Energy raw in beak and claw!

Royal Institution Christmas Lectures this year, the subject is energy. Catch the last one this evening Beeb4 20:00 or on the EyePlayer thereafter.
Out for our walk on  Sunday we were entranced for about 20 minutes watching a buzzard working the ground around a small river and large field bordered by woods. There was a stiff breeze and the seeming lack of effort that it took to glide over the area looking for its xmas dinner made me think again "it's the energy stupid". What a marvel of energy it is. Precision hunting machine, power pack attached with renewable energy storage. Amazing what you can do with the old proton pump! Still the poor thing did not get its dinner while we were about.
(Probably too polite to tuck in while you heathens were watching...Ed)

Fiat Lux and a lot more!

Thanks to the excellent Carbon Commentary Newsletter of Chris Goodall a good news video. A P2P Solshare Microgrid Installation in Mymensingh.  When the clowns have escaped from the circus we need a little balance. A good friend has been advised by his US relatives that on January 20th next year the clock will be turned back 60 years. I would say nearer 90!
Best wishes to all (?) our readers and a peaceful New Year.

(Is that it? are we going to be swamped in all this U tubeyfacebookytwittery socialistmedianonsense now...ED?)

Have a good holiday but take care there is a man out there who promises to drain the swamp.

Streaming but not Cold

Now here's a thing. Some of us oldies may be old, very old, but it does not necessarily mean that we always associate the word streaming with the word cold. The World Wide interWeb of Wonders does provide some truly marvellous things, as this article in the Grauniad shows. 
That's what I call neat.
I am still of the opinion, though,  that the accordion is an outdoor instrument despite having a 'connected' party who is a superb instrumentalist and musician; you know who you are! Number ten is a family favourite. Many a long journey, spiritual and physical, has been sustained and enlivened by the McGarrigles' Swimming Song.
(Is that the one about swimming in unsafe places in a lack of suitable attire...Ed?)
I'm a self-destructive fool!

HSL High Speed Library

Books, people, time and it's Bliss!
I don't know if any books were harmed in the process of making this short video from the Grauniad.
As Lenin once famously said when he worked at Salford Public Library "You can't have book, Tovarish, unless I stamp on it!"
(I didn't know Vlad was on the council payroll at Salford. Was he there long...Ed?)

As long as it takes to make an omelette.

Bloody Hell

I've just finished 'His Bloody Project' by Graeme Macrae Burnet. A supposed collection of found documents. It has left me with a very strong sense of place, character and society. There is, as described in the Grauniad review ...

...a healthy dose of Kafka as well as Flann O’Brien in Roderick’s account of laboriously gathering seaweed from the shoreline with his father to spread on the fields, then being forced by Lachlan [The Parish Constable] to return it to the sea because they lack the laird’s permission to use his property. When they summon up the courage to seek clarification of the rules that govern their lives, they are told “that a person wishing to consult the regulations could only wish to do so in order to test the limits of the misdemeanours he might commit”. ...

Shades too of Gunn's Green Isle of the Great Deep but the lasting impression I shared with the reviewer was wondering about the reliability of the perspectives that the 'documents' had provided and the other crimes that may have taken place.

(Did Roderick have a poor mouth on him then...Ed?)

I thoroughly enjoyed wading through the misery and misdirection!

The Third Programme

As was, is 70 years old, aint we all (nearly) dearie!
Charlotte Higgins in the Grauniad  makes a plea

"Furthermore, if the bulldozers came for Radio 3, I would be lying in front of them. To my dying breath I would assert its fundamental importance to Britain and its profound contribution to the country – not just by way of the musical life it has supported and grown, especially through its commissioning of composers, but also through a significant relationship with drama and documentary."

Move over Charlotte! Is there room in front of that bulldozer for someone who has delighted in the sound of the Shagbut, Minikin and Flemish Clacket ever since he first heard them  see R3.


