Farting through my Fingertips

cool, and ciao
as they say in ireland

no
they say
ciao wiedersehen
(©: nutgroist™)

JESUS irresponsibility coupled with authority makes me angry.

China elects to kill world for short-term economic gain

I could talk about patterns and so forth about now, but I'm not in the mood to spend the time to put together an iron-clad argument so it's neither wise nor worthwhile.
Suffice it to say, selfishness relies on parasitism.

The Metric shall define the Result

"At the moment estimating the emissions from each mine is subject to a wide variance due to a number of factors. The result of this is that CMM Coal Mine Methane" [ACTUALLY: abandoned-coal-mines' methane] cannot be included in the Methane Inventory of the UK, whereas methane emissions from working mines are because it is possible for them to be measured. This resulted in working mine methane qualifying for the UK's pilot Emissions Trading Scheme whereas CMM is excluded."

Rephrased: "Yes, we know we're pumping a gas 20 times more greenhousy than carbon dioxide, but because we can't get a 100% certain measure given the amount of money we want to spend on this measure, we can't get any funding to control it."

We know nothing, I mean NOTHING about genetics and their interactions, let alone how our bodies work

This particular article is only second-order effect enraging. Every single test of low-level genetic manipulation demonstrates almost immediately that our best experts don't have a clue what's going on in any other sense than their microscopic subset of particular research questions. Junk DNA? Oh, actually, that becomes highly active in brain cells and some nerves. We only just noticed that (announced last week). Gosh. The 90% of the brain that's "wasted"? Glial cells, dismissed as pure fat framework for neurons. Oh, wait, they have all sorts of cognition-affecting behaviour operating more slowly but just as significantly as neurons. I could rant for hours about this sort of stuff, in particular the diet and exercise fatuities, but the primary thing I want to flag up that I really should post about, is GM-foods.
Australians should understand immediately the essence of the problem with releasing GM crops outside the laboratory with two previous examples of introducing out-of-environment oddities:
1/ the rabbit
2/ the cane toad
And didn't they do well?
Oh, and all you UK-ians, you can buy examples of genetically modified mutants in your local fish stall. Those monster "Indonesian prawns" weighing a quarter of a kilo each that have recently started appearing are the descendants of an experimental scientific fishfarm in San Francisco testing mutated prawns, which were all washed out to sea in a freak storm in the late 80s. I wondered at the time if they would survive in the wild. I went cold from nape to heels when I saw them presented for the first time last year as "Indonesian prawns", weighing exactly the same per prawn as the scientists had said they did.
Yep. They're out there, and flourishing. I wonder if the real prawns will be in 50 years?

GROW UP- the biggest fish are the most valuable for maintaining the population

No shit sherlock. Tell me something not violently bloody obvious.

One of the more egregious anthropomorphisms I've encountered is actively responsible for wiping out most fish stocks globally. By egregious anthropomorphism, I mean people's refusal to contemplate the idea that not all species on earth are a flavour of mankind.

Here's Reality:
if you go fishing and you catch a small fish: keep it.
If you go fishing and you catch a large fish, throw it back.

Yes, this is exactly the opposite of what you're taught.
Let's step through this:
Fish and mammals have fundamentally different breeding-survival strategies.
Mammals live in a relatively low-danger environment. Mammals tend to have relatively few offspring but protect them. Characterisation of Breeding Strategy: low quantity, high probability.
Fish tend to have relatively huge numbers of offspring and are relatively unable to protect them. Fish live in a relatively high-danger environment; perhaps 1% survive to adulthood. Characterisation of Breeding Strategy: high quantity, low probability.
Consider briefly the numbers. How many cats or dogs (those renowned over-breeding pets) do you know which have had quarter of a million babies? Not that many, right? Now, how many of those cats and dogs do you know have quarter of a million babies every year for 10 years?
Quite.
Now, add in the fact that many fish species are unable to breed usefully until relatively late in life. Breeding for the last 20% of life is more common than the last 80-90% of life, as mammals roughly do.
Only those fish of a species which are wildly successful (or lucky) will survive long enough to breed. ~99% of all fish are eaten by other fish before they get anywhere near breeding. After the juvenile and youthful carnage, a microscopic few reach full size. And then they have a relatively short time to breed.

