Carolyn and I went out for a meal and a drink last night. It was 29th February, but she forgot to seize the opportunity. Her loss.
There was a big birthday party at the table next to ours, with balloons saying 60 and 15. It took us about three hours to realise that they referred to the same chap, who was in the process of receiving an inflated-fairy-gram.
Don't ask.
BBC: Charles proud of returning Harry
Prince Charles has spoken of his "great relief" at the safe return of his son Harry, after 10 weeks with his regiment on the frontline in Afghanistan.
That's as may be. But he's still a nasty little ginger shit who bears an uncanny resemblance to Major James Hewitt (rtd).
Wonder if any of our rare harriers have been downed in Helmand Province recently. Cherchez le prince!
From an online chat with Carolyn last week (edited slightly for brevity, with typos corrected):
Carolyn: We're going to get about 3 Black Rock chicks in a couple of weeks. The farmer is a right Yorkshire man. He was very put out when I asked for day old chicks and asked if they had to be exactly 1 day old. When I asked him what age he was thinking of, he said 'Well, they're only day-old for 1 day - would you mind if they were 3 day old?' - When he said that, I could see his point. He also informed me, obviously having decided that I was a bit naive, that the chicks would be the size of an egg when they hatched and therefore I wouldn't need a giant box full of hay and sawdust for just 3 of them! He's going to sell me 'eater' [heater] and as long as I've got 'eater' I can have as many as I want! He wasn't impressed with my idea of taking a hot-water bottle for the car journey. I'm looking forward to meeting him - he sounds great fun - a bit like those farmers on the old James 'erriot programmes.
Me: Where does he live?
Carolyn: eeee, ee's a long way... Up near Preston in a place called Much Moor or something. I've forgotten now. In fact someone from t'Wirral 'ad just phoned 'im before I did and they though it was too far to go.
Me: If he's from near Preston, then he's Lancashire, not Yorkshire!
Carolyn: Well, they sound very similar. It did say Lancashire on the address somewhere. Maybe he moved when he got married about 40 years ago and retained the accent.
As usual, you can't fault Carolyn's logic.
Guardian: 'Enjoy life while you can'
[James] Lovelock has been dispensing predictions from his one-man laboratory in an old mill in Cornwall since the mid-1960s, the consistent accuracy of which have earned him a reputation as one of Britain's most respected - if maverick - independent scientists…
For decades, his advocacy of nuclear power appalled fellow environmentalists - but recently increasing numbers of them have come around to his way of thinking…
"You're never going to get enough energy from wind to run a society such as ours," he says. "Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time."
(My emphasis added.)
John Lanchester (London Review of Books): Riots, Terrorism etcNick Davies's Flat Earth News [...] is a genuinely important book, one which is likely to change, permanently, the way anyone who reads it looks at the British newspaper industry.
A really interesting piece. It sounds like a great book. I'll certainly be buying it.
(If you also decide to buy it—and if you intend to buy it from Amazon UK—follow this link, and I will receive a small commission from Amazon, which I shall donate to Amnesty International.)
As you might have gathered, Stense and I went out on a hot date on Tuesday night (photos here). Stense spent the whole evening mentally undressing me. Don't you just hate it when they do that? WHAT AM I: A PIECE OF MEAT?!
My social life is one crazy whirl at the moment: we went to the same pub that I had taken Carolyn to just four nights earlier. The landlady gave me a funny look as she came to collect our glasses. I don't think she was mentally undressing me. Well, I bloody well hope not.
"Be honest now," I asked the landlady, nodding at Stense, "which do you prefer, this one, or the other one? I can't make up my mind."
The landlady was too polite to venture an opinion.
"Your son has been totally out of order this evening," Stense informed my dad when he came to collect us.
"He gets it from his mother," said Dad.
Congratulations to my golf-mad dad for getting his third ever hole-in-one last week. This one was particularly pleasing as it pitched straight into the hole: no superfluous, namby-pamby bounces for Dad!
And people who take their children to church are brainwashing them. Just one of the many choices you are entitled to make as a parent, I guess.
But why complain about one and not the other?
Times: Series of blunders turned the plastic bag into global villain
Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.
The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds…
The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.
Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to "plastic bags".
This is not to say that we shouldn't try to use fewer plastic bags—I understand they're pretty disastrous for marine turtles, which eat them, mistaking them for jellyfish—but it is an interesting example of far too much being read into a single, flawed scientific study. Remember MMR?
Still think spinach is good for you because it's full of iron? Think again.
BBC: Peers vote to scrap blasphemy
The government has got its controversial plan to scrap the blasphemy law through the House of Lords… The amendment [to the Criminal Justice Bill] will abolish the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales.
