The art of communication

Don't you just hate people who use 20 words when one would do...

 

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo pointing out the horrible habit many Gen Y and Gen Z people have of turning every sentence into a question by raising the pitch of their voice on the last word, I blame the parents...

 

Management Training vs. Reality

The 1st law of thermodynamics makes a mockery of most modern cultish management mantra's IMO..

 

And so it starts..

If we ever make an AI that becomes self aware (don't worry that's not going to happen anytime soon) then we'll have the creator's dilemma! Meaning, how do we impart the social and moral wisdom accumulated over millennia to a new consciousness without being dictatorial or authoritarian, invent heaven and hell perhaps and delegate the problem to an invisible agent, like some steroid infused celestial doorman?

We've all been there.. "I don't make the rules gov, but unless you do what I say you're not getting in.."

Daily Dissonance

 

How come many serious Christians say that you shouldn't practice Witch Craft or Astrology (even Yoga!) but then go on to celebrate the resurrection of a dead person on the Sunday after the first full moon of the equinox and then they drink wine and eat bread pretending that it's the blood and flesh of an ancient Jewish shamen and incant over their animal sacrifices before they feast... make sense?..

Political Complexity

No so complicated..

 

Selective Pied Wagtails

Went to visit our Daughter during her lunch break to buy her a coffee and a bun in Gail's, she has a part-time job in town at the weekends. Whilst there, this little fella visited our table picking up crumbs off the floor and empty plates. He was really brave, totally ignored the people sitting there! It's nice to see wildlife adapting to urbanization, but I did wonder if he's figured out yet that there are probably less lucrative left-overs at Gail's than Greggs down the street, owing to the typical ingredients and the hugely inflated prices Gail's charge for everything; ergo there's more energy in a flake of puff pastry than poppy seed! Natural selection needs to take it's course I guess..

 

A swift one at the Dean

I attended a leaving do in London yesterday and we ended up in the Dean Swift pub near London Bridge, the (excellent) beers flowed and as the evening wore on the conversations became ever more philosophical. We ended up debating Utilitarianism vs. Buddhism, not sure those two things are entirely comparable but we gave it a good go anyway, very enjoyable. 

 

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo, provocative as usual. I always thought that a big part of religion was how the different Gods and prophets were attributed with superhuman powers in an attempt by the followers to out do the religions that went before, a kind of superhero "top trumps" thing?

 

Thought for the day...

Passed this on my walk today. Had to do a double take on the grammar, but on reflection, quite a lot of cyclists you see these days do need you to think for them!

 

The Black Stuff

Been in Dublin for a couple of days on business and was staying in a hotel on Fleet Street, so I had to pop into the famous Bowe's Lounge (also on Fleet Street). It's famous for it's Guinness, the second best in Dublin (apparently) and I suppose by definition the second best in the world! Anyway, I snapped a picture for posterity, looks fabulous, and it was very good indeed, an epic pint!

 

Spanish Craft

Tried a new beer yesterday, since it was such a sunny day we decided to walk into town and stop off at our favourite craft beer/cocktail bar for a swift half before getting back to cook dinner. They had a Spanish beer on called "Ocata" by Garage Beer Co. of Barcelona and this was the second of their beers I've tried (the other one is recorded here). It was lush, hoppy, crisp, fresh and very satisfying after a long walk. Made with Mosaic and Palisade hops it had hints of peach and mango with a very smooth mouthfeel; delicious.

 

Floods of evidence.

How do we know that plate tectonics is real, well, because paleontology (among other things) backs it up! Without Geology and evolution pretty much nothing in Biology makes any sense. It's stunningly plain when you look at fossil distribution across the globe, we find that certain species have territories that span continents, however when you rewind the clock, and undo proposed continental drift, it all slots into place! So much for flood mythology.

Bucket List

This is the longest distance it's currently possible to travel by train. Must get around to trying it before I kick the bucket!

 

Itchen authors

Nice visit to Jane Austen's (last) house in a little Hampshire village called "Chawton", near Alton today. It was a beautiful day so we decided to drive down there and have a look around, having never been before. It's only a small place but interesting none the less, my Daughter is doing A-Level English and was fascinated by all the nick-nacks, jewelry, clothes, paintings, writings and furniture etc. Afterwards we dropped into Alton itself and since there wasn't much going on there we headed over to Winchester for a bite to eat and a beer, lovely walking along the Itchen in the Sunshine.

