Carolyn's elder daughter (10) to me (42) on Tuesday:
When I grow up, I want to be a teacher… You can shout at children all day, and you get to eat free toast.
She went on to explain that the free toast is funded from the takings of school fairs.
Before you dismiss this as wild conspiracy theory, I should point out that Carolyn's daughter appears to have inside knowledge: her mum manages the accounts for her school's fair.
This is how it started for Woodward and Bernstein.
From the front page of today's Sunday Times:
Good to see responsible journalists flying helicopters over quarantined areas infected with airborne viruses. It's all in the public interest, you see.
We know what dead cows look like, thank you. There really is no need to put any more living ones at risk for the sake of a few snaps.
The lovely Noreen just made stuff come out of my nose.
BBC: Outbreak source 'linked to lab'
There is a "strong probability" the foot-and-mouth outbreak began at a research site, inspectors have said…
The Health and Safety Executive found there was a "negligible" risk it had been spread by the wind or flooding. But its report said the disease could have been the result of human movement.
Apparently, local badgers are demanding a cull.
Observer: The Dawkins delusion: science good, the rest bad
Thanks to Richard Dawkins I [Neil 'I Lie for a Living' Spencer] have just acquired a new title. It's official: I am an 'Enemy of Reason', a wily opponent of rationalism interviewed (in my capacity as The Observer magazine's astrologer) by Dawkins for a new two-part TV documentary.
Dawkins is right, and you, Neil 'Shite Merchant' Spencer, are, without doubt, a charlatan, enemy of reason, opponent of rationalism, and complete and utter tosser. You're a fucking astrologer, for Pete's sake!
Why in the name of Holy Bollocks does The Observer—an otherwise sensible newspaper—feel the need to have a sodding astrologer on its staff? Answer me that!
Neil Spencer claims he can predict people's futures based on the time of their birth and the arrangements of the planets. You'll notice I say claims and not believes. He sells his specious prognostications to dupes who either do genuinely believe in such bullshit, or wrongly think it's just a bit of harmless fun. Either way, that makes Spencer an Enemy of Reason, and he knows it.
This week, I finally managed to carry out a little experiment I've been planning for some time. The delay was because I needed access to a military jet-fighter.
You must have noticed how, when a jet-fighter flies past, the noise it makes appears to come from behind the aircraft. When I was a kid, I mistakenly believed that this was because the jet was flying faster than the speed of sound. The real reason is that the light arriving at your eyes from the jet is travelling at approximately 300,000,000 metres per second, whereas the sound arriving at your ears from the jet is travelling at around 330 metres per second—roughly a million times slower. This means that the light arrives at your eyes pretty much instantaneously, whereas the sound arrives at your ears slightly later, depending on the distance of the jet. By the time the sound arrives, the jet has moved several fusilage lengths further along its flightpath, meaning that you are seeing the jet where it is now, but you are hearing the jet where it was a short while ago.
We are able to judge the direction from which a sound is coming because we have two ears. When the sound is coming from the right, say, it arrives at our right ear a split second before it arrives at our left. It is also, thanks to the inverse-square law of acoustic waves, and to the fact that our ears point in opposite directions, louder in our right ear than our left. Our brains use these differences and other subtle cues to calculate the direction of the sound. Amazing, or what?
I finally got to perform my experiment on Monday evening. I was in the garden watering my tomatoes when I spotted a jet-fighter travelling down the valley towards me, low and fast. Its flightpath would take it about 100 metres in front of where I was standing. So I dropped the watering can and hurried to a location on the patio with a better view.
As the jet flew past, the sound appeared to be coming from a few plane-lengths behind the aircraft. Then I took out my other piece of vital experimental apparatus—my right index finger—and inserted it firmly into my right ear. As if by magic, the sound from the jet suddenly appeared to be coming directly from the aircraft. Unable to detect the direction of the sound with data from only one ear, my brain quite sensibly deduced that it must be coming from the plane.
For the remaining few seconds that the jet was in view, I repeatedly removed from and inserted into my ear my index finger, causing the direction of the sound to move repeatedly back and forth.
Give it a go some time. You don't really need a jet-fighter; any noisy, fast-moving aircraft will do.
