Recursion

posted by Stu Savory on 30th January 2005 at 11:11 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Donny Strangelove ?

Some of my older blogreaders may remember Stanley Kubrick's excellent 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Even then I found it blood-chilling to see the way the US was portrayed as being so careless with its nuclear weapons. That was during a trigger-happy phase of the cold war.

Now, just last week as it happens, we had Donny Rumsfeld and Dubya playing a dangerous game of nukulah poker. Bring-it-on Hellfire ? Up in the mountains of Montana the Condition Yellow United States military popped open 200 missile silo doors simultaneously! Any watching satellite might have interpreted this as launch preparation for a massive first strike and launched-on-warning themselves. Nuclear WW III caused by Donny "just practising" for taking out Iran? Or sheer thoughtlessness during a military exercise? Or Dubya's trigger-happy cowboy bravado, knowing Putin is in Davos? Or Condole-easy Rice's New Diplomacy? SCARY!

posted by Stu Savory on 29th January 2005 at 11:59 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Your Friday feedback

Tess (US) writes that I blog mainly about maths (which she likes) and Bushwhacking (which she is not so keen on) and asks me what on earth the connection is? Well, Tess, if I may slightly misquote G.K.Chesterton : Morality, like geometry, consists of drawing the line in the right place! And where do I draw that line? I agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins". Let Dubya read and learn that too! She also points out that Bush got the majority so I'm really the loser! To which I reply that the selfsame G.K.Chesterton also wrote "To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school".

I owe an apology to both Claude at Blogging in Paris and Leslie at La Vache Qui Lit, because I mixed up their mails, replying to Leslie with a mail intended for Claude and vice versa. My mix-up, but Claude put me straight. At least I got a French translation for Gary Williams right.

Crivvens! Duncan , a Scot in Canada, points me to this Burns-like canadian poem. Jings!

Web developer and blogreader Tony McNulty (Berkshire UK, who is not that Tony McNulty, Labour MP for Harrow East and Minister of State at the Department for Transport in the UK, who is a non-blogger) warned me about a bug in my RSS feed; thanks Tony, I just fixed it hopefully.

Small World : Michael Heynemann (Berlin) whom I haven't seen since about 30 years(!) google-hit on my crypto pages and sent me via snail-mail a short algorithm which I'll be posting there soon. Thanks to Google, my fellow Class-of-66 City University (London,UK) graduates are arranging a 40th reunion for next year. Got an email too from GP, my old school history teacher, now retired and living in Australia; the web does make the whole world into a small village!

Blogreader Jane points out that I had a second Blogiversary on 1st of January and asks why I didn't mention it? I'm ashamed to say I didn't notice it, Jane, because we were away celebrating the New Year. But thanks for the photos of (NOT my) Jackass Bloglaunch fireworks.

posted by Stu Savory on 28th January 2005 at 09:33 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Remembering Alice

Today is the birthday of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician, perhaps better known as Lewis Carroll.

Dodgson wrote mediocre mathematical stuff under his own name but for the children's books he derived the pen name "Lewis Carroll" by translating his first two names "Charles Lutwidge" into Latin as "Carolus Lodovicus", reversing their order, and re-anglicising them.

Under this nom-de-plume he wrote "Alice's adventures in Wonderland" and many other wonderful children's stories (see sidebar booklist). Her Majesty Queen Victoria read one of them, enjoyed it, and said to Dodgson "You must send us a copy of your next book!". Obeying the Royal Command, he sent to the palace an abstruse mathematical treatise ;-)

The pencil sketch shown on the upper left is by the man himself, Lewis Carroll, and shows Gertrude Chataway, alias Alice, playing on the beach (N.B. 'Alice' was written in 1865). Accompanying this sketch he penned the following lines :-

		GIRT with a boyish garb for boyish task,
		Eager she wields her spade : yet loves as well 
		Rest on a friendly knee, intent to ask  
		The tale he loves to tell. 

		RUDE spirits of the seething outer strife,
		Unmeet to read her pure and simple spright, 
		Deem, if you list, such hours a waste of life 
		Empty of all delight!

		CHAT on, sweet Maid, and rescue from annoy
		Hearts that by wiser talk are unbeguiled. 
		Ah, happy he who owns that tenderest joy, 
		The heart-love of a child!

		AWAY, fond thoughts, and vex my soul no more!
		Work claims my wakeful nights, my busy days 
		Albeit bright memories of that sunlit shore 
		Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!

