So that's the answer!

My thanks to Wikipedia for answering a question I asked some four years ago - when did pikelets become crumpets?  Because in my youth we called them pikelets - and I still do.  Well it seems that the word is an Anglicisation of the Welsh piglydd which is what they called their version of the ubiquitous griddle cake.  And because we here in the West Midlands are fairly close to Wales we adopted their name for it - or at least our local pronunciation of it.  Thank you, Wikipedia.

We should hang our heads.

The shameful delay in raising a memorial to the lads of Bomber Command which I posted about last June, is as nothing compared with the fact that it is only now, nearly 70 years after the event, that those sailors who undertook what Churchill called "the worst journey in the world", ferrying supplies to the Soviet Arctic ports during WWII, are to receive recognition of their efforts with the minting of an Arctic Star medal.  There aren't many of them left of course, which makes the delay all the more reprehensible. In the immediate post-war period it was apparently felt that it would be inappropriate to honour those who had helped a country which was now our cold war enemy, and by the time the Wall came down it was considered too late to do anything about it.  So, better late than never, but we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Twelve good men...

Trial by jury has come under scrutiny following the Vicky Pryce trial where it appears that at least some of the jurors didn't really understand what they were there for. Of course, it may not be that simple - because our laws forbid jurors from talking about what went on in the jury room, or anybody questioning them about it, all we can do is draw inferences from what we do know, which may in fact be wide of the mark. And before we start talking about doing away with trial by jury, it's worth remembering those cases where juries have disregarded clear law to come up with a commonsense verdict.  Let's face it, if it wasn't for juries, Lady Chatterley's Lover would probably still be banned!

Nah - leave it!

We are a nation of procrastinators it seems.  Well, all I can say is that if there's one thing a life working in, and for much of the time managing, offices has taught me it is - never do today what you can put off until tomorrow, because tomorrow you may not need to do it.  I was always surprised at the number of potential problems which, if left alone, sorted themselves out and never came to fruition.  So I pass that thought on for what it's worth.

Do you have the "yuk" factor?

Has this horsemeat business affected your shopping habits?  It seems for some it has.  Local butchers are reporting an increase in trade and Asda has said it has noticed more people seem to be buying vegetarian ready meals.  Each to his own, but I'm still buying the same stuff I always have.  For starters, most ready meals that I buy are chicken based, which as far as I am aware is not iffy, but also I was brought up in the war, when you didn't enquire too closely into what you were eating - if it tasted all right, that was all that mattered.  There's an old song which starts "Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I've found thee...", and back then this was commonly referred to as The Sausage Song, because nobody wanted to think too deeply about what wartime sausages contained!

Now what did I come in here for??

Interesting article in my pensioner's magazine - indeed, if true very interesting -
    "What a relief to learn this - we need more studies like this for old age enlightenment!  Ever walked into a room with some purpose in mind only to completely forget what the purpose was?  Turns out, doors themselves are to blame for these strange memory lapses.  Psychologists at the University of Notre Dame have discovered that passing through a doorway triggers what is known as an event boundary in the mind, separating one set of thoughts and memories from the next. Your brain files away the thoughts you had in the previous room and prepares a blank slate for the next locale.  It's not ageing, it's the damn door!  Thank goodness for studies like this."

Counting - continued.

We saw last time that the idea of putting sets into one-to-one correspondence leads to counter-intuitive ideas like that there are as many even numbers as numbers - and of course there's nothing special about even numbers, you could just as easily show that there are as many century numbers (100, 200, 300...) as numbers. Indeed providing you have a set of things where you can organise them in some systematic way so that you can point to each element in turn then they can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the set of numbers.  Of course you could say we are cheating here, because we are dealing with infinity.  And indeed for some time mathematicians treated the concept of infinity as an embarrassing irrelevance. But then a bloke called Cantor back in the 1870s showed that infinity was an important mathematical tool, and in fact that there was more than one sort of infinity - that there were sets which were too big to be put into one-to-one correspondence with the set of numbers - were in fact uncountable.  But just what do we mean by counting?  We'll look at that next time.

Is this the future?

The other day I watched about six hours of TV - nothing special in that, that's about my normal daily ration, but what made this different is that I never turned the TV on. No, everything I watched I watched on my computer using the various streaming sites, like iPlayer and Sky Go.  And it was all catch-up stuff - programmes from the past - in some cases the long-distant past.  And I wondered if TV as we know it and have always known it is on its way out.  In years to come, will we turn on the TV to be simply presented with a menu from which we will chose what we want to watch? I suppose there will always be a place for news and current affairs programmes but other than that I can't see why I should be stuck with a schedule thought up by somebody else.  Indeed, what brought me doing what I described above was that on that day there was simply nothing on "live" TV worth watching (at least in my opinion).  I remember when video recorders first made their appearance, one of their selling points was that you would be able to create your own schedule of what to watch and when, and streaming is just the latest step down the same road.

