Clowns to the Left of Me

Student union rejects academic's IQ claims

2008-05-22T09:45:00.003+02:00

Student union rejects academic's IQ claims (click for article)

Cause or effect? Surely in a meritocracy this is what would be expected. IQ being a largely hereditary phenomenon, over the course of generations those with higher IQ will tend to exhibit higher levels of socio-economic success and those with lower IQ to tend towards lower levels of socio-economic achievement. A rather Darwinian process of natural selection!
Any moving of the goalposts to accomodate lack of potential simply removes the whole concept of merit. I look forward to the Student's Union publishing their full findings on the basis of which they refute the claims of Bruce Charlton.

Breastfeeding 'helps to boost IQ'

2008-05-07T21:54:00.003+02:00

Breastfeeding 'helps to boost IQ'

It's official, seemingly, just 18 months after having been disproved, here, it has now been decided that suckling one's young does indeed give them a headstart in life as far as intellect is concerned.

I find it not overly surprising that higher IQ people, statistically, are more likely to have been breastfed as their probably fairly high IQ mothers are probably, statistically, more likely to have breastfed them than their lower IQ counterparts are to have breastfed their probably equally lower IQ offspring. Breastfeeding therefore being more likely the effect of, rather than the cause of, a higher IQ.

The new report offers no explanation to refute the doubts that the earlier article casts upon the possible causal relationship which yesterday's report claims to exist. For much that breastfeeding promotion programmes existed, one must assume that they were not forcible and that uptake among Bylorussian mothers would be influenced by their own intelligence allowing them to see the advantages put forward by medical staff or through their own common sense.

It would be hoped that the researchers would have performed IQ tests on the mothers and to have looked for correlation between IQ and uptake of the breastfeeding programme.

A Fishy Tale

2008-04-17T19:03:00.004+02:00

I initially thought this was a joke, but reading on discovered that it is anything but. Two ordinary blokes albeit, admittedly, a bit the worse for drink, went for a night swim after a party in Folkestone, Kent and played with a dolphin which approached them in the sea. It was a public beach, and the dolphin was wild, and in the open sea. They now both have a criminal record.

Is it me, or has the world gone insane. When I was a child people patted and stroked animals that approached them, it was normal, provided the animal wasn't dangerous. Wild animals usually went the other way, very quickly, but one usually tried to get closer for a look if one could. Don't get me wrong, I am all for protecting animals, but the usual reaction if an animal approaches you in an unaggressive manner is to assume it is being friendly and to play with it

Now suddenly this is a criminal offence, or so it would seem. And we are to blame if an animal approaches us because we do not have in depth knowledge of its behavioural psychology and anticipate the possible effects on the animal. It just seems like another preposterous case of the do-gooders plunging us even further into surreal insanity.

Sex offenders face website bans

2008-04-04T09:50:00.002+02:00

Sex offenders face website bans

The beeb today report that the cunning new plan devised by the Home Office to keep sex offenders off social networking sites is to force them to give their e-mail addresses to police, these would then be passed onto the social networking sites to, I imagine, be blacklisted so that these individuals cannot sign up.

Don't get me wrong, the spirit of what this tries to achieve is admirable, but, unfortunately it seems to be another over simplistic, knee jerk piece of legislation aimed at appeasing those of the electorate not tech savvy enough to see the flaws that make it a worthless gesture. As far as keeping control of those who are really a risk, and protecting those who they may prey upon, it is an utterly meaningless waste of time.

The move seems to revolve around the erroneous idea that an e-mail is somehow a personal and distinguishing ID rather like a passport number or social security number. Firstly, how many people have only 1 e-mail? I certainly don't, I have any number set up over the years, and most now dormant and forgotten. Secondly, does the Home Office not know that a new e-mail account, completely anonymous and free can be set up in about 30 seconds by anyone with internet access? Personally I generally set up a new one from some free e-mail service or other everytime I need to sign up for something which I don't then want to send endless spam to my "real" e-mail.

