Ireland

The older I get and the more I see and hear in the world the more I think that things would be a lot simpler if the island of Ireland was a single country. Even without the EU/Vax/border cock-up the whole frontier in the Irish sea thing can't ever be totally efficient and although I do have sympathies with Unionists in the North I would bet that many there aren't entirely happy with the way things have panned out these last few years. Separatism and division seems to be flavour of the month in the UK at the moment,  it's hard to see it getting any better anytime soon.

 

Reborn?

It's always sad when your snowman melts, I came across this sorry sight on a walk during the week. Not to fear though, looking at the weather forecast I suspect he will be reborn later on this weekend or into next week.

 

Hefeweizen fliers

Loving this new beer from local firm Siren. It's called "Nacken" and is a collaboration between Siren and Swedish brewers Omnipollo. Made with lots of oats and wheat (hence the murk!) and fermented with a traditional Hefeweizen yeast strain, more usually used in German lagers. It's also loaded up with American hops giving it a tropical flavour but with a background of spice from the yeast, it's an unusual but amazing combination, I really must grab some more cans of it soon! I bet once people taste it and word gets around, this one will be flying out the doors!

 

Vax Contracts

 

Some interesting twists and turns going on at the moment between the EU Commission and drug firm AstraZeneca. The EU is upset that AZ is going to fail to deliver it's contracted amount of vaccine to the EU on the dates agreed, they look like they're going to miss the target by over 60%. The issue seems to be about a failure in production of some kind at several EU based plants, although production in the UK of the same vaccine seems to be progressing smoothly. This discrepancy is promulgating the idea that production of UK vaccine should be redirected to the EU in order that AZ fulfil their contract with the EU. Obvious UK folks aren't best pleased with that idea since it would mean a probable shortfall in the number of doses available in the UK.

Interestingly (if you're interested in this kind of thing) the actual contract between AZ and the EU has been made public, I've been reading through it and paragraph 5.4 would seem to me to be the most relevant section in this dispute (it's a big document so there are other relevant sections) See below for a truncated version of this section and see what you think for yourself.

5.4 AstraZeneca shall use its Best Reasonable Efforts to manufacture the Vaccine at manufacturing sites located within the EU (which, for the purpose of this Section 5.4 only shall include the United Kingdom) and may manufacture the vaccine in non-EU facilities, if appropriate, to accelerate supply of the Vaccine in Europe; provided that AstraZeneca shall provide prior written notice of such non-EU manufacturing facilities to the Commission which shall include an explanation for such determination to use non-EU manufacturing facilities. If AstraZeneca is unable to deliver on its intention to manufacture the Initial Europe Doses and/or Optional Doses under this agreement in the EU, the Commission or the Participating Member States may present to AstraZeneca, CMO’s within the EU capable of manufacturing the Vaccine doses, and AstraZeneca shall use its Best Reasonable Efforts to contract with such proposed CMO’s to increase the available manufacturing capacity within the EU.

As you can see the language used (typical for supply contracts) uses the phrase "Best Reasonable Efforts", if I were on the board of AZ this would be my "get-out-of-jail-free" card, so long as they can prove that they made "best reasonable efforts" to manufacture the agreed quantities then surely this clause applies and the remedy should be that alternative manufacturing sites within the EU should be ramped up (with inevitable delay?). It seems to me that the UK is more of a "fringe" concern, and in order to supply from there the EU seems to want AZ to jump through some administrative hoops first?

We should all be awaiting the resolution of this dispute with interest, I suspect it will hold the key to the continued run-rate of vaccination in the UK!

Deeply held beliefs

Saw this on the interwebs the other day, thought it was an accurate depiction of Human psychological behaviour, we're right stubborn buggers most of the time aren't we...

 

Friday Smirk

The excellent J&M pointing out the difference between an argument from authority with no evidence verses an argument that can actually be verified and tested with evidence in the *real* world. I once had a believer sneer at me by saying "So, how do you (an Atheist) explain love then?", when I simply replied "Oxytocin" he looked baffled for a second then huffed, shook his head and walked off. It's hard to argue against facts, although, many people desperately try by maintaining their own private set of them.

Things we say..

