Hare Krishna In The Rain
I hadn’t seen them on Oxford Street for some years, but they were there last week in the rain.
Hare Krishna in the Rain
We may think of them as harmless religious nutters.
But a couple of years ago, I heard their work in improving school sanitation in India widely praised by the Projects Director of UNICEF in a lecture at Emmanuel College in Cambridge.
France Annoys Another Friend
France is thinking about making it an offence to deny the Armenian genocide and a bill is passing through their parliament.
If you don’t know about the genocide, this is the first few paragraphs from the Wikipedia article.
The Armenian Genocide also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees. The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally held to have been between 1 million and 1.5 million. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination.
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as scholars point to the systematic, organised manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians, and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust. The word genocide was coined in order to describe these events.
If you read the article, you’ll see that it was probably one of the most barbaric acts of history at the start of the twentieth century. And let’s face it there were quite a few atrocities.
The French action in their parliament, is very much resisted by Turkey, who still deny that the genocide happened There was a protest in Ankara yesterday, which is reported in the Guardian.
Interesting Comments On North Korea
Some wag has posted this as a comment to this article on The Times website.
What next? Simple. Send an X Box, PS3 and Iphone 4 to the young Kim with all the games available. Like any other Korean kid he will get addicted and leave the North Koreans alone. £2000 well spent.
He’d obviously need to be supplied with a decent broadband connection, but the South has some of the best in the world and I’m sure they could find a solution.
And here’s another one.
” I told you I was Kim Jong Il.”
(Apologies to the late, great Spike Milligan.)
There are lots more.
How Real Printers Catch Rats
My father was a real letterpress printer and his works was a rather decrepit building with a rodent problem.
Over the years he told me various stories about how they dealt with them
In the 1930s, he’d lived with his widowed mother above the shop, so to speak, and they’d employed a traditional solution; a cat.
According to my father, who was not unknown to embellish a good tale, the cat was an enormous ginger specimen. And as was typical of those days, he was a proper Tom.
Whether he was any good in the ratting department never entered the story But above the shop next door lived a posh lady with a pedigree Siamese female.
One morning my father was confronted by the lady, saying that his mother’s cat had fathered a litter of kittens, that her Siamese had just produced. On inspecting them, there did seem to be a large number with a ginger hue.
The lady said that her cat never went out and he knew that his family cat was always shut in to deal with the rodent infestation.
So how did the two cats do it?
One hot night, my father was returning from the Jolly Anglers opposite. All the top windows were open and he saw the ginger cat balance along the parapet on the wall and hop in next door to see his lady friend.
His other method of catching rats, relied on those things that were always around in a print works. He would take a quad box and prop it up at an angle over the rat hole with a pica reglet. They’d then all wait in the dark for action. When the rodent disturbed the reglet, the box fell and trapped the poor animal underneath It was then a matter of switching the lights on and moving the box gently to the middle of the room, keeping the rodent trapped Everybody, then grabbed something suitable, like a small coal shovel before the box was removed
It was a quick end. And as my father told it, a fun tale
Islington’s Hidden Temple
Walk through the back-streets of Islington and tucked away in Gibson Square, you’ll find this curious building in the garden in the middle.
A Curious Building in Gibson Square
So what is it?
The clue is in the roof, as it doesn’t look like the wire mesh would keep the rain and weather out.
But then that isn’t necessary as it is the ventilation shaft for the Victoria line.
The shaft was built in 1970 and has recently been updated to improve the cooling of the line for passengers.
Practical Risk Taking
David Spiegelhalter is Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University. His personal home page doesn’t look like most you find for academics of his august reputation.
We will all have the chance to see him on television tonight.
Not in some economics program about what the various rating agencies think of the euro or a discussion on the risk of smoking, but in the first edition of the BBC’s new series called Winter Wipeout. In an article in The Times today, he said that he considered it an obligation under my terms of employment to apply.
What did the University’s Health and Safety Department say? He does not disclose this in The Times.
Let’s hope though, that after his performance, where I hope he does well, that the politicians, bankers, businessmen and the general public take statistics more seriously. And act on what they say they should do!
I’m A Male Homo Sapiens
I have just sent Islington Council an e-mail giving them my views on the obstructions in Upper Street, I detailed here. What annoyed me was the details they required afterwards about me. About the only information they didn’t ask was questions on my size, but they did ask some very impertinent questions. I finished with this.
I object to this part of this form. That probably means you won’t take my comments seriously. Some of the questions are downright impertinent. Especially, as I’m a widow, who lost his wife to cancer and then had a stroke. So any questions about sex insult the memory of my wife.
They will obvious take no notice of what I said.
what is really needed is a short scientifically correct form, that will help the council plan services in the future, so questions about age, gender, drinking and smoking habits and height and weight are actually the most important.
I suppose it is deliberately designed to annoy, so that they don’t get too many people filling in the form.
Smokers, Chuggers and Street Obstructions
I go to Upper Street in Islington quite a few times a week. I had to walk from Boots near the tube station to Carluccio’s, which is a few hundred metres towards HIghbury Corner.
It was the usual obstacle course.
For the first part of the walk, the road was lined by smokers trying to commit suicide, dropping litter and making life unpleasant for everybody else. Several smokers even had babies in buggies. If anything should be made illegal, it should be to smoke in the street within five metres of a child under five.
Then there were the chuggers, protesting this time against torture. I can sympathise with their cause, but whilst they continue to plague my life, they are just wasting their time.
and then there were the street obstructions like these.
Street Obstructions in Upper Street, Islington
My eyesight has got better now and I seldom bump into them now. You will see from the photograph, that Islington Council has improved the pavement, only for the banners and bicycle to be added to make it an obstacle course. I would think that a better idea might be to sell the advertising space on the side of the litter bins at the edge of the pavement. At least those are well out of the main walking route.
There was also this abandoned bicycle.
An Abandoned Bicycle in Upper Street, Islington
Or it certainly looks so. I’ll check tomorrow to see if it is still there.
We wonder why people flock to out-of-town shopping centres. You don’t get any of the annoyances of chuggers, smokers and unnecessary obstructions.
Why Security Vans Don’t Get Robbed So Much!
I took this picture yesterday of the warning sign on a security van.
Warnings on a Security Van
Surely only a idiot would rob it.
So why weren’t the shops with goods like smart-phones and plasma TVs protected this way before the riots? A smart water spray in the entrance and a warning sign might have made a lot of difference.
I hope these sort of systems are now in use.
Am I Lucky Or Does The Devil Look After Me?
Throughout my life, I’ve often been described as lucky and several times, positive things seem to happen to me by chance.
For instance, I met my late wife at Liverpool University, when I manipulated a scheme for students to get partners for one of the guild balls.
I ended up in Metier, after a chance meeting outside an opticians on Great Portland Street.
I’ve also been mentored well, by a lot of friends, who would never be described as conventional. Some sadly are no longer with us.
and I could give lots more examples.
Even on Monday, when I had the tooth exorcised from my body, I did the right thing, as it needed three hours and three dentists.
So is it luck or do some quickly weigh up the chances and make the right decision? I do know that my late wife would never describe me as boring and is that because I never throw any possibly useful information away from my brain. Since the stroke, I have lost some memory, like knowledge of who did this or that. But there is always Wikipedia!
As I don’t believe in any religion and believe organised religion is just another way to screw wealth out of the poor, then I can’t think that a devil exists either. Although after my last few years, it is more likely there is a devil, than a loving and peaceful god.
But then I’m a London mongrel! And they have more fight than a wagon-load of pit-bulls.
The Anonymous Widower 