Every time you eat a full-grown fish, you are decimating the next generation.
Every time you eat a half-grown fish, you are having almost no effect on the next generation.

Throw the big ones back.

via TamIAm

Sorry, but it's still so hot my brain is a puddle.

So today's post is brought to you by the letter "I".
Or possibly "E".
Or maybe "A", "O", and "L".
Whatever.
Nicked from various places I neglected to note at the time. Apologies in advance to any bloggers offended, although I think 3rd one might have been FridgeMagnet and it was definitely Alfie who pointed out the first one. Click-through or be square

• In the news:
  Enchanted by own innocence, Michael Jackson molests self
  
  
• 15,000 gays in group hug record
  
  
  
• British MP launches Drug Testing Machine, tests Positive
  Funny. Didn't read about that in the *UK* press.
  
  
• Superb lawyer-in-court story
  
  
• Massively Multiplayer Online Gamers volunteer to remove themselves from the gene pool
  

By way of empathising with the current state of my brain (see post below), stare at the cross in the middle of this picture for a while, and notice that all the violet spots slowly vanish, leaving only the green one spinning around.

Worse, that last spot isn't even green. It's not even there. Your own brain has created it.

This is a very accurate model of my ability to interact with the world today.

When one is unable to sleep for more than 2 hours due to room temperature not dropping below 30°C all night, be more aware that one will spend much of the day swimming below the surface of sense.

In particular, refrain from emailing anyone or commenting on any blogs.

Because on reading them back, one's skin will crawl at the extent to which one missed the point and potentially buggered the tone of an otherwise intense post.

No link, because one is pissed off enough at oneself as it bloody is, without compounding the error.

One apologises. In a nonspecific manner.

Today I bring you two must-see items. Both are highly dial-up-unfriendly so my apologies in advance. But oh, well worth the wait.

The first is a magnificent explanation of:

How Pregnancy Happens
Prize to the first to realise how and why the "Pool" is the reason humans have genetically selected in favour of females who orgasm slower than males, but then multiple times. (Knowledge of female internal physical behaviour during orgasm will help here)

via SuperMum/SagaLout

The second is huge but quick and brilliant to watch:

A Sad Story
I really didn't see this coming. So to speak.

via Veritatis Splendor in sunny Belgia

London never gets it quite right, does it? We've gone from miserable chilly weather, via a couple of weeks of tolerable but rainy non-chilliness, to sun-screaming sweatbox.

32 degrees in the shade, and cloudless, for most of the weekend.

And at times like that, you think, "Hey! This would finally be a wonderful chance to recall the simple happy joys of youth, and have a beer outside in the sun."

But then with a screech of internal rubber, emotional clouds immediately tear out of hiding and cover the suddenly emotional sun, as you remember that every time you've attempted to go find a pub with a decent sunny outdoors area, so have approximately 42 million other people in the usual English herd-process (the whole population tries to do the same thing at the same time, always), and there are never enough tables to go round and it turns into some hideous territory-vulturing/guarding game and a long run-on sentence.
Which sours the whole process.

But then...
A thought.
England's licensing laws let you drink anywhere in the near vicinity of licensed premises. You are legally allowed to walk out of any pub and drink on the footpath and immediate surrounds outside.

And I've increasingly remembered that for my huge round-the-Baltic-sea campervan trek a few years ago, I bought two super-comfy, super-portable, super-nifty foldable chairs. With arms. And a high, tilted, head-supporting, vegetating-ish back. With over-the-shoulder quiver-style carry-handle slings.

Hmmm.

So Saturday we woke up late with early hangovers and suffered through the day on the back roof terrace. Well, when I say "suffered", I mean: "had a bloody delightful time in the o-so-rare sun and accompanying cloudless warmth". And then hit Covent Garden late afternoon to sort out an imminent-traveller's well-meaning-but-deluded-friend's backpack f... err mistake-up. Then walked across the Thames to Southbank and sat by the river to the left of the NFT on one of the o-so-rare benches and idled the long late sun-scoured blue warmth away in peaceful peacability, before moving up to the Festival Hall's 5th floor balcony to watch the sun go down and the evening grow up around us, continuously glorying in the view and the colours. Which moment(s) itself is very worthy of a long and lyrical blogpost by itself, but I just can't do it right now. It's 30 degrees and muggy and bright and 30 second thunder is growling overhead and confusing y hangover.

