Medical Update plus Something Completely Different, with Ian Lang.

Radiation therapy course finishes this morning! YAY!!!!
My second 21 days of Ibrance began mid-week after 7 days free of the demon pill. Oddly enough the loss of appetite and nauseous feelings increased during that 7 days off - I was expecting the opposite. I really need to be eating more. I'm oncologistless at present, so I asked one of the senior nurses about the nausea. She very kindly sent a couple of prescriptions to be picked up - 2 different nausea medications specifically for problems caused by chemotherapy and other cancer-related therapies. One of these medications worked a treat on the first trial, not as well the second time - but I'm to take them alternately, and for a particular reason didn't do that initially- better luck next time, I hope.

On the medical marijuana front, I have an appointment at a local MM dispensary late tomorrow afternoon (I managed to get their last appointment - my stars must have been aligned!) I'll see a visiting physician who will (I hope) give me a recommendation letter to send to the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, so as to get me an MM Card. That card will enable me to buy product at any dispensary in the state. This appointment will cost me $75, a little cheaper than expected, and because I'm on Medicare the cost of the MM Card will be just $20 (as against $100 for those not on Medicare or Medicaid.) Around 10 days, after sending (online) proof of identity, residence, the recommendation letter, with a digital photograph of myself, and my Medicare card + the dosh, all to the OMMA, I shall hope to be set up to buy something which might help on several fronts.

And now for something completely different....

I'm calling on Ian Lang of Quora to provide a lighter note. As any regular readers will remember, Ian has very kindly given his blanket permission for me to use his writings on my blog. Here's what he had to say - waxing all poetic for a change - in answer to this question.

What do British people think of Boris Johnson as their PM?

Non-British readers will likely need a translation of "soss" : it's short for sausage; and should any readers in the USA be thinking of 'chips' as known in their world (= a bag of crisps in the UK), chips are something akin to steak fries in the United States - certainly not like French fries which are way too skinny for their own good!
So:

What do British people think of Boris Johnson as their PM?

I think unlike John Masefield, I’ll stay away from the sea

And focus all my wishes on soss ’n’ chips for tea.

I think I’d not like to be at work in summer’s hot enthrall-

I think that is much better though, than watching the football.

I think I really can’t be arsed, with who it is in charge;

Johnson, Corbyn, Hunt, Leadsom, or that bloke Farage.

For I think that in some future age, it will be so much fooey.

In five billion years, as well we know, the sun will go kablooey.

And all that we have said and done and all our silly rhymes

Will be vapourised. Including those with lines that don’t suit the rest of the metre and aren’t made into couplets.

I think then, that we should not dwell on our human worries of toss,

Yet cast our minds to glorious times, when there are chips, and soss.

And splendidly, egg as well, if you’re lucky.

The Power of Words and Language, with Ian Lang

Calling once again on Ian Lang, at Quora, for this post on the topic:
What powers do words and language have?

Ian has given me blanket permission to use any of his Quora answers on my blog. Thank you, Ian! Here is what he wrote in answer to the above question. A round of appreciative applause from yours truly, Ian!

From Ian Lang, Leading Technician:

Ooh, words.

It’s often said that the pen is mightier than the sword, thanks to Bulwer-Lytton. With this in mind I went into Harrods and got myself a really nice Cross-Townsend and went and poked some members of the Blues and Royals with it during the Trooping of the Colour last year.

Bulwer-Lytton, you were not right I’m afraid. This year I’m going to try it with a Montblanc but I’m not terribly hopeful.

Words though. They do have a power. In Western languages we have an alphabet based on the Roman one, and in English there are twenty-six ugly little characters (thirty-six if you count numerals too) which, when strung together in just the right way, can delight, enthrall, cause despair, joy, pain, love, hate, jealousy, anger and all emotions between.

Daily I thank God for the circumstances that caused me to be able to read and write for I’m sure I would have made a most miserable illiterate, and words cast to paper (or as in these days to the server) are the shapers of our history, and the echoes of our lives.

Writing and Oratory are the two most important skills any person can have. Applied properly, they can cause the world to shake. Let’s have a look at this chap:

Cicero. His letters and speeches were of such perfection that they ringed for two thousand years and still today anybody who does Latin at school will be tormented with and influenced by him. He could strike chords in men’s souls and such an accomplished gobshite was he that they had to murder him to shut him up.

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet). Jesus, I thought I was a snarky bastard, but this bloke could take snarkiness to an art form. His writings so chimed with the stroppy, awkward squad of pre-revolutionary France that he was exiled and his books were burnt. He’s widely thought to have made the first serious cracks in the Ancien Régime.

Then there’s this bloke:
I’m sure he needs no introduction. Now think what you like about him personally and politically. But can you, through the power of your voice alone, persuade millions of people that have seen the slaughter of a great war in Europe a mere twenty-one years previously, take a course of action that’s going to land them in an even bigger one and make them think that this is a good idea? Because I can’t.





