Sunday, July 17, 2022

COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Back to Mono, by JD

Republished from yesteryear on James Higham's Nourishing Obscurity before its great technocrash:

Modern digital cameras are wonderful machines with their whirring and beeping and flashing lights and auto-everything but their reign was short lived as it seems everyone now has a camera built into their 'smart'phones (I wonder what the next fad will be.)

.......but sometimes I get all nostalgic for the days when all you needed was a roll of Tri-X and a camera that didn’t need batteries. Oh and there was also the quiet joy of messing about with chemicals to develop the films and to print the photographs, watching the image slowly emerge on the paper.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be; all of these photos are about fifty years old. Where did the time go and why and how did it pass so quickly?

Somewhere in Keilder forest

Horse Guards Parade

... closing time

St Nicholas’ Cathedral

The cat in his favourite place – asleep on top of the central heating boiler

Saturday, July 16, 2022

WEEKENDER: A couple of things, by Wiggia

He forgot his authorisation codes

I said I would leave the question of the incompetence of the NHS alone for awhile. I lied, the organisation can’t help itself as it is embroiled in multiple failures, but this week we saw both ends of the spectrum which highlight the disconnect between what we are told and reality.

Firstly the NHS as a whole was given the George Cross for its work during the pandemic. You can make your own mind about whether ‘all’ should have received the award, as only a relatively small number were actually on that front line in difficult circumstances; the rest, well I have spoken before, were at home for the best part of eighteen months, the evidence being surrounded by doctors and nurses from the local hospital was all too evident.

The neglect of all other diseases and procedures was always going to come back to the NHS and bite them in the backside. The waiting list for life saving operations being put on indefinite hold will have consequences for years, perhaps threatening the existence of the NHS itself. Nothing was more harrowing than the total neglect of a young woman who could not get to see her doctor for a year! The story is here:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/familyhealth/teenage-girl-tragically-dies-of-cancer-after-waiting-year-to-see-gp-leaving-family-outraged/ar-AAZjiOz

This is not a lone incident: there have been many reports of similar cases. There is no need to say any more on this one, and in the wake of it all Dr Katherine Henderson president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said, following the reports that patients are waiting more than twelve hours in ambulances outside hospitals, “the health service is slowly collapsing.” We could have saved her the trouble, we already know.

But today's gripe is a more personal one, it is online banking and other online activities requiring passwords plural and memorable names, usernames, codes, second cousin's middle name, favourite car and numerous other items designed to confuse and make any mistakes almost impossible to remedy.

The mistake in this case and as has been in the past is not mine, it is the bank's Changes are made and you have to go through various hoops to prove who you are to use the new and ‘improved’ service. The service of course is not improved, it is simply made more tedious to access one's own account and if something goes wrong as in this case, you personally have to put it right: your time, your effort, your utter frustration for something you had no hand in... read on:

I have just had a couple of hours when I nearly lost it completely dealing with my bank.

The story is that my old phone became, according to the bank, incompatible with their latest app for online banking, the inference being I would have to buy a new smart phone to be able to access my own bank account - perhaps they should supply one? Just a note, I do not use the phone for banking as such, but you need to be connected to get codes to be able to buy online and these are sent to your phone; they all do this now.

Anyway my newish phone has the app and I have been using it for a couple of years. Suddenly with another update it refuses to accept the password I have used all this time. I made several attempts to rectify the matter and was told I had to transfer all the info from my old phone to the new one, despite it having worked fine for at least two years, and then to be told it would not work?

What a performance and I gave up, so the online banking has been parked; but I got a letter this morning saying they were not sending any more paper statements after July 19th - a couple days' grace then!  and if I still wanted one, you guessed it, I would have to go online into my account to change it, but I can't get online for reasons given.

So I thought I would try one more time and used several old passwords from yesteryear and bingo one worked, but the next stage required a further password and that did not work so I went the trodden route of password change. Christ I wished I had not bothered; I entered the new password twice and it then said I had to verify with an identity number given by phoning a number given to get the password finally accepted.