Interesting use of the word controversial, I thought, bearing in mind the last three prosecutions for blasphemy were in 1922, 1841 and 1676. Routine housekeeping is how I would have described this amendment to the law.
But, as of last Thursday, I have been sleeping just a little bit more soundly in my bed.
Bongo fury!
Nobel Physics Laureate, Richard P. Feynman (one of my heroes) plays the bongos:
Believe it or not, I have this track on CD—bought, legitimately, through the post from the other chap in the video, Ralph Leyton. It's called Orange Juice.
Hat tip to Sean at Cosmic Variance for the link. Sean is a physicist who sits at Feynman's old desk.
Lorks-a-lordy and ruddy heck! Carolyn's niece did a Google search for her own name the other week, found nothing, then searched for her parents' names—still nothing—then searched for Carolyn's name and hit the Gruts motherlode (or should that be auntielode?). Carolyn's niece was mortified.
She didn't mention it to Carolyn right away, though. No, she waited until the entire Farthing Clan had gathered for a meal, then announced to the world that Auntie Carolyn was on the internet and it was "ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING!"
So the whole family (apart from Carolyn) rushed upstairs to the computer to have a gawp.
Stupid internet!
They're trying to do us out of a job, lads!
Observer: MPs back artificial sperm for childless
MPs are planning a change in the law to allow babies to be conceived from artificial sperm, a move described by opponents as playing God with human DNA.
This is clearly a feminist plot to make us chaps totally superfluous. Ensure all of the offspring are female, and they could half the world's population through natural wastage within a century. It would probably also curtail nearly all global conflict.
Actually, I'm struggling to come up with a reason why this is a bad idea.
Stupid genetics!
How's this for a spooky coincidence? Orang-utans are orange in colour, but the orang bit of their name has absolutely nothing to do with the colour orange.
The word orang-utan derives from the Malay/Indonesian words orang, meaning person, and hutan meaning forest; orang-utans were people of the forest. Years before Darwin, the wise folks of the Malay Archepelago knew a close relative when they saw one.
The word orange, on the other hand, has a very complex derivation, given on Answers.com as follows:
Middle English, from Old French pume orenge, translation and alteration (influenced by Orenge, Orange, a town in France) of Old Italian melarancio: mela, fruit + arancio, orange tree (alteration of Arabic naranj, from Persian narang, from Sanskrit narangah?, possibly of Dravidian origin).
In other words, absolutely nothing to do with orang-utans. Like I said, spooky coincidence.
I worry about this sort of thing a lot.
For reasons I won't go into, I know for a fact that at least one Gruts reader out there has more than a passing interest in tapirs. To that particular individual (plus anyone else with more than a passing interest in tapirs), I address the following remark: you might find this recent post on the Laelaps weblog rather interesting.
Independent: Ban anti-Catholic books in schools, says bishop
Makes a change from burning them, I suppose.
The winner of the BAFTA Scotland 2008 'Best First Time Director-Fiction' award is…
No bullshit! In her very own words (via text message, ten minutes ago):
I WON!!!!!!! xx
Fan-bloody-tastic, mate! You are a total bloody star!
Time for a Laphroaig.
(I think you'll find that's the first ever Gruts scoop.)
Observer: Put young children on DNA list, urge police
Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain's most senior police forensics expert.
Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.
'If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,' said Pugh. 'You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won't. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.'
(My emphasis added.)
That is one hell of an if, if I may say so, Gary. But I suspect you already know that. Exactly what percentage of experts is 'some experts'? How do you define an expert? When you say these experts 'believe', do you mean they have actual scientific proof, or do you mean that they believe in the same way that some people believe in Father Christmas, that there is a god, or that there are fairies at the bottom of their garden?
Why are you spouting this dangerous nonsense, Gary? Haven't you read The Mismeasure of Man?
What's your real agenda, Gary?
(Is this the sort of debate you had in mind?)
It turns out that gruts, in Latvian, means hard or rigid.
My reputation precedes me.
From now on, you can call me Rigid Carter.
BBC: Call to restrict smoking scenes
An anti-smoking group in Liverpool is calling for all movies with smoking scenes to be given an 18 certificate.
The latest modest proposal from the anti-smoking bigots. Doesn't it seem just a little bit over-the-top to you? Here's a short list of films that would be given an 18 certificate if they had their way:
- Casablanca
- The Quiet Man
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
- Blade Runner
- The Full Monty
- As Good As It Gets
- The Lord of the Rings
- 101 Dalmatians
- pretty much any film depicting the Second World War
Yes, we know smoking isn't nice, but neither is being a criminal (not quite the same thing yet—although rapidly heading that way in the movies). Tell you what, while we're at it, let's slap an 18 certificate on every film with a bad guy in it too, just to make sure they don't tempt children towards a life in crime.
