Quedula

The Tenth Dimension

2010-08-25T06:38:00.001-07:00

St. Paul's from the South Bank

2010-07-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

In 1977:-

In 2009:-

The obvious change is the Millenium footbridge. This is obscuring the tall building towards the left side of the picture which, from the details that can be made out, appears to be unchanged. The new terrcotta-coloured building on the riverside is now obscuring the College of Arms and the Welsh Church of St. Benet's in Queen Victoria Street. The building to the right on the riverfront appears to have been rebuilt but with some architectural references to the original. St.Paul's itself, gleaming white, is clearly showing the effects of the cleaning that has been carried out since the 1977 shot.

Regrettably the NatWest Tower and another tower block to the right of St.Paul's dome are now degrading the skyline.

Lego felt-tip printer

2010-06-26T01:08:00.000-07:00

There are some clever buggers out there . . .

Tombola tale

2010-06-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

I was at a village fete today helping on a tombola stall in aid of a local charity. In pride of place was a large cuddly toy, a pink & white fluffy dog with number 176 on it. This caught the eye of a small girl who asked how much it was. I explained it was a prize which she could try for by purchasing a 50p ticket. She rushed off and came back a minute later with a a 50p coin. I took the coin and proffered the bucket of folded-up ticket stubs. She plunged her hand in without hesitation and drew out - 176. She accepted her prize quite calmly. Of course she was going to win it.

I hope this hasn't given her the wrong idea about life . . . .

Electric lighting causes cancer

2010-06-14T00:40:00.000-07:00

"The advent of electric lighting at night is one of the major reasons why the cancer rate has increased substantially during the last 100 years. The reason for this -melatonin. This hormone, which puts us to sleep, is a powerful anti-oxidant and cancer preventive agent. Results of in vitro and in vivo studies, suggest that melatonin helps the immune system to eliminate neoplastic cells, before cancer develops.
What to do about this? Sleeping in complete darkness is very important, of course. If your bedroom is not dark, wearing a sleeping mask keeps your melatonin levels high throughout the night. Interrupting the darkness, however, for example by turning on a bathroom light, even for a few minutes, can turn off your melatonin for an hour or more! That's why for many people it's hard to go back to sleep after getting up to go to the bathroom."

From: Sentient Cosmos

The Sunscreen Song - Baz Luhrmann

2010-05-23T02:11:00.000-07:00

Lamp Longevity

2010-04-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

This Philips SL*18D, an early, energy-saving fluorescent, (18W) has just given up the ghost. It was bought in 1985. I estimate that over the ensuing 25 years its use has saved, very roughly but of the right order, 700 kilowatt-hours. Taking the average energy price over the 25 years to have been 5p per kWh that means the cost saving has been about £35.

The lamp itself would have been fairly expensive in those days, probably about £10 but I suspect this has been more than offset by the number of incandescent lamps I would have had to buy over the same period..

It is very heavy weighing in at 550 grams and been in a suspended lamp-holder all its life: but the flex and anchoring seemed to stand the strain.

Wind Power - the killer argument

2010-03-24T02:39:00.000-07:00

Wind turbines pay back the carbon cost of their manufacture in about 6 months and last for 20 years or more. After that first 6 months every kilowatt they generate is carbon-free and nuclear waste-free and a gain for our grand-children.

That is not to say that it is not preferable to site them out at sea rather than in areas of outstanding natural beauty; but one also should not be misled by nimbys with their arguments about lack of efficiency, and the fickleness of the wind. These are not relevant to the matter in hand, the saving of the planet.

Connections

2010-03-10T12:55:00.000-08:00

I know someone who once met someone who had once shaken hands with Hitler.

Just thought I'd mention it. . . .

Last Lines 7

2010-03-06T13:23:00.000-08:00

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

From 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

2010-03-04T04:38:00.000-08:00

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer."