I phone, and as usual no one answers and I hang on listening to drivel about how they are being kind to people with no money and giving them bank accounts (perhaps a mobile phone as well?) and none of the options eventually given aligned with what I wanted, there’s a surprise. So I went for any other business; another long wait. I then go through various security questions with an operative in Delhi or somewhere which I don't have to hand only to be told she cannot solve my problem and will pass me to security.

Security eventually answer and I cannot hear never mind understand the Indian person at the other end; after my saying several times he is inaudible he bothers to up the sound and I can hear him but understanding is another matter, having to ask repeatedly can he say that again.

Needless to say we go through the security questions again but they are different and I do not have them to hand, but we get there, or I thought we had, until he said I will now ask a couple of questions for which I need a yes or no answer and only the first response will be accepted: the second question is can you give a transaction on your CC since the 26th June? My statement only goes to the 26th and I can't access online so cannot give an answer as I use other cards as well, so after all that I am back to square one as he cannot go forward because of my answer. I should have shouted, it would at least made me feel better, but was told I would have to take identification to my nearest branch and resolve the problem there. The nearest branch, as they have closed them all, is five miles away.

All I could say was that because the bank's system doesn't work I and other customers are doing the security work for them and I have had enough, f*** you all and put the phone down, it has gone beyond stupid now.

I have the same problem with my Halifax account: the app works but the codes for online purchases are never sent. I gave up on that long ago, yet if I use Pay Pal which I am loath to do, the transaction goes through without a problem or need for codes to be sent. Am I missing something here or is it all deliberate? My other card still works, but for how long, as I had trouble with that a couple of years back and there has not been a recent update. It won't be long now. I feel, before none of the bloody things work.

They also keep asking me to use online payments and stop using cheques to save the rainforest or something. I refuse but the cheque book gets thinner, and if they have their way will disappear altogether, then I will really be stuffed.

My wife who was a dept head in clearing at the bank laughs at all this. She was in charge of the first computerised clearing operation in banking in this country and now won't go near a computer and only uses, whilst still available, telephone banking. As she says, even in the day computer banking was risky and the bad guys are very clever, this is why of course the security gets ever more tedious and frustrating and the onus is put on the customer to do their work for them.

It is noticeable that HSBC has gone full woke and has blundered into backing the statement that the Halifax put out about leaving the bank if you do not like our stance on the rainbow people; and to think that these once revered organisations were once the foundations of our financial system and the bank manager, remember him, was a pillar of local society!

Oh and the sun has gone in... perhaps that is a rehearsal for when the lights go out…

Friday, July 15, 2022

FRIDAY MUSIC; Cowboy Junkies, by JD

Cowboy Junkies are Margo Timmins with her very soulful voice backed by two of her brothers and a variety of guests. I'm not sure if they are a folk group or a rock group or a blues band but it is an eclectic mix of many strands of popular music and it works

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_Junkies
https://cowboyjunkies.com/


















Sunday, July 10, 2022

COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Golden Section 2, by JD

Continuing the examination of the Golden Section plus the significance of Ø in the formation of the universe; following on from part one here -

The Golden Section is evident in plants as can be seen in this graphic representation of the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower. The spirals are asymmetrical with 21 seeds in the clockwise spiral and 34 in the anti-clockwise spiral.


The same asymmetrical arrangement is evident in a pineapple with the diamond shapes being 8 one way and 13 the other. All of these numbers belong to the Fibonacci series as shown earlier and demonstrate that the growth of plants follows the same 'rule' of Ø.

The Golden Section appears as a spiral in plants, as seen above in the sunflower seeds, and in other animal life both large and small including the mollusc known as the nautilus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus

And in this cross section through the nautilus shell you can see probably the most beautiful demonstration of the golden section in the whole of the natural world:


And that is the point: the Golden Section, the Law governing growth of all living things is everywhere from the spiralling galaxies in space to the structure of DNA. It is what unifies the entire cosmos.