Damn! The recently resurrected and relocated Lunartalks weblog has pipped me to the post with the latest nostril-venting quote. In this case, the nostrils were Jen's:
If it wasn't for the Enlightenment, you wouldn't be reading this right now. You'd be standing in a smock throwing turnips at a witch.
Not to be outpipped, here's another one which had Jen snotting herself this afternoon:
It's 1983, we are on the M25 and I'm sharing the back seat of Dad's Ford Sierra with my three sisters and their "my little ponies". Dad is shouting because I've got a McDonald's milkshake, which I am refusing to let my siblings drink, due to the Large Family Food and Drink Code of Conduct: under no circumstances do you share.
Exasperated, Dad demands I give him the shake, which I do. Driving at 60mph he winds down the window, holds the cup and chucks the milkshake out, the intention being for the shake to hit the road rather than his face, which it does in a hilarious custard-pie type way.
I cry with laughter. Ciara wees with laughter. Dad's pride and his car seat cover take weeks to recover.
BBC: In pictures: Isabella Blow's funeral [image 5]
You can tell it was Taupin what writ the lyrics.
I made some of my homemade lemonade yesterday. I experimented with the recipe by increasing the unwaxed lemon count to 11 and decreasing the sugar count to 5 oz.
It was a tad tangy.
Which is how it should be.
I stayed at my parents' house last night and we all got pleasantly smashed on whisky. At about 10pm my mobile phone rang. It was Carolyn. I thought I'd better come clean: "I am extremely drunk," I admitted.
You have to be very careful being drunk around Carolyn when she is sober: she makes up stories about you afterwards.
Carolyn said she needed my advice on what to feed a poorly mouse. Approximately three times a year, Carolyn and her children find some wild animal somewhere and decide it needs help. This time it was a mouse.
I advised her to let it go. But Carolyn said the mouse was too small and ill. So I advised her to try milk, sugar, brandy, chocolate or nuts. Carolyn thanked me for my advice and explained her theory that an owl must have caught three mice but dropped one of them (presumably because it only had two sets of talons). She also explained that she had been practising trampolining in the garden after her children had gone to bed.
A short while later, Carolyn phoned back. It was a bad connection. "Can you hear me?" I asked. "No!" replied Carolyn. She went on to explain that the mouse appeared to be enjoying its sherry. She had decided against opening the Champagne-Cognac.
At least, I'm pretty sure that's what happened, but I might have dreamt the whole damn thing.
Jen and I are back from a family reunion in Ireland. Jen's family, that is, not mine.
Coming from a non-Catholic (or, in Irish parlance, atheist) family myself, I hadn't realised that this would involve 180 people, mostly first cousins, who all seemed to be named Mary, Joseph or Patrick. "A reunion of 180 people who've never met each other before," as one family wag put it. I think his name was Patrick.
I would be hard-pressed to name 180 people, let alone be related to them.
Still, we were made to feel very welcome after a near-disastrous start. When the bulk of the Yorkshire Contingent arrived en masse at the hotel, the receptionist informed us that we had been allocated rooms on the Turd Floor. "Oh good grief, grow up why don't you? Won't you people ever get over hundreds of years of British oppression?" I was about to shout at the poor woman. Just in time, I realised she was trying to say that our rooms were on the Third Floor. Simple misunderstandings like this are probably how The Troubles started. I still rue the day many years ago when I tried to chat up a beautiful, green-eyed, Irish colleen by asking her what made her tick. It did not have the effect I had hoped for easing Anglo-Irish relations.
Due to some mishap at the local water treatment plant, the water at the hotel was the colour of cloudy piss. For a moment, I thought our genial hosts had provided us with lager on tap. We were advised not to drink it, so I decided to see if I could survive the weekend on Guinness.
(L to R) Jen's: brother, handsome bloke, lovely self, brother, brother-in-law, sister, niece and mum.
The reunion was scheduled for the Saturday night. On Friday, the Hebden Bridge Brigade went out for a Chinese meal, followed by a few pints in a local pub. It was the first time I'd been in an Irish pub since the smoking ban, and it was every bit as bad as I had feared. If this pub was anything to go by (and I have no reason to think it wouldn't be), the legendary atmosphere is pretty much gone. The neo-Puritan health Nazis have done to Ireland what the combined forces of Oliver Cromwell and the potato blight never could: they have destroyed the country's very soul. I hope the self-righteous vandals are pleased with themselves, as they sip their G&Ts in their lifeless, child-friendly, bio-degradable, vegetarian bistros.
