Recipe swap..

Tried an interesting beer on Saturday evening, it's a recipe from Boston (USA) firm Trillium and the can art-work and detailing is all as per the American version of this beer but it wasn't brewed in Boston, it was brewed in Manchester! One of the leading UK craft brewers called Cloudwater are doing a "beer recipe swap" with Trillium, i.e. they took a popular Trillium double IPA recipe ("Uppercase") and brewed it here, whilst Trillium took a famous Cloudwater recipe and brewed it over there, they even used the authentic branded cans. What a great idea for those of us who'd love to try famous US beers but can't get hold of them here in the UK. The beer was delicious, typically American, completely unrestrained and over the top in every way but so very good! Hopefully this trend will catch on and we'll see some more famous US brews from over there popping up over here!

 

Puzzle progress

My jigsaw puzzle is coming on quite nicely don't you think? (just the featureless brown/black bits left!)

 

Heavy laws

Religious laws are stupid. There is no such thing as "blasphemy" it's a totally victimless crime but being only half a chromosome away from chimpanzees Human beings often have a habit of taking their hobbies a little too far. In Poland the metal band leader Adam Darski (pictured above) has just been nicked (again) for stepping on a picture of the virgin Mary and is appealing for donations to help him fight his legal case. It isn't the first time this person has fallen foul of Polish religious laws (which are some of the strongest in Europe) and from tweets being made around this issue, it's clear that many (mostly younger people) in that country are fed up with religious bullying and repression in their lives. Hopefully the case will be won, but it seems unlikely, Poland probably needs to shed the older generation of hardened Catholics before it's legal system can free itself from Medieval interference.

Hop Rhythm

Being ever keen to try new food and drink experiences I thought I'd grab a can of this new beer (Rhythm Recipe) from my local craft brewery Siren. It's a hazy IPA (nothing new there) and is made with American hops (Citra, Mosaic and Simcoe), also nothing new! The new thing about this brew is the hopping method, they used a technique called "dip hopping" which essentially means making a "hop tea" (with the hops in large tea bag type things) and then blending the raw beer on top of them. It's claimed to give extra depth to the hop flavours, I can confirm it's definitely a flavorsome beer! It tastes of the hops used but feels like it should be an 8% double IPA (i.e. BIG flavours!) but in reality is only a 5% ale, almost sessionable. Good effort from the Finchampstead crew, will have to secure some more of this one!

 

Nostalgia

I see that the 90s TV show "Fraser" is set for a reboot sometime. This is causing great excitement in our house as we LOVED that show! I thought I'd find a suitable image for our current times and caption it, how about "for God's sake Miles you're on mute".. (love the bottle of wine in shot and the 90s "luggable" computer, ah nostalgia)

 

Friday Smirk

J&M pose an interesting question this week. If we find evidence of extra-terrestrial life on Mars (or anywhere else) what does that mean for the swathe of religions that are founded on the idea that we (Humans) are made in the "image of their god" and are somehow special? That somehow we're the centre of attention when it comes to judging, smiting and saving etc. I would put a lot of money on the various established churches coming up with some old hogwash about their particular "God" creating the whole universe and therefore everything that's in it, including other life-forms, the missionaries and apologists would have a field-day! However, I'm sure that if we made contact with any properly inter-stellar species, one sufficiently advanced to travel between systems and not just planets, then they'd think our religious ideas were hopelessly parochial and quaint, right before they obliterated us with their death rays in order to harvest the rare Earth metals in our bones, in true Darwinian style.

Chute code..

Here's a little geeky story for those of us who followed the recent Mars lander (Perseverance) mission and watched in awe as a parachute slowed it down upon hitting the Martian atmosphere, and then rockets kicked in and lowered a vehicle the size of a car gently onto the surface of another planet! 

