'Perhaps the greatest jazz musician of the 20th century... Miles Davis is so important to jazz because of his ability to continually evolve. This evolution resulted in a continuous impact on the world of jazz that saw Miles move from bebop to helping found cool jazz, hard bop, third stream music, and fusion jazz, as well as staying in the avant-garde of jazz music for much of his career. His innovations forever changed jazz, and although a great trumpet player, he is most remembered for his stylistic innovations.'
Some sexual practices are not only weird but downright insanitary; yet at least they are, one assumes, performed in private.
What we shouldn't expect, even in our louche and degraded times, is to see the British Establishment taking its pants down in public and taking a giant dump on the face of Justice.
We should not focus exclusively on the magistrate currently involved; she is, presumably, fulfilling the will of others. Which is why I think that any appeal to the High Court against the predetermined extradition of Assange will be refused: what senior judges wish to go to their graves with the plaque of this case screwed to their coffin lids?
'Il faut mener les hommes avec une main de fer dans un gant de velours,' said Napoleon. If the magistrate at Westminster is to be criticised, it is for allowing the velvet to wear thin and expose the iron fist of our country's cruel, implacable ruling Power.
As the late Physicist Richard Feynman pointed out, Mathematics is the language necessary to understand the Universe. That is, to do Science. He lamented that so few people seemed able to learn the material.
In the US (and evidence suggests that this is true in most countries), only about 15% of 12th grade students have mastered Algebra I enough to take the first college-level Math course, often called College Algebra. This has been the case since I began teaching.
With Herculean efforts and massive amounts of money spent on college-level remediation for the 75% who arrive at higher education below that level, we have achieved about the same success rates as drug addition therapy, or poverty relief.
In other words, it appears that we need that 15%+ of students for all of the jobs which require at least some higher-level Mathematics (or the associated analytical skills), including: Actuaries, Chemists, Computer Engineers, Computer Scientists, Computer Technicians, Dentists, Doctors, Electricians, Engineers of all types, Financial analysts, Geologists, Mathematicians, Neuro-Scientists (the newest tool for them is systems of partial differential equations), Optometrists, Physicists, Pilots, Statisticians and so much more, and the teachers and professors of these subjects.
And how do many of our leaders respond? By claiming that we can replace all of these things by Artificial Intelligence, and by defunding the STEM areas at universities because they "aren't popular enough".
"Richard Wagner’s final creation is also his most mysterious. The story of Parsifal, the ‘pure fool, knowing through compassion’, who has been called to rescue the Kingdom of the Grail from the sins that have polluted it, appears familiar enough, but the redemption sought by Wagner’s characters is far from the Christian archetype. "Wagner’s Parsifal is an exploration of the drama, music and philosophy of this extraordinary musical icon by a writer whose knowledge and understanding of the Western musical tradition are the equal of his capacities as a philosopher.It shows how, through musical connections and brilliant dramatic strokes, Parsifal expresses in music a depth of feeling for which we do not have words, a deep longing for wholeness and relief from suffering which, Scruton argues, contains within itself the image of salvation." https://dauntbooks.co.uk/shop/books/wagners-parsifal/
Not me, I might add, but an old friend in an Australian winery.
I was in my cellar, actually a converted inspection pit in my garage, sorting out my wine bottles. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that all this hoarding at my time of life has a down side: I may never reach the last bottle before I pop my clogs. We all like to think we can cheat the taxman and the grim reaper by spending everything before we go, but there is a snag: when will we go? Relying on averages is notoriously flawed, after all there is nothing to stop me falling over tomorrow, or on the other hand I could keep on for a number of years.
All sorts of factors are involved in coming to some conclusion. Family longevity is for me a difficult one as my mother's side (she lived to 100) go on forever whereas my father's side all died young (he was 68) and his father similarly. Which side do I take after, whose genes are dominant, which line fought off serious illnesses the better - obviously my mum's line; so do I draw a mean average of the two halves or do I wait to be mown down by a bus because I was too slow on the aged people's crossing outside the care home?
All of this information has to be dissected and assimilated, then throw in the deteriorating health service that keeps many of us going longer than we should, deduct time for that, then go back to the Office of National Statistics where you can put in age at present sex etc. And they say I could/should live to 88, yet the same site says at this moment in time the average age in the UK for a man is 79.2 years; this last figure is worrying, not because if true it means I don’t have long with this mortal coil but it leaves very little time to consume my cellar. It has been suggested I get help, and I have had several offers! consuming the cellar with that scenario, but I am a greedy sod and hope to do the job on my own; what a conundrum.
