Casting around for what to do with the front garden, I decided on a pergola overgrown with climbing flowers and fruits. Clematis and loganberries seems an ideal combination. But then I can also plant flowers in the spaces between the legs of the pergola for ground cover and colour, so what to plant?
I was looking at blues and purples when I stumbled upon Hydrangeas. They look lovely, but further research reveals that kids have started nicking the flowers to smoke 'em on the basis of a myth that they contain tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in cannabis. They don't contain any THC but they do contain Hydrogen Cyanide, the famous Nazi death gas. Now while there isn't enough HCN in a Hydrangea spliff to kill you there is enough to risk brain damage.
A combination of conscience and the fervent desire to not have my garden trashed (again) is why I'm not planting Hydrangeas until this idiocy dies a death. A shame really, because they do look lovely!
Showing posts with label eejits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eejits. Show all posts
Friday, 5 April 2013
Saturday, 23 March 2013
On complaints
It's needed saying for a while now: you have an absolute right to complain about the behaviour of another person. You do not have an absolute right to see that person punished if they've done nothing wrong.
Now in this oft-repeated story there are two stereotypes who crop up again and again. We have the Grumpy Granny, and we have Daily Mail Bloke. The victim can be practically anybody, though teenagers, ethnic minorities, the working class and the poor all seem to have a greater than average tendency to fall victim to this. Note that the name Daily Mail Bloke refers to the mindset of your average Daily Mail reader rather than the Daily Mail itself. Although...
Scene: A sunny Saturday afternoon. A bunch of teenage boys are sitting on a park bench, discussing Life, the Universe, and Everything. Alright, they're discussing football and women. A constable approaches...
Radnor Gardens, the wee park at the bottom of my street, is routinely used by anglers fishing in the Thames. A couple months ago, Daily Mail Bloke walked up to an angler to tell him that he didn't like the look of him. The angler - quite correctly - told Daily Mail Bloke to piss off. Daily Mail Bloke went home and complained to the council that "the fishermen in Radnor Gardens are all very rude and antisocial". Again, the word of one man against the characters of many. Sure enough, fishing was banned for a fortnight in Radnor Gardens.
Are we serious? Are we as a society so hellbent on ensuring that no complaint goes unremedied that we are willing to suspend all rights to leisure time just in case the oversensitive, bigoted sensibilities of the Grumpy Granny and Daily Mail Bloke are slighted by our presence?
No, but nor will we do anything about it.
Now in this oft-repeated story there are two stereotypes who crop up again and again. We have the Grumpy Granny, and we have Daily Mail Bloke. The victim can be practically anybody, though teenagers, ethnic minorities, the working class and the poor all seem to have a greater than average tendency to fall victim to this. Note that the name Daily Mail Bloke refers to the mindset of your average Daily Mail reader rather than the Daily Mail itself. Although...
Scene: A sunny Saturday afternoon. A bunch of teenage boys are sitting on a park bench, discussing Life, the Universe, and Everything. Alright, they're discussing football and women. A constable approaches...
Copper: Alright lads, do you mind telling me what you're doing here?
Boys: Just talking with my friends, passing the day.
Copper: I'm afraid we've had a complaint from the Grumpy Granny, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave.
Boys: But we haven't done anything, we're just sitting here.
Copper: Yes, but we've had a complaint, you see. We have to do something because we've had a complaint.I overhear this same discussion once a week around here. It's ridiculous that people think like this. We are all citizens, we all have a right to enjoy our city in whatever lawful way we see fit, yet half a dozen citizens at a time can have that right impinged upon by the authorities because the Grumpy Granny says she doesn't like the look of them. It's a joke!
Radnor Gardens, the wee park at the bottom of my street, is routinely used by anglers fishing in the Thames. A couple months ago, Daily Mail Bloke walked up to an angler to tell him that he didn't like the look of him. The angler - quite correctly - told Daily Mail Bloke to piss off. Daily Mail Bloke went home and complained to the council that "the fishermen in Radnor Gardens are all very rude and antisocial". Again, the word of one man against the characters of many. Sure enough, fishing was banned for a fortnight in Radnor Gardens.
Are we serious? Are we as a society so hellbent on ensuring that no complaint goes unremedied that we are willing to suspend all rights to leisure time just in case the oversensitive, bigoted sensibilities of the Grumpy Granny and Daily Mail Bloke are slighted by our presence?
No, but nor will we do anything about it.
Monday, 14 January 2013
In Pictures: MugGate!
This is what happens when the same bunch of activists are cooped up together in the same place for too long. If they don't get new blood, new ideas, the occasional voice of reason, they start to get a bit... sidetracked. Next thing you know it's "OMG there are TOO MANY MUGS!"
