Grist to the Mill

28 November, 2005

DITHERING

1605: To Be or Not To Be or Not To Be or Not To Be or Not To Be or

2005: Yeah but No but Yeah but No but Yeah but No but Yeah but

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27 November, 2005

THE NATURE OF THINGS

It dawned on me a few weeks ago that nobody ever refers to "Global Warming". It is always, 95% of the time, called "Climate Change". This happened recently. Why? I'm guessing that the phenomena previously known as "Global Warming" isn't proven - we may be going through a "Solar-Flare Phase", for example - whereas "Climate Change" covers all bases in the event that increasing temperatures are attributable to a natural agent. This shift has a ring of political correctness about it. "Global Warming" sounds definite and serious; "Climate Change" on the other hand is more subtle, less threatening. "Climate Change" sounds relatively benevolent - a climate is localised and limited, and "Change" doesn't specify in which direction. Let's not shirk the reality of the situation in an attempt to make it more palatable.

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PET HATE #1,119

Women, (because it's almost always women), finishing their sentences with a trailing-off "so". Usually they do this after making a point. I sense it may be about preventing any comeback from the listener. It's a bizarre socio-linguistic feature possibly adopted to retain control (of a conversation). Because the other party is never quite sure whether the elongated "so" is going to lead anywhere, such as to a connecting phrase, the speaker has the upper hand and is dominant - it strongly discourages any reply. You're left hanging on, and it's not clear whether the speaker wants you to reply or shut up. Once you're aware of the "so" thing, though, you notice it everywhere. Here's an example of it in a 'bragging' context:
"Yes, well, we've seen a place and put an offer in. We had to wait ages and there was a lot of messing around, but the offer's been accepted now, so......." (nothing).
And in an 'I'm correct' context:
"I looked it up. It doesn't mean a lettuce leaf it means a leaf from a tree, so...." (voice trails off into silence).
You get the idea.

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24 November, 2005

BIRDS

In addition to the other birds I mentioned, I've seen another pair of Songthrushes, some Pied Wagails and a gang of Starlings. The Starlings are now frequent visitors. The way they swoop down on the food is similar to the arrival of the three caped villains in Superman 2, looking for trouble.

Sadly, and in spite of spending time making a lard-porridge oat cake with apple bits, I have not yet had to phone the RSPB to report any Golden Eagles...

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I LIKE TO PLAY WITH HIM

I like to play with him
He would be lovely to play with
He is so solemn sensitive conceited
He would be lovely to play with
I could pretend
Say so-and-so and so-and-so
Watch his responses

How he'd take that today
And this tomorrow
Mood, tense, you see
I'd conjugate His Inexcellency.

Oh on that evening you were
So charming enchanting touching
Lost wounded and betrayed
Oh that should have been only the beginning.

Stevie Smith again. She's go-ood!

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ADVICE TO YOUNG CHILDREN

'Children who paddle where the ocean bed shelves steeply
Must take great care they do not
Paddle too deeply.'

Thus spake the awful aging couple
Whose hearts the years had turned to rubble.

But the little children, to save any bother,
Let it in at one ear and out at the other.

Stevie Smith (ever the batty old aunt).

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23 November, 2005

THANKSGIVING

Realised today that it is, or will soon be, Thanksgiving in the US. I have very little idea of what Thanksgiving is about. However, I think it might be about giving thanks to Native Americans for seeing early European settlers through their first couple of winters in New England on the East Coast. Without their help in identifying hitherto unseen and unidentified plants for the purpose of eating and treating medical ailments, and their guidance in building shelter, the pilgrims would have perished. This is guesswork - I couldn't say for sure. I have only a few nuggets of (mis-)information absorbed here-and-there from long-forgotten sources. I think the gratitude was largely due from Western European settlers, rather than Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe.

This started me thinking about the curriculum in schools and about society in general. At school, all children are taught about Ramadam and Eid, and a bunch of other festivals reflecting the ethnicity/cultural values of children, and society at large. Nothing too wrong with this, yet noone ever mentions Thanksgiving. Surely Thanksgiving is important somehow? I wouldn't object to being a bit better informed about it. After all, didn't it come into being because of an exodus of people from, amongst other places, Britain and Ireland? From a purely pragmatic point of view, it seems necessary to know a little bit about this: the US economy seems to shut down, pretty much; flights are booked solid, offices are closed, international trading comes to a standstill, etc. Yet no-one is educated about the reasons behind this festival called Thanksgiving. Perhaps I missed a 50-minute lesson of Personal, Social Education (or whatever it's called these days) somewhere down the line? Yet I can recall entire spending an entire half-term on Diwali!

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21 November, 2005

KIDS TODAY

Here's a shocker. A teacher at school told me that she gave one of the kids a lift home after the child had stayed behind after school to practice for a public-speaking competition. The teacher asked the kid where she lived. The kid said "22 Acacia Avenue" (or wherever). The teacher didn't know exactly where this street was, so asked the child to supply some further information about the names of nearby main roads, or some directions. The kid - who is TWELVE YEARS OLD! - was unable to. Why? Because the child is ferried to and from school every day in a car, by her mother. And at weekends she gets lifts everywhere too, or uses one bus route into town and back. So this child has no familiarity with her surroundings or of the town she has lived in all her life. I can't stand this kind of mollycoddling that goes on. What about cycling and walking? Sometimes I feel it's just me that notices the creeping over-reliance on cars that is happening. Meanwhile, the roads are hopelessly blocked at school chucking out time...