I also have another first world problem that muddies the water somewhat: I have been fortunate in that the last two properties we lived in had a cellar which is where the build up of bottles got under way and here I got lucky with the inspection pit. The likelihood if we move - as we have been trying to for some time - of getting another house with cellar is remote these days, so a wine cooler of probably 160-200 bottles will suffice. That still leaves circa 250 to consume by the time we move and that could be in two months, a year, whatever; it all gets very involved.
Ah, joy…
As an aside, there are as many versions of wine cellars and wine storage solutions as there are wines - well not quite, but there are a lot. Most involve spending as above large amounts of the laughing lettuce but cheaper solutions are available, apart from wine fridges which themselves for a decent quality and reasonable capacity can get rather expensive. A larder fridge can be adapted by altering the thermostat to around a maximum of 55 degrees, in fact I have never been able to see why wine coolers are so expensive, they are after all little different from a standard fridge and there are plenty of cheap options with those: corner of a garage can be partitioned off and insulated with Celotex or similar plus ceiling and floor and a small air conditioning unit installed; you save a fortune over custom-made ones, which start at around £10k for those spiral-in-the-ground ones.
One word of warning when converting a part of a garage: by nature many garages get very hot so one that is in the sun all day and especially a flat roof version is not a good idea. If the air con breaks down your wine can boil, not good; but a shaded one preferably with a pitched roof is fine.
And even under the stairs, if not in a house hot spot, can be racked and insulated for little cost. Many of the cheaper options are more than adequate for all but the finest wines, as they are not kept that long anyway. I was lucky with my inspection pit: all it cost was the insulation for the roof and the racking which I already had. Of course, if you are fortunate to have a house with a cellar you are quids in.
Oh and by the way, storing bottles upright was always thought to be a taboo, but if they are screw cap it makes no difference and recent research has shown the corks do not dry out as thought if bottles are stored upright and again over relatively short periods it is an irrelevance.
A hot tip: if sharing the garage with a wine storage area and a car, don’t drink and drive; it could be very expensive in the wine department and red wine on the upholstery is not easy to remove and we don’t want that, do we?
Some people do manage to spend all their wordly gains by the moment the grim reaper appears. Rock Hudson famously did leaving only a few hundred dollars of cash allegedly, though his estate itself was worth millions and was left in trust and to his male lover., but these are rare events; he just got lucky. It is a notoriously difficult trick to carry off, the law of averages is not that compliant, so a start has to be made.
It has to be said the problem is self-inflicted, buying wine does have that ability to become somewhat addictive. Many wine lovers dress it up as buying for the future: buy now, the prices only go up! If you don’t like the wine you can always sell, but to be honest much of it is an ego trip, it’s no different to owning a nice car or a painting, the difference being you cannot drink either of those and on the other hand once drunk the value has gone which is why so many people never drink their collections, they become a focus for discussion among other ‘collectors’, hours spent discussing the merits of x over y and which year trumped the last great vintage. It’s all a bit surreal, but it does have a fascination, mainly because it is a natural product and the permutations in style and quality are endless as with every vintage it all changes again.
The 88 years life expectancy prediction is an easy one. I carry on drinking my cellar, currently north of 400 bottles of nature's finest, though much reduced from its peak of around 700, and before anyone states that is excessive, it is small beer in the collector wine drinker stakes (small beer, I said that!) as I sold off all the very expensive stuff in recognition that I would never make it to a satisfactory conclusion. At 88 years I will probably not be drinking much other than orange juice through a straw towards the end but even so if I run out I simply buy more. The lower figure of 79.2 though is worrying: it means I will have to drink 2.47 bottles a day to beat that deadline; well, I'm prepared if needs be to give it a go and hope my liver holds out; it is a tall order so I think I am going to have to settle for the former figure: carry on as normal and keep my fingers crossed.
It would be nice to think that should my prediction be found to be wildly inaccurate I could be entombed like the ancient Egyptians in a cellar like above with all the wine intact - and don’t forget the glasses and a corkscrew - to take on my voyage to Valhalla*; it’s like one of those wonderful dreams one has and then you wake up!
With problems with the Coronavirus, the resultant damage to the economy and the NHS going to pot , being governed by idiots, seeing the whole world order imploding before my eyes, who would have believed there could be a bigger problem and it would rear its ugly head at this time, but it has and it has to be dealt with one way or another: cheers!
______________________________________ *Aaru, for Ancient Egyptians (Ed.) Also known as the Field of Reeds - but NOT straws!
More nostalgia and looking back to the beginnings of what became known as 'street corner symphonies' when youngsters would sing a-capella harmonies on the streets of their neighbourhood. The beginning of the 'doowop' style of music.
Because it was a-capella the doo wop and nonsense lyrics acted as 'fills' replacing musical instruments thus helping the melodic flow of the music. Instruments/orchestrations were added when these groups made it into the recording studios but without sacrificing the added colour of the doo wop lyricism. It is how musical styles develop and change over the years and this new style was a progression from previous years.