From the first paragraph of the poem by Dylan Thomas. Surely a poetic expression of a basic unalienable truth, the common ancestry of all life. When I feel the need to indulge the spiritual side of my nature I turn to works such as this. Of course much of the King James's version of the Bible is superbly poetic and can be enjoyed as such but where is truth to be found in its preposterous subject matter?

Last Lines 6

2010-02-22T07:27:00.000-08:00

"As she went on her way, gossamer threads, spun from bush to bush, barricaded her pathway, and as she broke through one after another of these fairy barricades she thought, 'They're trying to bind me and keep me'. But the threads which were to bind her to her native country were more enduring than gossamer. They were spun of love and kinship and cherished memories."

From 'Candleford Green' by Flora Thompson

Domestic Waste Recycling

2010-02-20T03:04:00.000-08:00

I have always have had worries about the viability of domestic waste recycling. Take, for a simple example, plastic bottles. These occupy large amounts of space, even when partially crushed but are low in weight of recoverable plastic. To collect them necessitates a heavy vehicle frequently stopping & starting along miles of residential roads; then, when full, transport to a depot and from there to a recycling plant for recovery of usable plastic. Is the carbon saved at the point that reclaimed plastic granules issue forth into a delivery lorry more than that expended by all the handling and transport involved?

Will the cost of this recovered plastic to the bottle-makers be less than that of new material; or are taxpayers subsidising recycling as a matter of Government policy in order to keep the raw materials in the ground and waste out of land-fill?

Presumably someone has done the sums.

Louis Comfort Tiffany

2010-02-18T08:34:00.000-08:00

In the UK Tiffany windows can be seen in situ in Kimbolton Church, Cambridgeshire, and New College Chapel, London.

Last Lines 5

2010-02-08T08:27:00.000-08:00

"One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

From Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Also inscribed on a cross on Observation Hill, Antarctica, in memory of Scott & his party

Test your Risk Intelligence

2010-02-04T00:26:00.000-08:00

Risk Intelligence Quotient (RQ) is a measure of a person’s ability to estimate probabilities accurately. People with high risk intelligence tend to make better predictions than those with low RQ.

High risk intelligence is quite rare. Fifty years of research in the psychology of judgement and decision making shows that most people are not very good at thinking clearly about risky choices. If risk intelligence was more common, the world wouldn't be mired in financial crisis, since this was largely caused by unwise lending and borrowing - both of which involve risk intelligence. Too many lenders and borrowers overestimated the chances that loans would be repaid.

The 5 minute test here will measure your will your RQ.

Small garage? - No problem.

2010-01-25T05:35:00.000-08:00

Slimste parkeerder van België | Flabber

Rien à dire

2010-01-23T01:06:00.000-08:00

Etiquette advice sought. . .

2010-01-02T13:26:00.000-08:00

If a friend (not very close) invites you, among others, to their home for a meal and then serves unmistakably under-cooked chicken, what procedure should one follow?

Charity Sponsorship

2009-12-23T00:59:00.000-08:00

This is a modern phenomenon which has never quite clicked with me. If, along with a few dozen, hundred, thousand, others you agree to hand over £x to some athlete prepared to run 6 marathons back to back or ride up Mount Kilimanjaro on a unicycle, and you are completely trusting that, if he succeeds a large proportion of this £x will be donated to a favourite charity, would you, in the event of him dropping dead or otherwise failing in his mission say. "Oh no, sorry you can't have the money"?

If your answer is "no", why not hand over the whole sum right at the start and save him the trouble. Tell him you want the whole sum to go straight to the charity and he should fund his adventure some other way.

Just a thought . . .

The Lady of Shalott

2009-12-17T03:48:00.000-08:00

I like Tennyson and I like Loreena McKennitt, so - no contest.

We are not the Centre of the Universe

2009-12-01T21:53:00.001-08:00

Another strange sign from across the pond . . . .