This is a real conversation that I was involved in. I'm "Bill Door" below:
This is a real conversation that I was involved in. I'm "Bill Door" below:
It's funnier with rum.
Update: I've since been banned from Occupy London for "flaming". Apparently it's now offensive to point out that we've got bigger things to worry about than mugs.
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
Amazon fail!
I ordered a baseplate for my composter 2 months ago. After 6 weeks I messaged them to say it hadn't arrived, so they re-sent it. It's just arrived now, I get it out of the bag and it's cracked through. FML!
On the plus side: my festive blues have lifted and I'm visiting Kew Gardens tomorrow.
On the plus side: my festive blues have lifted and I'm visiting Kew Gardens tomorrow.
Friday, 28 December 2012
How far do ethics go?
It's an interesting question. Normally in Science we think of ethics in terms of the direct effects of an experiment on subjects participants. True up to a point.
Let us consider the Bell Curve, a psychological treatise that didn't directly involve much in the way of live experimentation, but which was used as a scientific justification for widespread racism. Schools in black areas are underfunded compared with schools in white areas, and this underfunding leads to underperformance. The Bell Curve allowed politicians and racist pundits to argue that "these kids aren't underperforming because the school is underfunded, they're underperforming because black people are not as intelligent as white people". On that basis, correcting the underfunding was never a priority. Thousands and thousands of young people received a sub-standard education because of the abundance of melanin in their neighbourhood, and this was allowed to continue because some bloke they'd neither met nor heard of had gotten it into his head that they were just naturally stupid.
I would beg to differ as - indirectly - this man has saved my life on more than one occasion. At any rate, the racial aspects of the Bell Curve were later proven to be dodgy as fuck, and using that to form policy is seen as scientifically unethical. If doing your thang as a researcher causes others to be harmed - even if they aren't involved - and you could have foreseen or avoided such then you are unethical. Simple enough.
People say that politics should not interfere in Science. True up to a point. Misusing Science (or Psychology) to round up political undesirables is reprehensible behaviour on the part of all involved. With that said, unfettered Science has given the world its fair share of horrors. Freedom without some degree of regulation is like a loaded gun in the hands of a toddler. There must be, not control as such, but limits. There must be checks in place to ensure that innocents have nothing to fear from Science. There must be acts that are deemed to be beyond the pale.
Ethics, in my view, begins with the germ of a thought in the researcher's mind before the study has even been fully conceived and ends only when those ripples upon the surface of history which were caused by the study have ceased. Typically this point will be reached long after a prominent researcher has died. Indeed, his great-grandkids might have great-grandkids by the time we can say that his work is no longer skewing the world. If you loose a thing upon the world - be it a theory or an ideology - then you are responsible for what it does.
In my view of ethics, J. Robert Oppenheimer killed a quarter of a million civilians, because he built his doomsday device knowing full well that it was a tool for levelling and irradiating cities. If we divide the casualties (c.250,000) by the number of weapons needed to cause that many casualties (2), then at a ratio of 125,000:1 we can say that the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the single most efficient slaughter of civilians in human history. He's a hero to some, sadly, because the bomb is said to have ended WWII and saved the lives of thousands of soldiers who would've been flung back into combat had the war continued. Standing between the war and the civilians is what soldiers are meant to be for. A few thousand troops saved at the cost of a quarter of a million civilians is not an ethical trade. Of course to some people it makes a difference that the unelected emperor of those civilians was in bed with the Nazis. To others, it makes a difference that those civilians weren't white.
So then I encountered this article via a link on Facebook. The university in question is undermining Palestinian homes in occupied territory at the risk of causing a collapse. They say that groups calling for a boycott are attempting to bring politics into the business of what should and shouldn't be researched. I disagree. Ethical oversight prohibits abuse primarily because it is abuse. Our notions of what constitutes abuse evolve with the political understanding of the times, but if we today perceive it as abuse then it is abuse, plain and simple. Endangering the lives of families is not made acceptable just because they're Palestinians living somewhere Israel wants. If anything, by forcing this upon those under occupation it is the university itself which has brought politics into research, as there's no way in hell they'd be allowed to do that kind of maverick shit in Tel Aviv!
It then falls to ethics bodies to intervene and halt the study.
If however the ethics body cannot or will not apply its own rules; be it because the abuser is untouchable (as in this case, Israel has Uncle Sam behind it to grant impunity), or because the ethics body has been bought, then we reach an unfortunate circumstance wherein the nearest semblance of ethical enforcement is obstruction by the protest of citizens. A boycott or blockade has no weight on paper, it is unaccountable; but on the other hand I struggle to think of a more democratic way for a society and its citizens to articulate the point at which they draw the line between acceptable conduct and unacceptable conduct.
Now for the ethical distinction between winging a stone at the guy who took the decision to dig under homes in the first place and winging a stone at some poor bastard who is just doing his job...