Jen's brother and sister-in-law met us in the pub. They had travelled over separately and had spent Thursday evening in Dublin. They told us how, as in many other places in Europe, Dublin has recently had a huge influx of cheap labour from Poland. On the bus back to their hotel, everyone else was speaking in Polish. Jen's sister-in-law was delighted: "Listen! They're all speaking Irish!" she gasped. Jen's brother strung her along for a while, explaining how Irish is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn: "You just start with Bejaysus! and take it from there."
The reunion on Saturday went very well. At least, I'm pretty sure it must have gone very well. After about five hours, I discovered that I was in the zone with the Guinness, and the rest is a bit of a blur. I am reliably informed that I ended up on the dance floor at one point, which only ever happens when I am extremely in the zone.
Ireland will always hold a very special place in my affections. Jen's parents (Patrick and Patricia—you couldn't make it up) were both Irish, but I only have a minuscule amount of Irish blood, thanks to an errant great-great-grandmother named Bridget Kelly. My beard originated in Ireland, though, and that must surely count for something. But, in my heart of hearts, I will always remain a true Brit, and I had no real regrets returning to my homeland, where the beer is warm and the water is see-though.
Televisual highlight of week was a mystical Shambhala therapist explaining to Richard Dawkins (of all people) that "DNA is very interesting right now in our evolution of the human race". I almost felt sorry for her. Did she have any idea who she was talking to?
She went on to explain to Dawkins, author of numerous best-selling books on evolution and genetics and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, that "every human being except a very small percentage has a double-helix in the cell". When a surprised Dawkins asked whether this meant that some people don't have a double-helix of DNA, the mystic explained that "a very small percentage do not—they have got more strands. We used to have, in Atlantis, twelve stands, and they're in the form of four triangles facing in in each cell. And we forgot who we were in the experiment after Atlantis and everything changed…"
When asked how she knew all this, the woman explained that "it comes from the Akashic record—the record of all vibration on this planet—but we also have […] The Deep Knowing, and the Deep Knowing, it really can't be argued".
No it can't. She made an utterly convincing case. In her own mind, at least.
The woman then went on top up Dawkins's quota of DNA strands. I don't know if she charged him the going rate of £58 for doing this, but we actually got to see her "put the last triangle in". She did this by closing her eyes and waving her hands about in a manoeuvre that will have been spookily familiar to any student of Rixology. Sadly, she did not explain whether Dawkins's missing triangle had been an isosceles triangle, a Bermuda triangle or a Dairylea triangle.
All of which made me wonder, do any of these alternative therapy adherents have any sceptical faculties whatsoever? Do Chakra healers ever get into heated arguments with homeopaths? Do acupuncturists ever accuse Reiki Masters of being charlatans? Do crystal healers ever point out that aromatherapists are spouting a load of old wank?
If people from different religious backgrounds can have violent disagreements about utter nonsense, then why not different snake oil merchants?
Or is someone out there trying to link all these specious disciplines together into a Grand Unified Theory of Mumbo-Jumbo?
Perhaps we could call it Gumbo for short.
I live in Hebden Bridge. I'm used to seeing what might euphemistically be referred to as eccentric individuals. There are quite a lot of them round here. I think it must be something in the water.
But, this morning, I spotted someone who looked incongruous even in Hebden Bridge: A RED INJUN!
He was sitting at a pavement café enjoying a cream tea. He looked very smart in his designer sunglasses and posh suit. I would never have taken him for a RED INJUN! at all, if it hadn't been for his two waist-length, plaited ponytails and his moccasins.
"Eh-up! Me Johnny Two-Wippets," I imagined him saying when he'd ordered his cream tea. "Me here for heap big quantity surveyor pow-wow in Mankinholes. Me trade-um five ferret pelts for strawberry cream scone with cappuccino. Thanks to draconian smoking ban, me sittum outside to smoke peace-pipe."
Yes, I know we're supposed to call them Native Americans these days. And yes, I'm sure he was perfectly harmless. But I was brought up on a diet of John Wayne films, so I thought I'd better play it safe. I decided to photograph him from a very long way away.