At 23.45

SCHOLA POLYPHONICA NEASDENIENSIS Peter Weevil and John Throgmorton (shagbut) Tatiana Splod (minikin) René Carter-Thomson and H. B. Hogg (Flemish clacket) Introduced by HUGO TURVEY
Hucbald the Onelegged (of Grobhausen: fl ?1452) Instrumental Rondo: Haro! Poppzgeyen ist das Wieselungenslied

Take heed "Mother Theresa" where you wield that bulldozer.  I saw a Prime Minister who had an unfortunate accident with a Shagbut and fell into a Flemish Clacket. It was not at all nice, but very interesting!

 (Did old JSB not write a few pieces for the minikin there...Ed?)

The Bright Web!

An excellent book provided, once again, by the stakhanovites in Suffolk Libraries. The Switch by Chris Goodall.

It's the energy stupid!

IMHO a good overview of the present state of solar energy providing a sustainable supply for our needs in the future. It includes a down to earth (sorry) review of costs and implementation.  He considers  financing, the normalising of demand, the use of the web for this and what to do when some ejit says the sun don't shine all the time! (That's easy, turn the lights on...Ed!)

His website provides lots of interesting facts and figures including an analysis of energy supply and storage for the Island of Gigha!  You did want to know didn't you? There is also a weekly newsletter, if you are so minded.

(Ah for the love of Mike will you give us a break from all this happy, clappy, Corbinista, wooly, sock and brown rice eco-communmitarianism...Ed)

Come on! Spark up princess, anyone would think you had pneumonia! 

Cygnet Ring

Not even wrong

A idea contained within an article in the Grauniad  about the possible negative effects of always being right.  Towards the end of the piece  one of those ideas forces you to say - Why didn't I think of that or if you did why didn't I get off my a**e and do it?
Sabine Hossenfelder   has set up a service  wherebye you get a consultation with a quantum mechanic for fifty dollars a pop.

(Did I mention that once upon a time I was involved in sourcing some livestock for a famous scientist.  Erwin Schrodinger, since you ask. As I am no great shakes in the physics department my contribution was in designing and producing the advertisements in the Dublin Press...Ed)

What did it say? Cats! Wanted dead or alive.

Glad to Bee Gay

Border Crossings

An Item on the LRB Blog about the famous Seamus, his finely honed sense of mischief and barriers to humanity. 
As we know he has not passed on but lives quietly, a suitable presence in the fens, a miasmic curate in some forgotten pub!

"To educate the English" Now there's a thought.
(Do you think they might build a wall? I know a few fellas who could do with a bit of work. The construction business has been on the down for a while now and the family connection would ensure it was done to spec and on time...Ed)
by their walls ye shall know them!

Low Blow Jo

Martin Wolf, Chief Economic Commentator of the Financial Times, had a provocative little programme on the Beeb  (R4 09:00 21/07/2016) about negative interest rates. Very interesting! Monetery Policy may not be your thing but it does throw up some ideas "helicopter money" and a the abolition of cash being some.(Did I hear a German Banker scream...Ed?)  One of them, unless I am wrong and frequently I am, is the printing of money.
Gutenberg Money! Can you see it? The man with the beard and the printing press, stood on the bridge, shouting at a minion who is sweating to screw down the press.
"But Master Gutenberg won't this undermine the whole economy?"
"Shut up and keep printing"

Bit of a Larf

Not much recently to give us a chuckle.
Rooting through the tangle of electrons in my interweb reference box I found this link to the GOG (Good Old Grauniad) live session with Naomi Alderman 'interviewing' Margaret Atwood about her new novel 'The Heart Goes Last' on the 2/10/15
(Glad to see we are still at the cutting edge...Ed) As you already know I am a man with a great future behind him.
Anyway the link is here and is also available as a downloadable mpthingy. Very enjoyable.

Flowers and Horns

A dilemma! The pretty picture below, a flower meadowlet in Suffolk, was taken  with my point and shoot bog standard camera.
(It shows...Ed) Hold your horses now Mr Ed.