So how does this system prevent the sex offender going down to his local internet cafe and opening a dozen new hotmail accounts? And I hope it is sex offenders we are talking about here, and not wasting public money keeping tabs on some poor harmelss fool who was caught trying to hoover his underpants or copulate with a park fence.

Zimbabwe opposition claim victory

2008-04-02T16:44:00.002+02:00

Zimbabwe opposition claim victory

Welcome perhaps but the end of an era. I remember when I was 10 and the first elections were held with the granting of independence to the then Rhodesia. The father of a bloke at school was part of the force the British Government sent out to oversee fairplay in the elections. And so Britain handed over power to the democratically elected Robert Mugabe.

Now 28 years later, independence has hardly spelled prosperity for Zimbabwe. The fate of ex-colonies is an interesting thing. Obviously colonialism in itself does not preclude success as is clear in Malaysia, Singapore, India, etc. Why, I wonder, has Zimbabwe, and why have certain other ex-colonies, experienced such a different fate?

Driving - Child's Play?

2008-04-01T13:32:00.007+02:00

Stuck in the traffic this morning and staring around me at the other drivers I realized just how much my safety is dependent on the skill, prudence or just plain common sense of my fellow drivers. Once at work I decided to have a look, statistically, at just what sort of people I could expect to find out there on the road.

I am assuming that the necessary attention, prudence, rapid processing of information and subsequent decision making involved in driving and surviving successfully on the road, ensuring minimum risk to others as well as to myself, will have a lot to do with intelligence, and did some calculations.

An average person, falling exactly in the middle of the general population, is considered to have an IQ of 100. 50% of the population will be above this and 50% will be below. It should be added that the distribution of intelligence in the population is represented by a Bell Curve - this in layman's terms means that the population tends to clump around the average. Less than 10% of the population have an IQ of 120 or higher and once we get up to 130 - the level necessary for Mensa membership, we are left with just 2% of the population.

It quickly becomes apparent that there are few Einsteins out their competing with us for road space. However, the shock comes perhaps when looking below the average. The percentages are the same, the reality, however, is a little more worrying.

IQ was originally calculated by dividing mental age by actual age and mutliplying by 100. For adult IQs above the average this is not very useful as after the age of 16 (adult age for the purposes of calculation) IQ does not change much. However for intellgence levels below average we can get a meaningful result, namely a mental age below 16, which may well be taken as an indication of arrested development.

So, following that Bell Curve below the average level of IQ 100 we find that statistically the drivers of almost 2 of every 20 cars we encounter on the roads could be expected to have a mental age of less than 13 while staggeringly just over 1 out of every 200 drivers could be expected to have a mental age of less than 10, that is, an IQ of 61 or below.

Tumbumdo

2006-09-29T23:21:00.000+02:00

I finally found it. A couple of days ago. I just didn't have the time to post before. Tumbumdo the final resting place of Dutreuil De Rhins, attacked and mortally wounded by a Tibetan rifle shot on June 4th 1894. The french explorer was seized by the Tibetans and thrown into the river presumed dead.

Accompanied by an established player in Tibetan and Central Asian exploration Mohammed Isa and the author of the only account of the expedition, fellow Frenchman, Fernand Grenard, Dutreuil De Rhins body was never discovered and his place of death has, to the best of my knowledge, only been marked by a cross planted in the 1950's by French traveller Andre Migot.

Tumbumdo seems to have been all but forgotten as far as modern maps and guidebooks are concerned and it was only through the ever useful Oriental List and the help of the seasoned and very knowledgeable Kham traveller Raul Gutierrez that I picked up the trail.

Time did the rest, a chance quiet afternoon, not easy with a young family, after several months of wondering, and the cartographic miracle that is Google Earth and here we are. 112 years on, it seems to be very little changed. Rather refreshing to see in this ever changing world.