But the only reason we got that river-side seat was because it was missing most of its back and so people were avoiding it.

And I thought...

And I thought...

And so on Sunday, we did the "had a bloody delightful time in the o-so-rare sun and accompanying cloudless warmth" with the added bonus of the Sunday papers, followed by a too-hot-to-sit-in-the-sun couple of hours sitting on the window ledges in the front of the house, Sal's Summer Libating and watching all the various people walking along the passage immediately underneath us, and then we did this:

We walked over to The Big Chill in the old Trueman Brewery Yard, with the outdoor space I knew would have ALL the seats and good spots immediately taken.

We had one of these each:

, held simply and lightly across the back, quiver-style. Only a kilo or so. And we strolled over, sunglasses akimbo. And in my case, baboon-shit hat akimbo and extraneous. And we beered up and cucumber cocktailed up, and we strolled outside to the sunny area. Which was exactly as I'd predicted: no seats free, even the good-ish wall-leaning bits were taken.

And we strolled over to a prime bit of real-estate devoid of people since there was nowhere to sit, and we flung out our quivers and adopted the lizard drinking position in a matter of moments:

Fan
Bloody
Tastic

I'm a convert. I'm never going sun-drinking again without that little life-enhancer. £10-20 at your local camping store, eg Decathlon or InterSport if you're in the UK. Imagine-- an automatic outside seat at any pub, which can NOT get poached when you go to the loo or the bar because you can simply throw it back over your shoulder again when you stand up.
I may investigate getting it surgically attached.

This has been a public service announcement.

Ah dear me, and will you look at that?

Summer is upon us, as has been brought to my attention. Which is good. That saves me having to go and get it for my attention. Which saves me having to get up. As it is I already get up before I get up each day, and it really restricts my ability to roll over (though not yours), not to mention me tearing up the sheets if I try. Ah, what it is to be young and stupid.

Speaking of which, I need to update my cocktail list for your benefit. Or, as my sidebar currently has it, my cocktail llist. So this is for all you Welsh out there.

Why don't Wellsh eat lleeks instead of leeks? We have a right to know.

Now, for those of you who don't know (comprising to several rounded decimal places 100% of the earth's population) I'm Australian. To prove it, I'll now recite some Australian jokes:

• our Parliament
  
• the Opposition

Oh dear me, *wipes eyes* they get me every time.

And by virtue of Ozness, I'm accustomed to protracted stretches of ludicrous heat.
And by virtue of Ozness, I'm accustomed to dealing with heat by drinking.

This is a wise move, and sound in all respects.

Shut up.

Come the summer —and I hope to— yer ole uncle Sal settles down in the sun with a lashing or two of the following fine beverage:

Sal's Summer Libation

Take a large-ish glass. By "ish", of course, I mean as fucking huge as you can lift. Or move on a trolley.

Into this glass, artfully arrange a selection of icecubes.

Over said artistic cubes —well, not so much said as written, in this case— Angostura Bitters to taste. Well, obviously to taste. That's what the whole point of this exercise IS, after all, unless you're planning to add the result to an IV drip.
If you're mixing a pint glass, say a dozen or so drops.

Now, the denouement. It's actually just the next bit, but I quite like the word denouement. Denouement. Denouement.
Martini Rosso. Or any red vermouth, they're all much of a muchness. e.g. Cinzano Rosso. Note the "rosso" portion — this is the giveaway: it's Italian for red vermouth. Or something. It definitely doesn't mean espresso, which is Italian for "it's too early, much much too early".

Delightfully economic language, Italian.

Ladle it in. Or alternatively, pour it. This saves on the washing-up later.

Keen people can add a slice of lemon and/or lime about now. Or not. Up to you. As are all of your life decisions, actually — you're only fooling yourself, you know.

Finally, the penultimate step. It is actually the final or ultimate step, but I also like the word penultimate. Like penumbral and adumbral, it's both useful and under-used. Like me. Please. I'm clever, I know words and stuff.
Dry Ginger Ale. The old-fashioned English stuff is better to drink by itself but a little too strong for this mixer — try the American style froth, such as Canadian Dry.