 

We all thought we were so modern back in 1982 (39 years ago). I can remember it being the year that the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, (a colour computer for £125) was launched, and all us teenagers lurked by the front door every morning for weeks, eagerly awaiting the delivery of ours! Anyway, new technology was certainly a memorable thing about 1982, but, here's a list of things that people might unthinkingly say in everyday conversation today that would have been totally incomprehensible and/or unimaginable back in 1982..

- I just dropped my phone down the toilet..

- I'm just off to the bank, mustn't forget to take a mask..

- What's the wi-fi code again?

- Livestreaming my Spectrum unboxing later..

- Who was that actor? Hold on, I'll just look him up..

- Pause the TV I need a quick pee

- Alexa, what's a hundred in Welsh?

- Prosecco anyone?

- Have you seen my charger?

Happy Birthday

One of my favourite bands of all time is Pink Floyd. I've been fortunate enough to have seen them live a few times (and loved it every time) and have also seen a couple of their "tribute bands" live in recent years too. Today is the 77th birthday of Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason. For followers of the Floyd he's clearly played the role of "grown up" (the voice of reason?) of the band over the years, and seems happy to reside in the background in terms of PR and general showbiz stuff, although, I bet he could tell a few stories. Happy birthday Nick!

 

Midweek Mirth

So here's a little book about spells, charms and incantations. Something that the more gullible folk among us would probably leap upon as an "easy" answer to some of their more intractable social challenges. Like how to win the affections of the fairer sex, for example. According to this book all that's required is a piece of cheese! Unfortunately that leaves the recipient of such attention with a serious dilemma, there are so many possibilities, soft, hard, blue, runny, furry, smooth, smelly, crumbly and so on, there are also many different kinds of cheese!

 

Hard Pour

Had a can of this beer over the weekend, it's a little 330ml can of Porter from my local craft brewery Siren and had been "fizzed" up using Nitrogen rather than the more usual Carbon Dioxide. As you can see from the picture the technique for pouring these Nitrogenated beers is that you literally tip them upside down into the glass. Highly unusual for a beer pour as normally you are trying to minimize head formation by tilting the glass and pouring the liquid down the side rather than vertically. The effect is to generate a lovely fluffy white head made of tiny bubbles (think Guinness) tastes pretty good too, I'm not usually a great fan of porters (unless I'm eating oysters!) but this one was quite tasty, would be good with some nice Cheddar and crusty bread I reckon!
 

Education

This pandemic has certainly made a lot of people (including me) think about the way that we currently educate our kids. Clearly the divisions between the have's and the have-not's become really stark when the schools are closed and the only choice people have is either rolling their sleeves up and "having a go" or relying on patchy online options. The whole scenario makes me think that we should really start trying to tackle education in much the same way that medicine has been evolving over the last few years. It's about accepting reality and understanding that, much like understanding someone's DNA in order to prescribe the correct medicine, people also have vastly different responses to learning. It's hardly a revolutionary thought, but some people seem to be inherently curious and others less so, some even to the point of being inherently chaotic. 

Some people work hard and push themselves and others spend all their energy avoiding work, it's a realisation that makes the imposition of a single system and a single measurement mechanism seem somewhat "blunt" If we can all agree that maximizing potential is the ultimate goal, then we probably need a more tailored system. Like most large social systems such as health-care, government, social-care etc., the number of variables is large and the number of obvious and economically viable solutions vanishingly small but once this virus stuff is all over I believe our education system is something we should have a serious think about.

Snow day

We all awoke to a snowy scene this morning, a couple of inches of the white stuff fell overnight and into the morning which made getting around a little bit more tricky than usual, hopefully it won't hang around for too long!

 

One born every minute

Sad story in the news today. Earlier in this pandemic Sri Lanka's health minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi  (unbelievably) endorsed a "herbal remedy" cooked up by some shamen who obtained the recipe from a dream. Apparently the "syrup" prevents Covid and also cures it, the miracle potion contains honey and nutmeg (and eye of newt no doubt) and significant money has been changing hands as gullible people clamber to get hold of the magic elixir. Predictably the minister has now contracted Covid-19 and is isolating. When will people ever learn, there's no such thing as "magic" and viruses don't give a rat's arse about ancient wisdom, culture, status, visions, gods, spirits or the ghosts of our ancestors, they're gonna get into our cells if we let them and do their thing, it's just chemistry!