The first word of each stanza gives her name, of course. The more astute of my blogreaders will also have noticed the acrostic made by reading the first letters of each line of the poem vertically. Tricks like these were typical for Dodgson, who had acrostics and hidden meanings scattered throughout his works. Especially for today's anniversary, I'm re-reading the explanatory Martin Gardner's annotation of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. Gardner's annotations, in "The Annotated Snark", make Dodgson's genius doubly enjoyable. Go read it!

PS: If he'd blogged, he would have purged all 'p0rn zpam' comments too (Get rude chat away!).

posted by Stu Savory on 27th January 2005 at 07:27 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Burns Nicht & a short history of Scots poetry

This evening, Scots around the world celebrate Burns Nicht, remembering our famous national poet. Last year on January 25th I even blogged in the Scots language, with the result that not many readers understood me (go try to read it!) ; so I've decided to stick to using English today; pardon me please, my countrymen!

Although Robbie Burns is probably the best known scottish poet, I'd like to mention a few others, so that you can go enjoy reading their works too. This is a very short chronology:-

• "The Dream of the Rood" was written in the 7th century and is the earliest Scots poem I know. I'll not quote from it here as you wouldn't be able to understand it. However, if you are ever in Dumfriesshire go look at the cross in the Kirk of Ruthwell. Parts of the poem are written on it, but in Norse Runic inscriptions!
• Around 1424 John Barbour wrote an epic poem The Brus which mentioned Freedom even more often than Dubya in his inauguration speech last week. Many know at least 4 lines:-

  		A, fredome is a nobl thing,
  		Fredome mays man to haiff liking,
  		Fredome all solace to man giffis;
  		He levys at es that frely levys.

• In 1470 Blin Hary wrote The Actes an Deidis of thae Illustre and Vallyeant Campion Schir William Wallace. Many of you will have seen the movie version starring Mel Gibson a couple of years ago ("Braveheart"). Gory, Gory, Hallelujah!
• Probably the most accomplished of the medieval makars were Robert Henryson (1425-1505?) with e.g. The Testament of Cresseide and Gavin Douglas (1475-1522?) with e.g. the Tretis of the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo. Scots, Latin and English neatly woven.
• In the late 16th century Alexander Montgomerie was writing mellifluously. I remember reading in school the one about God creating the first Highlander, but I can't even remember the title nowadays, let alone the humorous content for you :-(
  However, he also wrote poems about the political corruption of the day, I quote :-

  		My Lords, late lads, now leiders v our lauis,
  		Except your gouns, some hes not worth a grote,
  		Your colblak consciense all the country knawis;
  		How can ye live, except ye sell yr vote?

• Scottish literature reached its lowest ebb in the 17th century, so I'll just skip that and turn instead to the 18th century with such famous poets as Ramsay e.g. with Ever Green, Fergusson e.g. with 'Hallow Fair', and of course Burns, with e.g. these lines...

  		But yet, O Lord! confess I must;
  		At times I'm fash'd wi fleshly lust;
  		An' sometimes, too, in warldly trust
  		Vile self gets in;

• But it was it was Robert Sempill who introduced the popular style which became known as 'Standard Habbie'. I quote from the Piper from Kilbarchan :-

  		Aye whan he play'd the gaitlings gethert
  		And when he spak the carl blethert
  		On sabbath days his cap was fethert,
  		A seemly weid;
  		In the kirk-yeard his mare stood thethert
  		Where he lied deid.

• For the 19th century I'd like to point you specifically to Charles Murray's poem Scotland Our Mither. Also to Stevenson lamenting a perceived passing of Scots as a language in his famous poem The Maker to Posterity :-

  		Few spak it than, an' noo there's nane
  		My puir auld sangs lie a' their lane,
  		Their sense, that aince was braw an' plaine,
  		Tint a' thegither,
  		Laik runes upon a standin' stane
  		Amang the heather.
  

• In the 20th century however, a radical Glesgae communist called Christopher Murray Grieve using the nom-de-plume Hugh MacDiarmid revived poetry in the Scots tongue. Two of my favourites are Second Hymn to Lenin and The Drunk Man looks at the Thistle.
  Here is a verse from a third favourite of mine, The Watergaw :-

  		Ae weet forenicht i' the yow-trummle
  		I saw yon antrin thing,
  		A watergaw wi' its chittrin' licht
  		Ayont the on-ding;
  		An I thocht o' the last wild look ye gied
  		Afore ye deed...

  To help you understand it, here are some words translated : forenicht=early evening, yow-trummle=cold weather after the sheep shearing ('ewe-tremble' in English), antrin=rare, chitterin=shivering, on-ding=onset of rain, watergaw=indistinct rainbow.