And then I started thinking. But for his ponytails and moccasins, I wouldn't have had a clue that this man was a RED INJUN! How many other RED INJUNS! are there round here, dressed as white-men? There might be whole tribes of them, and we would never know it!
Perhaps that explains why it's so hard being a cowboy in Rochdale.
The poor old Beeb: they do try so hard! In any other week, they would surely have won headline of the week for the above, but how could anyone hope to compete with this?
Spiegel: Wuthering Heights: The Dangers of Wind Power
… After the industry's recent boom years, wind power providers and experts are now concerned. The facilities may not be as reliable and durable as producers claim. Indeed, with thousands of mishaps, breakdowns and accidents having been reported in recent years, the difficulties seem to be mounting. Gearboxes hiding inside the casings perched on top of the towering masts have short shelf lives, often crapping out before even five years is up. In some cases, fractures form along the rotors, or even in the foundation, after only limited operation. Short circuits or overheated propellers have been known to cause fires. All this despite manufacturers' promises that the turbines would last at least 20 years.
King John, 28-Aug-1207: Johannes, dei gratia, Rex Anglie, Dominus Hibernie, Dux Normannie, Aquitanie, Comes Andegauie, Omnibus fidelibus suis qui Burgagia apud Villam de Liuerpul habere uoluerint Salutem. Sciatis quod concessimus omnibus fidelibus nostris qui Burgagia apud Liverpul ceperint quod habeant omnes libertates et liberas consuetudines in Villa de Liuerpul quas aliquis Liber Burgus super mare habet in terra nostra. Et ideo uobis mandamus quod secure et in pace nostra illuc ueniatis ad Burgagia nostra recipienda et hospitanda. Et in huius rei testimonium has litteras nostras patentes uobis transmittimus. Teste Simone de Pateshill apud Wintoniam xxviii die Augusti anno regni nostri ix.
or, to put it another way:
King John, 28-Aug-1207: John, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, to all his faithful people who have desired to have Burgages in the township of Liverpool, greeting. Know ye that we have granted to all our faithful people who have taken Burgages in Liverpool that they may have all the liberties and free customs in the township of Liverpool which any Free Borough on the sea has in our land. And therefore we command you that securely and in our peace you come there to receive and inhabit our Burgages. And in witness hereof we transmit to you these our Letters Patent. Witness Simon de Pateshill at Winchester on the twenty-eighth day of August in the ninth year of our reign.
or, to put it another way:
HAPPY 800TH BIRTHDAY, LIVERPOOL!
Ignore the stupid, ill-informed stereotypes. Liverpool is a bloody brilliant city. And tonight they're gonna party like it's 1207.
A nice example of the lunacy of so-called faith schools:
BBC: Sikh girl in Catholic school row
The parents of a Teesside Sikh girl say they will convert her to Catholicism in order to get her into the best school in the area…
The Roman Catholic diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, which oversees admissions policy at the school, said it was following correct procedures.
But Mr Singh said: "At the moment she has not got a religion. She follows Sikhism because we are Sikhs."
Exactly!
Mr Singh's daughter is four years old. How in the name of God, Buddha, Allah, Waheguru or Tinkerbell is she supposed to know which ridiculous belief system she might one day adopt? Or not, as I hope the case turns out to be.
What hope is there that kids from different cultural backgrounds will ever get on together if their parents are allowed to keep sending them to sectarian schools?
People's religious belief, like which soccer team they support, is a highly heritable cultural trait: they tend to inherit it from their parents. To endorse religious sectarian schools makes as much sense as saying that we should have schools for the children of Manchester United fans.
Or special needs schools, as we call them in Liverpool.
New Scientist (21-Jul-2007): Interview: Why mathematics is beautiful
Christopher Zeeman is a British mathematician who inspired generations of young people, built a world-class maths department from scratch and still manages to find time to correct theorems developed by Euclid in ancient Greece…
You built a world-class mathematics department from scratch at the University of Warwick when it was founded in the 1960s. How?
I wrote to the six best topologists in the world asking them to join me. They all said no. So I wrote again saying the other five had agreed, and all replied to say yes.
That's the way to do it.