Let us consider the Bell Curve, a psychological treatise that didn't directly involve much in the way of live experimentation, but which was used as a scientific justification for widespread racism. Schools in black areas are underfunded compared with schools in white areas, and this underfunding leads to underperformance. The Bell Curve allowed politicians and racist pundits to argue that "these kids aren't underperforming because the school is underfunded, they're underperforming because black people are not as intelligent as white people". On that basis, correcting the underfunding was never a priority. Thousands and thousands of young people received a sub-standard education because of the abundance of melanin in their neighbourhood, and this was allowed to continue because some bloke they'd neither met nor heard of had gotten it into his head that they were just naturally stupid.
I would beg to differ as - indirectly - this man has saved my life on more than one occasion. At any rate, the racial aspects of the Bell Curve were later proven to be dodgy as fuck, and using that to form policy is seen as scientifically unethical. If doing your thang as a researcher causes others to be harmed - even if they aren't involved - and you could have foreseen or avoided such then you are unethical. Simple enough.
People say that politics should not interfere in Science. True up to a point. Misusing Science (or Psychology) to round up political undesirables is reprehensible behaviour on the part of all involved. With that said, unfettered Science has given the world its fair share of horrors. Freedom without some degree of regulation is like a loaded gun in the hands of a toddler. There must be, not control as such, but limits. There must be checks in place to ensure that innocents have nothing to fear from Science. There must be acts that are deemed to be beyond the pale.
Ethics, in my view, begins with the germ of a thought in the researcher's mind before the study has even been fully conceived and ends only when those ripples upon the surface of history which were caused by the study have ceased. Typically this point will be reached long after a prominent researcher has died. Indeed, his great-grandkids might have great-grandkids by the time we can say that his work is no longer skewing the world. If you loose a thing upon the world - be it a theory or an ideology - then you are responsible for what it does.
In my view of ethics, J. Robert Oppenheimer killed a quarter of a million civilians, because he built his doomsday device knowing full well that it was a tool for levelling and irradiating cities. If we divide the casualties (c.250,000) by the number of weapons needed to cause that many casualties (2), then at a ratio of 125,000:1 we can say that the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the single most efficient slaughter of civilians in human history. He's a hero to some, sadly, because the bomb is said to have ended WWII and saved the lives of thousands of soldiers who would've been flung back into combat had the war continued. Standing between the war and the civilians is what soldiers are meant to be for. A few thousand troops saved at the cost of a quarter of a million civilians is not an ethical trade. Of course to some people it makes a difference that the unelected emperor of those civilians was in bed with the Nazis. To others, it makes a difference that those civilians weren't white.
So then I encountered this article via a link on Facebook. The university in question is undermining Palestinian homes in occupied territory at the risk of causing a collapse. They say that groups calling for a boycott are attempting to bring politics into the business of what should and shouldn't be researched. I disagree. Ethical oversight prohibits abuse primarily because it is abuse. Our notions of what constitutes abuse evolve with the political understanding of the times, but if we today perceive it as abuse then it is abuse, plain and simple. Endangering the lives of families is not made acceptable just because they're Palestinians living somewhere Israel wants. If anything, by forcing this upon those under occupation it is the university itself which has brought politics into research, as there's no way in hell they'd be allowed to do that kind of maverick shit in Tel Aviv!
It then falls to ethics bodies to intervene and halt the study.
If however the ethics body cannot or will not apply its own rules; be it because the abuser is untouchable (as in this case, Israel has Uncle Sam behind it to grant impunity), or because the ethics body has been bought, then we reach an unfortunate circumstance wherein the nearest semblance of ethical enforcement is obstruction by the protest of citizens. A boycott or blockade has no weight on paper, it is unaccountable; but on the other hand I struggle to think of a more democratic way for a society and its citizens to articulate the point at which they draw the line between acceptable conduct and unacceptable conduct.
Now for the ethical distinction between winging a stone at the guy who took the decision to dig under homes in the first place and winging a stone at some poor bastard who is just doing his job...
Sunday, 16 December 2012
Woodcare
Thanks to the efforts of the weather, crap builders and one inconsiderate smoker (who has been soundly bollocked, fear not), my bench is in a bit of a sorry state. I've brought it in, planed it and sanded it. I also improved it by using the plane to round off the corners, making it more comfortable. Granddad Rab would be proud-ish. I'll give it another sanding tomorrow morning then varnish it. Jobs like these make me wish I still owned a belt sander (we lost it in a move), so when I've a few bob spare I'll have to have a shufti on ebay.