Jugal Himal

2006-05-30T19:14:00.000+02:00

Ed Douglas on the Jugal Himal
"Chomolungma Sings the Blues" (London, 1997 pp. 11-12)

The itinerant curmudgeon Bill Tilman had been the first European to tramp his way through this slim portion of the Himalaya in 1949, travelling south from Langtang to Panch Pokhari and then west to the Helmu, grumbling about skinflint shepherds and sleeping in damp hovels at night, maybe dreaming that he was seventeen again and back in a trench on the Somme. He wouldn't like those districts now with their tea houses and apple pie and I doubt he'd like this road either. None of it was there in the 1940s. In those far-off days the Ranas still ruled from their palaces in Kathmandu and the Dalai lama looked over his people from the Potala in Lhasa.

Bill Tilman was a childhood hero of mine. He still is. The remoter and more uncomfortable the better seemed to be his guiding principle. A better philosophy for escaping this over civilised modern world I cannot imagine.

Spyware Beware

2006-05-29T13:29:00.000+02:00

I am still reeling from the shock of seeing my spyware scan turn up a positive result, informing me that my computer is infected with TrueActive Monitor - a remote keystroke logger and Cool! Remote Control - a remote control tool.

Two more malignant pieces of spyware I find it hard to imagine. Who had planted them on me? Why? I had my suspicions, and the conclusions I came to did nothing to set my mind at ease. I yanked out the plug on my modem and retreiving the log of infected files e-mailed my anti spyware suppliers - Sunbelt Software.

With impeccable efficiency they were back to me within a couple of hours. They had checked it out, the results log I sent had been CHECKED OUT BY THEIR RESEARCH LAB, and, false alarm, a recent update was causing me to turn a false positive result.

Crisis over, my mind at rest, more or less. And more importantly my faith in good service has been restored. Shit happens from time to time, and much better a false alarm than having stuff slip through the net. Sunbelt were honest about what had happened, they were thorough, and they were quick. It may have been a false alarm but I shall certainly be keeping a tighter rein on daily spyware scanning in future.

What Are They Hiding?

2006-05-20T11:55:00.000+02:00

What dark secret is Google Earth hiding under the blanked out square in Hudson Bay?

Earlier I was zimming around the world in 80 seconds on Google Earth as I tend to do fairly often, peeking down on friends houses, revisiting favourite haunts, or just crusing. I zoomed down on Hudson Bay, Canada. Check it out. Just north of Churchill, just off the coast, there is a large blank space. What is the blank hiding? Some dark secret? Or just an error in the imaging software?

If anyone has any idea what is there, please drop me a line, I'd love to know.

The Colour Orange

2006-05-04T22:50:00.000+02:00

Had an e-mail from my old friend Tadek. He has been to Amsterdam, I followed the link to his trip photos and encountered a city completely decked out in orange.

I have no idea what the occasion might be although it did bring to mind a rather more informal interpretation, perhaps, of the orange marches in Ulster. And after all there is the Dutch connection with William and Mary of Orange. I am intrigued and shall investigate. I will share my findings.

Mail Order

2006-05-04T14:47:00.000+02:00

Quite why it didn't occur to me to check earlier I couldn't say. But, after a month's waiting I sent off an e-mail to Pilgrims in Kathmandu enquiring about the status of my latest book order and, lo and behold 2 hours later they had processed the payment and my bank balance was reduced accordingly.

Surface mail from the subcontinent may take up to 3 months (air mail works out more than the cost of the books) but, for reprints of classic works on Tibet that one could only dream of finding almost anywhere else in the world, and for a fraction of what the original would cost in an antiquarian bookshop, they will arrive impeccably packed in bubble wrap, thick card and well worth the wait.

Throwing Stones in Glass Houses

2006-05-03T23:57:00.000+02:00

So, the Iranians are facing UN sanctions for continuing with their nuclear programme.

That may be wise - certainly not for me to judge - but I feel the niggling question begging to be asked- how many current nuclear powers asked Iran's opinion before developing their nuclear capacities?

Answers on a postcard please.

Lurgan Sahib

2006-05-03T23:20:00.000+02:00

With time on my hands I have whizzed through the last few chapters of Peter Hopkirk's "In Search of Kim" , which is , by the, way a fascinating read. Much googling has gone on of people, places and events, the inevitable stirring of curiosity and further reading which seems to be unavoidable with any Hopkirk title.