The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment which was the birth of the scientific view of the world make it difficult now to speak of the universe as a creation but if the Golden Section is not the creator’s design then what is it?

- - - - - - - - - -

A further illustration of these Golden proportions in and of the human body comes from one of the great heroes of the Modern Movement of the early part of the 20th century, the Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

Le Corbusier wanted to find a way of creating harmonious proportion in his buildings in a way that would allow people to feel “at home” when living or working in them. He returned to the idea of the Golden Section which was first recorded in Classical Greece although its origin is much older.

Originally he took as his starting point a hypothetical man 1.75m tall – a French height he called it. The modules developed from this starting point, as well as being difficult to calculate accurately, proved unwieldy and unsuited to everyday living; disproportionate in fact.

In one of his books he tells the following story:­

He had been working for some time on his Modulor system using these French decimal measurements but without much success. Then one of his collaborators, Py, said: “Isn’t the height we are working with rather a French height? Have you ever noticed that in English detective novels the hero is always six feet tall?” Le Corbusier continues: ”We then applied this standard. To our delight, the graduations of a new Modulor, based on a man six feet tall, translated themselves into round figures in feet and inches”.

The different positions of the human body during various activities fits the Modulor divisions.

The Modulor consists of two scales, the red and the blue scale (the above illustration shows the two scales combined). The dimensions of the blue scale are double those of the red and the divisions of each scale are based on Ø the phi ratio, the basis of the Golden Section. Thus the Modulor is not only an instrument of architectural proportion but also a means of ensuring that the buildings designed using it are of a human scale.

Here again we are coming closer to the answer as to why the Golden Section is important. If it occurs naturally in the human figure, as demonstrated by Leonardo, and in all other plant and animal life then by using Ø as well as the dimensions of the human figure as a starting point for design then such designs as are produced will, in theory, reflect the harmony within ourselves.

As an aid to creating architectural proportion, Ø is evident in many of the buildings of antiquity. The Parthenon in Greece for example, although it should be noted that in past ages, unlike the present, all buildings were designed on a human scale using Ø to create a harmony between man and his surroundings.

This explains why a modern building can induce a sense of unease without the source of that unease being apparent. It could even be said that this is one of the reasons for what is known as “sick building syndrome” where workers take sick leave with unidentifiable illnesses; their offices literally make them ill. Don’t forget that the word disease could also be written dis-ease.

…the essential importance of Ø is that it represents universal harmony; a picture which displays its elements according to the ratio will be pleasing to the eye; a building constructed in the same way will likewise be a thing of beauty… we all know it when we see it but without being able to articulate what it is that pleases us…

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Two books of interest related to the same subject.

The Power Of Limits http://www.cymaticsource.com/power.html
by
György Dóczi
ISBN 0-87773-193-4

A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe https://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/bookinfo.htm
by
Michael S Schneider
ISBN 0-06-092671-6

Saturday, July 09, 2022

WEEKENDER: Rewilding, or Food Production?

Read: https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-chelsea-flower-show/news/2022/rewilding-garden 
                                         
The woke judges were having a laugh at our expense here; this view can be seen in a corner of any allotment in Britain. It must have been the poohsticks that did it. This is not rewilding, it is total neglect, why would anyone actually want this view from the kitchen window?

As with so much today, every week has items that contradict what was said last week.

Much is the result of total chaos in the world today and incompetent governments and this is just one example.

Rewilding is every green's wet dream. Who could not want wildflower meadows at the bottom of the road as portrayed in the statements about rewilding. The fact that motorways have been re-wilding with very mixed results for decades now has conveniently been forgotten. 

I pick on wild flower meadows as I know a bit about them. They are extremely difficult to start up and maintain: as with the motorway seeding and some farm efforts, after the first year usually one species, the strongest remains, all others die out or are subsumed.