I picked up a trio of birdhouses today; they'll also go up tomorrow. I can make my own easily enough, but I had a coupon that made these more economical to buy. They're of a size to attract tits to the garden - stop sniggering! Got dirty minds the lot o' youse! Anywho, there's something of a debate on painting and/or staining birdhouses. Some say do it, it makes them look pretty and can ensure that they're in keeping with the look of the garden. Others say don't do it, that you don't know what chemicals are in your paint or stain and that it might poison the birds.
I have my own line of reasoning on the matter, and that is that if you put a glass over the entry hole and draw round it, then only paint outside the line, you should minimise the likelihood of stuff getting on the bird. You should also refrain from painting the roof, as water on the roof might drip in through a gap in the wood, and don't paint over the baseplate. The baseplate has gaps around it to allow air in and to allow any water that gets in to drain away, protecting nestlings from drowning or suffocation. Painting this can occlude the gap and cause these problems. Finally, never paint or stain the inside of the birdhouse. This should remain largely dry in use, it may even pick up oil from the bird's feathers, so there is really no need to introduce chemicals into such an enclosed environment.
Lastly then, I've found out how foxes are getting into the garden. It's hard to see scale in a vertical photo, but this lot is six feet high!
Pics of the finished bench and the birdhouses in situ will appear either tomorrow or Tuesday. FSM knows what I'm gonna do about Steptoe's Yard...
Monday, 3 December 2012
Rhizobium woes
Thus far, my beans aren't nodulating. I still don't know if the deficiency is in cobalt or Rhizobium. I've been looking online for a cheap way to test for the presence of Co whilst browsing Rhizobium stockists.
Most places (quite sensibly) won't ship live bacteria to any address that isn't a school or college. Trouble is that this includes Rhizobium. Some strains of Rhizobium can infect humans, but not the same ones that infect beans. Thus far, the only place I've found that'll sell me Rhizobium will also sell me Penicillium, Candida, and Staphylococcus. OH HELL NO! I shan't publish the address because I don't want to encourage or facilitate stupidity.
Staphylococcus is the genus which includes the dreaded MRSA. Whilst certainly dreaded, MRSA lives on the skin of 1-in-3 of us and is only likely to harm you if you have an open wound or a compromised immune system. Still, after the huge media flap over MRSA (ethical journalism FAIL!), you'd think they'd be careful with Staphylococcus.
Penicillium gives us penicillin. Penicillin is restricted for a good reason, in that overuse of it is what started this whole superbug fiasco in the first place. People should not be making batches of dubious penicillin in their garden sheds.
Candida is a fungus that gives you ringworm or thrush. Bloodstream infections from Candida have a mortality rate of between forty and fifty percent. A vengeful, twisted eejit who got hold of a batch of Candida could load up the Karcher, take it down to Westfield and give ten thousand people a dose of thrush. It also makes wine go off and I can't be having that!
Suffice it to say that I shan't be shopping at a place so reckless as to offer any germs to anyone.
So, I'm back to square one. A mate's dad grows V. faba and he gets N fixation just fine, so I'm trying to get a clod of his soil to spread on mine. He's fine with it, the only problem is he's down in Southampton. Next time I visit Ro I'll stop by, but that won't be for a while yet.
I best get working on that Co test...
Most places (quite sensibly) won't ship live bacteria to any address that isn't a school or college. Trouble is that this includes Rhizobium. Some strains of Rhizobium can infect humans, but not the same ones that infect beans. Thus far, the only place I've found that'll sell me Rhizobium will also sell me Penicillium, Candida, and Staphylococcus. OH HELL NO! I shan't publish the address because I don't want to encourage or facilitate stupidity.
Staphylococcus is the genus which includes the dreaded MRSA. Whilst certainly dreaded, MRSA lives on the skin of 1-in-3 of us and is only likely to harm you if you have an open wound or a compromised immune system. Still, after the huge media flap over MRSA (ethical journalism FAIL!), you'd think they'd be careful with Staphylococcus.
Penicillium gives us penicillin. Penicillin is restricted for a good reason, in that overuse of it is what started this whole superbug fiasco in the first place. People should not be making batches of dubious penicillin in their garden sheds.
Candida is a fungus that gives you ringworm or thrush. Bloodstream infections from Candida have a mortality rate of between forty and fifty percent. A vengeful, twisted eejit who got hold of a batch of Candida could load up the Karcher, take it down to Westfield and give ten thousand people a dose of thrush. It also makes wine go off and I can't be having that!
Suffice it to say that I shan't be shopping at a place so reckless as to offer any germs to anyone.
So, I'm back to square one. A mate's dad grows V. faba and he gets N fixation just fine, so I'm trying to get a clod of his soil to spread on mine. He's fine with it, the only problem is he's down in Southampton. Next time I visit Ro I'll stop by, but that won't be for a while yet.
I best get working on that Co test...
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
I shouldn't have to say it!
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