2005, a personal retrospective . . .

Jane is asking some of the bloggers she reads for a personal retrospective of 2005, no commenting public events. Well, here goes, Jane, with the top 10 highlights you asked for :-

• Saddest day? When our old dog died.
• Most enjoyable time? Taking the Hurtigruten post boat north.
• Most painful time? Falling off my motorcycle.
• Most memorable day? Our 15th wedding anniversary.
• Regular fun? Dogblogging.
• My best photo? A Walk on the Wild Side, taken January 19th.
• Most popular list? Books recommended in my Blog.
• Oldest personal anecdote? Squaring the circle.
• Best new blog discovery? Apathetic nation.
• Loudest laugh? Read this bit of Bushwhacking.

Now here's looking forward to 2006 with all you blogreaders. Thankyou for reading me :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 31st December 2005 at 06:31 CET permalink Email

Rocket Science, 180 years ago today...

As I write this (tuesday evening) it is AFAIK exactly 180 years ago today that Stephenson's Rocket first pulled a train. The photo shows the replica at the UK National Railway Museum in York, which is well worth a day's visit! Later, in 1829, the Rainhill Locomotive Trials were held on October 6th to decide which engine/system should be chosen for a public rail service. Stephenson's competitors included the "Cycloped" , described even at the time as "an absurd affair which was worked by two horses moving an endless platform with their feet." However, the winner was Stephenson's Rocket, its driver was a Mr. Edward Entwhistle, his family maintains an Edward Entwhistle webpage, here. Stephenson's Rocket pulled a load of three times its own weight at 12.5 mph and hauled a (single) coach filled with bravehearted passengers at 24 mph. Also worth a look is this : the BBC has online an excellent explanatory animation of Stephenson's Rocket.

However, school history lessons notwithstanding, over 30 years earlier the inventor Richard Trevithick, a Cornish mining engineer, built the original London Steam Carriage (a replica is shown in the photo on the right) in 1803 - 25 years before Stephenson's Rocket took to the rails. Indeed, Trevithick's London Steam Carriage was the first motorised vehicle. A traditional mail-run horse carriage sits perched above wheels of 8 ft. diameter! The thing was so underpowered, it only worked on the level, and was unable to climb hills, or for that matter go down them, as the brakes were inadequate! I had a bike like that (BSA Bantam)!

AFAIK the world's largest currently operating steam locomotive (built in 1943) is Union Pacific’s No.3985; it is an articulated locomotive with a "hinged" frame to allow it to negotiate curves, and is 122 feet long. It weighs more than one million pounds, has six-foot diameter drive wheels and can reach a top speed of 70 miles per hour. AFAIK, the world's fastest operational steam locomotive is the 113mph German 18201. The record is claimed by the British Mallard at 126 mph in 1938, whilst going steeply downhill (1:200); the German locomotive 05 002 had gone 124.5 on the level already in 1936. Bryan Benn has the details.

Oh, and by the way, just to wrap up this morning's blog with a historical flavour : on this day in 1066 (28/12 by current reckoning) William the Conqueror landed in Pevensey and the most recent (Norman) invasion of England began, 939 years ago. Eye up, Harald!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 28th December 2005 at 06:28 CET permalink Email

Jews against Darwin ;-)

FYI, the cartoon is copied (badly) from a 1904 edition of the "Schlemiel" newspaper, issue 1.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 26th December 2005 at 06:26 CET permalink Email

The Orwellian Nanny State at Xmastime

Bethlehem, Judea - Authorities were today alerted by a concerned citizen who noticed a family living in a barn. Upon arrival, Family Protective Service personnel, accompanied by police, took into protective care an infant child named Jesus, who had been wrapped in strips of cloth and placed in a feeding trough by his 14-year old mother, Mary of Nazareth.

During the confrontation, a man identified as Joseph, also of Nazareth, attempted to stop the social workers. Joseph, aided by several local shepherds and some unidentified foreigners, tried to forestall efforts to take the child, but were restrained by the police.

Also being held for questioning are three foreigners who allege to be wise men from an eastern country. The INS and Homeland Security officials are seeking information about these who may be in the country illegally. A source with the INS states that they had no passports, but were in possession of gold and other possibly illegal substances. They resisted arrest saying that they had been warned by God to avoid officials in Jerusalem and to return quickly to their own country. The chemical substances in their possession will be tested.