Herself had an invitation to go and view the flowers and since I was off to the nurse for my MOT results (I am a martyr to my platelets, apparently.) I suggested she take my camera and, with permission of the field management, a few pictures of same flowers. (Manfully attributed... Ed!)
However, the picture above was taken by the field management with my camera and is, domestic harmony notwithstanding, (are you sure that is alloneword...Ed) the best of the bunch, as it were. So there you have it or not as the case may be.
Many thanks to David.
Pretty though, isn't it?

Amazing Grace

Mick had a hangover. He walked through Norwich Market passing the corner where the kilted one  played bagpipes.  The piper was a man in a Jimmy Wig, with no musical talent and a lethal instrument in his hands. He played the only tune he knew, again and again.  Mick crossed the market and headed for the garden in front of the Town Hall and peace and re-hydration. Sugar and caffeine restored some functioning level of awareness. He saw the  shamboling man, carrying two  sports bags, headed for his bench. The flight path meant touchdown in ten seconds! He could not be arsed and began to turn away. Landing with a bump Mr Shambolic  groaned - “Stapped” - stoned more like -  and  pissed himself but when it hit the floor it was red! Phone, ambulance, police, he needed help. This was not Mick's problem. The last words to Mick were - “No phone, take...”
Oh god what, bombs, guns, drugs, dead babies? The late lamented didn't move, he was doubled over,  chest on his knees looking at the bags with sightless eyes, one hand on each bag, offering them. 

He should phone but moving to the body he  zipped back the flap of one bag. Bundles, money bundles, foreign money bundles.  There was no six foot two copper saying Hello! Hello!  No one wanted to say hello to them and no one was near enough to notice! Taking one bag in each hand Mick heaved and walked off, slowly. Terror, fear, guilt, excitement, I don't care, ran through his mind  as he  passed the library. How much money, what type of money, where can you spend it? CCTV cameras, where are they, how can you avoid them, where can you go? Get a taxi.
The man in the grey hoodie was confident that his movements about the city would not be seen or recorded. They had paid for software and an operator to do this. In any case he was not 'known' in the UK. His mother would not recognise him today. He watched Mick  and spoke briefly into a mobile. A car drew up and the hoodie disappeared into the back seat as  Mick hailed a taxi.
The controller in the CCTV centre had  a lousy day. The senior coppers   breathing down her neck. Words half caught between them “big”,  “going south”, “where the f...”.  The cameras blanking in what appeared to be random fashion and a fatal stabbing. She was confident the cameras were sound, they were regularly checked and rechecked. It must be the software and the communications links. That was the job of Mr Algorithm, the condescending nerd who made her life a misery. God, he would pay for this! 
When she got home the local TV news had the body count at 3 now including a taxi driver and a young man, no pictures of course.

Word Botching

A Kite is pure delight
But a 'fisher is much swisher!

What are they thinking now?

Firstly a picture of that Mr Farridge who seems to have acquired some notoriety of late.
See the estimable Grauniad here.

The man with the hand into which he could be despairing, mightily perhaps, is Vytenis Andriukaitis.
What he suggests he was thinking is reported in this blogpost here.
Worth a look.
(Is that a Wimbledon tie Mr Farridge is wearing? I must say it is in better taste than the tie  Andriukaitis has round his neck. Who is he trying to impress, the wee lassie in front of seat 122 or the jaffas...Ed!)

By their ties ye shall know them. The ties that bind, perhaps.

Helen of the D'Amberponts

Disclaimer.
The proposal for a romance/radio cereal/graphic novel is attached.
Any similarity with an everyday story of countryfolk or indeed Mr Hardy's underwhelming and somewhat febrile novel is purely coincidental. To be continued... (see omnibus edition No. 92)

Mayday

The first Sunday in May and six acres of bluebells in Haughley Park Woods.

Other photos are available -

http://www.haughleypark.co.uk/public-events/

It seems meet and just to celebrate Mayday with something blue. In the interests of balance however and to avoid any any suggestion that all that is yellow is not necessarily red can I direct you to Mhairi Black: SNP MP's maiden speech in full on You Tube! (I am confused, perplexed and banjanxed. You have me completely lost...Ed!)