So what do they mean by rewilding? Is it a pre-homo sapiens world of wolves, dark forests, swamps, impenetrable scrubland, beaver-dammed rivers, and locals in bear skins foraging for berries?

The web site of Rewilding Britain is not that explicit about what the overall effect of all this might be, or the purpose. It conveys an image of long lost species coming back or being introduced into areas that don’t really want the experience. Golden Eagles being introduced as they have in some places, means farmers have to factor in 10% losses of lambs which naturally increases prices; RB consider such moves as beneficial and we should take the hit as we benefit from the rewilding, or so they would have us believe.

What benefits the average person gets from all this is moot. It is rather like the movement to get black people into the countryside because it is 'too white', yet all over the world black people are leaving the countryside for the cities - why anyone should think it will be different here is a mystery.

The site shows an award-winning Chelsea flower show garden in the city (see above) This has nothing to do with rewilding, it is a trendy image portrayed in many ‘award’ winning gardens of late: the shabby allotment look.

Cattle of various long lost pedigrees are shown as being re-introduced, such as Bison. This rather flies in the face of the green movement that would have all cattle culled as they fart and are killing the atmosphere; if you believe that you will believe anything, nonetheless the gullible are beginning to believe this stuff and the vegan shelves are bulging with overpriced vegetable-based items, and manufacturers are rubbing their corporate hands with delight at being able to charge more for an item that has had the expensive ingredients left out.

No wonder he is smiling!
                                                                                               
There can be no doubt in my mind that the green lobby/movement is advancing its ideals on all fronts at the same time, with climate change the driver behind it all.

It is no coincidence that drive to so-called sustainable is leading a push to change the way we live. Once again a minority is attempting to shape the future for the majority using scare tactics that proved so successful during and after the pandemic. The old adage ‘if you tell a lie often enough people will believe it’ has never been more true.

A good example this week is the announcement by Cambridge University that it is set to drop beef and lamb from its menu as a part of  its 'sustainable' food plan. They credit the plan with with causing a 33% drop in carbon emissions for food in the university. Other colleges are putting meat and even fish at the bottom of the menu and only on certain days and are blatantly putting a surcharge on it if you have the gall to order.

They claim the move is being driven by the students. I wonder what all students actually think and not just the activists. There are currently around 600,000+ vegans in the country; that is a small albeit growing part of the population but again the protest groups are getting their way, and please don’t tell me it makes a meaningful difference.


The change to organic food production has not been the success they told us it would be,:premium prices in a time of spiralling inflation for a dubious gain……..



This one is good, they equate a financial success with changing from uneconomic farming to a camp site as a triumph for rewilding. The loss of food production is ignored: you can’t eat tents. They also use giving up almost everything we enjoy and buying crappy land with as a way forward; let them lead the way.


At a time of rising populations worldwide, rewilding of productive land will cause shortages of foodstuffs, in the same way that we have neglected to build the infrastructure to ensure energy reliance on the back of our own resources.

These green lobbyists can’t have it all. In an advanced world populations are not going to take a step backwards and live in yurts and take up smallholdings. It is not a practical solution, unless you are a celeb who can afford to go off grid; for the other 99% it is nonsense.

The current financial crisis should pull the plug on this nonsense, yet governments still cave to the minority pressure groups at a time when they should be looking after the majority. Somehow the latter sort of government has flown the coop; we are now run by governments who only want to stay in power; the people (see Brexit) are at best a nuisance and worse, are totally ignored.

In Holland the government has already taken a step too far in this direction. The results were inevitable in a country that has such a huge agricultural base. No-one is listening to the majority there, either.


As with the rest of the western world they have convinced themselves that farm animals are the enemy of the environment.

As is anything else that goes against the agenda, even making money for people has risks now.


Rewild, go green, at your peril!