Up against him was an equally brilliant gobshite:

Sometimes I just wish I’d been around at that time because I don’t think there’s ever been anybody before or since that’s been better at using the English language to do something really on the face of it monumentally stupid, and yet fire up enough spirit to not only actually do it but do it so well that the opposing side is completely crushed. The German War Machine rolled right over Europe unstoppably. It got to the English Channel. It’s a hop, skip and jump over twenty-two miles. All it’s got to do is get to London and the game’s finished. We couldn’t stop them in France and Belgium. They’re on the Channel Islands. It’s bloody hopeless. Except-

A fat little bloke educated at Harrow who likes a drink and a smoke stands up and effectively says:

“Right. No. We’re not giving in to this little bastard. We’re going to kick his arse roundly and if we all have to die in the attempt so be it.”

But he delivers a factual account of how hopeless it looks and then at the end puts in shining words:

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

God almighty. The British Army’s been booted out of Europe. The Luftwaffe is at its highest glory. The Wehrmacht just can’t be beaten. There’s U-boats everywhere and we could easily starve. The only advantage we’ve got is the Royal Navy and the Home Radar. Neither going to help if the Germans can get air superiority. And it’s a BIG and very cocky Luftwaffe now. The sensible thing is to sue for peace. And yet……and yet………

What did Winston just say? Hey, do y’know what? He’s right! "Bollocks to Hitler! If he thinks he’s just walking in here he’s got another bloody think coming. Right. Sleeves up. Boots on. We’ve stuff to do.”

And it rang with every man and woman in the UK, and didn’t stop there. Men of the Empire came. Men of Europe came. Men from countries who had nothing whatsoever to do with it came. All because they’d read and heard the words of power emanating. Who’d have thought that some ink and some electro-magnetic waves could do that?

To our shame, in so many ways we today are not the equal of what our grandparents were and one of those deficiencies we suffer is in the field of literary and oratory works. There is no Orwell writing his simple but resonant sentences now. There is no Churchill stirring us on to punch well above our weight. Where is the Voltaire that can mock for millions? Perhaps our lives are too easy; perhaps our days are filled with business and we have no time for the craft now.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Which doesn’t mean that some woman threw up in my van at the beginning of the week. But it’d be nice to think so.

World of Today (through the eyes of teenagers from the 1980s)

I've been lacking inspiration this week; today I'm calling on a Quora colleague, Ian Lang, to help out once more. (I do have Ian's blanket permission to use his Quora answers here.)

The question:
If teenagers from 1980s could see our modern-day world, what do you think that they would be shocked by the most and what kind of questions would they ask?



By Ian Lang, Leading Technician:

So, here I go with my spotty face from 1982, travelling into the future and —— it’s 2019!

What the feck-

Why is everybody staring at a little glowing box and typing out vacuous messages to one another rather than talking? What the feck is a Facebook and how can you possibly have eighteen bajillion friends?

Hang on. Last time I looked at the top forty, we had Madness, The Police, Blondie and Adam and the Ants. Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Now it looks like you’ve got a bunch of bland pretty boys and clone-women all singing the same bleedin’ song. And what do you mean you don’t go down the record shop? Download an MP3? Knob off. I want my boom-box.

Your mum and dad drive you everywhere? Have you never heard of a bus? Where’s all the Wimpys gone and what the feck is sushi? Or burritos? Starbuck was the cocky bloke on Battlestar Galactica- what’s he doing selling coffee? What do you mean they remade it and turned him into a girl?

You want to work in what? Marketing? Do you mean advertising? No? Well, what the bloody hell is it, then? Holistic sales promotion? You’re just talking bollocks, aren’t you?

Why in the name of all that’s holy do you say everything as though it’s a question? What are you babbling about when you say “OMG, LOL, it’s like you’re a caveman, dude?”

Why are you all dressed in running shoes when your parents drive you everywhere and how come you’ve all got five bleedin’ computers but hardly any of you know how to program them? Or change a fuse. How come you all go to university but none of you can change the wheel on a car? You’ve all got twenty million A levels each? So how come when I ask you a question the answer’s always, “oh, I dunno? Google it?” And what’s a bloody Google anyway?

God almighty. Send me back to 1982. You’re all at university now, even if you don’t pronounce the -versity bit, so there must be someone who knows how to do it.

No, I’m not bloody Googling it. Google off you spoilt little bleeders. And go and vote in this Brexit thing. Whatever it is. I’m going to see if anybody’s got work for a turner.

Saturday and Sundry Robot-related Reflections

A weekend chuckle courtesy of Ian Lang at Quora who has, very kindly, given me blanket permission to use his Quora answers on this blog.

QUESTION
Can we build a robot that has a brain of a human being?

ANSWER by:Ian Lang, Qualified Electronic Engineer BTEC National 3.

Now look, I have, in the past, met human beings who:

had to ask how to turn on a laptop computer

failed to cook a pie, because they couldnt work out how to light the gas on an electric oven

put a 13A fused plug onto a 30A cooker and then complained that it was tripping the breakers.

seriously believed that leaving Europe meant we’d move the country into the middle of the Atlantic

asked what I was listening to on my MP3 player and when came the answer “Beethoven” replied “what, that film with the dog?”

have to wear a digital watch because an analogue one is too confusing

tried to use a computer mouse upside down and complained it’s not working

have not plugged a printer into the mains “because it’s supposed to be wireless”

have bitten into a bar of fancy soap in the belief that it was white chocolate

and have phoned their mothers to ask how to make a jam sandwich.