Oja La.

Wake Up Call

Imagine my surprise listening to Late Junction early this morning on the Beeb's marvelous catchy uppy iplayer type thingy.
(Late Junction 5/04/2016 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b075prfv ) There at 00:55 - Ed Lee Natay  Zuni Sunrise Canyon Records. He was  singing his socks off to get the horses up and all us idle bu**ers out of bed. Sam Lee (no relation as far as I know), who was the guest on the programme, describes his recognising this track and first hearing it as the arise song at FSC. I recognised it too though I was probably singing it (I could in those days, sing that is.) Is it as haunting as I think or is it just  an association with the great outdoors and a very happy time?

Sam was on  after his own programme went out on Sunday - Taking It All Back Home 3/04/2016 BBC R3 . In it he explored how archives and institutions around the world are looking to repatriate sound recordings.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b075p6n9  If you miss the link or don't have time it is downloadable.

I particularly liked the division of people into coyotes and others!

Reflections on Memory

Interesting article in the Grauniad on art, identity and memory by SJ Watson.

 (Oh I see what you did there, smart boy wanted, very good, very good. Speaking of bright young things I believe one of the related's saucepans has had some success  with the fiddle..Ed)

See for yourself at 1:58. You do have the Swedish do you not? I don't know what I would pay an editor for if it wasn't the Swedish.

(PAY...Ed!)

Paella Marinara

Well what else can you do

on a wet Easter Saturday.

Herself cooks a mean Paella Marinara and with help from family and an anniversary bottle a good time was had by all.
Which is more than can be said for the characters in High Rise (or the audience apparently)

Go Go Dancing

So that's it then we can all hang up our gobans and take to the bottle! (The machines have won. We're doomt, I telt thee, doomt. Are Go Bans like Ray Bans... Ed?)

No! See attached photo, ejit.

For those of you who are interested, there is a brief analysis of Lee Sedol's first game with Alpha Go and a nifty animated pictorial representation at the Go Game Guru site. Other sites are available and you may want to rummage in secondhand bookshops for a copy of the Master of Go.

 Mind how you go!

Thanks for all the fish

I witnessed an attack of the Zombie Herons the other day. It was in Thetford, of all places.

(Do you not feel there is something Trumpish about that hairdo...Ed?)
Strictly for the birds.

Orphan's of the Storm

To Cambridge. Confusing for a Foolish Old Man (FoM) First an Old Library with no books.  (Is this going to be a further tirade against the hardworking Mr Cameron and his Government's entirely reasonable policy of Austerity... Ed?) I believe the books have been moved elsewhere.
A Master who is a Mistress (Easy there! M'learned friends might have something to say about all this transgenderysexual stuff. Holy Mother, The Church,  would have had non of it...Ed!) No they would have had A Pope (and others) on the Grope.
Finally, Robert Macfarlane's Orphans, intriguing. (I had no idea the bloody fellow was deceased. All that walking his socks off and writing business. He would have been better off getting a proper suit and a job and looking after the kids...Ed!)

We pitched up at the Old Library Emmanuel College for the launch of a slim volume,  linked above, by Martin Johnson. The woodcut of a green lane on the cover is worth the price alone, in my view. I have mentioned the Patrician Press before. It is  a very courageous effort in these changing times for publishing. Have a look, buy a book!

Good to get that off your chess.

Here's what  Garry Kasparov had to say about in a review of Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind by  Diego Rasskin-Gutman, translated from the Spanish by Deborah Klosky in the New York Review of Books in 2010. The insight given into what it is like to be tanked intellectually by a machine is still worth it alone but there are some thoughtful observations about AI and the human mind and the way in which they can work together. I found it interesting that IBM seems to have closed down Deep Blue once the machine beast had bested the man. 'I'm going to take my marbles and go home'. Now where have I heard that before? Maybe Deep Mind has a greater life expectancy!

