (of plants and animals). And as such I follow ProMED which disseminates reports of these things from around the world to the scientific community.

And are there some strange and amusingly named diseases out there. So I was amused, but not surprised, this morning to see a report of Wobbly Possum Disease in New Zealand. If you wrote it in a novel, or indeed a comedy script, no-one would believe it! But what would you call a disease which makes possums, well, wobbly?

Others that always amuse me for their names are Astrakhan Spotted Fever (which affects humans), Flaccid Trunk Disease (of elephants), Lime Witches' Broom Phytoplasma (affecting citrus trees) and O'nyong-nyong Fever (also affecting humans).

Yes, it's a strange world we live in!

Without Glasses My Eyes are Out of Focus

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:22:00 +0000

This was taken for Eyes, this week's theme for The Gallery.

I've decided I need something to keep me thinking about photography, and The Gallery seems a good way as it provides a weekly theme and is weblog orientated.

January Sunrise

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:18:00 +0000

Sunrise yesterday, Tuesday 17 January, over west London as seen from our study window.

Click the image for a larger version
For those familiar with the Greenford area that's Horsenden Hill just peeking over the houses on the right.

Keep Calm and Drink Up

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:25:00 +0000

One of the many contents of my Christmas Stocking was a small book called Keep Calm and Drink Up. It is a collection of quotations and aphorisms about drink — mostly alcoholic drink, of course.

Amongst the more delightfully amusing and/or thought-provoking entries were the following.

The British have a remarkable talent for keeping calm, even when there is no crisis.
[Franklin P Jones]

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth.
[George F Burns]

Rum, noun: generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
[Ambrose Bierce]

I never drink water; that is the stuff that rusts pipes.
[WC Fields]

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.
[Galileo]

There can't be good living where there is not good drinking.
[Benjamin Franklin]

Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.
[Arnold Schwarzenegger]

The greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer ... the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.
[Dave Barry]

Social Nudity: Follow-up on TV Programme

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:16:00 +0000

Following up on my snippet alerting people to My Daughter the Teenage Nudist there's an interesting post by Alex, seen topless in Manchester in the film on that experience. Frankly I thought the attitude of the policeman involved was disgraceful and that a formal complaint would not have been out of order: he was arrogant, uncommunicative and inflexible specially considering that nothing illegal had taken (or was obviously about to take) place. Whatever his personal view may have been, at best he didn't portray the police in a good light.

More power to Alex for taking the stance she did — and indeed to everyone for taking part in what was a well balanced film with personal attitudes both pro and con social nudity being expressed. More power too to Channel 4 for making and broadcasting the programme, and to British Naturism for facilitating it.

If you missed the original programme, My Daughter the Teenage Nudist is still available on 4oD.

Reasons to be Grateful: 9

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:23:00 +0000

Experiment, week 9. This week's five things which have made me happy or for which I'm grateful.

Birthday Wishes. It was my birthday earlier this week. I've now had 61 of them. Making a big thing of birthdays is not something that's in our family tradition. So I'm not one for getting huge bundles of birthday cards. But I was touched by how many of my friends on Facebook remembered and wished me well. Thanks, everyone!
Daffodils. I'll probably say this again several times over the coming weeks, but daffodils are one of my favourite flowers (as long as they don't come in shades of pink!). And I noticed on Friday that our local supermarket had the first spring daffs in: small yellow and orange narcissi. Delightful. And a reminder that Spring can't be too far away!
Frosty Mornings. The weather here in west London has been unseasonably mild all winter; more like March than January. But in the last few days it has definitely gotten colder. It was very nice to go out yesterday morning in bright, clear sunny weather following a hard frost.
London Taxis. The London black cab driver generally gets a bad press — but rarely from me. I'm a Londoner and although I have a reasonable knowledge, for a layman, of what's where in central London I have to admire the London cabbie's knowledge of everything. I know they have to work hard to learn it all, but I really don't know how they ever manage it! An of course many never do manage to pass "the knowledge". I appreciate their skill every time I get in a London taxi — and that was three times yesterday!
Freedom Pass. For those who don't live in London, this is the London "bus pass scheme" for geriatrics. I finally got mine a few weeks before Christmas, but it was really only yesterday that I started to appreciate what an excellent scheme it is. Not only do you get free bus travel, and (mostly) free tube travel but also much of the rail network in Greater London is also free outside peak hours. And it also covers local buses across most of the rest of the country. Brilliant!

And, for once, there's a list with no mention of food at all.

Listography: 5 Tips for Bloggers

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:01:00 +0000

Kate's Listography this week is for us bloggers: she asks us to write about our top five tips learned so far on our blogging journey. OK, so here are five top tips ...