 

Winter walking weather

Out for a 6k walk today and got caught in a hail storm, only light fortunately but you can just about make out the white lumps falling in the picture I snapped. It had all thawed by the time I got home, the Winter Sun being quite strong here today, perfect walking weather.

 

Haze for days

Had a can of one of my favourite beers while making dinner last night. "Into the Haze" by Cheltenham maestros DEYA. It's a hazy pale IPA (as one of my mates says, "looks like chicken gravy") made with the classic Citra and Simcoe hops, can't go wrong really, soft creamy mouthfeel, perfect carbonation and lingering citrus and tropical fruits, a real treat.

 

Go Joe!

 

I'm liking this new President already! Not only is he retracting pretty much everything the orange tosser did (thank goodness!) he's brining a sense of reality and normalcy back to this important world role. In his recent order to rescind the travel ban on certain Islamic countries he said the following,

"Presidential Proclamations that prevented certain individuals from entering the United States… are a stain on our national conscience and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all."

In one simple statement he reversed a stupid ban but also (critically in my view) acknowledged that there are hundreds of millions of people in the world (including me) who don't believe in any Gods, and who are worthy of equal treatment, respect and status along with those that do. A simple acknowledgement of facts over the tyranny of the majority.

Weird?

This is weird, Bill Gates getting a Covid vaccination, surely he doesn't want to be injected with his own micro-chips? He must have felt left out of the collective and decided to join with the hive mind after all, I guess money can't buy everything?... (little known fact: conspiracy theorists are invariably working for the lizard people)

 

Health gadgets..

Bought one of these little gadgets the other day (£15), its called a "Pulse Oximeter" a device that measures (+/- 2%) the saturation level of Oxygen in your blood stream. It works by shining an infrared light through your finger and measuring the amount of IR radiation absorbed by the blood flowing through, it also measures your pulse. It's not a perfect device and there are certain conditions that cause it to give inaccurate readings but for a rough measure of O2 health it's not bad. There have been a few articles in the press recently about this kind of measurement and Covid-19, it would seem that it can provide a useful early warning for situations where someone has the disease and appears well, but, their O2 levels are running dangerously low! Hopefully I won't have to use it for that purpose but in any case I've always found it interesting to monitor various health measures. It's a useful way of (sometimes) getting an early indicator that something is wrong. Both my kids measured 99% with resting pulses in the 50's, both my Wife and I (in our 50's) scored 96-97 with resting pulses between 75 and 80, so overall we seem to be in rude health as far as these measures go, hopefully we'll remain that way..!

 

Space Evaders..

Amusing..

 

Friday Smirk

J&M pointing out an awkward truth for many of our religious brothers and sisters, i.e. the similar properties of the things we call "cults" and the things we call "religion". Someone more witty than me once pointed out the apparent difference, "At the top of every cult exists someone who know it's all a scam, in a religion that person is dead".

 

Sheep

44 years old today. I remember my dad buying this album and us listening to the whole thing, both sides, together in silence, we loved it! Especially the track "sheep" and the bit where the vocal gradually merges into an electronic sound, it sounded so futuristic at the time, wonderful stuff.

 

Identity

Following on from the inauguration of Joe Biden yesterday there's been a lot of talk in the media about the concept of unity and togetherness. It's something that featured large in the various speeches and interviews taking place around the event. It relates, of course, to the lack of said virtues within the current population of the USA (and elsewhere) whether that be divisions between left and right, race, religion, cultures and so on, it could perhaps be summarized as a plea to end the scourge of identity politics. 

Simple logic dictates that the pursuit of "Policy by Identity" is ultimately doomed. If we make rules based on random immutable characteristics of people then we're faced with a bottomless pit of division and ever increasing inequality. It may start with somewhat obvious things like ethnicity but can only then evolve to much less objective things like sexuality and then to totally subjective things like poverty within ethnicity and sexuality and then post-code within poverty within ethnicity and so on and so on. Ever decreasing "identities" and nothing but division to the far horizon. This so called "intersectionality" theory is a path to ruin in my view, which ever way you cut things someone has to decide that one group is more important or deserving than another and that's fraught. 