Sharp-eyed readers will have noted I've given little guidance regarding precisely how much of either the vermouth or the dry ginger ale you should add. Well done. WRONG! You fail. Go to the foot of the class. Ak-chew-alley, I've given NO guidance.

So now here's the guidance.

As much of each as you feel like at the time.

Fairly complex, I know, but give it a go. If you get a nosebleed halfway through, ring immediately for an ambulance and see if you can't actually get SOMETHING for all the money you've spunked on taxes all these bloody years.

For my tastes, for the first drink at the end of a long hot day (~10am), I like to go a bit heavier on the ginger ale. But most other moments, it's a bit less than 50:50 for me. Which brings it down to about the same strength as a meaty ale, in case you're wondering. And if you weren't: THAT'S THE SPIRIT!!

Right, so there you have it. Sal's Summer Libation.

• ice
• Angostura Bitters
• Vermouth, Rosso
• top up with dry ginger ale

Next time the sun comes out (British people: consult your astrologer), find yourself a verandah or roof terrace, a hammock or deck chair, and get yourself outside a few. Fan bloody tastic.

Life MAY get better than this, but I'm not interested.

I love it when pretension and incompetence combine to more beautifully satirise themselves than any observer would.

I read this:

"On Tuesday I helped M with his fashion show at Tantra; quite possibly the most pretentious venue I've ever come across. Is there a good excuse for charging £18.00 for a whiskey and a bottle of lager? - blimey!... crikes! I hear you cry. It was good to lend M a hand [...] however; spending an evening with two hundred image obsessed Kate wannabe's, felt something akin to rubbing myself down with a cheese grater..."

and clicked through the link:

Tantra
Tantra fills a much cried out for gap in the club scene for those who are tired of the predictable nights out in London

"You fill a much needed gap."
Gorgeous.

Many bloggers quickly find the pressure of daily and minute-by-minute posting eats into their rigorious schedule of staring at the TV. Yet they are reluctant to walk away from the blog.

Sal(t)vation is at hand!

At last, you can have a life AND a blog too!

Try new Autoblogger

> > ok, i just weirded me out.
> Weirded YOU out? Sheesh.

> > well, to an extent. i'm now going to wank myself to an early death
> > <2:46am>
> > ...ok, a late death

Hmm
If I have sex with my clone, is this:

• masturbation,
  
• homosexuality,
  
• incest, or
  
• gene therapy?

*ponders*

T-shirts for Conservatives

Or for Shaven. Shaven is good, too.

 YUM
 O

There are ELEVEN police beneath my window, responding to the latest emergency at the Karaoke bar opposite my door. Wow. Never had more than half a dozen before. Of course, this time there IS blood all over the alley and up the walls and trailing off down the alley and stuff.

Plus, all three alley entrances are taped off. I'm INSIDE a police emergency zone! Wow! I'm one of those cool, privileged people you see on cop shows, strolling nonchalantly round dead bodies and eating donuts out of paper coffee cups, while envious crowds watch and pine outside the yellow tape.

On the other hand, now I can't go to Tesco's because the tape will stop me.

Unless I limboed.
I'm good at limbo.
I always win.

I bet I COULD go to Tesco's.

Unless the police all hit me on the head with their truncheons.
They're good at hitting people on the head with truncheons.
They always win.

I think I'll stay inside.

just quickly:
Via News.Com:

Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller ... said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware.

"We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said.

Spectacular stupidity.

Reduce Apple to a BUY: balancing BUY from Mac Mini vs SELL from over-bid iPod revenues.

STRONG BUY: APPLE
The biggest news for global PC market shape since MS Office came out yesterday. Apple announced it is moving from PowerPC chips to Intel chips.


Looking at the market's reaction yesterday (none), the market analysts completely missed its implications so the money is still available to the retail investor.


So that's a STRONG BUY on Apple.

Go get it, kids. Opportunities like this don't come round very often.

---

EDIT: the core caveat was: "Assuming they don't cock up by hardwiring into particular motherboard designs".
I just received an email saying

"Did a long read last night, and somewhere an Apple upper stated emphatically that OSX would ONLY run on >Apple< Intel boxes
Jeeeezzzee
Will he ever learn? Potentially brilliant move to be monumentally stuffed up, once again, by severe dog-in-the-manger-anal-behaaviour"

I'll do some digging to see if I can verify this. If so, yes, Apple has just deliberately thrown away this upside.
Again.
Apple will slightly cheapen its chip costs and importantly it WILL allow it to continue to compete in the Notebook market (which the PowerPC can not, due to heat problems -- this, incidentally, has NOT been factored into any analysts' valuations I've seen), but over and above these defensive benefits, will gain no substantial upside.

