Cam Peak

Where I grew up, in Gloucestershire, there was a peaked hill which was known locally as "Cam Peak". I used to go sledging there when it snowed. It's just outside the town of Dursley, and there was a great story about it, which I will now ruin by writing it down:

The people of Dursley were a good people, and the Devil could not stand them. He decided to get rid of them by dumping a wheelbarrow load of clay and sand on the town. He was not very clear where Dursley was, so he wandered around Gloucestershire looking for it. That day, there was a cobbler travelling from Dursley to his workshop in Coaley, carrying a sack full of worn out shoes he was going to repair. He happened to meet the Devil at Ashmead, just outside Dursley. The Devil asked the cobbler if he know where Dursley was as he was going there to tip this wheelbarrow load of rubbish on the town. The cobbler, sensing a threat to his livelihood, had to think of a way to stop this. "Yes" he said; "I've just come from Dursley". "How far is it?", asked the Devil. "Well", said the cobbler, "you see this sack of shoes? I have worn them all out on my way. That's how far it is." Enraged at the fact he was so far from his goal, the Devil dumped the wheelbarrow load of clay and sand where he stood. To this day, Cam Peak stands there, overlooking the town of Dursley.

Loony Measurement System

I was recently reading the manifesto of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, and I started to wonder: if a spoof political party had a policy on units of measure, what would it be? Perhaps it would look something like this:

We propose to introduce into Britain a measurement system which is different from that used in any other country in the world. It would be similar to the system used in the United States of America, but not quite the same. It would be defined in terms of the metric system, but would not define its units in any convenient whole numbers of metric units, making it dependent upon, but entirely incompatible with the standard international system of weights and measures.

There would be four different units to measure length. The smallest, a “chin”, would be exactly 25.4 mm. Then there would be toof which would be 12 chins, or 304.8 mm; then a dray which would be 36 chins or 914.4 mm and finally a lime which would be 63,360 chins, or 1609.344 m.

For weight there would be six different units. Starting with the nouce, which would weigh 28.349523125 g. Then a pnoud would weigh 16 nouces or 0.45359237 kg; a snote would weigh 224 nouces or 6.35029318 kg; a ctw would be 4,480 nouces or 50.80234544 kg; and a not would weigh 53,760 nouces or 1,016.0469088 kg.

Volume would have three different units which would not be based on the length unit, but one of which would be loosely based on the density of water. The units would be the fluid nouce, equal to 28.4130625 ml, or approximately the volume of 1 nouce of water. Then a tinp would be 20 fluid nouces or 568.26125 ml, and a laglon would be 160 fluid nouces or 4.54609 litres.

If that measurement system was proposed now, no one in their right mind would accept it. It makes no sense whatsoever. And yet this raving loony’s system is exactly the same (save the unit names) as the imperial system, which some people in the UK find it so difficult to let go of. I hope that any readers who support the use of that system can see how ridiculous it is to argue

for its superiority over the international metric system. In fact the only possible argument for keeping such a system is that you simply can’t be bothered to change.

Bob The Builder wins the American Presidency

"Can we change it?" "Yes we can?"

Here in the UK we have a children's television character called Bob the Builder. His catchphrase is "Can we fix it? - Yes we can!".

Barack Obama's acceptance speech echoed those words - "Yes we can", and he made it his own catchphrase, even getting the crowd to chant along with him. I think this positive approach is perhaps the only thing the two characters share. Here's the full speach hosted on CNN:

He certainly is a powerful public speaker. He also talks a great story about being a conviction politician. I love that story about the 106-year-old voter. In the UK, the most interesting thing we've seen in politics recently was the invention of "New Labour". That project was all about sales, image and public perception. Nothing to do with engaging with people's needs and concerns; more about keeping "us" in power and "them" out, and then justifying it with sales talk. I really hope that President Obama can deliver something very different for America. This is one politician I'll be watching without my normal cynicism. I so hope he doesn't turn out to be a disappointment.