I was rather gobsmacked when I turned up a piece in The Guardian of December 31st 2005 which speaks of the supposed revelation that Kipling's Lurgan Sahib was based on Simla jeweller, mystic and one time secret agent Mr. A. M. Jacob. This revelation was picked up on blogs in different far flung corners of the web, in seeming oblivion to the fact that Peter Hopkirk enters in detail into this relationship between Jacob and Lurgan Sahib.

In his 1996 book he draws on numerous sources including Brigadier Alec Mason writing in the 1961 "Readers Guide to the Works of Rudyard Kipling".

I think I will reinvent the wheel tomorrow, someone is bound to be impressed.

Sant Jordi

2006-04-23T23:27:00.000+02:00

April 23rd - St. Georges Day. Patron saint of my native England and adopted Catalunya. A rather jaded festival in England, George, or Jordi as he is locally known gets rather more attention here in Catalunya with Catalan flags hung from balconies, and the streets alive with book stalls and flower sellers catering for the very well observed tradition of ladies giving their men books and men presenting their ladies with a red rose.

We went for a stroll to enjoy the festivities and queued up to get a balloon for Nora, which we tied to a button hole in her jacket - useful for spotting toddlers at a distance. As the green helium balloon bobbed in the wind some association of ideas snapped the image of Lawn Chair Larry into my mind's eye. Another few hundred balloons, I thought, and one could soar.

Oft mocked, I have the utmost respect for Larry who had a dream and the balls to simply give it a go. The result was one of history's stranger flight experiences and rather dubious fame. Any google search for Lawn Chair Larry will turn him up or try: http://www.lutins.org/walters.html

Oh crumbs!

2006-04-18T23:02:00.000+02:00

First day after the Easter break today, Nora back to nursery and the first post nursery coffee at my favourite bar after the holiday week. I got there rather later than usual so the newspaper was at hand and I went to sit down on a bar stool and... Uggh. Full of crumbs, bits of someone's croissant.

This is a regular niggle I have with all bars, they clear the table and wipe it religiously but the crap on the stools and chairs always stays put. You have to tilt them and bang them on the floor to make the fragments jump off. Just me?

Straight Talking

2006-04-18T22:53:00.000+02:00

Supper time, Nora has just spat a piece of omlette onto the floor, something which she sems to find endlessly amusing

Silvia: Estas riendo? (Are you laughing?)
Nora: Si (Yes)
Silvia Te parece divertido? (Do you think it's funny?)
Nora: Si (Yes)
Silvia Esta guarrada te parece divetida? (You think that mess is funny?)
Nora: Si (Yes)

That's my girl. Don't cave in!

The World Through a Pinhole

2006-03-30T23:51:00.000+02:00

After much coaching and pointing in the right direction from the good Mr. Williams my defunct Hawkeye is now a rather nifty pinhole camera. Much tweaking to sort out the unfortunate propensity to chew up rolls of film have now, for the moment at least, resulted in some passable negatives.

Yes. My very own time machine, and you know what the great charm of pinhole photography is. It removes all impermanence from the landscape. Long exposure and all transience just blurs into nothingness. Slight snag...no scanner. Keep you posted.

Meanwhle checkout all things pinhole at: www.pinholeresource.com

Beijing 1989

2006-03-28T21:48:00.000+02:00

Time is a funny thing. Exchanging e-mails with Tadek these past few days, 17 years have rolled back in an instant. So much has happened, in those 17 years that it seems like an eternity. Friendships have been forged and forgotten, a university degree gained, I have emigrated, started a family... and yet my memory flips back to a Beijing as remote now as the 19 year old that was me in 1989 on my first great adventure, as if it were yesterday.

Browsing the photos on Tadek's website brings back a flood of memories, the student protests in Tiananmen Square erupted just after my departure and to see again what I followed so closely in the media at the time, but through the eyes of a young traveller not so different from myself, conveys the human tragedy of what was to follow like no TV news report ever could.

A Trans-Siberian trip down memory lane

2006-03-24T13:42:00.000+01:00

I wonder whether the name Tadek Hutyra still rings any bells amongst any fellow westward bound Trans-Siberian travellers who passed through Beijing in 1989.

