In Your Head You Can Go Anywhere
The title came from the excellent documentary on David Hockney last night on BBC1.
He also said that “You don’t retire doing this, you do it until you fall over.”
I feel like that about programming.
Do It in God’s Name
I’ve just watched the Channel 4 programme, Dispatches about the attacks in Mumbai.
It’s chilling and it shows the callousness of those that controlled the gunmen from Pakistan. Is it alright for them to send young men to their deaths, when they are sitting comfortably at home? The title of this post is what a controller said to a gunman.
They said they did it in God’s name! Whose God? Not mine as I have none but life itself. And any religion that preaches death is some nihilistic cult that goes against all I believe in!
They were not even doing it in the good name of Islam. Much of Islam is now a bastardised version of a religion that looked after our science and made women equal. I’ve read enough history to know that.
But why do I feel so affected by the Mumbai attacks?
I wasn’t there, but I was in the Taj Mahal hotel two weeks previously. How many of those wonderful and kind people that we met in the hotel, died in the attacks?
Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai
I shall return to the hotel to show that terrorism will never get the better of me.
The True Cost of Gun Ownership
There is a small article in The Times about the gun lobby wanting to revive the law of the Wild west saloon.
The chilling statistic is that in the US, 30,000 Americans die by gunshot, of which at least 10,000 are murder. In England and Wales it is just 50, or about 300, if we had the same population.
No wonder I don’t allow guns on my land!
Universal Phone Chargers
I’ve got boxes of chargers and they’re all different.
But now they’ll all be the same.
This must be a good idea. But then I don’t agree with their choice!
Madoff with the Money
So Madoff has got away with life in jail and no remission.
Now I have no sympathy for the crook at all, but doing this doesn’t really do anything for those who he defrauded like the Miriam Siegman, who is reduced to food stamps and collecting things from skips.
Madoff’s wife has been allowed to keep $2.5 million and I have to ask is this right. She claims that she knew nothing, but if she did, then she was pretty stupid, as I don’t believe you can live with someone without getting an inkling of what is going on.
I don’t think I’m stupid, but where did all the money he got in go? And how did he hide the fraud from everybody who worked for him?
It all just beggars belief.
Years ago, I met a guy who worked for an organisation that was going pear-shaped. He was the guy who programmed the computer system and knew what was happening. There was no fraud, just incompetence! So he got out early. Perhaps what he did wasn’t ethical, but at least he saved himself.
Didn’t anybody in Madoff’s organisation spot that?
He must have been one clever guy!
There is also the point that these days, I believe that there is a tendency to use nothing but Excel to analyse companies accounts. Accountants and regulators don’t dig as deep as they should, as they know that certain bosses might ruin their careers and perks.
There is a large overhaul needed in the methods and management of a lot of companies, so that we don’t get another Madoff, HBOS, RBS or Northern Rock.
Where are all the Widowers?
After the last post I searched deeper for widowers blogs and information that might help. There would appear to be very little.
Are we all that low on the radar? Or do we just sit and suffer in silence? I have met one widower, who has decided to enjoy himself with large numbers of young ladies, but I think that he is rather in the minority.
There is I think little research into widowhood and even less where widowers are concerned. One researcher at my old university of Liverpool, does research the subject, but when you consider how many are bereaved in this world, the number involved in this subject is very small.
Surely decent research on identifying the problems and suggesting solutions, might be a very affordable way of improving society.
But it still doesn’t answer the question as to why so few widowers are posting on the web.
Posting helps me! So I suspect it would help others.
Widows Wear Stilettos
When I saw this article I thought good. Widows must carry on.
But it’s totally from a female perspective. What about men like me!
Memories of Polythene
My first job on leaving Liverpool University was at ICI Mond Division in Runcorn. I actually worked in Research at Runcorn Heath and like the company itself, I think where I worked no longer exists. Or should I say I couldn’t find it when I returned to the area last year.
The process for making polythene, or more correctly polyethylene, was discovered by ICI at Northwich.
The first industrially practical polyethylene synthesis was discovered (again by accident) in 1933 by Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson at the ICI works in Northwich, England. Upon applying extremely high pressure (several hundred atmospheres) to a mixture of ethylene and benzaldehyde they again produced a white, waxy, material. Because the reaction had been initiated by trace oxygen contamination in their apparatus the experiment was, at first, difficult to reproduce. It was not until 1935 that another ICI chemist, Michael Perrin, developed this accident into a reproducible high-pressure synthesis for polyethylene that became the basis for industrial LDPE production beginning in 1939.
For some months in my brief period at Runcorn, I shared an office with L. H. (Bert) Cross, who told me quite a bit of the history of how polythene was made. He would confirm the statement in Wikipedia that it was created by accident, as the researchers were experimenting with high pressures on ethylene gas.
Bert was an infra-red expert and he had analysed the spectrum of the compound to confirm what it was and ascertain his properties. I won’t put all of the story in, as even now many years on, I don’t want to destroy confidences. But let’s say that he found some interesting properties of polythene.
I’m not sure if it was Bert who told me, but at first they had no idea of what to do with their new product. It was very expensive and suggestions that it could be used to stiffen wax candles were probably quickly discounted.
In the end it was Radar, that used polythene because of its unique insulation properties. Even today, you’ll still find polythene as the insulation in the high-frequency cable that connects your television to the aerial.
Later I went on to work at ICI Plastics Division, but strangely I never worked on polythene, its production or properties again.
Breaking the Fashion Rules
My late wife spent quite a bit on clothes and I still don’t know what to do with a lot of her business suits. Many are new or nearly so and are all the best makes. I suppose I had better take them to the charity shop.
An article in The Sunday Times Style section called Breaking The Fashion Rules would have summed her up well. She wore clothes that suited her figure, skirts on or above the knee and despite being in her late fifties, bikinis. But as the article says, you have to make the right choices.
Did she have any secrets?
She always wore underwear that fitted and never peeked out from under a dress and she always bought her swimwear after trying on more than several in France! On the subject of underwear, how many women wear a £5 bra under a £200 dress? Balance ladies!
I’ll admit that she was reasonably trim and fit, with good shoulders and I follow a similar route. That helped her dress younger than otherwise. But I do think that it does everybody good to think that they look as best as they can.
Gay Pride in India
India is one of a few countries in this world, where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by jail of up to ten years.
But now after India has had it’s second Gay Pride march, it looks like according to The Times that this law will be repealed.
Good!
Especially, as this leaves a rather rag-bag collection of represive regimes where this ban is in force.