You must have seen those silly pine-tree-shaped pine-scented air-fresheners they have in cars… Do you see what they've done there? They've made the air-freshener into the shape of the thing that it smells like. Clever marketing ploy, or what?
The other day, I couldn't help noticing that a colleage had an air-freshener in the shape of a dolphin hanging from the rear-view mirror of their car. I have never smelt a dolphin, but I don't imagine it's the sort of smell I'd want wafting through my car. Rather fishy is how I imagine a dolphin would smell. But I could be wrong.
How about you lot? Have any of you ever smelt a dolphin? If so, what did it smell like? Is it the sort of smell you'd want wafting through your car?
I need to know.
One of my Scottish moles has provided me with hi-definition photos from Stense's Bafta triumph last Friday:
YAAAAY!!
She doesn't like to boast, but I can vouch from personal experience that Stense also has a rather magnificent pair of golden globes. I'm doing my best to obtain photos, dammit!
Jen and I are off work this week and next. The other day, we found ourselves in what I still insist on calling a record shop. Have you noticed how little music they sell in record shops these days? It's all computer games and DVDs. Music is dead. I blame Steve Jobs.
Anyway, when I'm working, I spend about three hours a day commuting in my car. When you spend that much time in a car, the delights of radio soon begin to wear a bit thin. On my way into work, my main listening choice is between Sarah 'Tory Girl' Kennedy on Radio 2, and the Today Programme with the unbearable John Humphrys on Radio 4. Which is why, a few years ago, I bought an iPod. Thank you, Steve Jobs!
With an iPod in your car, you have the best music radio station in the world. Put the thing into shuffle mode, and you can listen to non-stop music entirely matching your own taste. Eat my iPod's shorts, Radio 1!
But, with an iPod in your car, you also have the best talk radio station in the world, courtesy of the podcast. Thank you, Dave Winer! Over the last three or four years, I have become totally addicted to podcasts, be they ordinary BBC radio programmes available for downloading after the event, or programmes put together especially for the internet by talented amateurs. Thank you, Steve Gillmor! (Vanity feed still in good working order, Steve?)
BUT… What with having access to the best music station and the best talk radio station in the world on my iPod, I hardly ever need to listen to traditional radio any more. Buggles were wrong: it wasn't video that killed the radio star; it was the podcast.
On the whole, this is fine, but it does mean that I no longer have my finger on the pulse when it comes to modern-day pop crooners.
Which is why, when I was in the record shop the other day and heard a rather fabulous new tune, I hadn't a baldy clue who it was. Too embarrassed to ask the trendy, young whippersnapper behind the till, I scribbled down a couple of the lyrics for Googling later. It turns out that the song has been played to death on the radio and has been the UK number one for several weeks. Thank you, Duffy:
Perhaps music isn't quite so dead after all.
There's a semi-tame male pheasant which has been visiting our garden for the last five years. For alliterative reasons, we have named him Philip.
Philip seems to think he owns our garden, and gets decidedly pissed off if other birds start eating the bread that we have quite clearly left out just for him. When we neglect to leave out any bread for him, Philip comes to the window and stares in at us in an intimidating manner. If we ignore him, he starts pecking at the glass. Philip has got a bit of an attitude. I like that in a pheasant.
You might wonder why I put up with such nonsense from a wild bird. To be honest, similar thoughts have crossed my own mind. Then, yesterday afternoon, I saw something which made me realise that pampering Philip had not gone unrewarded. It was a sight that cheered me up for the rest of the day: one of the neighbourhood cats running terrified from our garden, with a very pissed off pheasant in hot pursuit!
Attaboy, Philip!
BBC: Brown criticised over embryo bill
It's a little-known fact that Embryo Bill was the name Buffalo Bill went by before he was born.
Guardian: Britain and France to take nuclear power to the world
Britain and France are to sign a deal to construct a new generation of nuclear power stations and export the technology around the world in an effort to combat climate change…
Britain hopes to take advantage of French expertise to build the power stations that do not rely on fossil fuels. Nearly 79% of France's electricity comes from its highly-developed nuclear power industry. The UK's ageing nuclear plants are ready for decommissioning and supply 20% of its energy needs.
Brown hopes the partnership will create a skilled British labour force who would then work in partnership with France to sell nuclear power stations to other countries over the next 15 years.
Let's hope this is more than just spin, and they have the guts to follow it through.