Friday, July 08, 2022

FRIDAY MUSIC: Johnny Hallyday, by JD

Hallyday was once called "the French Elvis", "a hip swiveling, leather-clad Gallic answer to Elvis Presley who shook up his home country's music scene with American-style rock-n-roll and bad-boy antics." He remained largely unknown outside the Francophone world and was sometimes described as "the biggest rock star you've never heard of."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Hallyday














Thursday, July 07, 2022

LIFE: Suburban siege, by Sackerson

It starts around five a.m., before the school cockerel across the way begins his crazy yelling.

The neighbour’s cat is waiting by the kitchen door, strategically placed so she will catch my eye when I go down to make the tea. She breathes in a sachet of catmeat and comes upstairs a few minutes later to remind me that she wants Go-Cat to follow.

She is very skittish. Almost her first act as a kitten was to hurtle up a tall conifer on the other side of her owner’s fence; after several ladder attempts, it took a tree surgeon in climbing gear to get her. Later we heard the owner saying, ‘If you go up that tree again Mummy’s going to be very cross with you.’

And very greedy. At one point it was three packets a day from us, over and above what she was getting at home. At first we thought she was a tom, so nervous and impulsive was she; we still use the male and female pronouns interchangeably; she’s a trans cat. What dispelled all doubt as to her assigned gender was when the pink buttons began to protrude from her fair round belly.

Then it’s the ants. The patch of lawn out front has a mound fit for crown green bowling. There was more than one colony, the pest control man said, as he set out the bait for the ones who invaded our living room. Repointing the bottom course of bricks hadn’t deterred them, they’d chewed a fresh route through the mortar in weeks. Those larger ones are gone, but now the smaller outdoor lot are blackening the double glazed windows of our porch as they prepare to fly, so I have to leave the outer door open until nightfall. I haven’t the heart to poison them; they were here before us and our thirties semi.

As evening falls the slugs begin their attack. They come from the back garden, fresh from chewing the clematis, and get into the kitchen; how, we’re not sure, but the heavy door has sunk on its hinges a bit and left a sliver of a crack at the top, though we’ve never caught them crossing. Switch on the light and there they are, climbing the cupboards, getting under the toaster, leaving gossamer threads by the sink, slobber on the cat’s plate and a well-worn silver trail by the kickboards. There are large and small, orange and leopard-spotted ones; one night, going out to the bin, I saw what looked like a naval battle group, the aircraft carrier in the centre.

I have a sneaking regard for their tenacity, but they have to go. I pick them up with kitchen paper; they curl up like soldiers awaiting a beasting; a flick of the wrist sends them back into the dark void. Light, that’s the key: for the last few days I’ve left a work surface fluorescent tube on and it’s been no-shows ever since. Energy costs are zooming, but it’s a toss-up between the electricity meter and the cost of kitchen paper and bursts of multi-surface cleaner.

Night, and absurdly long-legged spiders stalk across the carpet while we watch TV. I think they come up from below the gas fire and back boiler; there’s another air vent at the foot of what was the front room chimney in the through lounge; it won’t have been through the hole high in the wall British Gas made us have, that blew down a steady stream of cold air until we blocked it, only untaping it for the annual service. Funny how spiders freeze when you look at them; so do the slugs.

Annually it’s the wasps, getting aggressive in the autumn. One year they used the ventilation brick below the damp proof course to build a nest in the wallspace, and we could hear a regular loud thrumming as they cooled their over-insulated home.

And of course we feed the birds, even though sunflower hearts have doubled in price since the war in Ukraine, where they come from. It’s a pleasure to see sparrows, tits, finches, robins, starlings, even a rare tree-creeper or spotted woodpecker; not so much the squirrels, eating from the feeders upside down like a man doing a trick with a pint; nor the insatiable pigeons and villainous magpies. Occasionally owls hoot, hunting along the dual carriageway; they nest in the park, from where we can also catch the sound of woodpeckers.

If only we could afford to live in the country, where intensive farming, insecticides and the persecution of dairy herds almost guarantee peace and quiet for wealthy incomers in their new-build Linden and Persimmon executive homes.