It's just human nature

Another of these strange and rather pointless surveys has concluded that people who buy organic food are less likely to be kind and helpful to others.  Actually I'm not sure that the methodology used really supports that conclusion, but I'm equally sure that it's probably right.  It's got nothing to do with organic food as such - it's simply that the sort of people who buy organic food are more likely to be the sort of people who feel self-important and morally superior to everybody else.  I wouldn't mind betting that - if you could be bothered to do the work - you would probably find that people who shopped in Waitrose were less likely to be kind and helpful to others than those who shopped in Aldi, say.  Same reason.

I say, I say, I say.

The expression ex cathedra cropped up in a post the other day - so what exactly does it mean?  Well it translates as "from the chair" - the word cathedra being Latin for chair - strictly a chair with arms, but it has come to mean the ornate type of chair - more like a throne really - used by a bishop.  And - you may have already made the connection - a cathedral is simply a church which houses such a chair. And one of those things which "everybody knows" but which is actually false, is that a city is a place which has a cathedral.  Not so.  A city is a city by virtue of royal proclamation, and the presence or absence of a cathedral is immaterial,  There are cathedrals in places which are not cities (Blackburn and Guildford for example) and cities with no cathedral (Leeds and Wolverhampton for instance).  So a pronouncement made ex cathedra is one made with the authority of a bishop speaking from his chair of office - and the top dog of course is the Bishop of Rome - the Pope.

How about open-necked shirts?

Back in the day, clip-on ties were seen as "naff" and you wouldn't be seen dead wearing one.  So a rather strange story of a school which requires its pupils to wear clip-on ties, and in fact disciplined a boy who turned up wearing a proper one. Needless to say, the school claimed that this was all about Health and Safety   It isn't of course, the H & S Executive are on record as saying that it is a "myth" that their regulations ban traditional school ties and have described the school's rule as "disproportionate".  So let's be clear - the school is entitled to make what rules it likes, and to punish those who do not abide by them, but what it is not entitled to do is to claim that they are doing this in order to comply with H & S regulations. What's really behind this of course is the fear of being sued if any child were to be hurt as a result of wearing a "proper" tie.  Not that that is not a valid reason for having such a rule - just be open and honest about it.

Duck!!

What bothers me most about this meteor, or meteorite which crashed to earth in eastern Russia causing a lot of damage and injuring some 1000 people is that no one saw it coming.  You can't help but think that had it landed in a built up area we would be looking at a disaster of some magnitude, and the thought that it would have come completely out of the blue with no possibility of preparing any sort of defence is worrying to say the least.  I thought we had people looking out for and tracking these various bits of rock?

Connections...

You know how your mind freewheels sometimes and sort of joins dots you never even realised were there?  A TV report on the need to repair the Netherton canal tunnel, and an article in the paper about a a pub selling a mammoth "dare you eat it all" meal, and - "ding" - into my mind popped the name of The Dry Dock.  The Dry Dock was (and unfortunately it is "was" - it's long since closed) a pub on the canalside at Netherton (just outside Dudley) whose particular claim to fame was that the bar - where you went to get your drinks - was a canal narrow boat - a real one, Heaven only knows how they got it in there. The house beer was called Lumphammer and what made the connection is that they used to advertise a "Desperate Dan Pie" which was put out as a challenge to big eaters. Happy memories of several visits there - though I never plucked up the courage to order the pie.

Compare and contrast.

Can't understand all the fuss about photographs being published of the Duchess of Cambridge in a bikini on a beach in Mustique.  Parallels are trying to be drawn with the pictures taken of the Duchess last year topless on the balcony of a private house in the South of France - but there is no comparison.  Those photographs were taken with a telescopic lens of someone on private property.  These current photos are of someone on a public beach.  Quite different and perfectly legal.

Counting, counting...

This is a continuation of the post of 31st January.  What we were doing with our people and chairs experiment was putting two sets of things (people and chairs) into one-to-one correspondence - that is, pairing off each item in one set with an item in the other set, and this will tell us if the two sets are equal, and if not, which set is bigger.  And this can give rise to some seriously spooky results.  We all know that the whole is greater than its parts - right?  Well...  consider the set of positive numbers (1,2,3,4...and so on).  Now consider the set of even numbers (2,4,6,8... and so on). Common sense says that there are only half as many even numbers as numbers, but put them into one-to one correspondence, so 1 pairs up with 2, 2 pairs up with 4, 3 pairs up with 6, 4 pairs up with 8 and so on. And that's the point, "and so on" goes on for ever.  You never reach an end, and so are forced to the conclusion that the two sets are equal - there are as many even numbers as there are numbers!  More to come.