A better approach is the classic liberal one, where it's not identity that's important, it's the individual. The individual is sovereign, and what we should all be striving toward is equality of opportunity (as opposed to equality of outcome) only then do we focus on our (overwhelmingly more numerous) similarities over our parochial (and often petty) differences. Of course a change in focus doesn't automatically mean we'll live in a world that's "fair", far from it, but what do we do? We can accept reality and try to raise the ocean, thereby raising all the boats, or we can just focus on the canoes and the dinghies, the history of our species so far would suggest that we're more successful when we do the former.

Clearly we need a left wing in our politics, we need a bunch of people concerned with compassion and fairness and equality, we have come too far in the last 200 years to abandon social safety nets and ideals of public utility and service. But, I do worry that the left in the UK and US are still firmly under the spell of identity politics, recent election results (i.e. a lurch to the right) suggest that they need to let it go and get back to worrying about people and equal opportunity rather than attempting to bludgeon equality of outcome into the system for tiny minorities. Often running counter to everything we know about Biology and Psychology. Biden and his cohorts seem to play lip service to this cult of identity to some extent, time will tell if this is purely symbolic or whether he really gets it.

Sigh of relief

 

Glad to see the new President, Joe Biden sworn in today, somewhat suspicious that the current gale blowing outside my study window is due to a universal, worldwide sigh of relief! We can all breath a bit easier now that the nuclear codes are in the hands of a grown up again this evening.

Mid-Week Mirth

Always love it when a Larson can be perfectly repurposed to fit a modern dilemma.

 

ABC jab

I see that the ABC (Arch Bishop of Canterbury) received his Covid shot this week. It's great (for him) that he's now protected and can do his voluntary chaplaincy work, but also that he is encouraging other people to get the jab and obey the rules in order to shield the more vulnerable among us, this is all good, in fact I'd go so far as to say, it's the "moral" thing to do for a man in his position (unlike some!).

What's less clear cut, morally, is his response to this treatment. He claimed that the vaccination is "an answer to prayer"! Now, if he really believed in the efficacy of prayer (presumably not to Zeus or Allah..) surely he would have prayed for this virus to have vanished in the Summer, or perhaps that everyone spontaneously became immune? Praying that we suffer millions of dead, over a year of social deprivation and only then (as a result of billions of dollars of research and scientific endeavor) we get a vaccine that protects those of us unaffected or undead from Covid seems a little long winded? Perhaps he means "prayer" in the metaphorical sense, i.e. something that we hope for but only seemingly get according to random chance just like, err, luck? So perhaps he's just saying that we're lucky to get a vaccine? He's not wrong! But, rather than credit his invisible friend, he might have also thought to tip his rather elaborate hat in the direction of the scientists whose labors lead to the discovery, understanding and development of vaccines in the first place. A statement like this seems to suggest that if we all just close our eyes and wish hard enough his God will take a break from killing old people with heart conditions and diabetes, not much chance of that I'm afraid..

 

Beer puddings

Had one of these on Saturday evening, it's a stout made by my local craft brewery Siren and it's flavoured with cacao (i.e. chocolate) and cherries. Now I love that combination normally, i.e. a Black-Forest Gateaux kind of thing, but it's sometimes a bit hit and miss as to whether these classic pudding flavours are going to make the transition across to a thick gloopy dark ale. I'm pleased to say this one worked, not too overpowering but enough flavour elements so you could tell exactly what it was supposed to be and enjoy the lingering sour cherries on the finish. At 7.4% it was a pretty decent "Winter warmer" too, just needed a roaring fire and some Stilton for a perfect evening in. (not that there's a choice these days)

 

Lockdown protocols

I don't know about you but I still get the impression that people aren't really taking this lockdown as seriously as they could. I was out walking today and the traffic seemed to be as busy as it ever was, at least 3 out of 5 attempts at crossing the road required a pause to wait for cars and vans to pass. Last March during the first lockdown I could actually walk down the middle of most roads with only a seemingly small chance of coming across a vehicle at all. I have to wonder where all these people are going in the middle of the day, they can't all be nurses, doctors and policemen?

 

Biggest lies

 

I saw a tweet by a well known software developer the other day that, being in the software industry myself, made me think. He was talking about the way in which the marketing and sales people in our industry exploit (ruthlessly) the fact that most people who buy their wares have no idea how they work nor what the industry buzz words used to describe them mean (usually none of the marketing people understand it either). Like a lot of consumer groups buyers tend to largely adhere to a "herd" mentality when it comes to purchasing decisions, leading to the age-old adage "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" etc... I guess this isn't different in any other industry really, but I can't help feeling that it's a particular problem in the computer/software domain simply because these things are so pervasive these days (and expensive).

