Yes Prime Minister

I see Spain has a new Prime Minister. Pedro Sanchez was sworn in last week, and for the first time in that country's history, the ceremony was performed without a Bible or Crucifix in sight, Mr Sanchez is openly atheistic and took his oath without those particular props. Let's face it the previous Spanish Prime Minister used both of them and turned out to be involved in a massive corruption scandal! 

So much for making oaths on ancient books and Roman instruments of torture, good people tend to do good things and bad people tend to do bad things, time will tell which camp Sanchez falls into but in terms of morality, religious affiliation or lack of would seem unlikely to prove material.

Completed the set

I've always been one for collecting things. Here are the four beers that make up "Project Barista", an experiment in coffee beer by my local brewery Siren. I tried the last one yesterday (2nd from the right") which is called "Cold Brew" a cold-steeped Schwarzbier (essentially a black lager) which was perhaps the most refreshing of the group and went down great sitting in the sunshine munching on some polenta chips and pesto. 

So, that's the complete set tried now! My favorite was the 2nd from the left, a light coloured beer called "Affogato" which I've previously written about here but they're all unique and each brings something different to the style. We visited the brewery and did a tour with some friends yesterday, it was a great day for it and we all tried a number of different beers, it was a good day out, and the Siren folks were very generous and hospitable, a successful day and a successful (coffee) project I reckon!

Food, glorious food

Excellent couple of hours spent perusing the street-food vendors at the pop-up food festival in Forbury Park in Reading yesterday evening (Friday) The rain held off and we even had a bit of sunshine, my wife, daughter and I tried a selection of dishes on offer and unanimously decided that the "Crispy Squid" w/sweet chilli sauce was the overall winner with the nachos coming in a close second. The beer wasn't bad either, a nice hoppy pale-ale on tap and lot's of Brewdog cans in the fridge. Apparently the vendors change every week and the festival is on for four weeks, might pop along again if the weather holds out!

Close encounter

Back in the day when I was in my twenties I used to have a paraglider and religiously plod off to The Vale of Pewsey in Wiltshire every weekend to fly around the various hill-sites there. It was great fun and something I must try again before I die! This video reminded me of those days albeit that we never had such a close encounter with a jet fighter (plenty of bramble bushes and sheep-shit though). Squeaky bum time for all concerned!

Friday Smirk

Friday Smirk (early)

With Fathers day approaching next month, this is how it usually works in my house too.

Puzzlement of youth?

Is it just me or is supporting the World Cup in Russia on a par with supporting the "rebel" cricket tours of SA in the 70s & 80s? For some it seems that thinking about football temporarily evacuates the brain of everything else. Some of the younger lads in the office started talking (with much excitement) today about starting a World-Cup sweepstake. I pointed out that this may be in bad taste when we have people from the Ukraine working in the same office and bearing in mind the latest violent incursions by the current Russian state into our own green and pleasant land?

My comment was received with much puzzlement (and ignored) ...

Racist drugs

Best corporate response to the whole Rosanne Barr racist tweet episode! Not sure why people are so surprised, plenty of evidence from past behaviour that at best she's an idiot without a good sense of where obvious "what's actually funny" boundaries lie but even if she is racist, the best counter-measure against it is withering ridicule and/or simply ignoring her, just like this. 

Ironic that Rosanne is Trumps favorite TV star.. case rests me'lord.

Belief in belief

Excellent new J&M up today, poking fun at those "rational" religious people who poo-poo new-age nonsense like crystal healing, psychics and morphic resonance. Many seem to have a complete blind-spot when it comes to critically evaluating their own (even less likely) deeply held beliefs in superstition and the supernatural. Such is the seemingly ubiquitous Human need to possess a belief in "belief", or in other words, all those other Gods and beliefs are so obviously made-up, apart from yours of course, yours are real.

Rocky road to fame..

You have to marvel at the sheer emotional impact of this picture. It's a man in his mid-30s who was killed (obviously) by means of a bloody great boulder flung at his head by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Examination of his leg bones (because there's nothing left of his head!) show that, although he survived the initial eruption itself, he would have had great difficulty running from the pyroclastic flows and debris raining down on the town (Pompeii) and met his end in this cataclysmic event so long ago. 

We can't help but feel for him, we can't help but wonder what he was thinking, seeing and experiencing and how the preservation of his remains combined with the blatant evidence of his sheer bad-luck married with the fragility of existence somehow link us via shared Human insecurities across a vast swathe of time. One thing is for sure, he could not have imagined how his demise would be shared around the world some 2000 years later, or (from his perspective) the magical devices that we all use to consume his dramatic final resting place, on the other hand I bet he'd understand perfectly how we all feel looking at him.