Apparently people were wondering what the pattern on the parachute was for, anyway, as is the way with such things the geekerati got to work and decoded it. It's a binary pattern which starts at the blue arrow in the picture and then you can read a series of 1's and 0's (bits) around the circumference in four concentric circles (clockwise) starting in the middle. The each binary digit (a group of eight bits) represents a letter of the alphabet where "A" is 1 and so on. The message reads "Dare Mighty Things" which is the moto of JPL, the jet propulsion lab in Pasadena, USA. Pretty neat stuff (and the parachute was manufactured in the UK!)

For the full decoding and explanation, see below..

 

Munich heavy

Having sampled the delights of "Beak Brewery" last Friday, I thought I'd continue my voyage of discovery over the rest of the weekend by opening a new beer from my favourite Cornish purveyor of that traditional beverage, Verdant. There must be something in the water down in Falmouth but pretty much everything Verdant put out these days is outstanding, this example was no exception. Called "The Feast Afoot" it's a pale ale with a reasonably quaffable 5.5% ABV and made in a West Coast style, although, not an archetypal one. The bitterness was certainly there but dialed back, and the malt (Munich heavy) profile bought to the fore instead. Quite caramel and toffee initially but with the hops (Mosaic, Nelson and Simcoe) backing up with stone fruit, pine and lemon, light, refreshing and very drinkable indeed!

 

Puzzling

We've had a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle knocking around in a cupboard, still in it's box, for a good decade now! A week ago, some bright spark suggested that we do it as a "family" during lockdown. Now I think this statement was made in the same sense as when a kid asks for a puppy and says "we'll all take it for walks", i.e. I'm the only one who works on the puzzle now. It's a fiendishly difficult puzzle, most of the pieces seem "brown" and indistinct and I keep getting that sinking feeling that I'm missing some bits, until I find them, hiding in plain sight of course! Anyway, it's progressing slowly, I reckon I find about 20-30 pieces per day spread over half a dozen visits while waiting for the kettle to boil and bread to toast etc. The big question is will I finish it before we need the kitchen table back for visitors once lockdown is over, I think I should be guided by data rather than dates on that one!

 

Vax Vacation

So, the dilemma among the chattering classes this week is whether or not to pre-book a Summer holiday now, in order to get somewhere decent, or not. Since we're supposed to be releasing all lock-down restrictions on June 21st then is it reasonable to think that booking a holiday for July should be OK? Of course doing that is making the bet that everything will go according to plan, something that hasn't happened so far for pretty much anything apart from the vaccination program, which seems to be just about on track. There are a number of risks that need to be assessed, these include,

• Virus variant emerges and escapes the vaccine (putting us back to square one)
• Vaccine supply is interrupted or reduced somehow
• Vaccine efficacy isn't as high as we thought, or transmission continues at a high rate
• Antivaxxers are sufficiently numerous to prevent herd immunity
• Immunity window for vaccines is much shorter than we thought

My own view (merely unscientific speculation) is that the first of these risks is the biggest and most likely, I think the vaccines are proving to be reliable and effective but only time will tell on the question of duration of immunity, if it's as predicted then the current rounds of vaccines should cover us until the end of the year at least, so holidays in July/August are indeed feasible. Probably the safest thing to do is a "staycation" in the UK, but the choices are becoming increasingly limited as I think lots of people are reaching this same conclusion. So now might just be the time to snap up a deal, but, whatever happens, I think additional insurance is essential, covering refunds etc., Although clearly premiums are going to be on the high side this year, then again, I guess you don't win the prize unless you buy a ticket so probably time to get into AirBnB mode..

Craft fear..

 A MAN who only drinks craft beer is suffering from a hangover he considers superior to one caused by mass-produced "industrial" beer.

Graphic designer Tom Booker is feeling terrible after consuming 24 thirds of artisanal beer, but feels he is having a richer ‘feeling like shit’ experience than undiscerning drinkers. Booker said: "My hangover is very dry on the palate, with notes of bile, unbrushed teeth and 12 Marlboros. There’s also a lingering throbbing in my right temple, and my stomach appears to have very prickly carbonation. You just don’t get this quality of hangover from less expensive commercial lagers. As I was retching into the toilet bowl this morning I got a wonderful callback of lychee from the double dry-hopped bourbon barrel-aged saison we had on the second flight. On the back end there are some really interesting sensations of fear, regret and general worthlessness, with a real note of unexplained guilt cutting through."