Really? You want robots to be like that?

" Sure, thery're handy little things to have around, but you can't deny they're potentially dangerous."

Unless mankind redesigns itself by changing our DNA through altering our genetic makeup, computer-generated robots will take over our world.
Stephen Hawking

Wouldn't it be a strange twist of fate if we discovered that we were the original A.I.
Anthony T. Hincks.

Grammar, Language & Socioeconomic Class by Ian Lang

Here's a recent answer by Ian Lang at Quora. Mr Lang has kindly given me blanket permission to use any of his answers I wish to use, on my blog.

The ticklish question was:

How much does grammar and proper language impact a person’s social and professional image? Is this a mark of socioeconomic class?

Answer by "Ian Lang, Former Oik (still quite oiky from time to time)"

Putting forward the same(ish) answer four ways then:

Ay-up, me duck, not half. You get them snobby gets what won’t even look at owt we’ve wrote down up here in t’ north cos it i’nt wrote like what they speak down in t’ leafy bits of Surrey.

It does, yes, some people look at a piece of prose and if they spot a gramatical error then they dismiss it. Typos are allowed as long as it’s clear it’s a typo (look at the word grammatical previously again).

All communications should be worded and punctuated correctly in order to portray a clear and professional image of the organisation. Please comply with the attached guidelines and templates.

Within the precepts of certain types of individuals who, having had made accesible to them the zeniths, apogees, and pinnacles of the academic world, and who pride themselves on the fact, knowing exactly where to put apostrophes, semi-colons, and all the other apparatus of substantive prose, and understanding the rules of adjectives, adverbs and the sundry paraphernalia of the craft of the wordsmith, will look down upon those who have not had such extensive groundings and will instantly rebut even the most reasoned piece if the i is not correctly dotted in the approved manner.

The first is my northern mode. I do this when I want to put forward a sarcastic rebuttal to anybody who thinks we here are a bunch of illiterate oiks.

The second is my plain English mode. I do this to explain things that may be quite complicated in terms that are clear to somebody who doesn’t know it terribly well.

The third is my corporate drone mode. I almost never do this because frankly it creates prose that grinds my gears. If you’ve ever read Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four you’ll remember Newspeak. They pride themselves that the vocabulary is shrinking every year. I feel the same about corporate drone prose as Winston did about Newspeak.

The fourth is my over-educated-arse mode. I do this when somebody’s grinding my corn and trying to prove that they’re clever-clever and vocabularious. Don’t start with me sunshine, because if you do, I’m going sesquipedalian on your arse. If you carry on, I might even go dodecasyllabic, and then you’ll be sorry.

Everything thereafter (including this bit) is my normal mode. You’ll notice that I use a lot of contractions (you’ll, I’m, don’t) and inject a dollop of patois every now and then, and then slip into a bit of bathos. This is because I can’t bear any prose where the author has clearly taken pains to make his/her grammar, structure, and syntax as clever-looking as possible. It just comes out stilted and reads like the report of a village parish council meeting. Going the other way you get stream of consciousness writing, which is just a posh way to say “bloody mess”.

Now then. Imagine the above were all written by different people. What would you conclude about their standards of education, social class, and means of earning a living?

Oh yes. Grammar, spelling and punctuation can tell you much. But not when it’s in the hands of a wordsmith (which is the written equivalent of a gobshite), it can’t.

Stupid Idioms - with Ian Lang

What’s the stupidest idiom in the entire English language?

That was a question posed at Quora last week. Ian Lang, no stranger on this blog, has given me his blanket permission to use his writings here, contributed as follows:


Ian Lang, Leading Technician answered:

Oh, there’s lots of them. Down at the Idiomatic Phrase Testing Range (IPTR), we’re regularly trying these out.

No. 1 : What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger:

So we did an experiment. We got six large men and had them lift anvils.All of them could manage it. Then we shot two through the left knee, two through the right knee, and two through both knees. All six survived, but not one could succesfully lift an anvil any longer.

No. 2: It’s not rocket science:

We got a bunch of chemists working on solid propulsion systems and introduced them to a bunch of engineers working on rapid reaction guidance systems and told them to deploy a satellite by Friday teatime or they’d be next lifting anvils (see above). It appears it was indeed rocket science that happened thereafter.

No. 3: Time flies when you’re having fun:

We took a group of students from the local university and synchronised their watches to an atomic clock. The we got them totally pissed, fed them some marijuana, and played American soft rock at them for five hours. When we checked their watches, they were still in synchronisation. We didn’t make them lift any anvils. We feared that the work involved in lifting anvils might kill them and that would be a bit of a sticky wicket when explaining to their tutors.

No. 4: A picture is worth 1000 words:

We borrowed Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” from the Uffizi. We painted over it with white emulsion and wrote a very accurate description of what it used to look like in exactly one thousand words. Judging by the reaction when we sent it back, the picture was worth much. much more than a thousand words. Perhaps we ought to have used Italian words instead.

For some reason, the government is considering cutting the funding to IPTR. Personally, I blame Brexit.

Time Travelling with Ian Lang

If you have a Time Machine would you use it or not? Why?