2009-11-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

This was situated at a viewing point on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. No doubt they can be seen elsewhere in the States but this was the only one I noticed.

The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

I don't know exactly what the The National Park Service is afraid of but notice how it differs from the kind of sign that might be expected in National Parks in England. These would be full of prohibitions; no litter, no picnicking, no barbecues etc.

I like the font they've used. Very 'Art Deco'.

Bear Advice

2009-11-19T04:42:00.000-08:00

Last Lines 4

2009-11-02T05:41:00.000-08:00

"I lingered round them under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth"

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
(This is a very well-known last line, but none the worse for that. In fact when one comes to search for notable, resonant or distinctive examples they are very hard to come by. I have looked, for example, through all Dickens's novels and short stories and only found the already well known one from 'Tale of Two Cities", which I shall no doubt be driven to use at some time. Any suggestions will be welcome.)

Climate Change Denying

2009-10-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

The deposits of fossil fuels that we have been cheerfully consuming over the last 100 years or so, and at an ever-increasing rate, were gradually laid down over many hundreds of thousands of years. Although aspects of the present theories and predictions of climate change may still be open to be dispute or questioning, what climate change deniers, like Simon Heffer of the Telegraph, first need to tell us is; why should releasing this carbon in such a small fraction of the time in which it was laid down not produce some observable effects on the climate? If they can't, the sensible thing for the time being is to assume the worst and do what we can to get off this carbon jaunt.

Zippers

2009-10-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

The modern zipper has been around since 1914 and its adoption really took off after WW2. It has been through numerous manifestations. Anyway, nearly 100 years is a good long time. Could some mechanical designer now invent a version, or expert tailor a seaming technique, in which the slider does NOT get caught and jammed in the edge of the garment material.

PLEASE!

Monkeys using tools

2009-10-13T03:26:00.000-07:00

"Life", narrated by David Attenborough, makes one

wonder not only at the amazing scenes of the

natural world recorded, but also at the extraordinary

skills shown by the cameramen.

I found this particular extract particularly moving.

Science is Real

2009-10-12T00:17:00.000-07:00

Last Lines 3

2009-09-24T22:51:00.000-07:00

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

From "The Dead" in James Joyce's "Dubliners"

"Cardboard Self" by James Lake

2009-09-24T11:15:00.001-07:00

An entrant in the "Outside In" competition and currently on display at the Pallant Gallery, Chichester. It is a powerful, highly detailed sculpture made of pieces of corrugated cardboard built up on an armature of carboard tubes of the kind we discard from rolls of wrapping paper.

It was not one of the 6 winners.

Last Lines 2

2009-09-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

"We really are at the beginning of it all. The trick, of course, is to make sure we never find the end. And that, almost certainly, will require a lot more than lucky breaks"

from "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

UK Driving Licence Rant

2009-08-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

At centre top the orange covered licence is from 1926. Issued by a County Council it is a simple single-fold piece of high-quality card. Opening it up the driver's details are on the LH side and the blank RH side is headed "Endorsements" in Old English lettering. Moving clockwise are licences from 1961, and 1974 both issued by County Councils. The dark red one from 1974 is quite nice little item in cloth covered-card with a reinforcing scrim on the hinge.

Some time after 1974 licencing was taken away from County Councils by the DVLC and economies started to appear. . . The fourth licence illustrated, from 1977, consisted of a single sheet of A4 paper in pink and green, cleverly formatted to be folded 4 times to fit into a neat plastic pouch (also supplied) and resulting in a durable item scarcely larger that the earlier versions.

The final licence on the right with which all present day drivers are familiar, needs no description. It is euphemistically named the Photocard Licence and every time I come across it I feel the need of a good rant. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against the idea of a plastic credit card-sized licence with one's photo on it. It is a very good idea, but apparently, at the time it was mooted, the technology was either too expensive or just not up to storing all the data needed on a plastic card.