Ann and Bill are visiting us over Easter. Ann brought Easter eggs and a rather excellent home-made banana and walnut teabread. Bill brought beer.
There was three inches of snow overnight, so we stayed in today and watched the football. The least said about that, the better.
Off to drown my sorrows.
Someone calling themself Intentionally Blank left a comment the other day asking for a list of the podcasts I listen to. Well, Intentionally (if that is your real name), I am happy to oblige.
BBC: Williams top of Classic FM vote
Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending has been voted best classical piece of music by radio listeners for the second year running.
Look, I know diddly-squat about classical music, but I should imagine this sort of thing annoys the real classical music fan about as much as it infuriates me when one of the perennial best-ever pop song polls has seven boy bands in the top ten.
The Lark Ascending: great tune, quintessentially British, actually sounds like a lark, written by Charles Darwin's great-nephew—what's not to like? But best piece of classical music ever? Is that the best you can come up with, culture vultures?
Do us a favour!
Personally, I'd have gone for At the Castle Gate from Pelleas and Melisande by Sibelius (better known to UK readers as the theme tune to The Sky at Night). The first note alone wins if for me. Eat that, Beethoven! Crank it up to eleven. But, like I said, I know diddly-squat about classical music, so I'm not entitled to vote.
Democracy is a load of old bollocks at times.
Better put the sprouts on.
H O L Y C R A P ! Richard Widmark has died!
I thought he'd died years ago. For absolutely yonks, I've been saying that Kirk Douglas was the last remaining cowboy from the golden era of westerns*: the movies my dad was brought up on; the movies that my dad brought me up on.
But I was wrong: Kirk wasn't the last. Richard Widmark was still around.
But I'm right now.
Take care of yourself, Kirk.
Over in this neck of the woods, we are rightly proud of local lad Percy Shaw (1890–1976), the inventor of the catseye, which has saved untold lives on the nation's roads.
It is said that Shaw's invention was inspired by seeing light reflected off a cat's retina at nighttime.
It turns out that Percy Shaw wasn't the first man of science to investigate reflections from cats' retinas. This from The Eye: a Natural History by Simon Ings (pp.184–5):
In 1703, [French anatomist Jean] Mery noted that a cat's eyes shine much more brightly if you hold the cat underwater…
[W]ell over a century after Mery dunked his cat, [Swedish-born naturalist, Karl Asmund] Rudolphi turned his attention to the directionality of the shining eye. He was able to show that the reflecting eye will emit light along exactly the same line as the direction of the in-going rays. No chemical or biological process is taking place—a point he demonstrated by the simple expedient of shining lights into the eyes of a decapitated cat.
That's the way to do it.
In the 1960s, the scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock (who is dead right about the relative merits of nuclear and wind power, by the way) proposed the Gaia Hypothesis in which he suggested that the Earth functions as a sort of superorganism, reacting via natural feedback loops to natural and man-made changes in environmental conditions.
It is far from clear whether Lovelock was talking metaphorically or literally when he spoke of the Earth as being an organism. If he was talking metaphorically, Gaia is an interesting and potentially useful hypothesis which might help us to look at environmental change from a different perspective. If he was talking literally, it is, of course, utter bollocks.
This morning, I took some cardboard boxes to compost in my magnificent compost bins. As I was tearing up the boxes, a sudden gust of wind snapped in half one of the pieces of cardboard, the corner of which nearly took my eye out. It smarted. It smarted A LOT.
So that's what you get for trying to save the planet.
Sod you, Gaia! I'm off to buy an S.U.V!
Those of you with long memories might remember that Carolyn and I have our own two-person lottery syndicate. I (very sensibly) choose random numbers each week; Carolyn (very foolishly) picks the same numbers each week. Carolyn's numbers are based on our birthdays, our mutual age, and the numbers of the houses we were brought up in, three doors along from each other. So far, my numbers have won us a total of £80 (or there about). Carolyn's have yet to win us a sausage.
After this evening's draw, Carolyn sent me the following text message:
It's your fault! If you'd been born two weeks earlier we'd have won £10. Typical!
How do you tell your oldest friend in the world that her gambling system is shite?
Accentuate the negative, that's what I always say:
BBC: Pendleton misses golden hat-trick
Reigning champion Victoria Pendleton missed out on gold in the final of the keirin at the Track Cycling World Championships in Manchester…
Pendleton adds the silver to her two golds from the sprints.
Sod of, Beeb! Two golds and a silver are a hell of an achievement. Especially when you consider she'd never actually seen a bike until a week last Tuesday. Or something like that.
I think she should change her name to Victoria Pedalton.
Pedalton… Do you see what I did there?