He went on  to say: "I’d better go now as I think my bowels are about to explode again, but at least there’ll be a subtle hint of caramel and coriander on the finish."

Stolen from the Daily Mash..

Monday Mirth

Tories are traditionally keen on cuts..

 

Modern life is rubbish..

There are many things about modern life, for example pollution, global warming, pandemics, politics etc. that are just rubbish, but you have to admit if you're lucky enough to be employed and comfortable (monetarily) then things can be pretty sweet. It never ceases to amaze me that I can order something from my phone at 6pm one day and receive it on my doorstep before the second slice of toast and marmalade hits my gnashers. We really have reached a time (in the developed world at least) when you can get pretty much anything, anytime at the touch of a button, it's perhaps turning us into lazy gits, but, it certainly makes things like pandemic lockdowns much more bearable.

 

A visit to the Beak

No, I haven't been pinched and sent to court (not yet anyway) but I did attend an online beer tasting yesterday from "The Beak Brewery" based down in deepest Sussex. Beak is a relatively new firm but have been winning all kinds of awards for their beer this past year and have quite the reputation among beer geeks. The tasting (and virtual brewery tour) was all done via video and there was lots of beer geekery to be had, ingredients, recipes, techniques, plans, equipment a positive feast of all things craft. The beer itself was outstanding, I've not enjoyed a tasting as much for ages, I might even go so far as to say this was the best selection of beer I've ever tasted from a single brewer. 

There were a couple of stand-outs for me they were, "Dest" a Pilsner that was just amazing, tasted blind you'd have thought it was straight out of the Czech republic, bready, spicy, clean, crisp wonderful whiff of Sulphur and such depth and balance, this alone would have made the tasting but there was more to come. Strangers was a 5% IPA, hazy, fruity and packed with flavour, pineapples, grapefruit and lemon with a distinct note of pina colada (yes really) a wonderful beer. The last one in the tasting was also a banger, "Moon", a 6% IPA made with Citra, Bru1 and Idaho 7 hops just fantastic, a taste that lingered really long on the pallet, almost like a good wine does, a complete triumph of a brew. Beak, they're certainly the ones to watch in 2021! Let's hope that everything goes well on the virus front and we're allowed out in the Summer, I wouldn't mind visiting their little tap room in Lewes one afternoon, I can think of a lot worse things to do!

 

Religious meme's

Saw this religious meme on the interwebs the other day. Like most religious things it doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. Firstly it doesn't say which one of the 3,000+ "gods" mankind has ever invented it's referring to, so, I'm going to have to assume it's Yahweh. Next it claims that you can't "see" oxygen, I guess that's an attempt to introduce something "science 'y" to gain credibility, it fails of course. If you observe the picture below we have Oxygen at -218 Centigrade, looks pretty "visible" to me, maybe the author of this meme would like to tell us what the boiling point of their "god" is so that we can check the claim?

 

Friday Smirk

An utter travesty and dangerous abuse of free speech! The company "Cafepress" banned the J&M products (mugs, posters, books etc.) from their store (after 10 years of making money from the cartoon strip!) simply because they received a "complaint" from the Pakistani government. The correct response should have been an swift Anglo-Saxon V-sign and a reminder to that institution that Pakistani blasphemy laws are meaningless here in the UK, also to get their own house in order before they start dictating what other countries can or can't do. It's a shame some organizations are such cowards, preferring to throw fundamental principals and freedoms under a bus in favour of an easy life, they are of course free to choose who they do and don't do business with, but they should also realise that so are consumers!

 

Drones on Mars

NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover has landed! What an excellent achievement, unbelievable, a frickin drone on another planet! Can't wait for it to start exploring!

 

Working as predicted..