At this stage one would have thought an obvious solution would have been to keep the earlier licence and added a decent sized photo to it, as in the manner of a passport. But no, instead of rethinking and backtracking (perhaps it had gone too far and too much money had been spent) they compromised by keeping the inadequate card with a vanishingly small photo and supplementing it with an A4 sheet of flimsy paper on which all remaining data could be stored (including endorsements), i.e. we were to be saddled with an inconvenient marriage of 15th & 20th century technologies giving us two items to look after instead of just one. When they were first issued, this problem of keeping them together was obviously forseen and a special plastic wallet was supplied, but this has long since been discontinued and the driving public has been left to shift for itself.. . .

To compound the annoyance the licence holder is sternly warned that neither part of the licence is valid by itself and both parts must be produced together whenever required.

Well thanks a lot! I hope the Government Minister responsible for pushing this dog's breakfast through feels ashamed of himself - but I doubt it.

An Arundel Tomb

2009-08-10T09:55:00.001-07:00

This 14th. century tomb to Richard Fitzalan, 2nd Earl of Arundel and his wife Eleanor is in Chichester Cathedral, moved there from Lewes Priory after the dissolution of the monastries. Their poses are unique. Her right leg is crossed over her left so that she is slightly turned to her "Lord", her right hand is lightly clasped in his ungauntletted left. Their feet rest on their pet dogs. It has been made famous by a wonderful poem by Philip Larkin. Here is the last verse:-

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

from "The Whitsun Weddings"

Last Lines 1

2009-08-04T08:21:00.000-07:00

"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

From Middlemarch (1871–72) by George Eliot.

Sun beds

2009-07-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

The current fuss about the danger of using sunbeds, justified I'm sure, reminds me of an experience of my childhood. After a tonsillectomy at age 5 it was decided I was "run-down" and should have "sunray" treatment. Once a week I would attend the local childrens' hospital, don some dark-green goggles and sit naked with a lot of other youngsters in front of a large lamp. I don't remember it being as primitive as a carbon-arc lamp but I'm sure it was nowhere near as sophisticated in its emissions as a modern sun bed. The sessions lasted about 15 minutes and continued for a few weeks. I don't know if they did me any good but I'm sure they did less harm than subsequent teenage sunbathing on Brighton beach. Of course that was before the days of skin cancer scares.

How medical fashions change.

Kulture culture

2009-07-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

How to peel a banana.

2009-07-11T02:18:00.001-07:00

Pale Blue Dot

2009-07-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

twitter addiction

2009-07-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

Created by The Oatmeal

Recorded for Posterity . . .

2009-07-05T12:21:00.000-07:00

. . . a red public telephone box,

With a working telephone.
Minimum charge 40p. How quaint!

What I want in a vacuum cleaner is:-

2009-06-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

a) disposable dust bags. I do not want to mess about emptying dust chambers. I want to be able to easily lift out a full dust bag and drop it in a bin. There, - job done.

b) for it to be as light as possible and with a comfortable lifting handle for ease of carrying it around the house.

c) for it to have a power lead that automatically rewinds for storage.

d) for it to have easily dismountable extension tubes and tools.

Let's get this straight. I could not care less if the suction drops off as the bag fills up. I don't measure the amount of dust in the carpet before and after cleaning and even if I could and did and was worried about it, I could just keep cleaning for a little longer or clean more often.

Does anyone agree with me here? And does it perhaps make you wonder if the success of a certain very popular make of cleaner that looks like a miniature chemical processing factory, and has made its inventor a small fortune, might not have been solely due to the public's gullibility?

Its not that I like North Korea but, . . .

2009-06-22T05:34:00.001-07:00

. . . taking into account the number of times during the last 60 years that the USA and the UK have invaded smaller, weaker nations is it any wonder that a poor, isolated, paranoic country like North Korea wants to have its own nuclear deterrent?

It is always good to try and see the other side: http://www.korea-dpr.com/faq.htm