A question asked at Quora this week, with an answer from the inimitable
Ian Lang, "Forced to do relativity at school, college and polytechnic.Still don't know much."
[Used with Mr Lang's kind (blanket) permission.]

I have got a time machine. I started building it negative three years ago, in 2021, and sent it back to myself last year. In theory it doesn’t exist yet but since my wife is always grumbling about not being able to get the Hyundai Getz in the garage for it (and has will have been for the next two years, whereafter she will has been grumbling about not getting in the Rolls-Royce which will has had been bought on the proceedings of temporally questionable legal procedures) it does, in practicality, exist even though it hasn’t been invented yet.

The crew consists of me, Fat Dave, and a blonde woman in her early twenties called Paula, who runs around wearing figure-fitting outfits that don’t quite border on indecent but are just enough to catch the interest of a male demographic 16–30 because as you know, any self respecting time traveller has to have one of those on board, and sometimes she does something good.

The Co-Op are getting very suspicious about why, once every couple of weeks, we go in with an handful of lottery tickets with small value prizes on them and get about £300 back a time. So are WH Smiths, GT News and the convenience shop down the road in which we somehow always get three numbers over ten tickets.

Ladbrokes thinks it blacklisted us last September after we scooped a massive whack on a seemingly impossible round-robin at 30,000 to 1, but that’s not a bother because there’s always the year before that and of course, William Hill and Paddy Power are still taking our bets on, although PP will have has kicked us out too by the time (from this reference at least) that one on the end result of Brexit comes to fruition. No spoilers, but you won’t believe the way that turns out. I’ll just say if you’re from Iceland or Madagascar, it’s going to be great, if you’re French or live in the northern bits of Athens then, yeah, sorry.

So anyway. Last year we went back and got a load of stones together and dumped them in a circle in Wiltshire about four thousand years ago, just to have a laugh at the archaeologists today, and about two thousand years ago we told a bloke called Julius that everything in an island just over the water from Gaul was made of rubies and that nobody defends it.

Dave and Paula don’t speak German but I do, and I realise now that acting as interpreter for a conversation they had with a certain Herr Marx wasn’t my cleverest act. We enjoyed ourselves in Switzerland at the turn of the twentieth century though, even though Paula left her dissertation for her physics degree behind in the tea-rooms of a hotel next to the patent office. We went back to look for it but it had vanished, so she had to print it out again. Could have been a lot nastier, glad we didn’t radically alter any time-lines on that like we did when Fat Dave left his i-Pad behind in California in 2004.

We’re sorry about 1929 and that stock market crash thing. Rest assured we sacked our accountant over that, if it’s any consolation.

The best jape was the Brink’s Mat robbery. We didn’t actually do it, we just nicked most of the three tonnes of gold afterwards. Nobody knows where it is, because it’s currently in a barn near Inverness. In 2063.

Oh yes, I suppose I ought to mention April 23–26th 2087. Just get a lot of spam and boiled water and some electric torches, and stay indoors with the windows boarded up and the doors bolted. Get some batteries and an FM radio too. You’ll be alright if you don’t emerge again until about 10:00 GMT on the 27th.

If you see what looks like a Vauxhall Viva appearing out of thin air, and a fat bloke, and another with a scruffy beard, and a woman wearing a mini-skirt get out of it and probably go straight to the bookies, come and have a word. There might be a big drink in it for you.

Music Monday ~ Tina, Queen Liz & Ian Lang - Oh my!

First, Happy Birthday and Many Happy returns to Tina Turner, now a fellow-79er! She has Sagittarian Sun, with Venus in Sagittarius within degrees of my own natal Venus, her Saturn in Aries matches mine and is also within minutes of my natal Moon. She's of my generation too. Which of her songs to post? I love all her recordings, but some of them do have sad memories attached. Here's one that's new to me - a great rendition of "A Change is Gonna Come", with superb guitar accompaniment and solo by Robert Cray.

And now for something completely different, written by Ian Lang at Quora (used here with his kind, blanket permission) in answer to the question:

What is Queen Elizabeth’s favourite song?

Ian answered:

She was down our local pub the other night (Ye Olde Twilight Zone) and put a pound in the juke box. Her musical tastes weren’t popular with everybody, and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands complained bitterly about Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” blasting out. The Queen just had her footman, Gloria, fish out another pound coin, and thrust it in Maxima’s face, saying “whose head’s on there, girlfriend? Yeah. Suck it up! Now bop out to Britney, sweetcheeks!”

You can get away with that sort of thing when you’re the Queen. Anyway, we don’t think Britney’s magnum opus was her favourite. She played “Bat Out of Hell” three times and did an air guitar and pretended to rev-up a motorbike, so we think that’s the front-runner.

“Like a bat out of hell one will be gone when the morning comes”.

Shame we never thought to video it and put it on YouTube.

That’s my OBE gone west now, then!

:P

Hang on to yer hat!

A Bit of the Ol' "Bah Humbug!" from Ian Lang

Someone at Quora last week posted this question, possibly hoping for some nice, warm, cuddly answers about carol singers, Christmas lights, parties, kiddies, Santas and suchlike. Ian Lang had different ideas! His answer is below - shared here with his kind (blanket) consent.

"What is your favorite thing about Christmas?"