Freecycle

A few weeks ago I was given four beds by three different people - all complete strangers.  They wanted to get rid of them, and I happened to need them - so they gave them to me.  

I've recently been clearing out my loft and had a lot of stuff I've accumulated over the years.  None of it was rubbish, so I wanted to give it away - so I did.  I gave it to people I didn't know who said they wanted it.  There was a cot, a couple of turntables, a slide projector, a negative ionizer, a couple of children's bicycles, some ADSL microfilters - and several other things.

My heating recently broke down.  As I'm replacing the boiler I didn't want to get it fixed, so I asked some complete strangers if they had some electric heaters they could spare.  Two different people came up with six dimplex heaters to tide me over till the new boiler was fitted.

A few years ago, this kind of transaction would have been the stuff of dreams.  Stuff went to the tip if you didn't know someone who wanted it.  You would never go round asking strangers for things you needed.  But the internet has changed all that.  The internet and a rather clever idea called Freecycle.  You can read all about it here, and find your nearest branch.

Freecycle is billed as a way to "keep stuff out of landfill".  I think it is far more than that.  In fact the issue of filling up landfill is a bit over-done and Freecycle probably doesn't even scratch the surface.  What Freecycle is, is a real community.  We hear about "online communities", which often means a group of people who communicate on-line but never meet.  Freecycle goes much further than this.  It's about local people being able to contact each other, know each others' needs and support each other.  That's far more valuable than any environmental ideal or any chatroom you can find anywhere else on the internet.

Political Correctness GONE MAD

This made me laugh

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7643136.stm

Not only is it wrong to tell people which toilet they should use, but it wrong to say that it's political correctness "gone mad".  That might offend ... mad people ... like the green-haired lady in the interview. 

Smallcreep's Descriptive Writing

I think my father was always impressed by highly descriptive writing. When I was a teenager he recommended Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath to me, principally for the political message of the book (which turns out to be completely spurious, but that’s another story). However, he told me that his favourite passage in the book is a description of a tortoise crossing the road. Steinbeck devotes an entire chapter (albeit a very short one) to describing in minute detail the scene as the reptile climbs the bank, crosses the road and gets hit by a truck. I remember being very impressed by this passage myself. When Dad wrote his own book it gave him an opportunity to practice this style of writing for himself, and he made a very good job of it too. Here’s a video of Peter Currell Brown reading a passage from his book Smallcreep’s Day about some pipes on a wall.

It’s interesting that The Grapes of Wrath is a book with an intensely political message, and my Father was interested in the politics, but his favourite passage was a description of a natural event which appeared to have no bearing on the story whatsoever. Steinbeck may have intended the tortoise to be a metaphor, but that was lost on me as a teenager. Similarly, Smallcreep’s Day is a book with a political message, but Dad’s favourite passage is a description of something rather mundane – some pipes running round a wall. The way the words are used to describe the subject is far more important than the subject of the description. Are the pipes intended as a metaphor too?

Glow-worms

Glow-worms are one of those memories of childhood for me. I’d never actually seen one before, in spite of growing up in the English countryside, but they appear in children’s books so I grew up believing in them. They are so romantic -little insects that produce a light at night. The glow-worm in James and the Giant Peach provides light for the entire crew of the peach. But I didn’t know what they really looked like. When my mother told me that they lived near her, in a cemetery in Stroud, I was keen to go and take a look. At about 22:00 on a fine evening at the end of July we went up to the cemetery to see if we could find any. And we did! Two things surprised me about them; their colour and their intensity. Never having seen one, I had only ever imagined what they would be like. I had imagined a dull yellow glow that you would miss if you weren’t looking closely enough. But that’s not how they looked at all. The intensity was on a par with a green LED, such as you might have on the front of a T.V. And the colour was bright green – not the kind of colour I had imagined at all. We saw several of these lights in the long grass, but as we didn’t take a torch, I have no idea what the insect that made them looks like. I did try a photo, but there was not enough light for the autofocus, and without a flash all I got was a blur. But here is the blur so that you can appreciate the colour of the things.