The owner of the barn is also being held for questioning. The manager of Bethlehem Inn faces possible revocation of his license for violating health and safety regulations by allowing people to stay in the stable. Civil authorities are also investigating the zoning violations involved in maintaining livestock in a commercially-zoned district.

The location of the minor child will not be released, and the prospect for a quick resolution to this case is doubtful. Asked about when Jesus would be returned to his mother, a Child Protective Service spokesperson said, "The father is middle-aged and the mother definitely underage. We are checking with officials in Nazareth to determine what their legal relationship is.

Joseph has admitted taking Mary from her home in Nazareth because of a census requirement. However, because she was obviously pregnant when they left, investigators are looking into other reasons for their departure. Joseph is being held without bond on charges of molestation, kidnapping, child endangerment, and statutory rape.

Mary was taken to the Bethlehem General Hospital where she is being examined by doctors. Charges may also be filed against her for endangerment. She will also undergo psychiatric evaluation because of her claim that she is a virgin and that the child is from God.

The director of the psychiatric wing said, "I don't profess to have the right to tell people what to believe, but when their beliefs adversely affect the safety and well-being of others - in this case her child - we must consider her a danger to others. The unidentified drugs at the scene didn't help her case, but I'm confidant that with the proper therapy regiment we can get her back on her feet."

A spokesperson for the governor's office said, "Who knows what was going through their heads? But regardless, their treatment of the child was inexcusable, and the involvement of these others frightening. There is much we don't know about this case, but for the sake of the child and the public, you can be assured that we will pursue this matter to the end."

Author unknown, 25th December 2005 at 18:55 CET permalink Email

Your feedback is friday's blogfodder :-)

Robin wrote :- "I have a solution to your problem of type size vs. screen resolution. I have an article on my website that addresses this issue." And, because I was too obtuse to understand it fully, she has reworked my CSS to make it more flexible. I'll be switching to her CSS with my january blog :-)

Robin also points out something I didn't know about readers' browsers, viz :- "As I mentioned in the article, the end-user is allowed to use his own style sheet, which overrides any style that the author defines! This end-user feature was developed by the browser designers to allow people with disabilities, or who LIKE having every web page they visit look exactly alike, to set their own defaults." Thankyou, Robin, & all the best in '06 :-)

Liz Ditz has been telling me how to delete embarrassing posts (why?), she wrote :- "I have found a couple of ways to delete posts (but of course, the dreaded wayback machine is always there)...". Sadly Haggiswurst's blog got hacked after the searchlight glare of a national newspaper article shone on it on monday :-(

Bushwhacker Helen Babby (USA) tells me to check out the Jib Jab year-end roundup :-)

A W fan from Iowa, just using her/his initials (JJ), objected to my snide remark on December 6th, viz. "The spelling used is British English with occasional descents into 'merkin dialect to make cheap shots at our transatlantic friends :-)". He/she tells me (in no uncertain terms) that British speech has been much enriched by words created in America! Indeed, JJ, that is true! I've just been watching Dubya's speech on TV about his breaking the Constitution whilst spying on fellow 'merkins. He used several words created in America, indeed they were created on the spot by W himself ;-) No, JJ, watching Dubya always reminds me that one of the words created in America, never before needed in the English tongue, is "moron" !

Joel Sax thinks I should take a mental illness awareness test :-( What remarks of mine provocated that, Joel? Maybe the same one that Frank Köhntopp liked? Or the antipodean health aficionado, Loose Poodle? Tastes differ.

Frank Paynter tells me that I missed a fourth European reply to his "How do you blog?" meme, that of Italian Gaspar Torriero. My apologies to both of you, Frank and Gaspar. Frank also found a fourth interpretation of my sentence "I saw the man on the hill with a telescope", namely "Meanwhile, back on the hill with the telescope, I continue to saw the man, but the telescope is very dull and it is not easy to get a cross-cut started.". Well done, Frank, I'd missed that old saw myself ;-)

Ashish (India) points out that my health hints (on monday) only apply in first world countries and that third world countries have other health problems. Sadly true, Ashish, and here is a map of life-expectancies :-

Tom Nugent, Research Director, LiftPort Group, responded very quickly to my question about the mass of a space elevator ribbon for Mars :- "...As an example, assuming a 100 GPa material and a lifter mass of only 1,000kg (i.e., a "starter" ribbon), the ribbon for Earth would be 90 tonnes, but only 8.3 tonnes for Mars. It would be even less for the Moon." Tom's space elevator website will give space exploration fans a future lift ;-)

Alasdair MacCaluim wrote (partly in Gaelic!) reminding fellow Scots to sign the St Andrews Day petition [which is in English, despite it being a Scottish Parliament petition :-( ].