1. Write about whatever grabs you. It's your blog, you can write about anything you like and in any way you like. But it will be most successful, and enjoyable, if you write about things that grab you, that interest you. Don't write about something just because you think you should. Your passion, or lack of it, will come through in your writing and that'll affect your readers interest. And writing about things that interest you will give the blog your personal stamp. It will also keep you interested and writing. If you find a niche market along the way, so well and good.

2. Write readably. Be careful with your style. What you write needs to be readable and intelligible. But the style it doesn't have to be formal; probably better if it isn't. Don't write long meandering sentences that your readers can't follow — nor long meandering posts! Don't ramble: make sure your argument is coherent, concise and developed. Style variations and surprises are useful, but don't overdo them. Like this! See!

3. Think about your audience. Who are you writing for? What message are you trying to get across? I find that as I write a blog post I'm always writing it "for" someone specific; not always the same person: a particular friend, my wife, even myself. That will help you develop and angle your story; and it gives the writing a more personal and readable edge. This, for instance, I am writing with Kate in mind: 'cos she set the challenge and I know she'll read it. At other times I will be writing for a specific friends. And there will be times when you are writing for yourself: as a way to help you develop your ideas — that's fine as long as you don't always do it and you know when you are doing it.

(Of course, if you're writing a formal entry, say a scientific article, you may need to write more formally and in the third person. That's fine if that's your niche. But it isn't for most of us.)

4. Try to think up snappy titles. There are two aspects here. The title of your blog itself and the titles of the individual posts. Your blog needs to be called something memorable and informative. "Fred's Blog" doesn't help anyone. "Blue Cats in Custard" at the very least is arresting and makes people curious. It's all about marketing.

The second aspect is something I consider I'm not very good at: snappy titles for posts. The post's title is the first thing someone will read, and if it doesn't grab them they may read no further. So the title, and the first sentence, need to grab their attention as well as providing some clues about what follows. Titles also help the search engines index you, so people will be more likely to find you. If they're amusing too then so much the better.

5. Design. Good design is paramount. If your page doesn't appeal to people they won't read it more than once. Keep it clean and uncluttered. But also try to make it some reflection of you. You don't need a designer to do this for you — just a bit of time to fiddle around with the various style combinations your blog hosting service offers. Personally I don't like loads of white space, fancy fonts or twee backgrounds. Develop a design (it may take time) and stick to it. Use one typeface you like and stick to it — except for occasional emphasis. Restrict variations in font size and weight. Avoid flashing things, pop-up boxes and adverts (especially ones you can't control): they all distract and annoy the reader. Occasional pictures in your posts help break up chunks of text and provide some context and interest. But don't overdo the pictures: more than two or three big images and they should be put somewhere like Flickr and linked (using thumbnails if necessary).

Bonus Item 1. Don't expect instant success. If you track the number of hits you get to your blog you can get an idea of whether you're going in the right direction. But don't expect thousands of hits a day to happen instantly. Unless you have a lot of luck, a large advertising budget or a major sponsor people will take time to find you. Just keep writing. Encourage people who respond to comments. And, if you're doing it right, slowly your audience will grow.

Bonus Item 2. Re-read what you've written before you post it. Check your spelling and ensure it all makes sense. Bad writing is one of the biggest turn-offs of all.

So there you are: seven top blogging tips. Hmmm ... maybe I'd better take some of them to heart myself! :-)

In Case You Missed It ...

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 12:10:00 +0000

Links to a selection of the curious and interesting items you may have missed in the last week or so.

Do You Have Free Will? How can we know?

Heroes of the Hot Zone: pen portraits of some of the guys who are trying to clean up Fukushima.

Waterstones ditches apostrophe. English must be under threat when a bookshop ignores good grammar and makes it's possessive Waterstones's which is worse!

OK, here's one for the mathematicians out there: 153 and narcissistic numbers. I want to know how they've proved what the biggest such number is.

Here are some seriously stunning 100 year old colour photographs of Russia (see right).

Difficult to work out here who is the madder: Amish men jailed over reflective triangle dispute.

Cats occasionally like all sorts of unsuitable things. Apparently some even like mushrooms.

And finally, just to prove it is worth goig to the gym ... Scientists name rare horse fly after Beyonce "in honour of its impressive golden behind".

My Heritage is Under Threat

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:10:00 +0000

Yet again those dastardly Jonnie Foreigners want to slaughter my heritage. This time they're after destroying Greenwich Mean Time.

They're not content that our stupid government want to move us onto European time (equivalent to Summer Time) — permanently an hour adrift from real "astronomical time". Oh no!

Now the scientific community want to abandon good old GMT completely and replace it with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)**.