The substance of the text was "Is there any greater lie than private cloud?" 

So here he's talking about the fact that a lot of companies claim to offer "private cloud" facilities, essentially this means a customer using computers and software physically located on the premises of the vendor, services that are "managed" by the vendor. This is as opposed to the buyer having the hassle and expense of managing their own computers and applications. It's a reasonable strategy for some kinds of applications but the term "private cloud" implies that the computers being used are somehow "private" i.e. not used by anyone else and also, there's a kind of implied message that doing it this way is somehow more safe, secure and robust than say "public cloud" which sounds like a free-for-all. Of course this is usually a myth, i.e. exactly the opposite is often true. Most vendors share "private cloud" resources between all their clients (i.e. it's not private at all!) and typically independent (smaller) companies have infrastructure that's much less well specified, maintained and managed than larger public companies offering "public cloud" services. So, most of the time the perception that these "buzz words" are intended to invoke in the customer is a kind of lie.

This made me think about what other terms are commonly used in my industry that are like this, i.e. essentially lies. There are many, here's a list of the most frequent I see doing the rounds at the moment.

• We use AI to solve <insert whatever business problem you like>
• World-class <insert business function here>
• User friendly (WTF does this actually mean, against what standard?)
• <insert business function here> Platform (makes it sound bigger than it actually is)
• Intelligent <combine with any other buzzword> (compared to what?)
• Smart <insert adjective of choice> (as opposed to "stupid"?)

Often you see companies claiming to use AI to solve business problems. I would conservatively estimate that over 85% of these claims are lies. The problem is that the term "AI" is such a loosely defined one, i.e. it means many things to many people. Most software vendors rely on the fact that if you look hard enough then you can usually find something in most systems or the supply chain, that could be misleadingly described as "AI". Of course, if you go by the criteria with which this term is used within the technical community, i.e. the people that actually know, it's invariably a blatant lie. 

You may be thinking, so why do companies do this? It's the age old tale, things like "AI" are trendy and marketing departments around the globe have convinced corporate buyers that they need to have it or risk falling behind. To a large degree the (largely) ignorant decision makers within their respective (non-IT) industries have fallen for this, and so software vendors have decided that they must have the words "we use AI" on the WEB site or they risk losing out to competitors who do! It's a classic arms-race situation, but at its foundation sits a double sided lie. Most corporate business problems don't need AI and couldn't use it even if they wanted to and most software vendors don't actually use it either, a case of the emperors new clothes, i.e. as long as everyone goes along with the hype they will continue to be lied to.

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo pointing out that the presence of something is not necessarily better than the absence of it..

 

Floyd

Excellent work from Crispian Jago, love a bit of Floyd and hang on in there mate!

 

Fun fact for the day

 

It's reckoned that 1% of the population are estimated to be psychopaths. 4-12% of CEOs exhibit psychopathic traits, and 15% of prison population. Anecdotally I would argue that the CEO percentage is even higher than that, I've dealt with many over the years and almost all have the classic "traits", for example male, sociopathy, narcissism, boldness, lack of empathy or remorse, egotistical, disinhibited, tendency to lie, manipulative etc.. Unsurprisingly the most successful ones, certainly from the examples I've met, aren't like that at all. Even though common, these traits aren't good for building long lasting, productive and happy companies in my experience. I wonder what the percentage would be for Tory ministers, maybe there should be a test?

Mid Week Mirth

Saw this, had to smirk, seems like Antifa is becoming the same kind of thing on the "Left" as Trump supporters are on the "Right", i.e. as coherent and rational as a box of frogs... The overwhelming (numerically) majority of us in the middle need to ditch them both I'd say.

 

Shock and Awe

 

Sometimes you hear something that's truly awesome, this is even more marked when the more you think about that thing, the more awesome it gets. I read this statement the other day..

If you hold a grain of sand at arm's length, the patch of sky it covers contains 10,000 galaxies. Not stars, galaxies. 