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20 November, 2005

CHARITY DOESN'T HAVE TO BEGIN AT HOME

Children in Need has been and gone again, for another year. Thank God. I don’t like it at all. I realise that childhood is supposed to be a time of innocence and happiness, before any real anxieties, hardships and responsibilities kick in. Also, that a childhood which is not innocent, happy, or free from anxiety, hardship or responsibility, can mess up the rest of a person’s life to greater and lesser degrees. Still, I have a real problem with it, and the format of the television doesn’t help to win me over. My understanding is that the money raised under the umbrella charity “Children in Need” is then disseminated to other worthy charities (national ones, I think, rather than international causes?). But you never really know where the money goes… Presumably to Barnados, to help children who are caring for disabled parents, to buy holidays for children who are terminally ill, etc. Many of these causes are exceptionally worthy and you can’t really pick holes in the examples I cited, but are all the destinations for the money as valid? I suppose if I sat through the telethon I’d find out... It’s just that children, because they are supposed to be innocent and happy, etc, are a very obvious target for charity. Call me hard-hearted, but it’s my opinion that there are enough children’s charities engaged in fundraising already. I can hear the voice of a woman I used to know, all simpering and mawkish, exclaiming “Oh! but what about the children…?” This kind of person puts me in a bad mood just thinking about it. It’s hard to argue with concerned hand wringing people worrying about “The Children”, as though there could be no other cause under the sun more worthy of money or concern. But the fact remains - there are a thousand and one charities for children already. I’m sure that a charity with ‘Children’ in its title must immediately have a huge head start over a charity that doesn’t. And isn’t it possible that children’s causes, being, as I said, such an easy, soft target for fundraising, are easily hi-jacked by people with other agendas to promote, and noone dare wonder if these people are attaching themselves to so obvious a cause for ulterior motives, for fear of themselves being accused of monstrous inhumanity. Exactly like the sixth-form girls who wandered around school last Friday dressed in pyjamas (control yourselves, boys!), I’m sure many of the people on TV who get involved with the show just want to be looked at.

It shouldn’t annoy me that children’s charities get such a high profile, but it does. Why? Because it displays a certain lack of imagination. Like a lottery winner, asked what he spent the money on, replying, “Well, I bought a Bentley, a sports car, a Range Rover, a convertible…”. (Why do you need four cars? Have some imagination!). That’s what I think about people who always, year in and year out, pledge their charitable donations to children’s causes. People who pledge all their money and inheritances to animal charities are even worse.

Anyway, here are my top choices, not that I’m particularly in a position to give money away…
A really important charity carries out straightforward operations to restore bladder control to women who should’ve had caesareans but didn’t. Yes, the governments of these countries should pay, but they don’t. Or won’t. And I can’t help feeling that someone should. As if three, four, sometimes five days of unassisted labour without any kind of pain relief or even a hot bath isn’t bad enough to begin with, the women are then permanently incontinent. Not the kind that results from urgency, or coughing, but a relentless, drip, drip, drip, all day every day for the rest of their lives. The women can’t afford to buy proper sanitary products for absorbance so they use rags. A tearjerking fact: after the operation has been carried out, the charity gives the women a new dress and the bus fare home. I wish this charity had half the status and limelight as Children in Need - I suppose the general public prefer not to engage with the messier problems that some people in this world have to put up with.

Here’s another, helping people who have been injured by burns, and raising funds to research the care of wounds.

And another, very important charity that I’ve always felt strongly about. (Not just because of a recent high-profile case).

And yet another!

Children in Need indeed. Bollocks to it. (I know, I know – what a thing to say!).

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08 November, 2005

SURFACES UPON WHICH WRITING WITH A BIRO IS A PECULIAR PLEAUSRE

The sole of a slipper
A mousemat
An unpeeled banana
A paper napkin

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06 November, 2005

CARS

I hate them and most things to do with them. They are nasty, selfish, pernicious, unethical machines that expose the lucky among us to a range of diseases (asthma, rhinitis, allergies, hayfever - anyone?), the environment to pollution and slow death, and the unlucky, sadly no longer among us, to being crushed, cut, burnt and maimed. I dislike the environmental destruction, the noise, the advertising, the car-as-status-symbol, the erosion of community – I could go on here. I’ve resisted so far, making do with a combination of taking the train, cycling, and not going to things I’d otherwise have liked to. However, after South West Trains ruined my day and left my plans for the weekend in tatters, I have just booked a course of driving lessons with BSI. Since the railways were privatised they have become a shambolic mess. Reading to Portsmouth is not a great distance. Less than halfway there I realised it was not even viable to continue and that I would miss the event I was travelling to. So I turned around and came back. I spent Saturday night feeling very pissed off and angry that I wasn’t where I wanted to be. So, although cars, roads, etc are immoral, they’re surely preferable to being fucked around by clapped out infrastructure, incompetent rail operators and Railtrack’s moronic, Neanderthal staff.

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05 November, 2005

SCIENCE

Today, I read in an organic chemistry textbook that a single drop of 2-methoxy-3-(1-methylethyl)-1,4-diazabenzene(2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine) in a large swimming pool would be more than adequate to give the entire pool the odor of raw potatoes.

And what about this fact: there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth. I'm having trouble with this. Surely this is a close call? If you consider, for one moment, the area of a large beach towel on the surface of a beach, then consider this same area in three dimensions descending to terra firma, to the earth's crust - that's a lot of sand. And then factor in the thousands of miles of coastline that exist around the world (or even the coastline of the British Isles). How can physicists stake (or is it "state") this claim as a certainty? Yet they have.

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01 November, 2005

A DAY IN AUTUMN

It will not always be like this,
The air windless, a few last
Leaves adding their decoration
To the trees' shoulders, braiding the cuffs
Of the boughs with gold; a bird preening
In the lawn's mirror. Having looked up
From the day's chores, pause a minute,
Let the mind take its photograph
Of the bright scene, something to wear
Against the heart in the long cold.

R.S. Thomas

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