While watching the weather report on TV last night I noticed that an Atlantic weather front was due to sweep across the UK from West to East from early morning to the afternoon. It certainly did, and as is normal for this time of year it bought with it a decent dump of rain. I normally walk at around midday but today I waited a little longer as the front was due to pass over between 12 and 1pm where I live. Right on time the front passed over and the Sun emerged, here you can see a picture of exactly this, on the left hand side is the ragged backside of the front and on the right hand side are clear blue skies and bright sunshine (no umbrellas required!). I love it when the weather works as predicted!

 

Rules of thumb..

Love this story. It shows what happens when you make decisions via algorithms without human oversight or "rule-of-thumb" checks. A man in Liverpool (Liam Thorp) was offered a Covid jab after the NHS algorithm mistakenly took his height to be 6.2 centimeters (rather than 6ft 2ins), it then (correctly) calculated his BMI to be 28,000, i.e. a little on the "fat bastard" (see picture above) side of healthy! Now, we may well have all put on a couple of pounds over lockdown and morbidly obese people are being offered the jab, but this would be ridiculous. 

I increasingly think that it's important for us to realise (and be taught) that algorithms are created by people and people often don't or can't take every permutation and combination of inputs into account when designing them. This is true for simple calculations like this, as well as the most sophisticated AI systems! I've lost count of the number of software errors I've encountered over the years simply through lack of thought to possible input values, i.e. algorithms should be able to handle good input as well protect against bad or erroneous input. The best kinds of systems IMO are combinations of algorithmic computation and symbolic (or rule based) computation, get the algorithm to calculate an answer and then apply a rule-of-thumb to check that it's "sensible".

 

Another bumper harvest

Another bumper harvest of tasty beers from my local craft brewer Siren last year (2020) Despite the difficulties of lockdowns and limited trading they still managed to crank out an outstanding number of quality brews across a vast array of styles and techniques. If I were to pick a favourite from each row (i.e. the cans on the left hand side) I'd say top row, 13th from the left we have "Every minute matters" a collaboration with Green Cheek in the USA, a classic West Coast IPA, grapefruit, pithy and bitter with an oily hop vibe that was really memorable. On the second row down I'd go for eighth from the left, "I left my wallet in El Dorado" a hazy IPA made with El Dorado hops, a classic burst of stone fruit and orange, delicious. Then from the third row down it would have to be "I Sold my Soul for Citra" a showcase of the Citra hop (one of my fav's) thick gloopy and deliciously fruity a real hop soup of a beer. Lastly from the bottom row I'd plump for "White Tips", a wit beer inspired pale ale made with the zest of citrus fruits and a Belgian yeast, so refreshing and loaded with special meaning for me.

On the right hand side we have their range of barrel aged beers (in bottles) and their "core" range (330ml cans) I find the barrel aged examples interesting (from a complexity of flavour point of view) but always struggle to find an occasion to drink them. They're mostly high ABV some as much as 11-12% so they're not everyday chuggers, but, clearly I must try harder on this front! Whenever Siren release a new one it usually garners rave reviews online, perhaps I should start trying these beers with food, much like you would wine? Mature Roquefort and red wine barrel aged saison or stout anyone?

Bravo Siren!

 

Bread

A classic "how it started" and "how it's going" shot showing my first effort at making sourdough bread. 

Like many people I thought I'd take advantage of being at home all day and have a crack at baking a couple of sourdough loaves. The only cheat for this first go was that I used dried yeast instead of making my own starter but I reckon that's only a little cheat, everything else was by the book. The finished product turned out OK, not perfect by any means and I already have a couple of improvements to try (a lower ratio of water to flour to start with, i.e. less moist) but I can't complain, the bread proved for around 20 hours and so has a really strong flavour (which I like) and the aeration looks fine, some nice big bubbles with a really crispy crust (Dutch-oven technique). This one (above) used 50/50 plain/wholemeal flour and so has a rustic appearance with a nice malty note to it, perfect toasted with lots of butter. My second loaf (not pictured) had sesame seeds on top and a better shape, it was also a drier mix so it'll be interesting how that one turns out in comparison. Anyway, something to have another go at and to hopefully improve. It must be a sign of getting old, we're currently enjoying homemade bread, yogurt, beer, granola, cookies and cakes in our house, all pretty decent I must say.