A nostalgic web surf the other night on all things Trans Siberian turned up, rather unexpectedly, an online novel called GLASS CURTAIN I almost surfed on, being in the market for pictures and travelogues of the Siberian Steppes rather than literature, but something at the foot of the page made me do a double take. The authors name. Tadek Hutyra. Now that rang a bell, 20 seconds with the hard disc in my head spinning at full speed and I was there.

The guy who sold me my Ticket to Moscow all those years ago was called Hutyra. Two brothers, Tadek and Marc Hutyra, they hung out around the backpackers haunts of Beijing, the Qiao Yuan, Yongdingmen and Jing Tai hotels, providing cut price Trans-Siberian tickets and travel advice to shoestring travellers. 17 years on the coincidence that this novelist, who from the info on the website appeared to be living in Belgium, and the one time king of the Beijing black market for Trans Siberian train tickets could be one and the same seemed like a very long shot indeed. Curiosity dictated that I e-mail him.

24 hours later Tadek replied and confirmed that my rather wild hypothesis was correct. Further reading of the Glass Curtain and the basis for large parts of the hero Tadek Vanguard is in no doubt.

I recommend a browse for all those who remember those golden days when hutongs still outnumbered skyscrapers in the Chinese capital and one was still young enough to get drunk on Special Fine Brandy and come up smiling the next day. And especially to those who were there in the Beijing Jing Tai hotel and during those 7 heady days on the train to Moscow.

You can check out "Glass Curtain" in the literature section of the Belgian web portal www.funworld.be: www.funworld.be/literature.htm

Go Daddy Go, Go, Go

2006-03-01T22:33:00.000+01:00

What did I have for supper today? Humble Pie, and a large slice. After advocating GODADDY.COM as reliable and failsafe to my photoblogging mailing list chums, I was faced today with several hours of downtime, and not only my website that came up as page not found, but, major trauma, my e-mail was buggered, I will stay with them as it costs me $3.00 a month for 250GB bandwidth and a maintenance free relationship, but be warned, it can happen so look out. I was going to talk about crumby bar stools but it will have to wait for another day. I''ll leave you with a cat and dog story from my sister. I am I might add a confirmed cat man. This just confirms my logic:

>The difference between dogs and cats
>
>As seen in a dog's diary:
>
>7 am - Oh boy! A walk! My favourite!
>
>8 am - Oh boy! Dog food! My favourite!
>
>9 am - Oh boy! The kids! My favourite!
>
>Noon - Oh boy! The yard! My favourite!
>
>2 pm - Oh boy! A car ride! My favourite!
>
>3 pm - Oh boy! The kids! My favourite!
>
>4 pm - Oh boy! Playing ball! My favourite!
>
>6 pm - Oh boy! Welcome home Mom! My favourite!
>
>7 pm - Oh boy! Welcome home Dad! My favourite!
>
>8 pm - Oh boy! Dog food! My favourite!
>
>9 pm - Oh boy! Tummy rubs on the couch! My favourite!
>
>11 pm - Oh boy! Sleeping in my people's bed! My favourite!
>
>
>As seen in a cat's diary:
>
>Day 183 of my captivity ... My captors continued to taunt me with
>bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat,
>while I am forced to eat dry cereal. The only thing that keeps me going
>is the hope of escape, and the mild satisfaction that I get from
>clawing
>
>their furniture. Tomorrow I will eat another houseplant.
>
>Today my attempt to kill my captors by weaving around their feet while
>they were walking almost succeeded - must try this at the top of the
>stairs. In an attempt to disgust and repulse these vile oppressors, I
>once again induced myself to vomit on their favourite chair. I must
>remember to try this on their bed.
>
>Decapitated a mouse and brought them the headless body in an attempt to
>make them aware of what I am capable of, and to try to strike fear in
>their hearts. They only cooed and condescended about what a good little
>cat I was. Hmmm, that did not work according to plan...
>
>There was some sort of gathering of their accomplices. I was placed in
>solitary throughout the event. However, I could hear the noise and
>smell
>
>the food. More important, I overheard that my confinement was due to my
>powers of inducing "allergies." I must learn what this is and how I may
>use it to my advantage.
>
>I am convinced the other captives are flunkies and maybe snitches. The
>dog is routinely released and seems more than happy to return. He is
>obviously a half-wit.
>
>The bird, on the other hand, has got to be an informant and speaks with
>them regularly. I am certain he reports my every move. Due to his
>current placement in the metal room, his safety is assured. But I have
>patience, I can wait, it is only a matter of time...