Alex points us to Hossein Derakhshan who blogs about Iran (in English and Farsi).

Carol (GBM) had expected me to say something poignant on the anniversary of John Lennon's death. OK, Carol, but I'll let John talk for himself (144kb .wav file).

Gary Williams, knowing I'm a fan of English Bulldogs, sent me these photos. Thanks, Gary.

Finally, Chris Jung, who liked the 10 easy steps to health which I blogged on monday, reminds us that keeping a pet (especially an English Bulldog) helps old folks live up to 7 years longer. Woof Woof, Chris, will do :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 23rd December 2005 at 06:23 CET permalink Email

Fame for Haggiswurst & Xiaoyun Wang :-)

Ma guid freend Haggiswurst hae 15 meenits o' fame the ither dee (19th)! Scottish provost's councilworker Deskmonkey writes an anonymous blog called Haggiswurst and it has been named one of the top ten UK workblogs by a national UK newspaper The Independent.

Unfortunately, The Independent sets many of the links wrongly, so follow my link to him. But I fear his site could go down due to excessive traffic after the newspaper's mention :-(

The Independent wrote:- "Desk Monkey writes of the tribulations of working for a local council in Scotland. A consistent refrain is that what is done seems to be less important to many than the way it is done. Neither the management nor politicians are highly thought of. While it is infrequently updated and there are more personal posts interspersed throughout, the tales of exactly what it is like to work for such an organisation are worth checking in for. 'Your council tax money at work' as it were." Congratulations, laddie!

If you are a cryptographer who has been relying on the security of the SHA-1 secure hash algorithm, now is the time to wet your pants! That means you, NSA, and you, banks, and you, credit card companies. Chinese cryptographer Xiaoyun Wang (Tsinghua University in Beijing) is reported to have found a break into SHA-1. Just last year she found a break into MD5. We'll have to see how serious the SHA-1 break is. I'm waiting too to see what Bruce Schneier reports when he hears the news. We crypto-geeks live in interesting times :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 21st December 2005 at 06:21 CET permalink Email

Eat your way to health : 10 tips for 2006

Time soon for those New Year resolutions. One of them is usually to do something to improve your health. Like lose 20 pounds? You always find that difficult to do? Here are some OTHER health-improvement tips, which have been shown to increase longevity.

We older people need mainly to avoid coronary problems, cancer, and diabetes as our major life shorteners. And many of us dislike high-exercise regimes. But all of these are (near-)zero effort ideas and have been proven by medical statistical studies to work.

1. Drink 40 cc of Sea Buckthorn (called Sanddorn here) juice daily, diluted in a glass of water. You can get Sea Buckthorn juice from a health store. Contains vitamins A,C and E in large doses. It will fortify your immune system by upto 60% by the end of the year, says the British Nutrition Foundation.
2. Daily dose of 300mg to ½ gramm of Magnesium, via pills from the drug store. Reduces your chance of a heart attack by up to 50%, according to the Framingham study, by feeding more O₂ to the heart, decreasing the blood pressure, thinning the blood and even improving your sleep :-)
3. Probiotic yoghurt five days a week ensures healthy gut flora, and helps against allergies and infections, says a Swedish study. Infection rates drop by 30% and recent US studies show improved cell-internal cancer protection.
4. Take your tea with honey instead of sugar. Contains antioxidants and flavonoids that help prevent calcification of the arteries, says the University of Illinois. That reminds me of a little poem "I eat my peas with honey, I've done it all my life, It makes the peas taste funny, But it keeps them on the knife" :-)
5. Get your oats ;-) 10 gramm of oats, ½ a banana and 20 gramms of nuts for breakfast can reduce your stress level by up to 30% (US study). Sorry, no Full English Breakfast, but guid Scots Porage:-) Go easy on the salt though.
6. "An apple a day keep the doctor away". Two are recommended by Finnish researchers to decrease your risk of type 2 diabetes by up to 27%, of having a stroke by up to 25%, lung cancer by up to 60% and heart disease by up to 25%.
7. A tablespoonful of olive oil daily, drunk pure or eaten in a salad etc, reduces the activity of the dangerous breast cancer "Her-2/new" cells by 46% and the risk of skin cancer for you sun-lovers by up to 20%, says a University of Chicago report.
8. A mango a day will improve your skin tone and leave you looking up to 5 years younger. Note to self: 12 mangoes a day would leave me with a baby's skin???
9. Just a handfull of walnuts each day (50 gramms) can lower your blood fat by 20%, reducing the LDL values drastically. You may need no LDL-pills any more!
10. 250 gramms (=½ lb) of Lamb's lettuce (called Feldsalat here) eaten twice a week will ensure a good supply of iron as a trace element, increasing your immunity system's protection factor by up to 30%.