 

Walking in someone else's shoes

It never ceases to amaze me how some religious people (and theocratic states, like Pakistan) feel that their religious ideas should be respected and even obeyed by everyone else. The reality is that as the chart shows, for most religions no matter how strongly adored or venerated, the rest of the conscious world doesn't care what you believe and nor should they. Until some evidence (and I mean evidence that would hold up in a court of law) is forthcoming that any religion is actually true, even in a small way (i.e. not just allegorically or vaguely philosophically) then they're all just "ideas", akin to hobbies or literature and should be regarded by non-participants that way. Certainly deserving of tolerance, but not automatic respect (which has to be earned IMO) i.e. nothing special to the average kuffar..

I'd walk 500 miles..

Glorious day today in the South East of the UK, the Sun was out and the temperature soared to a balmy 13 Celsius. It was perfect conditions for my regular lunchtime walk so I threw a coat on and knocked out a quick 7 Kilometers in just over an hour. I'm finding that my overall weekly distance and pace are gradually increasing as lockdown goes on, last week I managed seven walks (most weeks it's only five or six) and notched up around 50 Km in total distance, which feels respectable, easily 500 miles and 500 more, as a yearly total.

 

Valentine

So that's Valentines done. I made Sunday lunch (roast beef & all the trimmings) for everyone, one of my Wife's favourite meals, it was good, brownie points earned!

 

Midnight stout

Went over to the dark side while cooking supper last night. A new beer from Siren called "Midnight Maverick" a creamy stout like Guinness but a lot nicer, and smoother, very pleasant on a chilly Friday evening.

 

Mind the Gap

Something about the outside lav on the Forth rail bridge is deeply disturbing, watch out below and mind the gap!

 

Friday Smirk

 

A topical J&M for our delectation today. I can't help but think, when I hear people in the media banging on about "pronouns", that such "problems", if indeed they are problems, are at most "1st world problems". What I mean by this is that in large swathes of the non-1st world we still have poverty, hunger, slavery, violence, child abuse, premature death, torture, crime, addiction, exploitation and so on. Such things are rare (not completely unknown though) to most people in the 1st world and therefore perhaps obscured from most of our consciousness most of the time. 

I hate "whataboutary" and am not oblivious to the fact that this comment is essentially that, but at some point we have to attribute resources and emotional energy to things in order to address them, even if it's just in conversation or debate and it strikes me that, Maslow go it right, our basic needs are physical/biological in nature and trump psychological ones. Therefore, subject to intent of course, someone using a pronoun that isn't a "preferred one" is quite a small problem in comparison to the other examples listed.

Book Club

Book-club... By the time we get to June having not had a break from the kids since March 2020...

 

Makes sense..

 Apparently, God...

• creates self & everything
• creates humans
• creates means for humans to corrupt themselves
• humans corrupt themselves
• furious at humans for corrupting themselves
• wipes out humans
• new humans evolve from one family
• new humans must pay for what old humans did
• creates solution for corruption
• creates self as human
• suffers as human (but not really coz he's "God")
• tells humans he's coming back soon
• goes home to see what happens
• hides for 2000 years and counting..

Yep, makes perfect sense...

Only 5%

For some reason there's a lot of interesting maps on the interwebs at the moment! I came across this little thought provoker the other day and it took me a while (before I read the blurb) to even guess what it was showing me. The key to the map said that 5% of the Earths' population (of Humans) resides in the blue coloured areas of the map, the red area houses another 5% of the population. Just goes to show how local conditions (like availability of water, climate and crop fertility) dictates so much of where we find ourselves living today, and therefore, what colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion and culture we are thereby slaves to (i.e. bugger all to do with what's actually true or superior!).

 

Midweek Mirth

I saw this on a Valentines card today it really made me laugh, not sure why as it's just a childish joke, must be lockdown fever? (TBH every time I see a dog being dragged around the streets by its gormless, fawning owner now I think of this cartoon!)

