Boiled Head

It’s a long story but the moans of this particular boiled head (slap head is so…violent!) reminded me of the time when the old ticker gave us all a fright. In the middle of Cantabria I was dispatched to see an ancient Spanish cardiologist at the local polyclinic. Excellent service! We chatted about this and that and he asked some questions and gave some advice.

Did I drink?

Shuffle, cringe, squirm. Yes I did! What did I drink.? Red wine…

Of course, no, but did I drink alcohol. Whisky, spirits…? No. Good.

I must walk, yes it is cold in the winter but I must walk. If it is very cold I must put a newspaper between my chest and my shirt. It will be fine. El Pais is usually good!

The tastelessness of wolves.

Homelessness and housing!
Haven't we come a long way since Cathy came home

We all know the story of the three little piggies.

So, to take the curly tail further.

Along came a man, with a wolf. He answered to the name of Al. He had a stocky frame and a broad nose. Occasionally, but not in polite company, he grunted. In polite company he merely sighed! The wolf was a sweetie with big yellow teeth and a wicked sense of humour.

The first pig offered to introduce Al and his wolf to Little Red Riding Hood’s (LRRH) granny. She had a room in her home; for 400 sovs they could have the room, a bath once a week and go outside in the woods if nature called. There was no access to the kitchen but there was a McOndos at the entrance to the forest. Al took it; he had no choice. He did have the 1600 sovs deposit for the month, and the deal was done.

Granny got weaker and weaker because of the pollution from the pig factory in the heart of the forest. Al and the wolf looked after her as best as they could, after their 16 hour shifts at the pig factory, but to no avail. She faded away and eventually Al and the wolf were evicted by the property developers who offered LRHH 1 million sovs to allow them to create a rustic holiday village. Naturally enough this had a value in excess of 100 million sovs from the word go!

Al said what do we do now, the wolf smiled, LRRH said "Jings I canna be doing with this." and went off to the bank.

So, the second pig offered Al and his wolf a room. 600 sovs a week, fair share of the kitchen and bathroom, outside loo, lovely views of the municipal recycling dump, and all the methane you can breathe. Al took it; he had no choice. He did have the 2400 sovs deposit, after a fashion, and the deal was done.
Al worked to get the money for the rent. An uphill struggle as they say.The wolf watched and waited as wolves do, it’s in their nature.

Times were good. Al had enough to pay the rent, feed himself, the wolf and go down the pub. Time marched on.

Along came a pig called Credit Crunch (CC) he was wild wacky and lotsa fun. He offered Al ‘A DEAL’ 2000 sovs! A little bit extra for the holiday, festival, wolves…...

The wolf growled, CC jumped, but he clinched the deal! So, Al now had the uphill and a little bit more. Well you can imagine; not a happy story.

Especially as the pig factory had to close. Damn those economic cycles! Don’t you just hate it when they do that?

So, there’s Al. Nowhere to go, no home, nothing to do and no sovs to do it with. The wolf still looked pretty sanguine, as wolves do, even though it is going to be a hard winter.

As they shuffled through the woods, somewhat downcast, Al and the wolf met Da Guy!

“Hello!” said Al.

“WHATEVER !” said Da Guy.

Al said he was sorry and the wolf grinned, after a fashion. No! Da Guy said that it was 13 down, eight letters,

‘Where VAT is applied regardless’

nice one.

The wolf said that Bunthorne can be such a bugger!

They moved on quickly, Al had other things to think about.

Da Guy called after them and asked if there was anything he could do.

“Not unless you can dig me, and the wolf, out of a hole, give us some sovs, and put a roof over our heads!?” said Al.

“Sorry,” said Da Guy, “ain’t got a shovelbut. How about an affordable loan and an affordable place to rent and a place for you and woolfie to work?”

“Don’t patronise me.”

said wolf.

Al asked how he could pay for this. Did it involve signing away parts of his body, the rights to his first born plus 16 hours a day of hard labour?

“No. Just work down at the community woodland coop.”

“Think about it!”

“We’ve thought about it.” said wolf.

“Where does he sign?”

“On a piece paper, usually at the bottom.” said Da Guy.

