Joined-up thinking?

Is it just me... or is there a significant lack of joined up thinking or is there something odd going on?

It is now impossible to buy standard incandescent light bulbs in the UK because they use too much electricity and the government has decided in their wisdom to ban them and force everyone to buy the much more expensive low-energy bulbs.

Now counter this with the news that the UK government is going to offer everyone £5000 to buy an electric car... which of course uses a lot more electricity than a petrol or diesel driven one. Perhaps the electricity saved by the light bulbs will power the cars! Doubt it though...

In 2012 the analogue TV signal will be completely deactivated in the UK meaning that everyone will either need a digital TV or a set-top box. I understand that digital TVs use more electricity than an analogue one and certainly a set-top box will use more than a "no set-top box"...

Counter all this with the news from the current generation of power stations are just about to draw their pensions and unless someone does something quickly and we start building new (nuclear) power stations the UK will very soon run out of generating capacity.

Machiavelli or cock-up?

Can someone tell me; what is so important about 0.1%?

Why is the whole world focused on 0.1% of the global problem of the recession? The RBS pension scandal and now the AIG bonus scandal (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7667214.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7960459.stm )

RBS received a total of £33 billion of tax payers money to prop it up and AIG has received a staggering (to use Robert Peston's favourite adjective) $170 billion.

Now Sir Fred Goodwin, who seems to be the devil incarnate if you follow the press, received a pension pot of £16 million, and the senior executives of AIG got a total of $165 million in bonuses.

All the newspapers, TV news, pundits and commentators are literally (in the case of Robert Peston) foaming at the mouth: "Scandalous! That's tax payers money being thrown away - GRRR!"

The problem is that the worlds Million and Billion sound so similar, but are in reality so different.

Lets look at the figures:

RBS got £33,000,000,000 and Sir Fred got £16,000,000. In terms of a percentage Sir Fred's pension is

£16,000,000

£33,000,000,000

 = 

1

2,000

approximately, or 0.05%

AIG got $170,000,000,000 and the executives got $165,000,000. That's

$165,000,000

$170,000,000,000

 = 

1

1,000

approximately or 0.1%

It is like giving a down-and-out a £10 note and then complaining when he gives a his dog a penny chew!

What I am far more interested in is
(a) what is happening to the 99.9%
(b) where all this money came from and how the government is going to pay for it.

Wikipedia

My friends often call me the "Dickipedia" (Spotted Dick's knowledge is legendary - apparently) but I do actually make a lot of use of Wikipedia, as I believe a lot of other people do to.

So if you want Wikipedia to carry on going, then it is time to put your hands in your pockets and give them some dosh... I have...

Brewing Beer - the first brew - part 1

Brewing Beer - Ahhh - a subject close to my heart...

I've started brewing beer again for the first time in about 7 or 8 years. I suppose I haven't brewed anything (apart from cider) for such a long time for two fundamental reasons. Firstly I've been abroad a lot and secondly the house isn't really ideal for brewing beer. The house has got a lot of land and a double storey garage, but there is only one tiny little shed at the back of the house and the garage as at the end of a 50 metre drive and has no electricity, or water...

I have been exploring getting electricity to the garage and using the upper storey of the garage as a brewery. What I thought would be a "piece of cake" has turned out to be expensive and complex as the government has stuck its nose into this aspect of life along with almost every other and it is virtually impossible to DIY 'lecy now. Everything has to be inspected and have a "Part P" certificate issued. I've had a couple of local electricians to look and quote - it should be “a doddle” - 50 metres of armoured cable, a few plugs and lights, but the only quote so far is for £2,100!!!

So, frustrated, I decided to cut to the chase and get brewing. I decided this time to do the whole thing properly and start with malted grain rather than various forms of malt extract. I thought I would start off with something simple like a standard English Bitter.