• Go swimming twice a week for 30 minutes if you have a pool nearby. Backstroke and Crawl strengthen your back and reduce back pain frequency by 20%, says the University of Freiburg. Back pain is more frequent amongst older folks.
• Forgotten why you're reading this? Go read the Alzheimer early warning signs.
• Finally, go for that cancer checkup every year (women after 20 for breast cancer, men after 45 for prostrate cancer, both after 50 for gut cancer checkups).

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 19th December 2005 at 06:19 CET permalink Email

How do you blog? and When? or At All?

I say "just managed to post" because in the middle of Frank's assembled replies over the last week, his blogging tool "Typepad" crashed for a day and a half. Bummer :-(

So Frank and I have been mailing about availability, as a measure of the uptime of blogtool (and website) providers. I was astounded to learn that Frank does not have a service level agreement (SLA) with "Typepad", in fact, after reading their marketing page, I'm not sure that Typepad even knows what a service level agreement is! Neither do Blogger etc :-(

Here in backward old Yurp we often define service levels in our IT service contracts. Apparently, that is not the case in Ami-land. So let me explain. We refer to two, three, four and five nines availability. That means the services are online and available 99 (2 nines), or 99.9 (3 nines), or 99.99 (4 nines), or 99.999 (5 nines) percent of a specified time. Three nines imply that 8 hours of downtime per year are acceptable. Four nines imply that ¾ hour of downtime per year is acceptable. Five nines imply that 5 minutes of downtime per year are (barely) acceptable. Your home PC may reach between one nine (=90%) and two (=99%).

Examples : Airline booking systems may well contract for five nines over a 24 hour day, 7 day week, 365 day year. A small to medium eCommerce site might contract for four nines over a 23*7 week (1 hour for maintenance). ATMs (automatic banking teller machines) here seem to have 3 nines over a 22*7 period. Personally I go for a 3 nines service level agreement in a time-window having a 10 hour shift over a five day working week. That means, if the service fails at 18:01 CET on a friday then the contractual repair time clock doesn't start ticking until 8:00am monday morning. Public holidays (there are 12 to 14, depending on where you live) don't count as working days either. Obviously this SLA is unsuitable for eCommerce, but it's OK for me as an amateur blogger.

Now, pursuant to the Typepad crash (> 1 day), I would like to ask fellow bloggers what SLA levels they have with their providers? Or don't you care?

PS: I bet Frank thinks that Typepad are "effable" too, now ;-)

PPS: I see that Sitemeter went down for over 10 hours today too, screwing all the stats :-(

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 18th December 2005 at 17:00 CET permalink Email

How! Do you blog?

• Jonny B's secret diary,
• D-Flat Chime Bar,
• Special Constable.

Another minor observation is that, although several people also podcast, which implies that they have a microphone available, I seem to be the ONLY respondent sometimes dictating their blog. Everybody else just types. Why? Certainly talking is easier than hunt and peck (which I also do on the shorter posts and to set HTML).

The very openness of Frank's question lead to the varied answers of course, and this got me to thinking about ambiguity. We respondents interpreted his "How do you blog?" in different ways, just as you might do with this sentence : "I saw the man on the hill with a telescope". This could mean :-

• I used a telescope and I saw through it a man standing on a hill.
• With my naked eye I saw a man carrying a telescope on the hill up there.
• I saw a man standing emptyhanded on a hill which bears an astronomical dome.