The wolf thought humans could be such a pain.

In praise of Capitalism?

Sometimes, even wild eyed, hate filled, pinkos like myself have to stand back and mutter, sotto voce, that capitalism is awesome. In the midst of dreadful conflict it does restore one's faith in inhumanity!

An article in Open Democracy makes this point very clear with the following claim-

In 2001, the last year of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the production of heroine was seventy-four metric tonnes; in 2006, under the nominal control of the US-led "coalition of the willing", the production of heroin in Afghanistan reached 6,100 metric tonnes.

Faced with such productivity what can one say but 'Our Ford'!

Better 2 - Do Things Better

I mentioned that I had started reading a book by Atul Gawande

Better. A Surgeons Notes on Performance

Worth ordering from the library, at least if you think about what you do and want to do it a bit better without too much effort, ehem, maybe not the last bit!

In an afterword he suggests that becoming a positive deviant is a good thing and you can make a start by:

- Asking an unscripted question;

- Not complaining;

- Counting something, something you are interested in;

- Writing something;

- Changing - look for opportunities to be an early adopter.

So I expect to see you Do Things Better! (DTB)

Your pre-Christmas resolution.
Why wait to the New Year, it’s so middle of the bell curve.

From mice to pigs.

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft agley

You’ll forgive me if I sound like Chris out of Northern Exposure groaning away on the good old kay-Bear but 'The Rabbi' (Burns) did appear to have an insight here.

I was hooked by the link to the Open Democracy article.

As a practising moneylender and property speculator I was shocked to learn that the fruits of such positive activity could be used to such ill effect. But then why should I be.

Hey, if de big guys can do wrong den why can’t de liddle guys.

More evidence of the ripe fruits of capitalism, if any were needed, in a Grauniad article on banks' use of charitable trusts. I particularly like the idea that when caught with hands in the cookie jar the big, bad, old bear told the charity one thing and the newspaper another, allegedly!

And finally a suggestion for a tank without taint!

Saudi free petrol! Is any other particularly clean? You've got to start somewhere.

Not sure if it is possible or even if it would be popular but I still enjoy a good old campaign.

I (think) I remember reading Hunter S. writing about a campaign organised by LBJ to discredit a fresh faced, honest looking, clean as a whistle, young opponent in Texas.

Let’s put it about that he f**** pigs!

His campaign manager, who presumably was forever washing his hands when he wasn’t handing out dollar bills and promissory notes, could not understand it. Even given his personal powers of persuasion and a large war chest, no one, not even Ladybird, was going to believe said opponent f***** pigs. LBJ’s reply was classic.

Course they ain't but we're going to have ourselves some fun watchin' him deny it!

Better

If you had told me even 2 years ago I would be inspired by a book subtitled :-

A Surgeons Notes on Performance

I might have demurred.

However, the book by Atul Gawande has given me a bit of a lift and a few things to think about in the money lending and property speculation business!

Have a look for yourselves.

Of course there are prescriptions.

Three things, (Tres cosas, siempre tres cosas!) which influence performance in medicine.

Maybe they apply elsewhere!

-Diligence

-To do ‘right’ (like that one, easy peasy!)

-Ingenuity.

Cooking the tea, ok dinner to you folk, tonight I was inspired by brother Bach’s sonatas and partitas. I suggested to goodladywife (GLW) that although the man himself might be regarded as a bit of a dry old stick, cerebral, mathematical, repetitive and so on, he could touch you in the humanity department! It is something I have come to gradually over the years. Glad I did too.

Pre-Christmas Shopping

Scooting about in Big Market Town, which is really quite small, I had to go into Waterwell's Bookshop. I am much more a creature of libraries as our many regular readers will know! However, needs must and the devil drives.

Having made my purchase, a present for a colleague, and secreted it about my person I was hovering by the door waiting for the tide of pre-christmas shoppers to subside so I could limp from the building. A woman of uncertain age and social background flounced into the shop and demanded at the top of her voice,

'Ave you got any funny books about, er, er, senior moments!

I slipped out of the door and jotted down the statement verbatim. My memory is not what it was.