There is an excellent little brew shop about 10 miles from home and I have been reading extensively about brewing for two months now, so I knew exactly what I wanted; a new boiler, a mash tun (an Eskimi with a tap and some copper piping to you) a new brewing container and some grain, hops and yeast, a few chemicals and off we go!

The man in the shop was very helpful (as ever) and I soon had what I needed to make my own version of Fuller’s London Pride… Except the man didn’t sell one of the ingredients “Invert Sugar” and anyway I didn’t want use sugar (I do know how to “invert” sugar and it doesn’t involve turning the pack upside down) so I bought some malt to cover that bit. But when I got home I discovered that the man in the shop hadn’t sold me the Target Hops the recipe needed. So I decided to go “off trail” and play things by ear – or rather nose and make things up as I went along. I substituted Target hops with Northdown hops which were already playing another role in the brew, replaced the 650 grams Invert Sugar with 500 grams of malt, and to compensate increased the amount of grain from a total weight of 3.5kg to 4kg.

Things went swimmingly at first despite doing the brew half in the kitchen and half in the freezing cold back garden – but without getting too technical, the “sparging” was a nightmare it took about 6 hours to get the required quantity of hot water through the grains, and as a result despite starting the brewing at about 10:30am I didn’t finish until 9:30pm when I finally added the yeast to the brew, switched on the heater and tucked the brew into the tiny shed surrounded by cushions from our garden furniture.

That was on Tuesday. I’ve just “dropped” the beer (filtered it) and it is looking, smelling and tasting (if you ignore the yeast and sweetness) good… Mind you “Pride of Dockenfield” is going to be a “skull splitter”. The OG was meant to be 1042 but turned out to be 1050 which means the beer will be about 5.5% alcohol! Actually that is good practice for me as the next brew I make will be a Belgian Trappist style ale, if all goes to plan…

I’ll keep you posted and some of you (un)lucky folk may get some bottles of the "Pride of Dockenfield" thrust upon you.

Brussel's Statues

Sorry about the lack of activity on this blog - no excuse except that when I'm busy I seem to find plenty of time to write my blog, and when I have all the time in the world I don't seem to be able to find the time to do it! Anyway I've been looking through my photos of Brussels (rather nostalgically as I'm not ther at the moment) and have been inspired to write again...


I wondered about putting a 'Discretion Advised' label on this post, but given that all these statues are on public display I decided not to - but on the other hand if you are easily offended please read no further!

Brussels is famous for many things including Sprouts and bureaucracy, but not many people comment upon one fabulous feature of the city - its amazing set of statues.

Of course Brussels is famous for the Manneken Piss (Petit Julien to his friends)

there are load and loads of other statues - including the Jeanneke Piss, Julien's sister who is to be found close to the wonderful Delirium Tremens bar

(not my photo)

and the peeing dog

but there are loads and loads of other wacky statues to be found.

How about this one (at the top of St. Catherine's)?

Not very interesting? Oh yes it is - it is dedicated to all the pigeons who died in the First World War!

Then there is the really odd set of statues close to the Royal Park and Beaux Artes on the Monte des Artes... They look fairly normal from a distance

But up close, well I hardly dare comment upon them!

I don't know what they are on - but it looks like one heck of a party!

As well as these nudes there are loads of other shapely ladies with quite a lot on display...

This lady is kneeling onto of a tall pillar close to the Gare Central then of course there are the fantastic statues on the Cinquintinaire arch. This beauty is quite close to ground level

While the massive gilded statues are impressive through a telephoto lens.

One of my favourites are the lovers in Place de la Monnaie by the opera house.

As well as these more than slightly odd statues there are hundreds upon hundreds of others that people just walk by without even noticing them. Here are a few examples:

St. Michael conquering the devil (see him cowering beneath) on the corner of Rue St Michel and Rue Adolph Max

Then there are the statues around the Grande Place

There are a series of little fountains throughout Brussels with tiny statues on the top depicting children's games. Here is an example of one of them

I've put all these photos plus one or two others of the photos in Brussels and beyond on my Fotki site and I hope to keep adding to the collection.