But wait! Isn't UTC the same as GMT?

Well no, actually. Not as currently defined. Although it looks the same at the moment, the proposal appears to be to do away with leap seconds (of which there have been 24 in the last 40 years) which are inserted into UTC to help our electronic time keep track with the actual motion of the planet. Inserting leap seconds is a pain and a technical challenge, but not an insuperable challenge. But the proposal is in favour of apparent simplicity: to abandon leap seconds in favour of some currently undefined (and doubtless cocked up) solution in years to come when our modern atomic clocks have drifted too far from astronomical reality.

But surely GMT, when originally defined, did not have leap seconds defined? That's true. Leap seconds weren't invented until 1972, by which time GMT had been the universal time standard for almost 100 years.

So where's the problem? Why can we not return to the original GMT, without leap seconds, if that is a scientific imperative?

Ah, now, that's because GMT defines noon as the time the sun is exactly overhead at Greenwich. And in days of yore that was reset at regular intervals (daily?) so in effect GMT kept in track with every slight wobble in "astronomical time" automatically. But with atomic clocks that doesn't happen. Time progresses regularly like, well, clockwork. And without leap seconds modern "electronic clock noon" (UTC) would drift away from "astronomical noon" (GMT) and that spells disaster for things like GPS.

So let's just redefine GMT to be atomic clock time? But that would make it neither "mean time" nor "Greenwich time", so it would be a misnomer. At least with a new name it is clear that the time being measured is different.

So ... We have a working system which we are proposing to break. This is absurd. We should keep GMT (with leap seconds). It is a valuable part of our heritage. It tells people the history and science of measuring and recording time. Why are we throwing our history away so carelessly? Is nothing sacred?

** I'm sure the acronym for this should be "CUnT".

More Rules for Life

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:03:00 +0000

Following on from my earlier posts about my guiding principles and lessons for life, I'm reminded of the 11 Rules for Life often attributed to Bill Gates. Except that they ain't by Bill Gates. They appear to have first surfaced in a 1996 piece in the San Diego Union Tribune by Charles J Sykes** and subsequently been pared down. But wherever they first appeared many people, not just youngsters! (present readers excepted, of course!) would do well to take them to heart. So, in case you missed then the first few thousand times around, here they are:

Rule 1: Life is not fair — get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping — they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

In fact the original had another 3 rules (which I've only slightly edited):

Rule 12: Smoking is not cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for purple hair and/or visible pierced body parts.

Rule 13: You are not immortal. If you think living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

Rule 14: Enjoy your youth while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now.

Hands up anyone who can honestly say they've never fallen into any of these traps.

Mmmm. Yeah. Not me either.

** Sykes appears to have subsequently published the list in his book 50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School.

Just in Case You Missed It ...

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:02:00 +0000

... here's a few links to the curious and interesting that I've read in the last few days.

Scientists have now worked out why not all chillies are hot. It's easy logocal stuff; no science required.

How good is your science? Well it's got to be better than most of the British! Britain's biggest science misconceptions revealed.

Would You Get a QR Code Tattoo? Would you get any tattoo? Thoughts on why we do this.

I've always said Shaun the Sheep would be a good alternative to the lawnmower. Now someone is doing it!

Gawdelpus! Now the government wants every under 11 to have read Harry Potter! FFS why can't politicians stop meddling in things they don't understand? Oh, hang on then they'd have nothing to do. No change there then.

Finally I was going to say this could only happen in Japan, but I suspect the Americans could do it as well. It was the "maternity suite" which finally tipped me over the edge! Hopefully we British don't scrape quite so much off the bottom of the barrel.

Thoughts for the Week

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:17:00 +0000

A collection of recently culled thoughts on life, the universe ...

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
[Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825-1895]

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence
[Thoughts of Angel]

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
[Thomas Edison]

If you treat people the way they are, you make them worse. If you treat them the way they ought to be, you make them capable of becoming what they ought to be.
[Goethe]

Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll to to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ... And he needs money!
[George Carlin, You Are All Diseased]

In the face of all the challenges we face today, is my optimism about the future of humanity idealistic? Perhaps it is. Is it unrealistic? Certainly not. To remain indifferent to the challenges we face is indefensible. If the goal is noble, whether or not it is realized within our lifetime is largely irrelevant. What we must do therefore is to strive and persevere and never give up.
[Dalai Lama]

Don’t think, it’s bad for the government.
[Touretteshero; this is one of her tics but it is so true!]

Just Too Good Not To ...

noreply@blogger.com (Keith (kcm)) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:18:00 +0000

From Annie Mole's Going Underground Blog ...

"Mummy why was does that man look like a chicken?"