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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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The College of Optometrists is on the ball.
| The College of Optometrists has issued advice for those who notice a change in their vision after the clocks went back last weekend. |
What? Changing the clocks has made eyesight worse?
No. Daniel Hardiman-McCartney FCOptom, Clinical Adviser for the College of Optometrists explains:
| “At this time of year, as it gets darker in the evenings, optometrists typically experience an increase in the number of people visiting for a sight test to complain about difficulty reading. |
There may be a correlation with trying to read in the dark. It just doesn't work.
| Typically this will be from people in their late-thirties to mid-forties, who may have noticed that occasionally they have had to hold things further away, but now ‘their arms are now not long enough’ to see print clearly. This is due to the onset of a condition called presbyopia and can be easily treated with glasses or contact lenses. If you already wear glasses a switch to varifocals may be all that is required.†|
Alternatively, try reading in natural daylight instead of by a candle.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Just to link the last coupla posts. I have, contrary to public perception including my own, been shack(l)ed up with quite a number of women in my time. Every single one of them had the following characteristic: whenever they came into a room in which I was happily reading, they would announce in Joyce Grenfell tones (though few of them were English) "You can't read in this" and switch every available light on. I would sigh. My 'happy hour' was over.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Anglo-American transitions of power are quite different. The British way is always daft, the American way is only daft this time. Emily Murphy, the beleaguered woman in charge of determining who is going to be the next president and, if different to the incumbent, to start the handing over process, is getting 'death threats from both Democrats and Republicans'. They certainly take their politics seriously over there but the woman is acting entirely capriciously in not beginning the process. She is not actually being asked who the next president will be only that if it might be Joe Biden, he needs to be prepped. Surely even Donald Trump concedes that is a possibility.
The Brits do not believe in prep time. The new prime minister has to take over the morning after staying up all night watching the results and then driving to London from his constituency. But he can then relax. He will be given the rest of the day to decide on his cabinet which, lest we forget, governs Britain. If the election has not delivered a clear verdict, our own beleaguered woman is currently Elizabeth Windsor.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Question: Which is the EU's largest oil producer? Answer: Denmark. I discovered this from the Guardian telling me the Danes have decided to stop all new oil exploration. France just announced likewise for herself and her territories. The Danes reckon the decision will cost them £1.6 billion a year which, considering that we are producing seventeen times the oil they are, means it will take Boris a supreme effort of will to announce our own accession to holiness at Glasgow next year.
We have had 'the greenest credentials in the world' for quite a long time now but only because of the chronological accident of closing the coal industry down. From now on they'll have to mean it. And by them I mean 'we'.
War Notes
If only Hitler had known about Danish oil he wouldn't have lost at Stalingrad
If only Rommel had known about Libyan oil he wouldn't have lost at Alamein
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Housebuilders fined £600,000 for destroying bat roost in south London
Court hands firm largest ever wildlife crime fine after it admits demolishing site in Woolwich [Guardian headline] |
Bastards, they need stringing up. We're not talking just bats, we're talking bats so rare they may have already flown the coop
| Bellway, the housebuilders, admitted damaging or destroying a breeding site or resting place in Artillery Place, Greenwich, south-east London, in 2018, where soprano pipistrelle bats had been documented the previous year. |
It's gonna be tough nailing these tricky merchants, and their teams of lawyers, but we are the Metropolitan Police and we have resources of our own
| “With the expert assistance of colleagues from specialist units within the Met, the officers constructed evidence to prove that the company had indeed committed an offence by carrying out work at a site where bats were known to inhabit,†he said. |
Is it too late to mount some sort of endangered species rescue bid? There are good prospects we may be able to acquire a fresh breeding stock from elsewhere
| The soprano pipistrelle is known to roost throughout Europe in rooftops and houses. Soprano pipistrelles will congregate in maternity colonies while they are pregnant and nursing their young. This causes a problem for the human population because these colonies can get quite large, in fact much larger than the Pipistrellus pipistrellus colonies, which tend to be fewer than 200 bats. This large size of colony causes a nuisance for humans because of the smell. | |
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Wiley keeps on mentioning that the supermarkets have plenty of leftover food (and are desperate to avoid a windfall tax), and the food banks are really good at handing it out fairly.