AUGHHHHH! Bloody Christmas! It’s only just gone bonfire night and we haven’t had Remembrance Sunday yet and do you know what, as I went in to get twenty John Player’s coffin nails, I saw in the bleedin’ Co-Op an hour or so ago? A huge pyramid display of chuffin’ chocolate Santas, that’s what. I tell you, I was a heartbeat away from “accidentally” tripping up and knocking the sodding lot down.

Actually I tell a lie. Three sides of the pyramid were Santa. The other side was bleedin’ Rudolph. What sort of a message are we giving to our children here? Look at this kindly, jolly old elf, kids! Now eat him! With some fava beans and a nice chianti, presumably. Then eat his deer too!

I went in Quality Save last Saturday. For reference, that was November 3rd. November. NOVEMBER. They were doling out Christmas carrier bags. Had been for a fortnight, apparently. My wife trotted in on Friday with a box of mince pies with a Christmassy picture printed on. And the caution best before Nov 15th.
Now look, retail bathtubs. Christmas is in bogpiggin’ December. Right at the arse-end of December, actually. I don’t mind if you want to whip a gullible horde of frenzied consumers into panic mode to buy your vastly inflated tat from the first of December. I take a bit of an objection to early November, and I’m positively spitting fire when you do it in October. One of you started it just after the brats went back to school after summer, and you know who you are. I will willingly sacrifice my left knacker to any God who will ensure that you will go bust by February, you bloody charlatans.

And why does my wife insist on cooking bloody sprouts for Christmas dinner? I don’t like sprouts. She doesn’t like sprouts. The kid won’t even countenance sprouts. Yet still, on Dec 25th, an Imperial Shedload of sprouts causes the table to creak and groan alarmingly and she gets upset if we don’t eat any.

“You’ve got to have sprouts because it’s Christmas”.

What in the name of the Sacred Mango Pigeon kind of reasoning is that?? Johnny Pope and his gang of merry batchelor-boys say we’ve got to have fish on Friday but I don’t see us polishing off a plaice, tackling a trout or sucking down a salmon on a weekly basis. Is it some sort of superstition hanging over from the middle ages?
“Arrr, Jezelda, it be only ten days to the Christ-Mass. Better start boiling a boat load of sprouts for ye village feast, lest God should smite us, or at least the bishop come down and bugger all the menfolk red-raw!”

Sprouts. Turkey. Crackers. Stupid paper hats. Being nice to people for days. Balls to all that. Still, Christmas is miles better than bloody New Year.

“Happy New Year!”

“No I won’t! £&!* off.”

Bathtubs. So what’s my favorite thing about Christmas?

January.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-favorite-thing-about-Christmas

Weather Forecasting with Ian Lang; Astrology Forecasting with...me.

I'm using two questions and answers from Quora today, one about weather forecasting, the other about astrology. Ian Lang answered the former; I, among others, answered the latter. It might seem that there's no connection between the two subjects. I do see a connection - however vague - so please do read on.

QUESTION: How accurate is weather forecasting these days?
An answer by Ian Lang, Leading Technician (used with his kind (blanket) permission) -

Not being one of those funny people in suits from Greenwood’s [Note from Twilight - Greenwoods is a well-known men's clothing retailer in the UK] that used to infest half of Bracknell I can’t speak for them directly, but having had to do fluid mechanics (which it is, albeit dressed up and on a very big scale) I can speak from that perspective.

When you’re dealing with fluids (gasses are also fluids) in an enclosed system, the best you can do is make educated guesses. The Greenwood Suit People (GSP) are very, very educated in their subject indeed.

The problem with what the GSPs do is manyfold and one of them goes by the name of Navier-Stokes. They’re fiendishly difficult, and those chaps at Oxford and Cambridge on here doing physics might like to go into the minutae of them but frankly they’d send me to sleep if I wasn’t so busy trying not to throw myself off the roof because of them and so I’ll just say that they’re used to calculate stuff to do with fluid motion and stress in it.

The Earth and its atmosphere are, as I’m sure you appreciate, a very large enclosed system indeed. You can’t possibly know the condition of every molecule of stuff there, or predict where hot and cold fronts will go. So, then, what you do is split the volume under consideration into smaller bits. With something so big, even smaller bits are quite large, and you might have a net in which each bit is 10km wide, 10km long and 10km high. In terms of something the size of the rock on which we live that’s a pretty fine net, but we have to remember that bits of stuff are continually leaving one cube and entering an adjacent one.

What you do is look at these nets and see what’s likely to happen. If you take some variables and give them a value, you’ll get several different outcomes depending on what values you have, and you can, with computer technology, run several variations on the theme and out will pop an aggregate with the most likely probability.

It’s not exact and it can’t be. What you see on Newsnight as a weather forecast may well have changed by six o’ clock the next morning as something that happened in Uppsala may well have changed the probability in Basingstoke from overcast to bucketing down rain.

So, then, the forecast for tomorrow will have a reasonable chance of accuracy, perhaps 70% or higher, and I’ve seen it in the eighties. It would be a very foolish forecaster indeed that said, with absolute confidence, that it will be fine and sunny all day without a doubt. I’ve never seen anybody say that there’s a 100% chance of accuracy.