Consider too "Time flies like an arrow":-

• "Fruit flies like a banana" , i.e. the verb was "like"
• "Time crawls like snail", i.e. the verb was "flies"
• "Time flies..." with a stopwatch as you would an arrow, i.e. the verb was "Time"

We humans use contextual information to disambiguate such sentences. Frank achieved the desired openness by providing minimal context, getting good results for minimal effort.

BTW, what is the most ambiguous sentence that you know of?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 17th December 2005 at 06:00 CET permalink Email

Vox Populi : your comments this week

Several of you sent comments on the blog this week. As chance would have it, many were pictures. First off, here's the pic Haggiswurst sent, about Bush and Liberty. In the same vein (sic!), Ivan sent a Xmas 2008 button, whereas Jane thought that the Bush propaganda poem was just a load of high-flying bull.
She also shows me Dubya's secret plan on how to leave Iraq in 2006. Scary!!!

Elaine Kalilily complained that my print size (12px) was too small, so I've just changed it for this month to 13px now. Is that better? If you use Opera you can change the zoom factor dynamically to compensate for poor eyesight. I've put a button in the header too, to tell readers that the preferred viewing resolution is 800*600. Of course, if you were looking with your screen set to e.g. 1280*1024, my 12px typeface WOULD look tiny :-(

Looking at my stats, I see that my diatribe against the death penalty cost me some 50-60 daily readers. I stand by my words; if you don't like em, just go away!

Several of you wrote about the Mars article. Manfred told me that the Face on Mars is now urban legend, and has been debunked by a higher resolution photo of the same area. Petra asked if I have a recent photo of the first Moonmen, lest they be forgotten? Here they are:-

Moonmen of Apollo 11 : Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin.

Haggiswurst, knowing I'm a Rammstein fan, sent me a still from Rammstein's "Amerika".

Winston Rand recently found his collection(4) of old slide rules of that era. Before you put them on eBay, Winston, let us bloggers make you an offer :-)

Anna Pashen wrote : "The way to achieve inner peace is to finish off all the things you have started"! So I looked round the house to see all the things I had started and hadn't finished ... and before leaving the house this morning I finished off: a bottle of red wine, a bottle of white wine, the Baileys, three Bacardi Breezers, the Jack Daniels, the Prozac, some Valium, and a box of chocolates. You have no idea what inner peace I now have ;-)

Carl looked at the maths calendar and thought he'd send me a couple of maths funnies:-
"Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary components." :-)
"Math problems? Call 1-800-[(10x)(13i)2]-[sin(xy)/2.362x]." :-)

Sergej has an anagram for us : "The Microsoft Corporation = Horror of Competition Acts" :-)

Lurker Sammy (is that a boy's or girl's name?) writes that he/she liked the Asian Flu joke a fortnight ago but just had the penny drop that A 'Jacques E. (Doc)' Story is a pun on "a shaggy dog story". Now he/she asks for more of the same; well try this one, Sammy :-

The village supermarket had a whole aisle of eggboxes left when the local (Mingleton?) authorities wrote saying that as a precaution against the Asian Flu, they were not allowed to sell them in their store nor advertise for them on their loudspeakers any longer :-( The canny grocer however, moved all the boxes out into the main road (i.e. not actually IN their store) and played a Rolling Stones song on the PA. Which Rolling Stones song?
"Eggs Aisle on Main Street" of course ;-)

Back on 6th December I made a first stab at answering Frank Paynter's question "How do you Blog?". Sammy asks me to explain my last line there , viz. "If you were wondering about the headline phrase Per Labora, that's Latin too, and means 'By (hard) work'. American readers may drop the final letter 'A' and consider tomorrow's date ;-)" That was a pun too, Sammy, "Per Labor" = "Pearl harbour" on the 7th December ;-)

Finally, Frank, here's an animated GIF I found on the web showing you How we ALL blog ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 16th December 2005 at 06:16 CET permalink Email

Scores of Christmas carols' words and tunes

Karaoke night at the pub and the amplifier gear was broken :-( So, after a few(?) beers in a Paderborn pub some Sennelager Brit soldiers loudly sang the few bawdy songs they knew off by heart. I'm ashamed to confess that I could still add a few verses of "Eskimo Nell" and "T'was on the good ship Venus" myself ;-) For the sake of decency, I'll not podcast them here ;-)