 

Half full..

Saw this map on the interwebs today, it peaked my interest. The UK is classed as not quite a "Full democracy", I guess that's because of our lingering obsession with Monarchy and national religions (i.e. medieval hang-overs) Not many "Full" democracies out there and way too much orange, it's amazing how DNA molecules that are 99.99% the same between members of the exact same species can generate such diversity of brains, ideas and systems, it's no wonder viruses that mutate all the time are so problematic!

 

Pun intended

I must admit I am partial to a good pun every now and again. It's an interest I've had ever since I was a teenager in the 80s, when my mates and I formed a band called "The Prevention". We weren't successful because we didn't get the lucky breaks that many other bands had at the time but we're not bitter, at least we can say we were better than The Cure...

 

Strata

I do enjoy trying new things. Here's a beer from my local craft brewer Siren called "Enter Strata", it's a hazy pale ale coming in at 5.9% ABV. It's made with a new (to me) hop unsurprisingly called "Strata" from the USA and very good it was too. Flavours of melon, sweet berries and stone fruit in a NEIPA format so hazy, soft mouthfeel with a mildly dry finish. Nice one!

 

Trending memes

I love it when a joke leans on niche trending social media memes.

 

Praying that prayer works..

I always find it slightly bemusing why religious people think that prayer is capable of helping anyone except themselves?

As to be expected during a global pandemic, there are a lot of stories and appeals being made in the media and on social channels currently about people who have contracted Covid-19 and whose family and friends go on TV/Radio or post messages about how they are "praying" for their loved one(s). I have experienced loss and trauma myself, many times, and I think I understand the mindset pretty well. I can absolutely understand the desire for support and sympathy during a personal crisis, I understand what that feels like, but I don't need "prayer" for those things I need Human contact and communication. Surely people who actually believe in an omnipotent and omniscient deity realise the contradiction here, if their God truly has those characteristics then the plan is the plan isn't it? If you contract Covid then your God must have planned for you to stand a fraction too close to that teenager in Waitrose at that precise moment to inhale the required amount of virus particles, if not then you have to admit that these kinds of things are purely down to random chance and if so, where does that leave the role of your Deity and your prayer for her to intervene in the plan?

 

Vaccine envy

Could we be seeing the emergence of a kind of "vaccine envy" in certain quarters of our communities?

With the near ubiquitous presence of social media in everyone's lives it's not unusual to see people posting comments like "Hurrah, got my vaccine today, feeling safer already" etc. This is especially disconcerting if you know the person in question and know that they're perhaps the same age and/or risk group as you and yet you haven't seen any sign of yours yet! 

There are, of course, many reasons for this, the specific date and time of your vaccine appointment is currently a postcode lottery (more or less) but never the less this situation will lead to inevitable snarky feelings and comments. Last time I looked at the vaccine waitlist for my area, age and medical profile the website said that there were 27 million people ahead of me in the queue, that's quite a lot of people and time, even at the rate of 1-2 million people per week! I do wonder if, like in every crisis there has ever been, that money talks? I would bet a lot that there's already a flourishing black-market for vaccines at the right price and in the right circles, there is certainly a black-market for fake ones. I did notice on the "Covid Map" for the UK that London boroughs like Kensington and Mayfair the incidence of infections are some of the lowest in the country, could be because there's no one there (perhaps all the residents have fled or are in Bermuda?) or perhaps they've all had covert jabs at £500 a go, who knows. I do find myself asking the question "would I pay?", I have to be honest, the circumstances would play a bit part in any decision but, I wouldn't rule it out..

 

Media Numpties

It's incredible that after a year of hardcore pandemic and pushing 110,000 deaths in the UK, we still have to listen to media numpties who think it's clever to promote conspiracy theories and suicidal "libertarian" positions. I'm thinking of people like Julia Hartley-Brewer, a Talk-Radio presenter and Hyacinth Bucket wanna-be who is still banging on about lockdowns not working, wrongly registered deaths and "flu kills thousands too" , whataboutery on an epic scale. No Julia, there aren't a thousand people per day getting hit by buses who are coincidentally Covid positive and lockdowns most certainly do reduce infection rates, the data is already in!