You can’t do long range either. Every hour into the future you peer, the chance of you being right diminishes. If anybody is offering you a three-day forecast, take it with a pinch of salt. If anybody is offering you seven days, you may laugh in their face and call them a charlatan. If anybody’s offering you ten, they may as well be Mystic Meg.

Nature abhors a vacuum. It’s not too fond of weathermen either. But at least it allows the latter to wear suits from Greenwood.

QUESTION: There are many people who believe in astrology. If there are 100 people who are born on the same day and exactly the same time, will all of them be facing the same kind of situations in life as per astrology?


An answer by me, at Quora

“…the same kind of situations in life” is the key phrase of your question as I see it. You are not asking, primarily, whether they will share personality traits and characteristics- though those factors will, inevitably, feed in to outcomes of situations encountered. Try looking on the natal chart and planetary transits affecting it, as a kind of weather forecast, but rather than predicting rain, snow, sunshine or frost, the astrological forecast indicates periods of time when things are likely to be easy-going, and other times with potential for challenges of various kinds to arise.

100 people who share very similar natal charts will experience similar “rhythms” and experiences of easy-going periods and challenging, more difficult, periods of time, because transits of the outer, slow-moving planets, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto will be conjoining personal planets in these natal charts at similar points in time. The nature of challenges and difficulties experienced will be quite different for each individual, the ways in which challenges and difficulties arising are dealt with will be different, due to differences in each individual’s early background, location, education, life situation, and so on. Sometimes a challenge opens a door of opportunity, a chance of transformation depending on choices made. Here, and always, we're dealing with astrological potential versus real-world opportunity, or lack of it.

Natal charts of 100 near astrological "twins" would manifest in very different ways, but with subtle resonance in the rhythm of challenging times and easy-going times experienced by each individual.

I now see that I could have added a thought to my answer, in the style of Ian Lang: "If anybody's offering you a prediction of a specific situation happening at some future date, based on astrological factors, you may laugh in their face and call them a charlatan - or Mystic Meg. (Poor Meg - she gets blamed for a lot!)

"If a meteor were spotted....." with Ian Lang

Let us, today, forget all about the Supreme Court, the travesties of Kavanaugh, Susan Collins, et al for a mo and imagine something else, equally horrendous - something such as this, which appeared at Quora a while back:

If a meteor was spotted heading towards Earth, one week before collision, what would happen in that one week?

Someone whose name has appeared before in these blog pages had an answer:
From Ian Lang, Leading Technician, with his kind (blanket) permission:

"Donald Trump would declare it fake news on Monday, blame the Mexicans on Wednesday, and go on a molesting rampage on Saturday.

Certain writers on Quora would blame Brexit. And then disable comments so that we couldn’t point out that it’s got nothing to do with Brexit.

By Monday afternoon somebody would accuse it of “cultural appropriation”.

The BBC would run a rolling news service devoted to it, in which the word “doom” is never uttered. ITV would do newsflashes on it, in which the word “doom” is mentioned in one in three. Sky News would have the word “DOOM!” in big flashing letters underneath the newsreader, and Radio one would have it as a ten-second briefing, after the bit about Adele.

Flat Earthers would be insufferable. They’d be going about saying “even you globeheads won’t be able to claim it’s round when that hits!”

If it was heading to hit the UK the politicos would be screaming about Brex-hit and castigating Theresa May for not doing a deal with it.

If it’s found to be heading smack for the Brazilian Rainforest every Greenie in the world will be rocking up to NASA’s doorstep demanding that they do something about it.

The average British man or woman would go down the pub. About four seconds before impact, they’d be draining the last pint.

UK Railway operators would use it as an excuse for the trains being late. Japanese railway operators would do nothing visible until it hits, and then thirty-eight seconds later (assuming total destruction of their railway system) would have the trains running again and be apologising profusely for the 8:15 being twelve seconds delayed in departing.

In North Korea, nothing unusual would happen all week, because nobody will be told anything about it.

Sales of patio heaters, umbrellas, and Spam will go through the roof.

The UK government will advise us to paint our windows white and take off our doors four minutes before the meteor hits.

We’ll all ignore this because, as I mentioned before, we’ll all be down the pub finishing our pints. And probably watching football.

Extinction Level Event? Balls to that. We’re taking our beer with us."

The Book of Cynicos with Ian Lang

Another slice of wonderful silliness courtesy of Ian Lang and Quora (with his kind blanket permission).
The question here was:
"What is the most hilarious way to describe humanity?"
Ian Lang answered:

The Book of Cynicos, which is not generally accepted as Church canon, and which comes before most of Genesis, goes thusly:

1. And lo, it was Saturday. And God had a cup of coffee and some Weetabix, and set forth to work.

2. And the Angel Mick did watcheth over God’s shoulder.

3.“I like the cows, very good patterning on the skin,” spaketh Mick. And God did reply “Thanks. Wait until you see the zebras”.

4. And God did maketh the giraffe, and did rolleth out the neck, and did get distracted by Cherubim playing football noisily in the garden. And God did commandeth Mick:

5. “Go and tell them to bugger off and play somewhere else, will you? Look at what I’ve done here because of them. That neck’s only supposed to be six inches.”