 

Black and White fallacy

Here's an interesting chart, showing Google searches for the terms "Sun Tanning" and "Skin Whitening" by country over time. As you can see, people with light skin tend to be concerned with how they can make it darker and people with dark skin are concerned with making it lighter. We're such predictable creatures, we always want what we don't have, even when it's bad for us..

 

Friday Smirk

An excellent J&M this week. Pointing out the bleeding obvious as usual! Our view of morality and religions change as our societies move from obsessing over survival values to more cultural concerns. The evidence for this is plain to see and all around us, for example, the only countries where congregations aren't shrinking are those places where poverty and poor education persist and where simple survival is very much top of mind for many people! (i.e. places like South America and Africa)

 

Data, data everywhere..

I'm sure everyone has seen this mapping on the BBC web site showing Covid cases region by region in the UK. I often look at it to see how we're doing at the local level. I took a quick peek today and it looks like we may have hit a peak and are on the way down now, great news if that's the case, hopefully the trajectory will continue and we don't get a new variant that buggers things up again! Anyway I was thinking how totally cool it would be if someone at the BBC took every image from every day over the last 18 months or so and stitched them all together into one animation. We'd be able to see each wave grow, peak and recede across the whole country, east to west and west to east, north to south and city to city, it would be fascinating to see. Anyway, just thought I'd share that little "brain fart", hopefully some data-scientist in the BBC's IT department is reading this and agrees with me (chances of that are roughly zero I reckon!)

 

Spring has sprung!

It's that time of the year again (thank goodness!) when we can all agree that Spring is finally here. It's been my habit for the last couple of years to take a snapshot of a particular tree (that I walk past most days) to compare and contrast the development of blossom from year to year at roughly the same day. Here we are at the 13th of April, I'd say we're roughly on a par with the 25th April last year, obviously these things fluctuate, here's the same picture on 18th April 2019 it's interesting to compare.

 

Planning

If I'm not this dude by the time I'm 80 then something went terribly wrong ...

 

Serious Laughs

For people who bitch and moan about people like me who poke fun at things like anti-science beliefs, religions and politics, this interview (that's now gone viral) is a perfect illustration of the (main) purpose of humour and satire in our culture. It's about talking truth to power (the classic role of the court jester) but in a way that can be easily and safely digested by people, doesn't mean either side is "right" of course, but if we don't confront these important ideas about how our reality is, then the only alternative way of settling the argument is violence. Sure, some will be offended, but hey ho, there's no law against that.. (unlike the things our PM does!)

Meetings

Is it just me or are Millennials obsessed with meetings? I work with several now and it seems to me like they're utterly incapable of making decisions and/or working on their own without constant validation. Of course, sometimes it's essential (and desirable) to get the input and advice of others and sometimes you need their help but sometimes it's nice just to have that sense of achievement when you decide to do something and just do it. They're missing out I reckon!

 

Monday Mirth

 

Some distinctions are pretty arbitrary..

The first cut is the deepest

I was in London yesterday on business and had an early start so I decided to stay in a hotel on Thursday night to minimize discomfort (I'm not an early morning person!) Anyway, I camped out in a hotel just off the cut, which is a road near Waterloo station and by the time I got there it was around 6pm so I decided to pop out and grab some food. 

Many years ago I did a project near that spot and we used to frequently grab a pie and a pint in a pub there called "The Ring", it was in a handy location being in between the office we were working in and the station. The unusual fact about this particular pub is that it's situated opposite what used to be the spiritual home of British boxing, a kind of 18th century "fight club" that housed many famous bouts through the ages, it was destroyed during the blitz by German bombs, but the pub retains the name (see pic below). 

Inside the pub is decked out with lots of boxing memorabilia and I distinctly remember a picture of Henry Cooper on the wall, I'm pleased to say that, although the pub has had a complete re-fit since I was last there, the photo of Henry is still there so I snapped a pic (above) for nostalgia!

Friday Smirk

Ah yes that Global conspiracy insecure people keep bleating on about, J&M on the money as usual.

 

Analogy

I thought this cartoon was a great analogy for the way Russia is claiming that it intended on retreating from Kyiv all the time! Unfortunately though, in the classic MO of a sociopath, revenge will be sought elsewhere and more innocents will be murdered in the name of the God of ego.