And six years before the broo ha ha over the computerisation of Go...

With the supremacy of the chess machines now apparent and the contest of “Man vs. Machine” a thing of the past, perhaps it is time to return to the goals that made computer chess so attractive to many of the finest minds of the twentieth century. Playing better chess was a problem they wanted to solve, yes, and it has been solved. But there were other goals as well: to develop a program that played chess by thinking like a human, perhaps even by learning the game as a human does. Surely this would be a far more fruitful avenue of investigation than creating, as we are doing, ever-faster algorithms to run on ever-faster hardware.

This is our last chess metaphor, then—a metaphor for how we have discarded innovation and creativity in exchange for a steady supply of marketable products. The dreams of creating an artificial intelligence that would engage in an ancient game symbolic of human thought have been abandoned. Instead, every year we have new chess programs, and new versions of old ones, that are all based on the same basic programming concepts for picking a move by searching through millions of possibilities that were developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

Like so much else in our technology-rich and innovation-poor modern world, chess computing has fallen prey to incrementalism and the demands of the market. Brute-force programs play the best chess, so why bother with anything else? Why waste time and money experimenting with new and innovative ideas when we already know what works? Such thinking should horrify anyone worthy of the name of scientist, but it seems, tragically, to be the norm. Our best minds have gone into financial engineering instead of real engineering, with catastrophic results for both sectors.

Well maybe not all our best minds. (Nice to get a bit of recognition now and then...Ed!)

Present company excepted. 

A Pun My Word

Some fun, reported in the Grauniad, with the publishing world, receipt books and authors.
I do like the idea of Honning Makrell. Maybe his latest book should have been Quicksandwich.
Fast food indeed.

Artichokes

Architects have been a source of annoyance for me in the past. You could never get the b***ers to do what you wanted, as the 'client', and as for doing it to time and within budget... I am old enough, however,  to realise that the antipathy was probably mutual.

I really enjoyed the Architect's Apprentice by Elif Shafak. The link gives the review in the Grauniad which may entice you or not but I have spent the last week with Sinan and Jahan whirling about my head and have fallen asleep with the sights sounds and smells of Istanbul infusing my brain. The construction of transports of delight.

Do No Harm

Stories of life death and brain surgery may not be your cup of tea but I read Henry Marsh's book, Do No Harm, for a variety of reasons. I came across neurotmesis  in the eponymous chapter 14.  Having herself returned to me after life saving surgery, but not alas the function of her lower left leg, I was interested to see it defined in another context.  Mr Wikipedia has it as a peripheral nerve injury, the most severe, which in most cases cannot be completely recovered from even with surgical repair. It led me to the thought that - Life is so precious and hangs by such a frail thread that when it is cut.

Marsh seems like an interesting cove. I listened to his Private Passions last year and I think they are still available, as a downloady mp3 thing in good old you kay at least. On p195, in chapter 18 charmingly titled Carcinoma, he relates moments in the days before  his mother dies. He is, with his sister, caring for her. She is carried to the bathroom, washed and tenderly treated in the full knowledge of the three of them that the end is near. He describes their love for her in such terms that even a brick would weep...

"It felt quite easy and natural for us both, I think, despite our intense emotions. It's not that we felt anxious - the three of us knew she was dying - I suppose what we felt was simply intense love, a love quite without ulterior motive, quite without the vanity and self-interest of which love is so often the expression."

(Are there any perks for us in promoting this Marsh fellow, private brain surgery or what...Ed?)

Herself still has a very strong right leg which she needs to exercise! 

Dimpened

Go, a game I used to play, is under attack from DeepMind's project AlphaGo. Google's official blog on this is given here and  other reports are out there. However, John Naughton has a perceptive piece in Th'Observer.  Different take on the "OMG the robots are taking over we're dooomtd I telt thee, dooomtd" that usually comes with these tales. Fits in nicely with the wrecking ball image of this piece.