If you want to listen to a real Burns Supper being celebrated, with Pipes and Burn's poems being recited in Scots, there are 14 Real Audio tracks available by following this link.

Personally, I prefer old folk-poems being sung a Capella (without instrumental accompaniment). Here is a 5 Megabyte MP3 song by Shiela Wheeler called Cairn o Mount, a free download.

posted by Stu Savory on 25th January 2005 at 07:31 Central European Time permalink Email

---

That'll be the day

44years ago yesterday, John F. Kennedy was inaugaurated as president of the United States. JFK avoided WW3 (over Cuba) and went on to become the most-loved president of the USA. He was a Uniter and made everyone optimistic. For this he was brutally assassinated by a wingnut of the day.

Compare this with yesterday. I never thought I'd see a pResident leading the US into the dark ages of a fascist theocracy. A theocracy which saw the changeover from the Rev. Jefferson Clintstone of the Church of the Seven-Day Fornicators to my current good friend, the Rev. Dubya of the Church of the Latter-Day Morons. And getting more fundamentalist and intolerant daily.

Bush said not a word on IraQ, trying to sweep it under the carpet maybe. But Bush is likely to start yet another war (IraN). He already is the least-loved president of the USA, a Divider who makes us all pessimisticly nervous. He even makes Angela Merkel (leader of Germany's right wing CDU party) look like a lefty.

Of course there is a pro-Bush faction in the blogosphere too, whose opinions differ from mine and who are more optimistic. They think Bush "will achieve immortality as president". To which I reply with a line from John Kenneth Galbraith : "If all else fails, immortality can be assured by spectacular error." They voted for Bush; but remember, Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said: "If you board the wrong train, it is no use later running along the corridor in the other direction."

So let's see where the unfettered locomotive of this new old administration proposes to take us. Condi Rice, the new secretary of state (abbreviated as SOS) spoke earlier in the week, saying "The time for diplomacy is now". When will the US prefer diplomacy to military aggression?

She also declared there was a "moment of opportunity" to end the troubles in the Middle East and vowed to take full advantage. When will the US pull out of the Middle East ?

At the coronation///inauguration Bush gave an insipid speech as usual. "The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons." (R.W.Emerson). Bush's speech was delivered from behind a bulletproof shield (the 21 gun salute missed him anyway), so he must realise he's split the country. He pledged to 'work to heal a country divided' by the Iraq War. When will Bush manage to unite the country again ?

Bush has also claimed he will balance the economy. When will this miracle happen ?

Bush said he has "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world". I have a suggestion : When will Bush step down?

Answers to the questions listed above can be expected as shown in the graphic :-

posted by Stu Savory on 21st January 2005 at 07:01 Central European Time permalink Email

---

A Bitch of a Problem ;-)

What to do? Some of my readers (e.g. Leslie, over at La Vache Qui Lit want less Maths here and more dogs. Others, e.g. young David from Edinburgh (Scotland) and Diane over at Arcadian Expressions want more Maths. So today's bitchin' postin' is to let them all win out :-)

Madame Levy can click on the photo icon here to get a whole page full of bulldog photos (albeit subtitled in German).

Diane is a mother of 5 kids, now bravely taking evening classes and needing to get her Maths up to speed again. David asked What's the easiest proof you know? We already had the proof that root(2) is not a fraction. So I've posted an easy proof of Pythagoras theorem. I know about 30 versions of the latter proof, but this one is the easiest IMHO.

Combining both subjects, now let's look at the other extreme, a real bitch of a Math problem!
Prove that between N² and (N+1)² there is always at least one prime! If you come up with a proof of that, you're a sure candidate for the Fields prize (that's like the Nobel prize for maths). Certainly I've given up on it, insufficient grasp of Number Theory, methinks :-(

posted by Stu Savory on 20th January 2005 at 06:20 Central European Time permalink Email

---

A Walk on the Wild Side

There is a local idiom, said to encourage perseverance, which I translate as "To get to the clear source you must always fight your way upstream". Last sunday morn we did just that, but literally. We hiked upstream along the little river which runs through our village. As we got into the woods and up into the hills the stream got narrower and the going more difficult. There are no riverside trails any more and it gets kinda boggy. Tip-of-the-day : having an eager dog on a leash with you is quite a good moor- and bog-detector ;-) albeit you will need to wash the dog afterwards. But the woods get really beautiful; let me share just this one photo with you (and leave you to imagine our state of muddiness ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 19th January 2005 at 06:45 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Eeyore has a Bthuthiday

Well, not Eeyore actually. It's A.A.Milne's birthday today; that childhood writer who gave us Christopher Robin, Eeyore, Wol and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Many of us learning to read were fascinated by the adventures of these pals, even - especially - before Disney cast his bland shadow over their magic little world. Many universities and colleges still have a Winnie the Pooh Society, where the students play Pooh-sticks down at the river. Days of innocence :-)

In these Winnie the Pooh Societies, we would make up our pub versions of Pooh-rhymes, satyrising(sic) the master, but sharing his captivating tales:-

			Little boy sitting in front of the fire,
			Christopher Robin is pulling his wire . . .