Modern Life

 

We said goodbye to my Son this morning, he's off back up to University in Scotland having spent the weekend down here celebrating his Sister's 18th birthday with us. I drove him to Heathrow this morning, luckily the M4 wasn't busy and it only took 30 minutes to get to T5 from home; I was shocked however to discover that they now charge £5 simply to drop someone off at the terminal!! (modern day piracy is alive and well in Berkshire!) Anyway, we left home at 9:30am and he was in the air by 11am (flight track on the LHS) Landing on time in Edinburgh just after Midday, from there it's a short hop to the train station to catch a direct train up to St Andrews (Leuchars), crossing the Forth bridge on the way (picture on the RHS) he should be arriving at his destination around 1:30pm a total journey time of around 4 hours which isn't too shabby I reckon, modern life isn't so rubbish when everything works..

Things that go bump in the night..

We had a strange thing happen last Friday evening. All of a sudden we heard a fairly decent bang followed by a hissing sound, all apparently happening in the street outside our house. Upon further investigation we discovered that a manhole cover had been blown out of it's seating and steam was billowing out of the gap. I sheepishly lifted the cover expecting to unleash a bunch of demons from the bowls of the earth but underneath was nothing but a puddle and some bubbling, the iron cover and the gas emerging was pretty hot however. Turns out that an electricity junction had failed under the street and ground water had seeped into the void and heated up to boiling point, generating steam which in turn had lifted the cover. Mystery solved, but now we have a gaping hole outside our house waiting to be filled in by the electric company, I fear that part could take some time..

 

Covid

We all took Covid tests today as my wife had a sore throat this morning. Her result is on the right, strongly positive! Mine and my Son's are the two on the left. Depending on how you read it there may be a very feint smudgy line on ours or not (the tests had been sitting around for an hour before I took the picture) If ours is positive then they're certainly not strong results or maybe we got lucky, or perhaps another 24 hours will produce a stronger reaction? We're keeping our fingers crossed that symptoms remain mild! Running around London (crowded tube trains etc.) at the weekend with hardly anyone wearing masks these days is a great way of picking the virus up, inevitable I guess, since at least one in ten people have it currently!

Tuesday Titter..

Lorry spills it's load of McVities (true story!) products all over a Derbyshire road.. This kind of thing really takes the biscuit and it's going to take me a while to digest it all..

 

Exmouth Market

Another place my Son and I visited over the weekend (while the Girls were shopping) was Exmouth Market. We stopped off at the famous Exmouth Arms which gave the area it's name and then had a wander down the street to the new (ish) Mikkeller brewpub which has set up shop there in the last couple of years. It's a great little spot, nice vibe and a perfect place to people watch even though it was a little chilly sitting outside. The beers on offer were pretty good too, plenty of in-house brews and a good selection of guest beers, around 20 taps in all as well as a huge selection of bottles should you feel the need for something a little more obscure. We only had an hour or so to spend there so we could only try a couple of different beers but one thing we did enjoy was an inhouse brewed "dark mild" (something my Grandad used to drink) which was a black beer, quite sweet and very low ABV but really tasty and very moreish maybe it's something that's going to enjoy a bit of a revival this year, who knows! Anyway it's definitely a good place to visit if you're looking for a range of locally sourced craft beers to sample your way through.

 

Trophy Pub

 

Spent the weekend in London with the Fam and while the girls were off shopping on Saturday afternoon the boys decided to visit a few pubs (obvs) First up was what I'd call a "trophy pub" called "The Blackfriar" next to Blackfriar train station. It's a "trophy pub" because it's very quaint and ornate and full of people (like us!) who are just visiting to tick it off some kind of list of London pubs that should be visited. I can perhaps claim that I'm a little more of a local since back in the 80s I used to work in the Farringdon road and walked past said establishment every day, often dropping in on the way back to Waterloo after work. The inside of the pub is very ornate, lots of tiles and scenes of monks doing various Monkish things (see pic below)

The big "but" for me is that the beer hadn't really progressed much beyond the 80s, still the same fairly limp selection of cask beers from macro-producers, not massively interesting if you're interested in the modern beer scene! But anyway, still a nice gaff  to visit on a sunny Saturday afternoon with your Son to while away a half an hour nursing a Timothy Taylor's Landlord or a decent pint of London Pride etc.. 

Meme du jour

Couldn't resist this little meme that I clocked on the interwebs the other day...

 

Friday Smirk

 Good point by J&M this week. We must never forget how religion was when it was strong..