Astro Physicists reckon that the average galaxy has at least 100 million stars (like our Sun) in them and each star probably has a number of planets orbiting it. That means the chances of there being "Earth-like" planets out there (i.e. in the Goldilocks zone) is remarkably high, suggesting the possibility that life is evolving someplace (other than Earth) also highly likely. The sad thing to consider though is that these planets are all so far away that it's highly unlikely Humans will ever visit them or even receive EM radiation (i.e. radio/light waves) from them before we go extinct (probably by destroying ourselves somehow). So, awesome and shocking at the same time, "shock and awe" as they say..

Politeness OTT

I've noticed a rather weird behaviour going on during the lockdowns to do with social protocol whilst walking outside. Several times now as I've approached people coming in the opposite direction, one party or the other takes a few steps to the side either onto the verge or onto the road, as appropriate. Sometimes it might be me and sometimes it might be them, usually depending on who spots who first etc. Several times now I've had people murmur something as we pass each other, the phrase they utter is a sarcastic "you're welcome" as if to say "you should thank me verbally for slightly altering my course for you". 

Now, I'm all for politeness in our dealings with one other and if someone jumps into a muddy puddle or a in order to get out of my way (unasked!) then of course a subtle nod of the head or even "thanks" is utterly reasonable, but if we're to thank everyone who takes a little side-step to maintain social distance or expect one in return then we've probably gone a little bit far down the "Victor Meldrew" path. I'm reminded of the scene in Crocodile Dundee (the first one) when he goes from the Outback to New York for the first time and is walking down a crowded Manhattan street trying to say hello to everyone he passes them, i.e. completely OTT. Rather than being nasty to these people I've decided to respond sympathetically and compassionately, I simply reply with the words "mental health", hopefully they stay even further away from me or perhaps seek some professional help.

 

Park life..

I see that the Forbury Park (Reading) killer Khairi Saadallah has been sentenced today at the Old Bailey. Thankfully he got a full life sentence, meaning he shouldn't ever see the light of day in our society again. Apparently (according to the murderer) the motivation for these killings was religiously inspired, Islamist extremism being a major influence on the mentally deranged Saadallah, although he claims to have been "part Catholic" as well (what a toxic mix!). I often hear apologists argue that religion is harmless and even beneficial, well, clearly that's a statement that needs some qualification, No doubt that the families of the three victims would have a more personal view on that.

This kind of atrocity isn't unusual of course, we see at least a few instances of it every year in the UK, it's almost part of everyone's lives here and in most Western countries now. This particular killing was particularly vicious, random and close to home, my own family have spent several Summer afternoons and evenings in that very park enjoying the various events that are held there, I wrote about the last one here, back in 2018. It's sobering when you consider how random blind chance plays such an important role in being caught up in these kinds of things, I shudder to think what that would be like. If I ever were to support the reintroduction of the death penalty in this country I think it would be for random acts of violence like this, terrorism in it's purest form.

Sunday Smile

Those of a "certain age" (i.e. fossils) will appreciate this, what strange times we live in..

 

Top collab

I cracked open this beer on Saturday evening while making risotto for the family. Called "Degrees" its a collaboration between two of my all time favourite breweries, DEYA (Cheltenham) and Verdant (Cornwall) a hazy double IPA flavoured with Amarillo and Loral on the hot side and Citra and Simcoe (on the cold side) - a delicious, peachy, grapefruit and citrus base with a tiny bit of bitterness, a perfect aperitif, let's hope both brewers survive this hospitality industry nightmare we're going through at the moment and live another day to collaborate again!

 

Sick as a Fox

My Son and I were walking back from town on Saturday and saw a large Fox sitting in the middle of a small patch of green in between some houses (I snapped this quick picture on my phone). It's not unusual to see Foxes around here early in the morning or in your car headlights at night but not so much during the middle of the day (it was about 2pm) and especially in such a busy place. I wondered if she was injured or sick (Covid?) it did look a bit drowsy/lethargic, not at all "fox like", or maybe she was just enjoying a quiet moment sitting in the Winter sun. Anyway, we wished her luck and went on our way!

Lessons for life..

January is a popular month for resolutions and re-evaluation of life priorities etc. For me you can't beat the simple pointers given by Nobel prize winning physicist, bongo player extraordinaire and all round genius Richard Feynman, for reference they are..

• Study hard.

• What others think of you is none of your business.

• It's OK not to have all the answers.

• Experiment, Fail, Learn and Repeat.

• Knowledge comes from experience.

• Imagination is important.

• Do what interests you the most.