Chatting afterwards, I asked How about some Xmas carols, then?", but it turned out that hardly anyone knew any words and tunes any more. However, the barmaid, who is of the Kylie Minogue school of entertainment known as "Waggle your bum and shake your titty"(singular, these days) did manage to squeak "Oh Tannenbaum" at us, albeit well within a single octave :( Mind you, I'm worse. At school the music teacher used to complain "Savory, I play on the black notes and I play on the white notes, but you always manage to sing in the cracks" :-(

To make up for that, I'm blogging scores (well, 6) of the most popular (UK) Christmas carols today. So, assuming that you can read music, you have no excuse, and need to practice these six to please your granny at the family Xmas party. Let's kick off with Silent Night ;-)

And here are five more scores, just click on the links :-

• Hark the herald angels sing,
• The first Noel,
• Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
• Away in a manger, and finally of course,
• We wish you a merry Xmas and a happy New Year.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 14th December 2005 at 06:14 CET permalink Email

Counting on a new calender? Try this one.

Now is the time of year when many of us shop for 2006 calendars, or are given some as Xmas presents by friends. Needless to say, we usually have Bulldog calendars, I recommend this one. But this year my good friends Klaus and Doris (from Alaska) have found the ideal geeky calendar for a mathematician, as shown below. I'd like to recommend it to my blogreaders. It's called "The Mathematics Calender 2006" by Theoni Pappas and goes for $10.95 in US money. The ISBN number is 1-884550-34-7 , should you want to order one (recommended :-). Thanks, Klaus!

Besides regular annual calendars, Theoni Pappas has written some 14 books, that's twice as many as I have, so I know she must be a hard working lady. She's a maths teacher and consultant in my age group (B.A. Berkeley 1966, MA Stanford 1967). Her maths books have been translated into 11 languages; that's a measure of her popularity.

Publisher's blurb : "The Mathematics Calender is designed so that the problem appearing on each day has as its solution that date. The answer is only one small part in the process of solving a problem. The challenge is discovering how to arrive at the solution, and possibly discovering more than one method of solving it. Some problems have general information in addition to the mathematical information. The text and graphics accompanying each month have a wealth of information and even a bit of humour."

Sample puzzles : Here are a couple of example problems from this calendar. Now you have to work out on which day of the month each of these problems appears :-

Problem A : "A black sack has 14 green, 6 yellow, 2 red, and 10 black marbles. How many times must you reach in to be sure that you pick a yellow marble?"

Problem B : "Find a positive solution for 2x²-27x=45."

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on (-3i⁵)(4i) th December 2005 at 06:12 CET permalink Email

Being goosed by your own proper gander ;-)

I don't know whether this is being reported in the US or the UK, so for my Bushwhacking™ fans over there I'll tell you about the current major schoolbook scandal in Pakistan. Read it and laugh yourself silly :-)

Apparently, some two years ago people were invited to submit poems, i.a. on the subject of leadership, for inclusion in the then new Pakistani standard textbook of English, used for teaching throughout the country. A review board rejected any bad poetry or any with a fundamentalist, religious or political message. But this one snuck through, to the embarrassment of the Pakistani PM, Mr. Musharraf, who is criticised in his (Muslim) country for being too pro-Dubya.

I suspect this little piece of propaganda was planted by the CIA, the Vogon poetry is so bad and the message so obvious (except to the board of censors). I've reproduced the poem (author alledgedly unknown) below, read it first then I'll tell you about the propaganda that backfired.

Patient and steady with all he must bear, 
Ready to meet every challenge with care, 
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel, 
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real. 
Isn't afraid to propose what is bold, 
Doesn't conform to the usual mould, 
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won't do, 
Never backs down when he sees what is true, 
Tells it all straight, and means it all too. 
Going forward and knowing he's right, 
Even when doubted for why he would fight, 
Over and over he makes his case clear, 
Reaching to touch the ones who won't hear. 
Growing in strength he won't be unnerved, 
Ever assuring he'll stand by his word. 
Wanting the world to join his firm stand, 
Bracing for war, but praying for peace, 
Using his power so evil will cease, 
So much a leader and worthy of trust, 
Here stands a man who will do what he must. 