If you never read any of these children's stories, but have children or grandchildren of your own, get some copies of these books (e.g. Eeyore has a Birthday) and read them to the children. Much enjoyment will be had by all. So today, I'll just say Thankyou A.A.Milne for writing them :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 18th January 2005 at 05:55 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Echoes of yesterday

Several of you commented on yesterday's blog post. Melanie reminds us that it's not just the US torturing and blogged herself about the Brit courts martial of Cooley, Kenyon and Larkin. Jimmy sent this link to the story that Abu Ghraib abuse firms are being rewarded! And Ali pointed me to the Al Jazeera version of the story, demanding the death penalty for Graner.

A person from Texas - whom I cannot call a gentleman for reasons given below - sent an abusive mail in reply. He seems to think that bad language, abuse and threats are a valid substitute for content. Insults aside, he basically asks where I get the assumption from that Torture is WRONG and especially that Imprisonment without trial is WRONG.

Well sir, I would refer you to your history lessons, assuming you even had a rudimentary education: Back in 1215 AD (long before the US even existed), on a sunny afternoon in June in a meadow at Runnymede (England), the evil King John was forced by the feudal lords to sign the Magna Carta, one of the first 'Bills of Rights'. Most Brits at least will have heard of the Magna Carta, although few will have actually read it. If I may quote Articles 38 and 39 from memory :-

38:  "In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his  own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it."
           
39: "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the  lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

These two articles are the basis of habeus corpus which is the basis of your own US Bill of Rights. So I think my insistance on the two points you questioned has a considerable historical pedigree and has stood the test of time for nigh on 800 years now, and therefore deserves respect. Yours too!

Jan, writing from Holland, sent me a video by the popular German band Rammstein which is subtly anti-american. Readers with broadband connections may like to watch the video of "We're all living in America"; dialup readers may just prefer to scroll down to read their lyrics.

posted by Stu Savory on 17th January 2005 at 12:22 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Ten Years, and not a day too little...

Since the beginning of this blog I have been writing that Torture is WRONG. I've written it so often that some of my US readers get bored instead of being incensed by it. My latest plea in this direction was as recent as January 12th. Now finally people in the US are beginning to agree with me. Most significantly, the judges at the court martial of ex-Spc Charles Graner, the torturing ringleader at Abu Ghraib, agreed that Torture is WRONG and have sentenced him to ten years. Well done! Can we now proceed up the chain of command to the real bad guys ?

I also insist that imprisonment without trial is WRONG. Just to show you why anti-american sentiments are still running strong, straining official relationships between our countries even, let me tell about the latest cock-up by the US socalled "intelligence". I think it likely that this won't have been reported inside the US, what with the CNN- and Fox-filtering (aka censorship).

Khaled al-Masri, a naturalised German, was kidnapped by the Americans when in Macedonia, flown to Afghanistan (probably on the torture-jet I told you about on the 12th), hidden in a US concentration camp in Afghanistan , and kept there for 5 months for torture & interrogation.

Only now, after five months, are the Americans admitting they got the wrong guy, who merely shares the same name with someone wanted by them merely for knowing the terrorist Atta. They captured him, kidnapped him, interrogated him in secret and tortured him and now expect to get off with a mere apology? No wonder anti-americanism is on the increase, given the brutal incompetence of the Bush administration and its so-called "intelligence" (which is sadly missing).

posted by Stu Savory on 16th January 2005 at 16:53 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Harry Windsor Downfall

Not only in Bush's America, here in Europe too fascism rears its ugly head. A well known German person - left nameless to protect the innocent - has been charged with imitating Harry Windsor, turd in line to the English throne.

"I admit merely to a display of incredibly bad taste, a lack of historical sense, and being an overprivileged wantwit. These were necessary conditions for my admission to Sandhurst. Now they want to send me to Ausschwitz" complained Harry Windsor.

He alleges he was misunderstood by society reporters, that he had only been shouting "She's randy!" in German (Sie geil!) at the racist party earlier this month. Herr Schickelgruber (his mentor) was unavailable for comment, having been dead now for 60 years.

posted by Stu Savory on 15th January 2005 at 06:53 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Friday is Feedback Day

Feedback mails and comments y'all sent during the week are the focus on Fridays.