One Pope good, two Popes...?

The Pope's decision to resign is likely to create problems for Catholic theologians. Dogma says that the Pope is infallible when making pronouncements ex cathedra (that is, in the exercise of his office) on matters of faith.  The question is, does that infallibility magically cease if he resigns?  I think it would be difficult to argue that you can be infallible one minute and not the next - and in any event, dogma says that a Pope is chosen by God, and therefore only God can remove him. The current Pope is known to be a traditionalist - suppose his successor is a moderniser, and decides to relax the Church's views on contraception, say.  Even if Benedict hides himself away somewhere, he is bound to become a focal point for conservatives who want to keep things as they are - and who will have the high ground on infallibility?  You can see the problem.

Cooking the books.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, is clearly a man of ideas - some would say barmy ideas.  He does seem to have a habit of going off half-cocked and then having to back-track.  He's just had to accept that his idea of going back to O-level style exams is a non-starter, but has bounced straight back with a plan to make cooking lessons compulsory for 9 to 14 year-olds (memories of Home Ec anyone?) and insisting that all children have school dinners - no more packed lunches.  His motives may be sound, but has he thought through the practicalities? Where are schools going to find the money to set up dedicated cookery suites?  Is there an assumption here that teachers know how to teach cooking?  What about parents who are unwilling to shell out for school dinners - they're not cheap, especially if you've got several kids? What about children who refuse to eat them - are they going to be allowed to go hungry?  Watch this space.

Waste of time and money - my money!

As part of her sentence for being involved in a pub brawl, a young local girl was made subject to a curfew which forbad her from leaving her house between the hours of 9pm and 7am.  To ensure compliance she was fitted with an electronic ankle tag.  She decided to make the tag look a bit prettier by gluing some fake diamonds onto the strap.  Hardly a hanging offence, you would think, but she was taken to court (on what charge I'm not sure - there is no suggestion that she breached her curfew) and fined some £150 when costs are taken into account.  The Magistrates told her she had committed a "very serious offence", though it's still unclear just what that offence was.  The company who fit the tags and monitor them said that what she had done "could affect the device" - could, you will notice, not did.  The words "sledgehammer" and "nut" spring to mind.

Thought everyone knew that?

It seems yesterday's post raised as many questions as answers for some people.  So - a couple of explanations.  Firstly, a prime number is one which cannot be exactly divided by any other number - strictly, cannot be exactly divided by any number other than itself and 1.  So 5 is prime for example, but 6 is not, because it can be divided by 2 and 3.  And secondly QED stands for quod erat demonstrandum which translates as "which was to be demonstrated" and is what you put (or we used to put when I was at school) when you've come up with a proof of something - sort of "so there you go then".

Big, bigger, biggest

One of my favourite quotes from The Simpsons is when Bart says "This is the worst day of my life" and Homer looks lovingly at him and says "The worst day of your life so far".  This jumped into my mind when I saw a headline reading "Largest prime number discovered" and without thinking I said to myself "Largest prime number discovered so far".  So is there such a thing as the largest prime number?  The Greek mathematician Euclid over two thousand years ago looked at this problem, decided that the answer was no, and came up with one of his clever proofs.  It relies on the fact that any number is either prime, or if not it is the result of multiplying two or more prime numbers together,  OK said Euclid, let's suppose there is a biggest prime number - call it P. So the list of prime numbers goes 2,3,5,7,11,13... and so on up to and including P.  Now multiply all these numbers together and call the answer N.  N is obviously bigger than P. Create a new number by adding 1 to N.  Consider this new number N+1.  Now N+1 is either prime, or it is the product of primes, in which case it must be exactly divisible by these primes. If it's prime, then you've proved that there is a bigger prime number than P.  If it's not prime then it must be divisible by primes, but because of the way it was created it can't be exactly divisible by any of the primes up to and including P - all of which would leave a remainder of 1.  So the primes it is the product of must be greater than P - QED as they say.

But we met our targets...