And the laughable CIA(?) propaganda message? Just read the first letters of each line, vertically down the poem :-( How sycophantically crappy can you get? This piece of propaganda is being removed from the second and subsequent editions, I'm pleased to report.

For comparison, a real work of art, Harald Pinter's Nobel Prize acceptance speech this week :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 10th December 2005 at 06:10 CET permalink Email

Dating a Martian

The length of a day on Mars is about 24 hours and 40 minutes, Terran time. So if the Martians name their marsdays (a term I just coined to distinguish them from terran days) the same as ours, then they would soon get out of sync, which would upset all those religious fundamentalists who needed to know when the Sabbath was (personally, I'd just ask Ozzy ;-).

So let's assume the Martians name their seven marsdays differently to avoid any judeo-christian religious conflicts and that they use marsdays of 24 marshours; marshours of 60 marsmins and marsmins of 60 marssex (for the punners amongst my readers this has nothing at all to do with the m*th*r-f*ck*ng time!).

The next unit of time to cause a problem is the month. On Earth this is related to the time the moon takes to orbit the Earth. But Mars has 2 moons, both really close in. Phobos zooms around Mars thrice daily and even Deimos takes just 5 ½ days for an orbit. Both are thus unsuitable for defining a month anywhere near the duration of a Terran month. So let's look at the Martian year and try to subdivide that.

The Martian tropical year is 668.6 marsdays long, that's about 687 Terran days, or 22.57 months. Assuming that Martians want a whole number of marsmonths per marsyear, and a month comparable to the Terran month (why?) that gives us some choices, all of them bad :-

• 22 marsmonths of 30.4 marsdays (=31.2 days).
• 23 marsmonths of just under 29 marsdays (=29.9 days).
• 24 marsmonths of 27.9 marsdays.
• 23 marsmonths on 4 of 7 marsyears and 22 marsmonths on the other 3 marsyears :-(
• 12 marsmonths (like Earth) but with 55.8 days.

I have ignored the problem that Mars' orbit is more elliptical than Earth's and the effect that this has on the durations listed above :-(

Now let's consider the marsyear. When do you start counting? And where? This is an arbitrary decision. Xians on earth use an assumed date of birth of a mythical person, that's pretty arbitrary! Jews started counting much earlier, Islam later. None had a year zero (Xian calendars jump from 1 BC to 1 AD afaik). The Intelligent design freaks align with James Ussher, setting an absolute date :-

"In the Beginning, God created Heaven and Earth". On 22nd October 4004 BC, at 6 o'clock in the afternoon, if we believe what archbishop Ussher of Armagh ( Northern Ireland) wrote in 1624 AD. That was a saturday ( Ussher used the Julian calender, which Britain did not adopt until 1752), so He was able to knock off late on a friday afternoon, just like the rest of us, and go down to the irish pub, which He had also created. Let us give thanks for small Murphy's (that's an Irish stout, just FYI :-). But I'm getting off track here; the starting date is arbitrary, so when in Rome, do as the Romans did, which was to count arbitrarily from the "Year of the Building of the City" = Anno Urba Conditae = AUC, which I did in today's martian datestamp :-)

None of this is compatible with the peculiar times and dates that Edgar Rice Burroughs used in his great "John Carter on Mars" books (whence the dateline Barsoom that I used today), and, after a few more Murphys in the Irish pub (the Guinness had run out) we agreed that Burroughs had probably wanted to write about Bar-rooms, not Barsoom, but that the combination of stout and deep-fried Mars bars had fried his brains, too. No wonder he was a little green, man! So , undecided about a date with a Martian, but slightly green ourselves, we staggered home.

So what do you think Martian colonists' timekeeping will look like?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 8th December 2005 at 06:08 CET permalink Email

How do you blog? Per Labora^*

Probably the most difficult part of blogging is having an idea what to blog about on any particular day ;-) Of coarse (sic!) there are those teenage girly blogs complaining about the size of their breasts, their nymphomanic tendencies and their periodic pain : the collective noun for that kind of blog being Whore-moans ;-) But if we restrict ourselves to the decent blogs, we find there are several types of posting which may alternate on a day by day basis. Let me try to categorise my own.

If I can't think of anything worth posting about, I don't. i.e. there is no regular schedule.