Hans-Juergen W. says he 'just got around to reading the January 3rd piece about early homeland security', and sends me three useful links. All good things come in threes :-) The first is a History of Private Security, the second is to Tim Hunkin's amusing article on the History of Safecracking, and the third is some advice on Choosing a Good Password. I had to think of Doug Alder's Wednesday story when I read that.

Charlotte - writing from Bonnie Scotland - read the same article and suggested I provide a link to a Dictionary of Scots, so that the Sassenachs (English) and Americans have a fair chance of understanding it. OK, Charlotte, I gave the link, and as an added bonus for my American readers, here's the American's guide to speaking British Slang. In a similarly humourous vein, here's a link to The American-speaker's guide to Proper English.

Jane knows another word (a place name) starting with X : "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan..."

Anonymous of Kansas read my wednesday Bushwhacking (c.f. Torquemada) and points me to a blog dedicated to the Ohio Election Fraud (formerly "Fairness"), saying W cheated again!
Update : Premier Executive Transport has now sold that CIA torture-jet to Bayard Foreign Marketing. On Dec. 1st the FAA assigned the plane yet another tail number, N44982 this time.

Thomas Langhans wrote about the speedo photo (in German) : 'If you'd taken the snapshot at 123 km/h and 4567 RPM with the tank 8/9 full, it would have been perfect' ;-)

Five of you wrote commenting on my motorcycling poem which I blogged on Tuesday. Now back home from Mexico, Jimmy McCarthy succinctly said "I enjoyed the poem!". Gary Williams made a nice polaroid of the photo using CSS, which Opera however renders wrongly, the photo sticking out of the right of his polaroid frame (at least in 800*600 it does) :-(

George Brooke (UK) wrote "Thanks for the blog on the Norvin. A long time ago I lived in a house where we had the Vincent 1000 engine on our dining table for around 6 weeks while we worked on it. Sadly although we got it into the Norton frame the problems of oil leaks and unreliability knackered it. It was last seen at a rebuilder who went bust, taking all the bits with him :-("

Len Paterson - THE leading light in the Rockers' Reunion - wrote "Your poem has stood the time test. Have you still got that proper job Rockers dream, the Norvin? A true Icon of a fantastic time warp-birds/burn-ups/greasy cafes/no money but rich beyond our wildest dreams."

Finally, Doug Alder gave me the best reaction : "You had a Vincent Black Shadow in a Norton frame - I am sooooooooo jealous, words cannot do justice :-)" So click on my name at the end of this posting Doug, to see me doing my annual spare-time job, and eat your heart out :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 14th January 2005 at 06:14 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Speedo Gonzales :-)

Driving our New Beetle along last week, when my subconcious - the bit that does mental arithmetic well - flagged a spontaneous idea. So I rapidly calculated the necessary mileage (kilometerage?), drove a little bit further, then reset the tripmeter. As a result, yesterday afternoon (at 12:34 ;-) I was able to take the attached photo of the speedo. Note the total mileage and the tripmeter reading ;-)

While we're talking about speeds and distances there is a neat little bit of freeware to be found at Pat-says-now which sums the total distance travelled by your mouse and records the maximum speed it attains (~26 kph in my case). I checked that the software is virus free and contains no spyware, so go download it, it's freeware. 'Pat-says-now' is a Swiss mouse manufacturer, so I guess we know where the cheese holes come from now ;-)

Apropos mental arithmetic : Gerd Mittring recently took a world record, extracting the 13th integer root of a hundred digit number in just 11.6 seconds. Wow! Using basically the same techniques it takes me about 40 seconds to calculate the 13th root of a 50 digit number in my head, so Professor Mittring is going eight times faster than I can!!! There is an outline description of the method (in German) online here in Der Spiegel, but the reporter makes a couple of mistakes and leaves out two important steps, thus proving that he couldn't follow Professor Mittring's explanation of what one does :-( Maybe I should blog the method one day?

posted by Stu Savory on 13th January 2005 at 05:53 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Torquemada Travel Inc.

Registered to a mailbox-only company called Premier Executive Transport Services, this twin engined long range (10.900 Kilometer) Gulfstream V jet is used by the CIA to kidnap suspects and fly them to countries where the Geneva Convention is ignored. Once there the poor suspects are interrogated and tortured. The plane has been seen in Egypt, Morrocco, Jordan, Saudi-Arabia and even Syria. The registration number varies. The plane's original registration number, N581GA, would later be changed by the FAA to N379P, and again to 8068V. Death has wings. Boing Boing has a little more on this breaking news.