Dumb but not Stupid

A long time ago I worked with a rather unpleasant fellow who amongst other things tried to convince me that intelligence is impossible without language. I disagreed with him, but I couldn’t prove him wrong – but recent developments seem to prove that, in some fields at least, language is not a precursor for intelligence.

Recent experiments with Native Australian (Aborigine) children have shown that you don’t need a word for a number to understand it. They did some tests on some English speaking Aborigine kids in a suburb of Melbourne and on another group of children in the Outback. The Outback children didn’t speak English and their mother tongue had no words for numbers bigger than 3 or 4 – basically they count “one”, “two”, “more than two”, and finally “a lot more than two”.

Both groups were given a bag full of discs and then asked to listen to someone repeatedly banging two sticks together. They then had to selected the same number of discs as clicks. To the researchers’ surprise the children in the Outback who have no words for numbers did just as well as the kids in Melbourne who could count. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7563265.stm

In another interesting experiment it has been suggested that elephants can count too. Obviously they have no words for numbers, but in Japan one Indian elephant called Ashya can nevertheless count. To demonstrate this she is presented with two large empty buckets. The keeper then randomly and repeatedly drop a few apples into each bucket. Two into the left, three into the right, five into the left, three into the right, etc… and then the keeper offers both buckets to the elephant. Aysha has been trained that she will only be allowed the contents of one of the buckets and not both. Amazingly, given that the elephant “can’t count or add” because she has no words for numbers, she picks the bucket holding the most apples 75% of the time. See http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14569-elephants-master-basic-mathematics.html

This ability is apparently very different from the one ‘Clever Hans’ had. Clever Hans was a horse that could apparently do sums and understand German (not surprising as he was from Germany). When asked “What is 2 + 3?”, Hans would tap his hoof on the ground 5 times, when asked “What is 6 divided by 3?”, Hans would tap his hoof twice. But when asked “What is the square of the square root of 144 minus the square root of 81” Hans got the answer wrong, so he wasn’t a great mathematician.

Hans could also read. If he was shown a written question he would still get the answer right… providing that his owner also saw the question, and knew the answer…

What “Clever” Hans was doing was reading the body language of his owner who knew the answers to the simple questions. Hans would simply tap his hoof until he reached the right answer known by his owner. At that point Hans’ owner would unconsciously relax and Hans would stop tapping… So Hans couldn’t count or even understand the questions, but he did understand his owner, so he wasn’t so stupid either. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_hans

I do hope, by the way, the testers of the elephant and the Australian children took steps to avoid the “Clever Hans Effect”!

Camping with the Blue Moon H3

Last weekend was a Bank Holiday in England, but here in Belgium we had our Bank Holiday two weeks before that starting on Friday 15th August – Assumption.

Because that weekend was close to the birthday of two of my fellow Blue Moon Hashers (Blue Willy and Ice Trix) and well, just because, it was decided that a group of us should go camping!

The site which Ice Trix selected was La Ferme Biologique Dorlou in the village of Wodecq close to the French border. Then we discovered it was not only close to the Graal Brewery but also was close to the start of a running race which suited the majority of us happy campers as we all run with the Blue Moon Hash House Harriers.

I had no camping gear at all, so the weekend before went and bought a sleeping bag and an airbed – I was amazed how cheap and compact the sleeping bag was and marvelled how technology had come on so far since I last went camping (about 30 years ago!).

I didn’t need a tent because both Hash Hole and Cock Trix both had massive ones and I had been offered a room in each – tents with rooms – whow camping technology has advanced!

I drove the hundred odd kilometers on Friday lunchtime and met up with the others. We were allotted a little meadow at what appeared to be at the back of the campsite – but as the site curled around the farm was in fact just next to the farmyard as you can see in this photo.