• Stay curious.

Yep, forget your avocado and raw sewage detox diet, contemplate these points a little more deeply and you won't go far wrong..

 

Things Islam gets right..

Couldn't agree more!

 

Who'ya gonna call?

So much for ordering and delivering beer online being a modern concept, these blokes in Bolton in 1970 had the same idea! They may not have had the sophistication of the internet and social media to help them but they've definitely got a "ghostbusters" vibe going on (who'ya gonna call?), and at 32p a pint, I'm pretty sure no one around here would complain! (the sad thing is, I can remember when a pint was 32p!)

 

Friday Smirk

 

I can tell, it's going to be another long year...

Collusion?

It would seem to me that you have to try really hard not to see the marked difference in how the police dealt with the storming of Government buildings by Trump supporting yobs last night vs. how they responded to similar threats of mob violence from Antifa and BLM supporters in the past. I'm not suggesting for a moment that I would support either of those two organizations nor that it has anything necessarily to do with skin colour, but how a bunch of white rednecks armed thugs* were allowed to get so close to Government representatives and innocent civil servants in the execution of their duties is baffling to me. I'd love to be shown to be wrong on this, but the only rational conclusion for me is that it's either gross incompetence or collusion with security forces?

*I must apologize for this slur on proper "thugs" who are usually a lot more savvy and much less fat than most of the apes strutting their flabby ignorance for Trump on Capitol Hill were..

 

Midweek Mirth

 

How it started, how it's going ...

The next big thing..

So, what hobby is everyone going to take up for "lockdown III"? We've had lunchtime hiking, sourdough baking, beer brewing (& drinking), box-set bingeing, yoghurt culturing, podcast listening, language learning, vegetable growing and YouTube calisthenics. I'm struggling to think what the next big thing will be, can't wait though, I bet it's gonna be great!

 

Face off?

This rule is especially important now that we live in a faceless society..

 

Pivots

Yep, guilty as charged.. (especially when it comes to software!)

 

Mistake or lie?

I was unfortunate enough to hear some random "man on the street" bloke being interviewed this morning about impending "Brexit" woes, this is what he said..

"So what if there is disruption at the ports, so what if food costs more, who cares if holidays are now more difficult, all that is worth it to stop my sons being forced to learn Muslim in the schools, that's the real benefit of Brexit"

Of course this is only the view of one person, but, it's nice to hear the truth for once! We keep getting told that there are great "benefits" just around the corner for us all, now that the UK is out of the EU, but I'm yet to hear anyone articulate what these benefits might be? The only thing I've ever heard from anyone who supported this move has been along the exact same lines as the chap above, i.e. pure unadulterated xenophobia (although what Muslims have to do with the EU I don't know!) or a blatant lie or simply that they made a mistake and now regret voting leave! Although, if you think about it, since we're now all supposed to be looking to non-European countries upon which to build our businesses and future economic growth, "learning Muslim", might not be such a bad idea.

Like many things done for emotional reasons and not logical reasons, there's often a backfire with unintended consequences, immigration for example, just look how it's profile has changed since 2016 and the Brexit vote (see chart below)

I wonder what this chap is going to say when the UK government do the inevitable (because there's not enough skilled people in the UK to sustain our levels of growth) work-visa deal with say, India or Pakistan or perhaps Indonesia? I fear that when this happens his kids are going to be forced to learn a slightly harder lesson, i.e. how to live on smaller wages and diminished job opportunities.

World-beating

Looks like our infections line is nearly vertical now, world-beatingly vertical, obviously..

 

Plague Island

How other people view us, again. Incredible cartoon from the NZ Herald, pointing out the differences between handling a pandemic well, and protecting your population vs. incompetence and cronyism. And another thing! It's appalling how certain people are still spouting unscientific nonsense about this pandemic while whining about their perceived loss of "personal freedom". I hope people remember how some behaved when this is over and respond appropriately toward them and their need for an audience; particularly those whose only claim to fame is inheriting a load of money and being a stroppy stuck up bitch on crappy property porn programs. If you're denying Coronavirus at this point, or demanding an end to tiers and lockdowns you're a dangerous idiot. If you're doing the same with tens of thousands of followers you are far worse than that. You're putting lives at risk and deserve sanction IMO, let's hope that major media companies are having a long, hard think about that right now.