Even if it bores you, dear US readers, I will continue to say that :

• torture is WRONG,
• unjustified wars of aggression are WRONG,
• permanent imprisonment without trial is WRONG.
• and that the people responsible for this moral bankruptcy should be removed from office.

Why oh why did you (re?)-elect that unethical bumblebrain. I mean, just go listen to him waffle!

posted by Stu Savory on 12th January 2005 at 06:12 Central European Time permalink Email

---

1965 Rocker Nostalgia : "The Norvin Burnup"

This poem was written in London (UK) 40 years ago. I had it published in the September 1965 issue of the 59-club's magazine "Link". These days I ride a silver FJR1300; in the same way :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 11th January 2005 at 06:11 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Stormy Weekend

Here in Europe we've been having a very stormy weekend. Even in our area the winds reached 56 mph (90kph) and half the wind-turbines up on the plateau feathered their propellor and turned themselves out of the wind to avoid overloading.

In Carlisle in the UK there is severe flooding (see photo left) since friday. As the storm sped across northern Europe it flooded the tiny offshore farming islands (Halligen) in Germany, and washed away part of North Fresian islands like Sylt. Bridges, tunnels, canals were closed for safety's sake, because lorries were being blow over and even off bridges. Tunnels partly flooded, roads flooded so deep that emergency services could not get through. Rescue helicopters grounded.

Sixteen dead that I know of and well over 2 million without power. In the UK power was out because many of the electricity sub-stations were under water. In Sweden two nuclear reactors were shut down as their distribution yards were flooded. St.Petersburg (Russian coast) shut the subway train system down. The Tallinn weather station reports 12-metre high waves in the Gulf of Finland, so I guess Helsinki may be under water today. It's weakening as it goes east tho'.

An aside about those nuclear reactors : they are built at the seaside because they need the cooling water (basically nuclear reactors are just big kettles making steam for the turbines). Some countries (e.g the US) build build their nuclear reactors on rivers for the same reason. Rivers often follow geological fault lines. So they are deliberately building potentially dangerous nuclear reactors on likely earthquake sites? Good thinking! Pray to St. Andreas, californians!

Now I'm going to the other room to listen to a Blues CD by Alexis Korner called "Stormy Monday".

posted by Stu Savory on 10th January 2005 at 15:33 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Montage-a-Google psychoanalysis ;-)

Seems like there's a new meme in the blogosphere, Montage-a-Google, a site where Grant Robinson assembles a collage of images found by Google Image for the text terms you enter. Brykmantra and Gary Williams both gave it a vanity search to do, so - shamelessly - I did too.

Montage-a-Google chooses a different set of images each time if there are sufficient available, so this first try was fortuitous. The images in my first collage seem to be rather geeky. Lots of statistical graphs taken from one of my project pages, the covers of three of the text books I wrote about 15 to 20 years ago, my bulldog bitch, the wife and I with the dog, my friend Michael with his bulldog, a surrealist painting, Godfrey Hill's six-fingered hands, maps of where I live and an orang-utan doing its impression of being a librarian (OOK to Pterry). Representative? Yes.

Amusingly the central photo reflects this blog best of all. It shows a sheep in wolf's clothing :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 8th January 2005 at 16:21 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Friday is Feedback Day

Comments and feedback mails y'all sent during the week are the focus on Fridays.

Theo and I have been teasing each other all week. He is publishing some of his creative writing over at Theophany chapter by chapter and bravely invites us review his work. Go help the poor man, perhaps less harshly than I do :-)

Dr. Menlo invited me to write for a communal blog called American Samizdat (Rebel Scum Since 2001), but I declined because I'm not an American although a Samizdat; really I'm just a Yurpean Bushwhacker. That is what pisses Meg off, she reckons it's an obsession and boring too. I guess we all have our own particular blogging styles : "Save it harm someone, do what thou wilt" as Aleister Crowley infamously said ;-) So in this vain//// vein I swapped the photo linked behind my name at the end of today's article, Meg, to reflect your and Theo's views more accurately :-) But "When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other" - Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) - so there are lots more Bushwhackers on the net :-)

More positively, Ray Wilson wrote from Brisbane, Australia, saying "I stumbled across your site after googling for photos on the tsunami damage at Patong Beach Phuket - a wonderful holiday 3 years ago had me curious. I've spent the last 2 hours of 2004 going through your back posts and just wanted you to know I've thoroughly enjoyed your musings." Welcome aboard the blog, Ray, you have just doubled the number of my fans in Brisbane, the other there being Anne Pashen.