Regardless, there is still the Mac Mini BUY. But please bear in mind that that is depreciated by the iPod halo effoolishness meme so is less compelling.

To the Barbican today for books, then a stroll round its rationalising foyer, which is gradually becoming pleasant, becoming finally a useful use of space as the redesign creates a space for people instead of architects.

Up the hideous soviet steps to the Gallery -- no change there since last time, neither in structure nor in population. One or two people writing or reading, an asian couple spending their day there pretending to work, and some bangla teens wasting their days there playing conversation and ritual social games.

But a difference -- a normally-closed door to the auditorium is half opened, one wooden leaf beckoning me in. I've never been, never seen- inside. I push softly through the sound-sealed inner door's blankness, mouth part open. And O the contrast as the ceiling soars away and the walls fall back and two steps forward into a hermetic wooden world sealed by the door easing to behind me, brings me 4 storeys above a bare stage bright-lit in the focus of the watching gloom.

Bare but for a beetle-black grand piano. Bare but for a short silver-haired bear in a rippling blue shirt, throwing music from his hands as he sways and bends his way through his solitary practice.


It's beautiful.


It's beautiful.


I steal down 3 steps to the gallery's bannister, my subtlety shoes only a carelessness away from shrieking squeaking on the thick-lacquered wood. The space drops down and out and all around me, and I pause for a minute and drink it all in. 30 yards left and right, 4 storeys down to the stage below the two shelving layers immediately beneath me carpeted in furry little seats, the piano maybe 40 yards and 30° away. Wood. Wood. The world is all wood. None of the foyer's industrial plainness has made it in here; this is a realm of forest and craft.

I turn and pick the perfect seat, sit.

And alone in the giant gloom-lit silent space, one maestro plays and one stowaway listens.
Both rapt in his skill ever-present and in the lilt and lift and thunder of the music ever-changing.
And the music's that much more the music for the circumstance. The peace, the pressurelessness, and just the purity of it-- the purity of having all the facilities and acoustics here to let the music soar, to stand proud and free as the composer hope-heard it, with none of the social swarm's noisy inconsiderateness depleting it, contesting it.

Just one maestro polishing a piece in an empty world-leading concert hall, one last time before the seats being silently set up around him are filled with their own jostle of instruments and people. And perched in the air awash in the perfection of a perfectionist's briefly public private pleasure: me.

---

An hour later, I'm alone again.
And just sit.
For just a little longer.

---

according to the pamphletts I then hunted up outside, I was even luckier than I thought:
You can still see the show: Sat. 4 Jun, 7:30pm

Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer - conductor
Richard Goode - piano


e.g. "Richard Goode has been hailed for music-making of tremendous emotional power, depth and expressiveness, and has been acknowledged worldwide as one of today's leading interpreters of the music of Beethoven. In regular performances with major orchestras, recitals in the world’s music capitals, and acclaimed recordings, he has won a large and devoted following. His performances of Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, Janacek, and others have received equal accolades."

e.g. "Goode, who prepares for his concerts with meticulous care and limits his appearances, has been a regular guest soloist with the "Big Five" of US orchestras: New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Cleveland. In 2000 he performed to great acclaim at the Edinburgh and Schleswig-Holstein Festivals with Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Their collaboration is going to continue in June 2004 in Vienna, in May/November 2005 in London and in January 2006 in New York (Carnegie Hall). "

e.g. "In an extensive profile in The New Yorker, David Blum wrote: “What one remembers most from Goode's playing is not its beauty—exceptional as it is—but his way of coming to grips with the composer's central thought, so that a work tends to make sense beyond one's previous perception of it…. The spontaneous formulating process of the creator [becomes] tangible in the concert hall.” According to the New York Times, “It is virtually impossible to walk away from one of Mr. Goode's recitals without the sense of having gained some new insight, subtly or otherwise, into the works he played or about pianism itself.”"