6. And God did looketh at his clock, and was pressed for time. “Oh, well” spaketh the Lord, “it’ll just have to do now”.

7.And Mick did return, having told the Cherubim to sod off and take their bloody football with them, just as God was making monkeys.

8.And God came to the last of the monkeys, and commanded Mick to pass him a monkey brain from the jar on the bench. And Mick did passeth from the jar, and God fitted the brain, and lo, the monkey was given life and walked in the Garden.

9.And God had another coffee and watched his work, whereupon he narrowed his eyes and did say “is that monkey talking?”

10.And God and Mick watched, and lo, the Monkey did say “I’m hungry. What’s for lunch?”

11. And God spake to Mick and did sayeth “what jar did you get that brain from?” and Mick did indicate the vessel.

12. “Oh bugger!” exclaimethed God. That was going to go in the last thing I was going to make after this coffee! It was going to be the supreme creation upon the Earth!”

13. And Mick did sayeth “oops. Sorry, Lord”.

14.“I don’t know what’s going to happen here now. God brains, monkey body. We’ll have to keep an eye on it. I suppose I’d better make it a mate, we don’t want it getting randy and trying to hump the other monkeys.”

15. And lo, in the Garden were now very bright monkeys and a big headache for God. And God did remarketh “we’ll have to put somebody down there to watch things. Who’ve we got doing nothing much?”

16. And Mick did replieth “Well, young Lucifer’s not busy”.

17. Oops

Rant Central with Ian Lang

Here's another super rant by Ian Lang (of Quora), posted with his (blanket) gracious permission. This time Ian is blowing off steam in regard to Brexit and the way specific, and other, aspects of the proposed exit from the EU are dragging on...and on....and... The question which brought on his recent rant was:

After 40+ years of common EU regulation and compliance, is it odd that the EU suddenly has an issue with UK driver’s licenses?

However, his words could be applied equally to any of the numerous stumbling blocks presented by the UK's proposed goodbye wave to the European Union.

By Ian Lang, Leading Technician

All of this sort of bollocks could be sorted out over a couple of G&Ts on a Wednesday afternoon if both sides really wanted to, but no, we have to have these long, drawn-out dramas because bloody career politicians and pundits on both sides want a bit of publicity.

For Christ’s sake. The bloody Yalta Conference only lasted eight days and that was sorting a proper mess out. The Congress of Vienna only lasted nine months; most of the work was done inside a week by little blokes with pencils and it might not have gone on as long as it did if bleeding Napoleon hadn’t slipped out of Elba in February and spoiled things. The Armistice of 1918 took three days. The German surrender at Luneberg took the same.

We’ve got these things we keep hanging around at great expense. They’re called diplomats. Granted, some of the ones at the top might not be any good but behind Sir Rupert Twaittingly-Corpulent KCBE etc (PPE Cambridge) and whatever his foreign equivalents are there are men and women who know how to strike a good compromise for both sides so lock them up in a room somewhere quiet with a pile of sandwiches and vol-au-vents and a tankerful of tea and coffee and let ’em hammer it out.

It’s bloody well symptomatic of our times. In industrial circles it used to be “go and make one of these and we’ll see if anybody’s got a use for it and sell it to ‘em” now it’s five years case study and cost-benefit analysis and worrying about how it fits in to the business model, by which time whatever it is you were going to make has been denecessitated by something else. In government it used to be chaps (hardly ever chapesses but never mind for the moment) had words in French and stuff got sorted that afternoon. It’s not that hard to be a moderately succesful shopkeeper, you buy a load of stuff and if it’s cheap quality you sell it on at a reasonable price, if it’s high quality you charge a premium, and where it falls between the two you judge it and set the right price adding a bit for profit and a bit more for tax. As long as you aren’t selling utter tat, keep your shop clean and you don’t throw cabbages at great velocity and scream “get out you bastards!” at customers as they come in the door they will give you money. But no. We have to have retail professionals running things. If anybody ever tells you they are a retail professional just say “oh, you mean you work in a shop?” and watch their faces. Retail professionals ran Woolworths. BHS. Toys R Us. Maplin. House of Fraser. Marks and Spencer. Need I go on?

It’s the same sort of professional that’s running politics as it is retail. They think they know it all and won’t let the people who do know how to do it actually do it. It strokes their egos but nothing gets done. Then there’s a big old mess to clear up but by that time they’ve had their bonuses and buggered off to ruin something else.

We could have a Brexit deal done and dusted by September and this sort of arsing about shouldn’t be necessary. But no. The politicos on both sides want to grandstand and bluster and in the end all that happens is we do nothing.

Politicos. You’re all bastards. We should have a European-wide rising to give you all a last cigarette before a nice, sunny wall in Madrid or somewhere. That’s the sort of EU I’d back. Then the rest of us could just get on with it. Now take your giant egos and insert them rectally at an oblique angle, you bunch of publicity-chasing charlatans.

Technology & Dependence

Here's another of Ian Lang's excellent answers at Quora, borrowed with his kind (blanket) permission. The question here was:


What are the ramifications of being so dependent on technology?