Bad arguments

One of the most common creationist arguments you come across (especially on the internet) is a classic argument from incredulity. It's an example of someone making an argument based on the premise that since they can't understand how something could have happened a certain way then it must be false, oh and therefore "God-did-it". The something in this case is Evolution of course, and the argument is the "something from nothing" spiel as popularised by literalists Christians like Ray Comfort, or as everyone knows him, "the banana-man". I know people who have found this argument to be compelling, surprisingly, they hadn't ever been shown or considered the obvious flaw in it.

The basic argument runs something like this,

1. When you see a building you know it must have had a builder
2. When you see a painting you know it must have had a painter
3. When you see the universe you know it must have had a "universe-maker" and that's God.
4. We know this because it's impossible for something to come from nothing.

Let's look at the basic problem with this argument.

1. What builders and painters do is re-arrange existing material (paint, canvas, stone, bricks, wood etc.) in order to "create" whatever it is they're making.
2. If some God created the universe in the same way, then the materials for the universe must have existed before he made it, where did these materials come from?
3. If the materials didn't exist beforehand then the God must have created them from nothing, but this entire argument rests on the premise that's impossible.

There are many other problems with the argument, for example the conclusion that something can't come from nothing is a fallacious one based on a very specific and philosophical definition of "nothing" that is artificially crafted (i.e. man-made) to suggest this conclusion. In reality no one has ever experienced or tested a "nothing" like this, if it does exist then we have no idea what it's properties might be.

Marketing by dummies

Cricket is the one thing that definitely does have a boundary?

Geometrical humour

Spent an enjoyable evening last night (Monday) watching Bill Bailey at the Hexagon theatre in Reading. It's a good show, mild-mannered and silly but with an undercurrent of tension as he examines the state of current affairs. Topics such as Trump and Brexit come in for particular scrutiny (and ridicule). The show is very diverse, everything from stand-up to steel-drums, I particularly liked the guitar made out of a Bible and it's two settings... I won't spoil the joke, you'll have to go see it yourself.

Victory for a compassion

Delighted for the "YES" campaigners in the Republic of Ireland who achieved a land-slide victory yesterday, just the North to sort out now..

Oxford

Spend a delightful day in Oxford yesterday with some good friends. We met up at the Grand Cafe at around 11 am for a spot of coffee and cake and then had a bit of a wander around the covered market. After that we headed over to the Cherwell Boathouse restaurant where we had a splendid "fine-dining" lunch, I had a pork filet with charred cabbage (essentially burnt to a crisp with a blow-torch) sounds terrible, but it was a great contrast, also a nice cold Macon La Roche to wash it all down.

After lunch we headed out again into a glorious sunny day. Oxford town centre was packed and so the boys in the group decided to forgo the obligatory "shopping" excursion and headed down the Cowley road to the local Brewdog bar where we whiled away a couple of hours putting the world to rights over some nice craft beer. Fortunately the guest brewery taking over a couple of their taps was "Wiper and True" of Bristol, who are on top form at the moment, I had some of their Quintet IPA which was just singing.

Then it was time for home. Back to the station and a fast train to Reading, tucked up in front of the telly by about 9 pm, this is how Summer should be.

Catholic correlations

The people of the Republic of Ireland vote tomorrow to decide whether or not to repeal their draconian abortion laws. Currently in that country it's illegal to have an abortion for any reason at any time unless  the life of the mother is in danger, reformers claim that even this caveat is very difficult to prove and trigger, and in some cases leads to the unnecessary death of women having difficulties with their pregnancy.

Most other western democracies have long since implemented more flexible laws around abortion. Using the best scientific evidence available, limits are typically put on aborting fetuses by age, 24 weeks in the case of the UK. A case of changing our laws to reflect experience, evidence and the well-being and pragmatic choices of human-beings in impossible situations. This way of creating and refining law seems to me to be far superior than more old-fashioned ideas that stem from institutions like the Catholic church, where what seems more important is dogma, compliance and a slavish subversion to authority, laws being made to be immutable unless they prove inconvenient to clergy or subverted by greasing the right palms.

Any country that has laws that are so easily subverted by people (who have the money) travelling to neighbouring countries for particular medical procedures needs to ask some important questions of itself. Questions like why so many people who can travel to get treatment do? and questions like who is actually running your country, the elected Government representing the will of the majority, or some unelected ancient religious sect that's accountable to no one and hell-bent on defending it's own parochial interests?

No system is perfect of course, every country has it's issues, just look at the fiasco that is Brexit, but when it comes to such sensitive and human issues I would certainly try to vote on the side of maximum compassion for all the people involved.

Not really..

New J&M up today. I almost always respect people more if they are willing to change their views based on evidence, I often think it says something about their character and perhaps indicates a lack of intransigence and/or arrogance.

What to brew?

Came across this today, perfect remedy to my problem of being hopelessly indecisive about what to brew this bank-holiday weekend. So, an ice distilled, no hop stout aged on wild raspberries then... (I don't think so)

Lazy weekend syndrome

Not much enthusiasm for work this morning, need to get back into gear after a very lazy weekend..

Travel

Trying to book a Summer holiday at the moment and came across this little meme - made me smile.