Soon tents were going up everywhere – Hash Hole’s 4 bedroom palace (to be shared by Hash Hole, Forrest Gulp, their little 4 month old baby boy Bonsai and me) Cock Trix’s 3 bedroom mansion to be (shared by Cock Trix, Ice Trix, Blue Willy and Rhythm Stick) and more traditional style 2 man tents for Ez Over and Spare Rib, Satan’s Lil Helper and Seb and Just Hugh’s in his space age fully ruggedized one man wonder. The tents as well as being a lot bigger than I remember, I could stand up in Hash Hole’s palace, are a lot easier to put up nowadays – once you get the basic concept of the rods and poles and the colour coding.

Then it was time to sit back and admire our handy work over a beer or two, or three or four – then Hash Hole produced some Margaritas and things started to get a bit blurry.

We took a stroll through the village to try to find the start of the run, but failed and then had a look round the farmyard to visit all the animals which included pigs and loads of piglets, cows, chickens and rabbits. I amused the pigs and my friends with my imitation of the pigs and gave just about everyone of them a good scratch (the pigs, not my friends).

The smell in the farm buildings was terrible though, so we didn’t stay long and went back to the BBQ.

We had an excellent BBQ on a tiny bright orange device brought by Ice Trix.



We even invented a way of getting it to furnace heat in no time by using the electric pump meant to blow up the airbeds to fan the fire (after I had spent sometime fanning it).

The meal was a long drawn out affair. There was, of course, far to much food and way way too much to drink, but I was doing OK until someone produced a bottle of Jameson’s. I then managed to break one of the camping chairs that Blue Willy had brought along, though he did kindly say it was already broken and soon after I decided it was time to go to bed.

The airbed was already pumped up, so it was a simple matter of putting it in my allotted room in Hash Hole Palace and getting into my sleeping bag – but this turned out to be a lot more complicated than I had expected. First of all the airbed wouldn’t cooperate and kept on tipping me off onto the floor, and when I had mastered that I couldn’t for some strange reason get into the sleeping bag. Finally I gave up and draped it over myself and covered that with a blanket I had brought with me from the car. I put in my earplugs, because being a bit of a country-boy I know that it can get a bit noisy on a farm...

I slept well until about 6:30am when some b@$t@rd started a large very noisy tractor about 6 inches from my ear which he then proceeded to hit with a sledge hammer for the next hour. I eventually gave up to and crawled out from under the sleeping bag and out into the outside world to find out what was really happening. I must admit I was surprised to see a man, a tractor with its engine running and him hitting it with a sledge hammer all about 6 feet from where I had been lying.

This was a working farm, and it was mid August – Harvest Time. The tractor’s rear towing coupling seemed to be causing the farmer some problems – hence the hammering. Eventually he gave up and roared off to do some farming with lots of rushing around with tractors and combine harvesters in a lot of the fields around us.

Just Hugh took pity on me and made me some porridge and a cup of tea while slowly the rest of the camp woke up. When I felt strong enough I went for a shower in the communal bathrooms provided by the campsite in one of the barns. The shower randomly sprayed me with scalding hot and freezing cold water but I managed to wash and shave without inflicting myself with anything more serious than simultaneous frostbite and 3rd degree burns.

After we had all breakfasted we set off to visit the Graal Brewery which was about 10km from the campsite. We pooled cars, so I rode with Just Hugh and a couple of others.

At the brewery the brewer’s wife greeted us. She showed us round the tiny brewery at the back of a small courtyard. It wasn’t actually brewing anything when we went around but nevertheless I felt very jealous – I would love to own and run a brewery of that size myself.

After the short tour we sat out in the courtyard and in the newly arrived sun sampled the complete range of beers the Graal produces (see http://www.degraal.be/products2.htm)

My favourite was the Triverius a blanche in the Hoegaarten style (but better). I bought a dozen bottles and a glass as a memento.