But if I have a good picture, I may just blog it on its own, without any text. Example.

I don't use a blogging tool, I just type in any HTML which may be needed. I'm fluent in HTML and fairly fluent in CSS. For the more complex stuff with neat visual effects ( Example) I'll often use template code as provided by Mandarin Meg on her excellent site. Thankyou, Michelle!

The next type (sic!) of blog-entry is a neat picture which I've found somewhere. I then append my comments. Example. The comments, and the HTML for the entry, are handtyped.

If I am on a rant or am relaying a conversation or doing something longer where the Muse just flows lightly, I'll be using Dragon's dictation software to enter the text, then editing in any HTML via keyboard later. Dragon's dictation software requires a quiet environment and it requires that I pre-choose the language I'm going to be speaking (English or German). It can't cope with foreign quotations in (say) Latin or Scots (see, for example, January 25, 2004) or French, all of which I've been known to use, so the foreign stuff has to be typed in separately.

But if I'm doing a review of a book, or music, or a product review, I'll most likely use an outliner first, just to get the structure of what I want to say. Then I'll either dictate or type in the content. Suitable illustrations etc. will be added to the HTML later. The dictation SW is liable to homonym errors, but spells all the words correctly, whereas the keyboarded stuff has the deliberate puns but may contain spelling mistakes. The spelling used is British English with occasional descents into 'merkin dialect to make cheap shots at our transatlantic friends :-)

The "Friday-feedback" types of entry here are your comments, mails and feedback cut-and-pasted (and perhaps elided) into a blog-post, because I don't support comments in real time.

Finally, the stuff gets proofread then uploaded to my provider's host early the next morning after I've had a chance to sleep on it (especially the rants ;-) . Then you read it, increasingly :-)

^* If you were wondering about the headline phrase Per Labora, that's Latin too, and means "By (hard) work". American readers may drop the final letter 'A' and consider tomorrow's date ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 6th December 2005 at 06:06 CET permalink Email

USA : the killer nation

Today, the USA, one of those third world countries still so primitive as to retain the death penalty, reached a despicable record.

They executed their 1000th death-row prisoner.

And those are just the ones we are officially allowed to know about. How many have been summarily executed without trial in Guantanamo Bay and the various other USA (CIA) gulags across the world remains an unknown number. "We don't do body counts" :-(

Listed on the left are the 33 states of shame, ordered by executions.

And what state stands out by far? Texas, the killer state.

And where does the oh-so-democratic leader of the "not-so-free" world , Dubya, a born-again Christian, reside? Crawford, Texas.

Crawford, Texas is just a few miles west of Waco, Texas. Hopefully you remember Waco; where the FBI went on a killing rampage back in '93. A local tradition perhaps? And Dubya is a local boy, he tells us. Waco!

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, you say (U.SA) ?

Not to mention start an illegal preemptive war, killing a hundred thousand and more.

Americans may not have the guts to impeach Bushco, but there is another court, to whom W cannot elect his cronies. The Day of Judgement will come, W, and you are no Abou Ben Adam.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 2nd December 2005 at 09:11 CET permalink Email

Having found out that the Brits often refer to their young women as "birds", she named her newly opened Chinese hostelry after her immigratory Jumbo flight :- "Asian bird flew Inn" ;-)

Due to the recent chain of events, her place got a bad reputation, and she was suffering a severe loss of trade, and so called in a local PR expert (NOT Michael O'Connor Clarke ;-) to advise on renaming her chinese 'fish and duck' restaurant and hostelry.

"I need a new name for this 'dish and fuck' place, as it is now a house of ill repute" she said. Being dyslexic, neither idioms nor spelling were her strong point :-)

After splitting his sides, the PR guy brusquely explained the mystery of English idioms to her, and asked "What major benefits does your place have that other chinese restaurants don't?"

The lady owner was severely miffed at being laughed at, and replied "Well, we have plenty of tables and so almost nobody has to line up or wait for a table." Then she added "But I'm not going to pay you, because you laughed at me!"

"In that case" answered the PR guy sweetly, I'd say "Few queue!" ;-)

"Good idea" replied the irate Chinese lady, having missed the pun, "Now sod off!"

Spelling was not her strong point, so this is the sign on her chinese restaurant ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 1st December 2005 at 06:01 CET permalink Email