I think of this blog in the words of Sir James Dewar, British scientist (1877-1925), who said "Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open!" I try to pull your ripcords :-)

Most of you sent comments and suggestions on Sunday's posting, Active X, telling me more words beginning with the letter X. So here are your improvements to my vocabulary :-

• David tells me that Xena = big-breasted barbarian played by Lucy Lawless. Trust a teenager to know that!
• Hartmut tells me that Xyster = an instrument surgeons use for scraping bones.
• Patsy, botanist, tells me that Xyl... = wood, a syllable cropping up in a lot of botanic words. she also writes that Xanth... = a syllable meaning yellow (dyes, crystals etc), part of about half a dozen words.
• Thomas writes about Xanthen = town near Cologne in Germany and also that Xaver = a Bavarian given name. And of course the historical Xerxes = a classical hero.
• Ivan reminds us sarcastically that Xmas = religious festival amongst X-ians.

Finally, Susan wants Wednesday's proverb explained. The pun is that Umleitung is German for diversion (i.e. redirection). I just separated the syllables, no chinese there at all. OK, Susan?

posted by Stu Savory on 7th January 2005 at 11:11 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Respect for the dead; help for survivors

Yesterday at noon we had a three minute silence across the whole of Europe for the 160,000+ tsunami dead. Trains stopped, busses halted too, car drivers parked, almost all the radio and TV stations shut down for a three minute silence as a mark of respect for the 160,000+ dead. Except CNN of course, who whined on about 1 US soldier dying in Irak in the war that Bush wanted! Inappropriately, CNN displayed NO respect for all the tsunami dead, so let me say it once and for all here loudly : Shut the f*ck up, CNN! We don't want to hear your wingnut filtered propaganda, then, now or ever.

Europe lost over 10,000 people in the tsunami, thrice the number of 911 dead. I don't think CNN or the Bush administration realise these numbers. Sweden alone lost more citizens than the US did on 911; and compare their relative populations. Bush's initial response was stingy, but after the UN reprimanded him, now he's jumping on the bandwagon for the propaganda!

A three minute silence is not enough of course. We have to help the survivors, both in the short-term cleanup and in the longer term reconstruction of their coastal economies. So I was very pleased to see that leading public figures like e.g. Michael Schumacher, F1 driver, took the lead (sic!) when he personally donated 7.5 Million Euros. That's a whole month's disposable income for him. It will make a significant aid contribution. I donated a whole month's disposable income too, which is a lot less though, since I'm still on the dole. Donate what you can please!

In the meantime the US catholic church paid 100 Mio dollars hush-money to the families of the children the priests sexually molested. The Vatican seems to have other priorities, trading parishioners' children's virginity and full collection plates for promises of Rapture, bugger 'em.

And now we have paedophiles trafficking in tsunami orphans. How sick can you get?

posted by Stu Savory on 6th January 2005 at 06:01 Central European Time permalink Email

---

The Understanding of Um Lei Tung

My log files show me that several of you are still coming here to the December '04 blogpage even though we're into January 2005 now. Maybe it's because of the way I do redirections to monthly archived files. If you followed a search engine's or someone else's link to http://home.egge.net/~savory/blog_dec_04.htm then that took you to the December '04 blog page. No amount of clicking on the reload button of your browser will get you from there to the January '05 blog page, it will merely refresh the December '04 blog page, there being one page per month.

Set your bookmarks and links to this blog to http://www.savory.de/blog.htm please. That will ensure that you always get redirected to the most current blog page.

To help those who didn't do that, the archived file links at the top of the archived blogpages contain a final link labelled TODAY which redirects you to the most current blog page also.

It would be futile to write this just in this January page, so I'm adding a pseudo-entry to the December '04 blogpage datelined December 32nd too :-)

Today's header is for my German readership who will understand the Chinese proverb :-
"The path to untarnished truth has many diversions" - Um Lei Tung

posted by Stu Savory on 5th January 2005 at 12:12 Central European Time permalink Email

---

1-deoxy-D-galactitol : shout it out!

Depressing days indeed. Bleak weather; low gray cloud, rain and slush, no sun this year. Bleak winter. Gray, gray, gray.

Depressing news continues from the wuthering waves of the tsunami tragedy, well over 130,000 dead reported now, breaking Dubya's record attempt for being the greatest killer of the century. For let us not forget that other tragedy, an illegal, unprovoked war in Irak. No WMD there as Dubya lied. Now Dubya going on TV with his daddy and with Clinton, not as a uniter, but simply because noone would believe him otherwise.