(Oh I see what you did there, DeepMind - dimpened, and here I am wearing my fingers to the bone trying to find the blessed word in the collections of Mr Collins and Mr Chambers... Ed )

I had often wondered why you had fingers of remarkably similar length, still you do have the opposable digits in the right place.

Top Shelf Stuff

Seen in local supermarket, exhibit 1 a photograph ( attached).

Thank god the owners are keeping this out of the reach of the children!
I know that some of you meterosexuals think that this kind of thing is passe. It is a short step from soft core fruit muesli to CRUNCHY GRANOLA. Hard core or what?

(My Da  (god rest his immortal soul) - said that it could only lead to one thing - mastication... Ed)

Does that parenthetical interjection not constitute illegal nesting by your Da in my blog?

A Modest Republican Proposal

As you may well know I am a fan of reading and libraries. I used the LRB archive to winkle out the Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. It was a straightforward exercise and well worth the old sub. (Are we getting paid for this ...Ed?) I then started to read. I stopped. Such explosions of laughter, merriment, paroxysms of amusement and general helplessness are injurious to one whose health is, to put it mildly, delicate. Besides I have matters pressing and cannot spare the time at the moment. (Then why in god's name am I having to edit this DRIVEL... Ed?)

However it occurred to me that we could combine national library/book/reading day, whatever you want to call it, with a call for the establishment of the Republic of Britonia. How about organising public readings of the work?

(Two for the price of one... Ed?)

Bogof!

Flights of Fancy

A bright sunny day tempted me to take my nose for a run. The local heath provided exercise and a measure of solitude for myself, various dogs and their owners and assorted family groups. The, relative,  peace was disturbed by a micro lite, or some such, imitating a Singer (sewing machine) with a bad cough going at full belt! But the day was such a delight that it was easy to let it slip by with some grace. I moved from the light into the shadow of the trees to hear the raucous call of a bird. I saw a RookCrow challenge a much bigger bird.  Beyond this a buzzard was taking advantage of rising air to circle above the fracas. Its partner left the RookCrow with a disdainful flap and joined the stately dance. Like unwhirling dervishes they slowly precessed up and away. A ghostly half-moon looked on and down.

Miss Placed in Translation

Interesting project reported in the Grauniad.

Literary travel: around the world in 10 must-read books  Ann Morgan spent a year reading a book from every country in the world – 196 in total.

In the article she picks 10 favourites.
Discussed at the dinner table one of the ten reads - The Ladies are Upstairs, a volume from Grenada.
It  prompted...

 Las mujeres estan arriba...

Until that is I corrected my pronunciation of the island nation!
The project is contained in the website Reading the World

(Conversations at the dinner table is it now...Ed?)

A Seasonal Salmagundi

To compensate in some small measure for the lack of postings.
(Phwaat in god's holy name is a salmagundi...Ed?)
Mr Collins (and others) will with their usual accuracy provide a brief description for those with energy left in their fingertips.

- Thinking about old age & forgetfulness. We will all, no doubt find ourselves in the position of wondering what it is that we wanted to go upstairs for. It is only the realisation that  we are now living in a bungalow indicates we have a problem.

- Told by Hugh Stephenson, the Grauniad Crossword Editor against himself...
 ‘How many times have you made pathetic excuses and tried to shuffle the blame onto someone else? You, sir, are unfit to run a whelk stall. Stand down, please, and let someone with more clout, more guts, more pride and more self-respect take over.’
Now who do we know to whom that could apply, answers please on a postcard to D Cameron!

- Shooting the bries with Pete and Sophie.

- Again the phrase in a book...

"almost her entire family had ended up behind bars"

... had me thinking that the tribe were all in catering. Tell me
 "Did they all work in pubs?"

Late Post

Well a belated good new year to all our readers, yes you at the back!

What have we been up to?

There was, of course, a glut of birthdays.

I'm not sure where the cake came from but...

(Ed... tell me do they make dog biscuits as well?)

Very creepy, very creepy!