The style probably began with the very popular vocal harmony group The Ink Spots in the 1930s. The first video below is 'I miss you so' by Cats and the Fiddle which could easily be mistaken for a 1950s record and the rest, as they say, is history. and briefly encapsulated in the other videos, roughly in chronological order. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doo-wop
A very amusing story was told to me yesterday which I sent to friends who I thought would appreciate it; it made me think it would be a good preamble to a more general tale of the little buggers above.
The story is this……
“I went for a haircut this morning and my hairdresser told me a wonderful story about his neighbour and his new fake lawn. The neighbour decided they would have a fake plastic lawn installed as part of the landscaping in their garden. All was completed and the couple came over to ask the hairdresser if he wouldn't mind keeping an eye on the garden and water the numerous pots, fine he said no problem as they do it every year for them anyway. First few days all went well and on the fifth day the hairdresser's wife said she would pop over before she went to work. Five minutes later she returns and says you really ought to come and have a look at this, so over he goes. Upon entering the back garden he sees what all the fuss is about: the newly laid fake lawn looks like the Somme, all hillocks and trenches. 'What the hell,' says the husband and then realises what has happened: moles; they have tunnelled under the fake lawn and tried to surface but couldn't, leaving the place wrecked. The installers returned to make good but much of the fake lawn had been so stretched by the moles efforts to surface it was unusable and it remains like that while they seek a solution.”
There must be a moral to that story, probably as most have said, ‘Don’t mess with Nature as it always wins’.
There appear to be two main ways that artificial grass is laid and the ‘softer’ version must have been used in this case.
By coincidence last year my neighbour over the road had a similar ‘uprising.’ Venturing onto his crazy paved patio one morning he was confronted by piles of earth: a mole had tried to surface and had succeeded by getting between the pavers and pushing up the grouting. What was amazing in this case is the garden is enormous, three and a half acres going down to the river bank, shades of Wind in the Willows, and though mole activity is seen in the softer soil near the river there have never been any signs near the house and there were no signs leading to the patio; that was some dig.
I've had them in more than one garden myself including the current one. They - or he, they are solitary animals - don’t like noise or vibration so normally come up in the quieter areas, but that never lasts. Slowly they expand their tunnel system looking for worms and they got to my veg patch; time for action. I genuinely do not like killing moles, their strange subterranean lives are a miracle of industry and I would much prefer to leave them alone, but we have all seen those roadside stretches of grass that look like a scene from WWI battlefields and the time to strike back arrives.
Whatever method you use to kill moles it is not a pleasant one. These days mole traps are the universal way and setting them correctly is very important, otherwise the little buggers go round them, under them or ignore them; their sense of smell is such that you should use gloves to handle the traps so as not to contaminate them with your scent, and patience is definitely a virtue.
Years ago you could buy gas pellets that poisoned the moles in their tunnels, but are now only available to professionals. You had to find all the openings by putting burning oily rags down the tunnel and seeing where it emerged, then cap those exits, leaving one for the smoke pellets; but the pellets were banned and traps are the only way today.
Various sonic devices are sold that claim to get rid of moles but the reality is, as with certain castor oil-based repellents, they only either work for a short period or simply move the problem to another part of the garden.
I did have signs of a return early this year but the two or three hills never developed into anything else so I was spared a repeat performance. As the garden backs onto a golf course the logic is they went there but it's unlikely as golf courses can use insecticides to rid the ground of the moles' dietary source - worms etc - or compacting the ground, which collapses their tunnels.
Like my neighbour there is another small river that runs at the back of the golf course and an adjoining recreation area. Moles are present on the river bank but there are never any signs in between there and my garden, another very long dig if that is how they get here.
There are those who are sympathetic to the plight of the mole in these circumstances and state they are good for the soil, aerating and even rotovating it in their search for food; all well and good, but to use that soil you still have to eradicate Mr Mole.
Moles don’t feed on plants: they are carnivorous, feeding on invertebrates that fall into their system of tunnels. Any plant damage they cause is incidental to their lifestyle.
If you're inclined to get up early, you can catch them live by putting a shovel in the tunnel behind the mole when you see movement and catching him as he comes to the surface; alternatively, use a container in the tunnel and use the spade method to drive him into it. If you're lucky and have caught the mole you are faced with 'where do I take him/them?' as nobody wants them; you have a problem of disposal. Only once have I caught live moles; it really is hard work and very time-consuming; I then drove them out to a country lane and deposited them in a ditch.
"A ride in the country - not quite what I had in mind!"
Above: a very good example of having got rid of them (maybe) in one area in the background, only to see the emergence of the mole hills elsewhere.
The battle with nature continues unabated - good luck!