What happened over the years at Stafford Hospital (and I'm sure it's not unique) is truly shocking, but that's what you get when meeting targets becomes the be-all and end-all and more important than doing the job.  I was talking about the dangers of target-based management back in 2007 - and I speak from experience. Will anything change though?  I'd like to think so, but frankly I doubt it.  Setting targets is an ideal strategy for the lazy manager - it means that you don't have to get your hands dirty by visiting the "shop floor" and involving yourself in what's really going on, and if anything goes wrong, well it's not your fault is it - it's the system that failed.  Just watch how those in charge at Stafford, and those in charge of them and so on up the line wriggle out of it.  Targets are OK when the product is widgets or whatever, but when the product is people, targets can end up being toxic.

Day of the jackal again?

I'm not sure why all the fuss about this story of the police "stealing" the identities of 80 dead children to create false personas for undercover officers.  Insensitive perhaps, but you can't really steal the "identity" of someone who is dead.  Your identity, in any legal or administrative sense, ceases when you die.  And if you're setting up a false identity for someone, the last thing you want is for them to come face to face with the person whose identity they have assumed, so naturally you would choose someone who is dead - the longer ago the better.  So like I say, insensitive, but practical.

The Music Man

"Les Miserables" (or as I prefer to call it "The Glums") is very much in the news following the recent release of the film, and it seems to be polarising opinion - bit like Marmite, you either love it or hate it.  I have to say that musically I have never rated it.  Not quite sure why, but it just does nothing for me.  I don't think the lyrics help - I think even Andrew Lloyd-Webber would have struggled to come up with anything memorable faced with a libretto like that, but I'm sure he would have made a better fist of it than Claude-Michel Schönberg who has come up with a raft of instantly-forgettable tunes -with the possible exception of "I dreamed a dream" which at least has a vaguely hummable melody.  No - not for me, though I'm not knocking those who think it's great.  Each to his own.

I refuse to answer on the grounds that...

Have you seen the worrying story that your GP is going to be required to divulge information about you - like your  weight, cholesterol level, BMI, pulse rate, alcohol consumption, whether you're a smoker or not and Lord knows what else.  This will all go on a massive database.  We are assured that the information will be used for purely statistical purposes and will be anonymous - yeh, sure, and I just saw a pig fly past the window.  I can understand that in order to get a complete picture they might want dates of birth and post codes, but if they're just interested in the information and not who it comes from, why are they asking for NHS numbers?  I don't know about you, but I shall think twice about what I tell my doctor about my lifestyle in future.  The only saving grace is that large government databases have a track record of failure so it all may come to nothing - but I see it as sinister.

It's just a man in a feckin' dress!

Do you watch "Mrs Brown's Boys"?  Do you like "Mrs Brown's Boys"?  Have you even heard of "Mrs Brown's Boys"?  It's a bit of a TV phenomenon - the BBC (who put it on) virtually ignore it.  Unlike other programmes it's not endlessly "trailed", and until recently it tended to get the "graveyard shift" slots late at night.  It's either ignored or slagged off mercilessly by the critics - and yet it gets some of the highest viewing figures of anything on the box outside of the soaps.  Why?  Well, if I knew the answer to that I wouldn't be writing this blog - I'd be sipping martinis beside my pool on my private island in the sun.  But I have a couple of thoughts - firstly it's unpretentious, it doesn't try to be clever, it just concentrates on being entertaining and funny, and it does that very well.  Secondly, it's honest - it's played on a stage before a live audience, and if things go wrong, they go wrong, and the actors deal with it in real time, and "Mrs Brown" frequently breaches the "fourth wall" and talks directly to the audience and camera.  But the one thing that really endears it to me above all others, is that at the end of the show, the actors come front of stage and take a bow in true theatre tradition - as though to say "It's just a play folks".  If you're very straight-laced you might find some of it offensive - but then if you're that straight-laced you probably don't like comedy anyway. Otherwise, if you've not already come across it, give it a try - I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Big Brother's watching you!

Be careful what files you store in "the cloud".  It's a very useful concept because it allows you to access any files stored that way from any computer with an internet connection.  But it has now become apparent that if the cloud provider is under US jurisdiction (like Google, Apple and Amazon are for example) the US authorities can inspect your files without your permission or any need for a warrant.  So you would be wise to think carefully about putting any personal details on there.

In the beginning...

Interesting question in a paper the other day - What do you consider the best opening line in a book?  Several candidates immediately spring to mind - "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" (Pride and Prejudice); "Call me Ishmael" (Moby Dick); "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" (A Tale of Two Cities), but my first choice goes to a book where I misread the title.  When I picked up "1984" - I supposed I was about 15 - I mistakenly thought it was an historical novel (reading it as 1884) so the opening line hit me like a thunderbolt - "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen".  Never forgotten it.

Ha ha.

Two goldfish in a tank.
One turns to the other and says "You load the gun - I'll drive"