Depressing regression into the dark ages under Dubya; torture, unlimited imprisonment without trial, unjustifed wars of aggression, 100,000 Iraqis killed, UBL still free, the raca war on terror lost, the Geneva convention blatently ignored, and four moron years. Depressing. Depressing.

The economy going downhill, stagnating here as the US dollar falls and falls, almost as weak as its leader. That scaramouch W (stands for Wantwit, BTW) unwilling to balance the economy and dragging everyone else down with him. Unemployment rising incessantly. No jobs. Depression.

Blogging is a boyg today, with all this depressing stuff; no fallal coamings to defy the eagre.

Makes you want to shout "1-deoxy-D-galactitol" or rather scream its common name : Fucitol

posted by Stu Savory on 4th January 2005 at 09:43 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Nightwatchmen; early Homeland Security

At the moment I'm reading Billy Kay's excellent book on the history of the Scots language The Mither Tongue and in parallel I'm also reading Imperial Hubris. Surprisingly, there's a small overlap, a common theme : Homeland Security.

King David I of Scotland (1124-1153 AD) passed the so-called Burgh Laws, regulating what could and must be done to improve commerce in the towns. I reproduce for you below Article 81 thereof, which lays down that towns (burghs) shall be walled and have night watchmen during the curfew times from dusk to dawn. Early Homeland Security was strict!

§81 : it is for to wYt Of ilke house wythin the burgh in the quhilk thar 
wonnys ony that in the tym of wakying aw of resoun to cum furth, 
thar sal ane wachman be holdyn to cum furth quhen that the wakstaff 
gais fra dure to dure, quha sall be of eylde and sal gang til his 
wache wyth tua wapnys at the rynging of the courfeu, and sua gate 
sal wache wysly and besily til the dawying of the daye. And gif 
ony hereof failye, he sal pae 1111 d, outtane wedous.

(wonnys = dwells; of eylde = of age; 
sua gate = in this way; outtane wedous = widowers excepted)

Note also the draconic fine should anyone fail to provide a watchman as required!

There is still a medieval walled town here in Germany, popular with tourists, known as Rothenburg ob der Tauber. If you ever get a chance to go there, be sure to take the hourly tour with the nightwatchman who explains all his duties in a most entertaining manner. Get him to show you the one-at-a-time 'airlock' procedure for admitting any late-comers after dusk :-)

Also worth a visit - and increasingly popular with the US military - is the museum of torture.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history." - Georg Hegel

posted by Stu Savory on 3rd January 2005 at 07:00 Central European Time permalink Email

---

Active X

Xis the big unknown, regardless of your speciality. At a recent Mensa pizza-party, those present were talking PC-geeky, but a guy listening is a linguist and changed the direction of the active-X thread in a challenging way. Thereby hangs a tale :-

He pointed out the declining standards of education (one of my favourite rants) as confirmed by our miserable performance in the international PISA comparisons, and alleged that this is accompanied by a significant decrease in the size of people's vocabularies. Linguists distinguish between words that you recognise when they crop up in a conversation or text you are reading (your passive vocabulary) and words that you use actively when speaking or writing yourself (your active vocabulary). I believe the relevant noun is floccippaucinihilipilification, which also happens to be the longest noun in the English language not containing the letter "E" ;-)

He challenged us to write down as many words from our active vocabularies as possible that begin with X. Three minutes should suffice he said wryly. Now I've always thought that I have quite a large vocabulary, but I only came fourth (out of nine). Here is my list, we were not allowed to use a dictionary. What X-beginning words do you know that I don't?

• X = short for XTC i.e. methylenedioxymethamphetamine (he said that didn't count!)
• X-rays = long gamma rays (he said that didn't count either, because of the abbreviation!)
• xanthomelanous = people with black hair and yellow or olive skin (e.g. many Arabs)
• Xantippe = a shrewish scold (e.g. Socrates wife)
• xenium = a present made to a guest (alternatively, a compulsory gift to a noble)
• Xenon = a noble gas
• xenophobia = a dislike of strangers
• Xerox = a dry photocopier (comes from the Greek for dry).
• Xhosa = a Bantu language, spoken in the RSA Cape district, AFAIK.
• Xiphidae = the genus of swordfish
• xylography = wood engraving (NB : xylopyrography = doing it with a hot poker :-)
• xylophone = a musical instrument

And that's it, my whole active-X vocabulary, I count a lousy Roman X valid words! Et tu ?

posted by Stu Savory on 2nd January 2005 at 06:13 Central European Time permalink Email

---