Our friends in the north

Christopher Harvie has an interesting piece in Open Democracy

"Choosing Scotland's future": a compressed history.

I leave you to ponder that from the man who used Deep Fried Hillman Imp for a book title.

He has, in the article, used the phrase sub-prime minister. I’m sure that Gordy finds it very wounding! I’ve not seen it previously. Who knows it may catch on!

For all I know, one of the cabinet wags may have attached it to Gordy's back on a post it note

Rock of Ages

Two men sit in a bunker somewhere underneath Whitehall.

Fu….g TNT!

Christ Gordon where?

No you bampot. No the explosive, the so called fu….g ‘ Logistics Facilitator’

Oh thank God for that!

It’s god actually in here Tony. You’re a wee bit twitchy since you came back from Palistan or wherever it is.

You’ve no idea, Gordon. It’s like surfing on sewage full of land mines.

Well that must be a new experience for you.

Ok, ok I can live without Mr Sarky. Ms Manzanilla is bad enough. Anyway how about some devil’s buttermilk as the Baroness would say.

Right I’ll get one of the little people to rustle up a few bottles of Glenn Miller.

Glenn Miller?

Disappeared into the wide blue yonder just like those disks.

Yes, I heard about that. Did I tell you I met this guy in Gaza, great sense of humour, dreadful personal hygiene, said he had leads on 25 million potential terrorists, two generations worth, convenient format, can play on any i-Pod; are you interested?

No thanks Tone, no just at the minute. Here we are. Give us your glass. I must say I’m impressed at the cellar in this place since I took over.

Yes lots of good vino and such; quite a few bodies as well, if I remember correctly, Ha! Ha!

Speaking of which have you seen La Mandleson. Are you sure he’s not wearing a syrup these days along with the pallor of the recently undead?

Now Gordon!

Ok Tone, just can’t resist it. It’s ma flawed nature te he he….

You’re right Godron, it is good stuff this Glenn Miller. God bless him wherever he is.

Ok Tone, I’ll give you the capitalisation at the beginning of a sentence.

Speaking of which, Godron, I don’t suppose there is any chance of slipping me the date of the nationalisation of the Old Rock! You know, Rock of Ages cleft for me for a slightly higher fee! Ms Manzawhatsit is whinging about the lack of the old spondoolicks in the communal kitty, meow, meow!

No chance Tone! We have to be squeaky clean. Jings, Rock of Ages, you are shome pieceh of work Tone you know that. Iztha two bottlesh already.

Yezz! I haven’t laughed so much sinceh the old queen died!

Yesh Tone! But which one?

Now Godron!

Capitalism 101 and jokes!

It has been so hard not to comment about the Rock. So many things to say! My amazement is that so many of us fail to understand the mechanisms of oh, capitalism. Damn! There, I have said it!
You invest in an enterprise, it is successful, it pays a dividend, its shares increase in value.
Off you go to the pub to realise some disposable income!
You invest in an enterprise, it is unsuccessful, it does not pay a dividend, its shares decrease in value, it goes tits up. Off you go to the pub to drown your sorrows with some borrowed capital. Nuff said; no whingeing.

Yes the weak business, if it is a failing bank , can have catastrophic effects on ' business sentiment'. If depositors in a bank are constantly worried about getting their boodle when they need it, bad news. Seeing people queue for their money is so 1920s. Not to mention the poor sods who work for the bank and don't have 2 mil. in shares! (Not sure Baroness Dagenham was too worried about decimating the mining communities either!) So where am I?

2 Jokes.

- How can you distinguish stoats from weasles.
Weasles are weasily distingused from stoats which are stotally different.

Thanks to a colleague, with children, for that one.

-Are there any Jews in Northern Ireland?
Yes of course!
But are they Catholic Jews or Protestant Jews?
Protestant Jews of course.
Why?
Don't we all have Orange Jews for breakfast!

Doh!

Birthdays

So if you get to be 91 what do you do to celebrate; well I guess you celebrate with the village and those members of your family that are around. Not sure I will get near that age at all but good luck to those that do. In the meantime, a snap of a Mum and two loving daughters.