 

Friday Smirk

Excellent J&M as usual. Pointing out the difference between freedom and "enforced freedom", a distinction that many people find it difficult to see clearly and yet a concept that holds millions in subservience around the globe.

 

Stuff people believe..

It's amazing how many of these fallacies you can find out there today, especially in social media circles! Although, actually, you don't even have to dig that deep, quite often you can find one or more of  these on the 10 o'clock news!

Ancient Wisdom - Not everything that is old is good. Don't forget we used to think that diseases were caused by demons and witches flew on broomsticks. Quite a lot of ancient wisdom is, when you don't look at it through rose-tinted spectacles, actually incredibly stupid.

Quantum - Classic pseudo-science, use complicated words to sound authoritative and lean on the hard work of actual scientists to make it sound like you know what you're talking about to the uninitiated, but actually spout complete nonsense. Deepak Chopra is world-class at this (and makes a ton of money from the gullible) Never forget, something that explains everything, explains nothing.

Miracle Cures - It's a well known fact that "miracle cures" occur at exactly the same frequency as natural rates of remission from diseases in question, funny that. 

Naturalistic Fallacy - Viruses are 100% "natural", end of.

Toxins - Repeat after me, there is no such thing as a "detox" diet, in the same way that there's no such thing as "original sin". Don't forget, every chemical ever conceived or discovered is made from the same "natural" stuff.

Conspiracy - The tyrant's favourite, if you can't do something properly and you are incompetent then the easiest way to distract everyone from this fact is to claim it's all the fault of some imaginary "other", the less falsifiable the better.

Energy (crystal vibrations) - There's no such thing as "ley lines" or crystal energy, there are statistically more lines between pizza restaurants in London! See Ancient Wisdom.

Orifice obsessions - Why do some people just love to stick obscure things into their orifices, I've never really understood this? Is it a cry for attention or just a complete lack of medical judgement, I guess the upside is all the hilarious emergency room stories out there concerning live eels and light bulbs.

Midweek Mirth

Bit of dark Atheist humor for you on a rainy Wednesday evening. Of course, even when you are dead you're still not that much closer to any of the Abrahamic Gods, at least you did exist once..!

 

Spikey

Here's an interesting chart. It shows excess deaths (i.e. number of deaths above average) going back to the 1800's. As you can see there have been some extraordinary events over that period that has caused the number of deaths in the UK to "spike" the biggest ones include the Irish famine (1845), Spanish flu (1918), WWII (1939) and of course our current Covid-19 pandemic (2020) Judging by the current death rate and the unlikeliness of it diminishing significantly for many months to come I have a feeling that the 2020 bar will eventually be knocking on the door of similar levels to those other historic events before we get through the other side.

 

Understanding

I come across this situation a lot in the industry I work in (software et al), people (particularly sales and marketing people) get really confused between the acts of "hearing" and "understanding" things. Quite often the same "words" are interpreted to mean a dozen different things (usually a hyper-inflated versions of reality) depending upon a delusion or parochial bias of the listener. I suppose this same phenomenon is also true in other areas, but in industries where technology and rapid change are commonplace then it seems to get amplified. I suppose it's a case of people not wanting to admit ignorance and filling spaces in their knowledge with "made-up-stuff". We even have an industry word for it "hype-cycle", it's where real understanding is very thin on the ground and words tend to have very little meaning. I suppose it's like believing in a God or supporting Trump, people can't rationally explain why or provide concrete evidence for their claims, but they'd just really "like" it to be true.

 

Simcoe treats

Tried a new beer at the weekend and had a can of this beauty (love the can art!). Called "Sold My Soul For Simcoe" it's a hazy pale ale made with, you guessed it, Simcoe hops. Another Siren beer (local to me), this one is an absolute banger, dank, sultry, bitter and pine laden it's a lovely showcase of what the classic Simcoe hop has to offer, delicious!