Arty + Crafty

2006-01-27T22:58:00.000+01:00

No posts for a week and I seemed to have been forgotten by the world, however time was on my side today and I decided to explore my artistic side. Illustration Friday beckoned and for the first time I indulged my artistic bent. "Glamour" was the theme and what else could it be but Diamonds. A long photoshop seesion later and I posted and boy oh boy, artists are nice people. Two hours down the line I had over a hundred visits and 4 comments, which wipes the floor with any of my photo archive. Drawing is fun and it has proved satisfying, I'll be an Illustration Friday regular from now on.

Funny thing, I followed a link on one of the comments and was posed an interesting question regarding arty crafty people, if artists are arty, does that make those into craft "crafty"?

Let Them Eat Cake

2006-01-16T12:00:00.000+01:00

The weekend was a whirl of activity, extended family round for the 2nd birthday celebrations, which meant an afternoon of cake baking activity followed by an early morning session getting it iced and decorated. Luckily it was all worthwhile and tasted a treat. Cake baking is actually quite therapeutic I've decided, relaxing and satisfying at the same time much in the same way as photography, just another form of self expression I guess.

Anyway family came and left, and peace descended once again as I chilled out ironing baby wear to the accompaniment of Kiri Te Kanawa.

Oh, and the bathroom basin now funtions a treat, after discovering a worrying tendency for the waste pipe to back up and fill the basin as I cleaned my teeth last week I dismantled the siphon and to my horror discovered what I half expected to lash out and sink fangs into my neck, it turned out not, however, to be an alien just 7 years worth of hairs and nail clippings all bathed in liberal doses of black gunk. I attacked the thing with bleach and a chopstick and won the battle. Teeth cleaning is now no longer a race against time and tide.

Another, very sound, argument for buying disposable chopsticks.

Happy Birthday

2006-01-12T00:00:00.000+01:00

Ah, the maps arrived, and what maps, 2 sheets of St George Littledale's foray into Tibet in 1896 and a sheet of Kham from Eric Teichman, c. 1922. Sheer delight.

Nora is 2 today, the day was spent in a helter skelter of presents and birthday cake. We celebrated, of course, in the afternoon once nursery was over. The morning rush is mad enough without added complications. I was busy all afternoon preparing a birthday cake in the form of a fish - anything she eats at the moment is, according to her, "PEIX", fish in Catalan. Salmon colored butter icing, chocolate eye, nose and mouth and her name in chocolate icing in the middle. In all the scramble to open the presents the candles burnt down to nearly nothing and the burnt wicks were blown all over the sofa with bits of wick and saliva also decorating the cake. A jolly good time had by all!

I'm Alright Jack

2006-01-05T23:38:00.000+01:00

So someone in Doncaster can afford the luxury of turning down 9.5 million quid in lottery winnings (link). Just goes to show as long as they've enough for a pint, a pack of regal and a bet the North is alright.

Anyway, Kings Day, back home in time for a slap up supper and to update the blog. Nora loved it, after plying her friends with the choc-chip cookies we spent the morning baking, we were rained with sweets from the floats of the Kings (now safely stashed in a pot to rot my teeth for months to come), Nora waved at all 3, Caspar, Melchoir and Balthazar so I hope they don't let her down in the morning ; ;

I ordered some real goodies today, 3 maps of St. George Littledale's and Sir Eric Teichman's respective forays into late 19th and early 20th century Tibet. More news when they arrive.

So whether it be fags and whippets, cookies and sweets, or 19th century maps, the important thing is a grin on one's face that says "I'm alright Jack"