Ian Lang, Leading Technician, wrote:

Quite soon in the future we are going to find out because we are sleepwalking our way to an energy crisis. I’m probably going to be good and dead before it bites but I’m fairly sure that some people already born are going to suffer it.

We depend on electrical or electronics for everything, from waking us up in the morning to making our breakfasts. Unless it’s a diesel vehicle we even depend upon a battery for our transport, and even if it is a diesel we use an electric starter. It carries on like this all day; hardly anything we do now doesn’t involve severely inconveniencing electrons.

We need nuclear power stations but the organic-carrot-scoffing hippies rear up and say “nope” at that and for some reason that I can’t fathom we listen to them, unless we’re French, in which case we produce seventy-seven per cent of our energy from nukes and say “allez-vous faire foutre, porteur de sandales” for which you’ve got to admire them. (Hey! must be mellowing in my old age - I’ve just said something nice about the French! =| )

Even if the beardy-weirdies do come up with some non-magical way of generating energy that technicians can make, there’s still the possibility of another Carrington Event happening. If you don’t know what that is, look it up and be afraid. Be very afraid.

If we keep on thinking that an app will solve everything then we’re doomed. We’ll lose all the old mechanical and human skills (how many can read a map and compass in the age of Sat-Navs?) and won’t know what to do when the electron-juice dries up. As I said, I’ll probably be good and dead and won’t give a monkey’s. But there’s a good chance that my niece might see the beginnings of it. That’s why I’m teaching her to do things with proper basic tools. You never know.

About that "Carrington Event" - see Solar storm of 1859

Snip:

The solar storm of 1859 (also known as the Carrington Event)[1] was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867). A solar coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record, September 1–2, 1859.......
A solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would cause widespread disruptions and damage due to extended outages of the electrical grid.[2][3] The solar storm of 2012 was of similar magnitude, but it passed Earth's orbit without striking the planet.

Lesson to be learned - As Graham Nash once wrote in song lyrics:
"Teach your children well!"

Music Monday ~ Hooks & Ear-worms

I'm borrowing, once again, from the writings of Ian Lang, on Quora. He has given me his kind permission to use any of his posts I wish, by the way. This piece isn't in Ian Lang's often quirky and humorous vein, but instead is interestingly informative about a phenomenon often called "ear-worms".

The question Ian Lang was answering:
Why do many modern pop/Top 40 songs get stuck in your head so easily, regardless of whether you like the song or not?


I don't listen to the Top 40 myself these days, but I do experience the same effect from tunes used to introduce TV/Netflix series or dramas.


Ian Lang's answer:

Having the musical talent of a ton of falling bricks, I’m not really in a position to write from a musician’s perspective. However all the musicians I know that play popular songs speak of a “hook”.

The hook is usually melody or rhythm led refrain, in western music the former is more common, and consists of a series of complementary frequencies (I believe musicians speak in terms of thirds and fifths and so on) or less commonly, patterns of rhythm, arranged in a way that is aesthetically pleasing and unique to the piece under consideration.

The uniqueness, combined with the aesthetic quality, immediately makes an association with that particular work. Because the arrangement is so novel, it sticks in the front of the mind for a time, and this is the ‘catchy’ aspect that keeps it stuck in your head for a while. In addition the refrain, whether it be melody or rhythm, is repeated, developed, and recapitulated over the course of the piece of work, reinforcing the ‘catchiness. The phenomenon has been exploited since at least the Baroque composers and probably long before that. Everybody who has ever heard it will know instantly from the first few bars Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.3 in G major Allegro Moderato, even if they don’t know they know it:



Similarly everybody will know Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights, Beethoven’s Ninth (final movement) and the end of the 1812 Overture.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, because the recording companies wanted to make lots of money from single and LP sales, this sort of thing became an applied science in the service therof.

Every memorable song that stands the test of years has a strong hook. In the Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black the hook is established outright, and is melody led, and if you listen you can hear the hook in the background being developed and recapitulated and eventually rhythm, vocals and melody are subsumed into it:



An example whereby the rhythm establishes a hook which is later replaced by a melodic one is the Ting-Tings’ That’s Not My Name:



This is quite remarkable artistry; certainly I can’t think of anything else quite like it offhand. You’ll notice that the drumbeat is mirrored by the vocalist with minimal melodic variation to begin with, and then the vocalist is allowed full expression towards the middle and then both rhythmic and melodic hooks are recapitulated until the end.

Lastly but not leastly we could point to Sara Bareilles’ Brave which is nothing if not catchy (I’ll have this in my head all weekend now):



Listen for the backbeat. You think you’re listening to the vocalist. But you aren’t. What you are doing is being reeled in by the tinkly piano bit in the back. Then the vocalist puts some power in, and you’re listening to her (deservedly so, her range is huge) but subconsciously waiting for the catchy backbeat to re-appear and you’re rewarded in the second verse. By this time it’s got you ensnared.

Now as I said before, I have no musical talent. I’m just a technician that builds amplifiers and other things to do with signal processing, both analogue and digital, and I tend to think in terms of frequency and amplitude and what can be handled. If I notice these things, think how much more developed an idea in aesthetics somebody who is paid to make these musical pieces popular (and therefore lucrative) will have. And that’s why they “get stuck in your head so easily”; somebody who knows just what they’re doing has designed them to.