By the time we got back to the campsite it was just about time for the race. The runners (Ez Over, Ice Trix, Spare Rib, Just Hugh, Cock Trix, Hash Hole and myself) changed and set off back through the village to find the race start. We had turned back too soon the evening before; the start was at the village school about 1km from the campsite. What had been a quiet little village the night before was now a mass of cars and runners. We signed up, paid our €3 and got our numbers.

There were a lot of runners and a lot of very fit looking runners at that – I knew I was outclassed but the excitement of the whole thing got to me and I covered the first 2kms of the 12.55kms race in 8 minutes. When I realised that I made myself slow down and let hundreds of people pass me – in retrospect this was a mistake, but I was not feeling great (hangover) and it was really quite hot. I chugged along through the very pretty countryside and suddenly after about 5kms found myself back at the start where the trail then looped off in another even prettier direction, that unfortunately included a massive hill which I walked up.

I was really pleased to get to the end of the run, and given how hung over I was and how unfit I am I was reasonably pleased with my time – for the record, this is what we all did (which you can check here)

Who	Place	Time
Just Hugh	102	00:56:24
Spare Rib	124	00:58:29
Ez Over	177	01:02:03
Cock Trix	203	01:04:54
Hash Hole	246	01:09:33
Blue Willy	248	01:09:41
Spotted Dick	255	01:11:11
Ice Trix	301	01:23:41

After drinking a lot of water we walked back to the campsite and I crashed out for a much needed snooze.

While we had been away the farmer had put a large rather lame cow in the adjoining paddock and switched on the electrified fence – something I think everyone of us discovered at some stage during the early evening as we hung our wet running gear out to dry.

The meal that night was in the campsite’s farm restaurant. The starters and the pudding were excellent but we had a very long wait for the main course which was overcooked when it arrived – I think our numbers rather overwhelmed the chef.

After a fairly restrained time around the unlit BBQ we all headed off to our tents. For some reason this time I instantly could see why I was having problems the night before with the sleeping bag – it was made for a midget! It only came up to my stomach, so once again I covered myself in my trusty blanket.

It had been hot and sunny all day so the combine harvesters were making hay (well straw actually) and were roaring in the distance in all directions well into the early hours– fortunately for those of us without earplugs, but not the farmer, it rained at 3am and that stopped the harvest.

We were awoken by the tractor again at 7am (well it was Sunday, so the farmer had a lie in). This time he revved up and moved off, only to come back again almost instantly. He kept this up for an hour before I couldn’t stand it any longer and crawled out of my diminutive sleeping bag to discover just what the silly b@$t@rd was up to…

Stacking straw bales in the barn right by our camp – that’s what – he kept it up for about another hour until he managed to hit the gutter with the forklift attachment on the front of the tractor and almost ripped it off. He got soaked with the rainwater still in the gutter and we all laughed.

I told everyone about my problems with the sleeping bag and they all insisted that I showed it to them. "Of course, it is a child's sleeping bag," said Just Hugh. "How do you know?" I asked. "It says so on the side, look". The sleeping bag had the words LowesKid (or some such) on the side - I honestly thought that was all one word! Mystery solved and I felt very foolish and a little cheated until I remembered it had only cost me €15.

Breakfast cum lunch was an excellent prolonged BBQ where we attempted to cook and eat every piece of meat we had brought with us. Because Ice Trix’s BBQ was so small this took a long long time, but no one was in any hurry to leave, and besides the tents needed time to dry off.

Finally it was time to take down the tents and try and fold them up small enough to fit into the tiny containers they arrived in – something that Cock Trix managed but Hash Hole totally failed at. We paid up a massive €6 each for the privilege of sleeping in the farmers field and after a game of boules headed off home back to Brussels.

We all agreed we would do it again – but not during the Harvest!!!

By the way you can see my photos of the event on my Fotki page, or alternatively have a look at Forrest Gulp's excellent photos her Blue Moon Fotki page (which does have one or two embarrassing shots of me).