Oh; and a really nice bit of NT real estate in the background.

An exceptionally simple theory of everything.

You thought it was 42 didn’t you, well it seems like it could be E8 according to A. Garrett Lisi. (original paper) No, that’s not a part of Hackney but the E8 Lie algebra…

perhaps the most beautiful structure in mathematics.

I can hear the groans already but hang on to your hats this could be a fascinating trip.

You know how all the forces in the universe, nuclear, electowhatsit, gravity and the like are all described by pretty little equations of course you do, so far so good.

In his introduction to the paper Lisi sketches his mathematical approach to describing the universe.

Although It is interesting to consider that the universe may be the physical instantiation of all mathematics, there is a classic principle for restricting the possibilities… A successful description of nature should be a concise, elegant, unified mathematical structure consistent with experience. Hundreds of years of theoretical and experimental work have produced an extremely successful pair of mathematical theories describing our world. The standard model of particles and interactions described by quantum field theory is a paragon of predictive excellence. General relativity, a theory of gravity built from pure geometry, is exceedingly elegant and effective in its domain… Any attempt to describe nature at the foundational level must reproduce these successful theories, and the most sensible course towards unification is to extend them with as little new mathematical machinery as necessary. The further we drift from these experimentally verified foundations, the less likely our mathematics is to correspond with reality. In the absence of new experimental data, we should be very careful, accepting sophisticated mathematical constructions only when they provide a clear simplification. And we should pare and unite existing structures whenever possible…By considering these two theories and following our guiding principles, we will be led to a beautiful unification.

He’s off then on his merry way. The first subheading draws me in

A connection with everything

My kind of pizza. You may have a certain reluctance to follow the next few pages if your maths is a wee bit rusty but I defy you to ignore Figure 2 on page 17. The E8 root system, with each root assigned to an elementary particle field.

After a few more equations Lisi summarises his conclusions

The theory proposed in this paper represents a comprehensive unification program, describing all fields of the standard model and gravity as parts of a uniquely beautiful mathematical structure… Some aspects of this theory are not yet completely understood, and until they are it should be treated with appropriate skepticism. However, the current match to the standard model and gravity is very good. Future work will either strengthen the correlation to known physics and produce successful predictions for the LHC, or the theory will encounter a fatal contradiction with nature. The lack of extraneous structures and free parameters ensures testable predictions, so it will either succeed or fail spectacularly. If E8 theory is fully successful as a theory of everything, our universe is an exceptionally beautiful shape.

Now men, and it is usually men, who think they have the secret to the universe, and if you just let them have 4 hours of your time and provide them with lots of paper, will write out the equations in a very small hand in green ink. They are not uncommon. They are not quite as common as men who think they are the son of god, or even god! However, I don’t think this is in the same league.

Two points really:-

In an article in the New Scientist

Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous". "It is one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years”…

A not inconsiderable achievement as one our prime ministers used to say. As I have mentioned before Lee Smolin seems to be a sharp cookie with a good overview

There is also testability. Those three letters LHC, the Large Hadron Collider, it is a big machine for hurtling particles at high energy towards each other. A very sophisticated way of finding out what stuff is made of. Just like kids bashing toys on the ground to see what’s inside! There are great hopes of finding the Higgs.

Now there is a theory, needs a bit more work and there is no guarantee guv, but it could be tested! So let's get bashing those poor old hadrons.

On a Winter’s Afternoon.

Listening to the Goldbloom Variations after a bowl of soup and hand wrought onion bread I feel a little like Chris in Northern Exposure.

Great temptation when away from home comforts to philosophise.

It is grey, cold and miserable out there. Still, I passed my MOT last week, alive but overweight was the verdict. I wonder if the car will be so fortunate this week. Can you have an overweight car?

Meanwhile hiding in winter! This from a hide last year.

From the Forest of the Dead. Maybe not!

Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris! Or not as the case may be.

Luz

Hay Luz!


Y despues?

A Prodigious Talent 2

A trip to London and a visit to Hampstead Heath gave me the chance to go and see the “Fancy Woman”.