The civil servants want food delivery to the poor, and those sheltering, to be a service to be tendered out or that imaginative, old standby, handed out by the army. The politicians know someone who err, would make a good fist of it for a tidy sum as they, err, run a hedge fund.
Ah well, it's all good publicity for the boy Rashford.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| and the food banks are really good at handing it out fairly |
I had to laugh. The government understands that 'the poor' do not exist as an entity. If you offer something for free, the demand is essentially infinite so you have to make sure that a cost is attached, if only a sense of shame. Filling the basket with carrots is also a good wheeze. If supermarkets get involved there will be far too much efficiency in the system. It's called 'Speenhamland Syndrome'.
The Left, which includes the boy Rashford, never understand that 'helping the poor' is always a fiendishly difficult technical exercise. A good heart is not, generally speaking, the best qualification since it leads to a sense of "anything we can do must be a help".
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Is there a leftwing bias in stand up comedy?
Brian Logan The Guardian |
I admit to some astonishment reading this headline. I had not envisaged the possibility of a stand up comic who was not left wing, now that Roy Chubby Brown has flown the coop. I read on hoping it was true. And it was only a bias.
| It may be that comedy, like the arts in general, skews leftwards |
Yes, I thought, just as academics, teachers and trade union officials do; and policemen, judges and prison warders don't. But none of this necessarily goes with the territory, I mused, even trade union officials, who are all mafia hoods in America and strictly a-political. Or are there internal left/right splits that outsiders are not necessarily aware of, like folk music versus country & western? Enlighten me, O Guardian
| The arts attract misfits, malcontents and people prepared to work for a pittance, and the latter category at least excludes most enthusiasts for the Conervative party. |
All the above categories, I would have thought, although the voluntary sector splits the other way: professionals (left wing) who are paid quite well, and volunteers (right wing) who work for a pittance. But that's noblesse oblige, so probably doesn't count.
| Let's face it: in order to be left wing in Britain today, a sense of humour isn't just professionally advantageous, it's a survival mechanism |
I thought the whole point about being left wing or right wing is you make your mind up in adolescence and stick with it for life. The concept of what works at any one time doesn't really apply. In any case, isn't it Conservatives that need the sense of humour 'today'?
After that the dude goes on to discuss comics whose work I'm not familiar with -- I hate all comics apart from Stuart Lee -- so I cannot judge his roll call of right wing comics. Reading between the lines I think he means left wing people who find a right wing schtick funny. A bit like The Pub Landlord (that's two I like). Perhaps I should take more of an interest now I've given up my own dreams of being big in comedy. And politics. I can finally stand back and laugh.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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They laughed when you said you wanted to be a comedian. They're not laughing now.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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I'm still not sure about The Pub Landlord (Al Murray).
| Alastair James Hay Murray was born in Stewkley, Buckinghamshire, the only son of a Lieutenant Colonel in 131 (Parachute) Regiment, Royal Engineers. A descendant of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, his grandfather was the former British ambassador Sir Ralph Murray, was from Scottish aristocracy and married into the Kuenberg family, Imperial Counts of the Holy Roman Empire. His patrilineal great-great-grandfather, Dr George Murray, was Bishop of Rochester, while Sir Edward Leigh MP is his third cousin. |
Perhaps he should be The Pub Landlord in the House of Lords?
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | Is there a leftwing bias in stand up comedy?
Brian Logan The Guardian |
I admit to some astonishment reading this headline. |
Is it anything to do with Echo Chamber politics? When everyone sounds much the same as you (whoever you are), it all seems perfectly normal.
Bias? Us? What bias?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The AEL, quite properly, consists of (a) left-wing people (b) right wing people and (c) me.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | The AEL, quite properly, consists of (a) left-wing people (b) right wing people and (c) me. |
The AEL Memorial Home will have a Harper Wing to honour you.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Many an untrue word spoken in jest. It is essential, once you have broken free from the two wings (and the centre), to avoid becoming your own wing. Everything has to be judged on the information before you. In this game you have to watch yourself like a hawk.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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That reminds me, M'Lady is fond of quoting Richard Feynman at me. Well, I think she is. The full quote is:
| The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. |
She has an abbreviated form of it, she tells me:
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