Shock! Horror! Phwat are you talking about? Have you not plighted your troth, whatever that might be, to the goodladywife, your partner of some(mumbles indistinctly) years!

Of course! However, I am only human and I am very taken with the works of a certain Mr. J Vermeer, one of which is permanently on display at Kenwood House, when it is not being stolen by various gobshites.

There she is and I try to see her as often as possible.

Not the gurl with the pearl

or the the gurl with the red hat (and no kn..…. stop it at once!)

A master of light. Would that there were more! Ojala!

A Prodigious Talent

A trip to London and a visit to the Grauniad Newsroom which currently has an exhibition of the “Unknown Bown”, a photographer of Prodigious Talent.

I was convinced after seeing it that my memory only graduated to colour from black and white (as far as I know she only worked in this medium) after about 1965. The Gypsy Child, Maidstone ’61 is a real stunner. By-election, Rochdale, ’58, is an interesting storyboard of politics at the time. I think the name of the candidate on the leaflets carried by the people in the shot was Jack McCann. If it is possible go and see it. Be shocked at how parts of England in the 50’s and 60’s looked like a failed communist state.
If you’ve got it you can plough a singular furrow to great effect!

Visits to Hampstead Heath and Anglesey Abbey convinced me that, even if you have no talent, a dodgy, digital, daguerreoista, with a bog standard point and shoot can hardly fail in decently lit, autumn arborial surroundings.

And of course it was too tempting to miss a snapper snapped.

Apologies to the woman whoever she is.

Glasgow Games

Many of our non-co-respondents complain about my lack of interest in sport, notwithstanding my goodladywife's passion for beefy men throwing an odd shaped ball around. Now, to set this matter to rights.
Glasgow is due to host the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Hooray!

The Leader of the Scottish Government, a Mr Salmo Salmar, is quoted in the Grauniad as saying

... the city would "make these games the greatest sporting event our country has ever seen".

The same article quotes a Mr Godron Broon, the Leader of the English Government,

"It's looking like a great sporting decade for our country," he said.

It was alleged that he

called many Commonwealth heads of government to bolster Glasgow's bid last week

Hats off all round. Nice to see the old chums getting on so well and being so effective. See what you can do when you work together as a team lads? No nasty sniping about all that (Scottish) lottery money being smuggled over the border for the (English) Olympic Games. You'll be whinging on about the (Scottish) oil next.

As the workperson once said when they were demolishing the roof of the Rector's office at Edinburgh University( I believe the Rector was one G Broon Esq. at the time)

It's no polical, pal!

Fun and games in the years ahead!

Reading Bad Science, see side panel, I was reminded of the Glasgow sobriquet common in my time in the north - YOU TUBE. - Maybe it persists to this day and is still a term of affectionate banter, as well as being something to do with the interweb. However, I would be vary wary of calling anyone a copper tube.
Thanks to Ben Goldacre for the link, possibly.

Crunchy and good!

Nice explanation of the little local difficulty in the wonderful world of wonga (WWW?) which I might have mentioned previously.

Thanks yet again to John Naughton and his contact. I missed it too.

Resolutions.

Panic over

Cloth hats –
Rep = cloth
Tiles = hats!

Doh! Useful little site for xwders.

Araucaria can be a real bugger!

Ben Hammersly had a very naughty link

Suggested that the Scots might want it fried!

There we go then!

So, that’s alright.
Amazing what people get up to.

Cautionary Tales

I am aware that this could become a theme.

However, an aside. Anyone knowing the whereabouts of the answer to the following question is implored to email to prop.for.06@btinternet.com.
What is the connection between cloth hats and lizards, monitors and/or reptiles? We solved the prize Araucaria in the Grauniad last week, despite not being able to make the connection between 'cloth hats and lizards, monitors and/or reptiles'.
All contributions gratefully received and acknowledged.

Moving on, a fine autumn afternoon for a bimble.

http://explore.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/os_routes/show/683

I am deeply grateful that the OS feel obliged to contribute something back to the little people just because they are a Treasury Trading Fund!

But, my god, are the ducks prolific in this part of the world; it's November for heavens sake!


Yes. That is a brood of ducklings!
Feckless buggers.