May 31, 2005
Self defence against fresh fruit?
(Idle) Welsh:Like someone who attacks you with a pointed stick?(Cleese) Sgt.: Pointed stick? Oh, oh, oh. We want to learn how to defend ourselves against pointed sticks, do we? Getting all high and mighty, eh? Fresh fruit not good enough for you eh? Well I'll tell you something my lad. When you're walking home tonight and some great homicidal maniac comes after you with a bunch of loganberries, don't come crying to me!
It seems that Doctors have found the solution to stabbing homicides. Banning kitchen knives. It seems so straight forward, you almost wonder why no one thought of it before. Or perhaps they did, and dismissed it as a stupid idea.
As summarised in the article:
• Doctors claim long kitchen knives serve no purpose except as weapons
• 55 out of 108 homicide victims in Scotland were stabbed last year
• Police superintendents say a ban would be difficult to enforce
One wonders if they ever cook for themselves. How do you go about filleting with a short, inflexible knife, or carving a pumpkin with a paring knife, or... Such knives exist, because for hundreds of years, chefs and cooks (both professional and otherwise) have found them exceptionally useful implements.
Latest figures from the Scottish Executive show that in 2003, 55 of 108 homicide victims were stabbed by a sharp instrument - often a kitchen knife.
...with the doctors claiming the knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings...
Half of a half is a quarter, with the best guess being that around 28 homicides involved stabbing with a kitchen knife.
It should also be noted that homicide is not always murder. On 2002 statistics from Scotland, the 125 homicide cases can be broken down into Murder (40), Culpable homicide (31) and... other (which were either murder (38) or culpable homicide (16), representing cases which were either unsolved or pending at 30 October 2003, or where the accused had no proceedings taken against them or were acquitted.
To me this seems to be blaming the implement rather than the culprit. Unless knives are inherently wicked and exude a power of darkness to compell people to commit violent acts with them. Kitchen knives are used in half of all stabbings. And the other half have evidently employed knives of a different sort. Or perhaps forks, or some other sharpened implement. Perhaps even pointed sticks.
Now imagine that long kitchen knives are banned. That's solved the problem. No more stabbing with long kitchen knives.
Scotland's most respected pathologist, Professor Anthony Busuttil, said: "All the statistics show that for the last 15 years, victims of stabbings, whether fatal or seriously injured, are caused by kitchen knives such as steak knives rather than knives bought specially for the purpose."
But I thought you said long knives? How long is a steak knife? Five inches at most?
So, should these be banned, I shall make some simple predictions:
1: Restaurant owners, butchers, fishermen, chefs and anyone who enjoys cooking will be pissed.
2: Blunt trauma homicides will go up as the homicidal grab the nearest thing that can be pressed to service as a weapon. Cricket bat, rolling pin, etc. Though the pointed stick (they're also called cricket stumps) may see a resurgence.
3: It will be completely unenforceable, and no one will pay much heed to the cutlery police.
4: Doctors take a serious look at the 3,013 deaths involving vehicles...
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 02:02 PM
May 27, 2005
A pirate of exquisite mind
The story of a forgotten hero, William Dampier.
Diana and Michael Preston
If it were fiction, it would be unbelievable. Very nearly indentured in the sugar plantations of Jamaica at the age of 21, it is the story of a man, who, in the 17th century, circumnavigated the world times. A buccaneer, pirate (occasionally though misfortune, largely intentionally) and privateer - a patriotic pirate with a charter whom seeks to disrupt the shipping of his countries enemies - though even this would appear to be because Spain's treasure fleet from the new world was simply the richest target available. His travelogue, which is impressive today in the age of air travel, included the Caribbean, Virginia, Galapagos, Central America, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia and the Phillipines to name but a few. A navigator, geographer and surveyor he maintained a log and created maps of trade winds, then theorised how it creates currents. His accurate observations of flora and fauna were subsequently used by Darwin, though the book tends to savour the culinary aspects of the wildlife. He also wrote sympathetic descriptions of the customs and culture of natives.
He subsequently combined and published writings of his extraordinary travels, which formed the basis of Swift's Gulliver's Travels (who refers to 'Cousin Dampier') and Dafoe's Robinson Crusoe. He also introduced words such as barbeque and marijuana into the lexicon.
The book itself is rather skewed towards the first of his circumnavigations, to the extent that the third journey is crammed into a dozen pages, though it lasted three years. There is also a tendency to make Dampier the first to do any task, some claims accurate, some not. However, it is an incredibly entertaining read, also providing a window of insight into the lives of the pirates of the Caribbean and elsewhere.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 01:50 PM
May 26, 2005
Dungeon, Fire and Sword.
John Robinson
I've always been intrigued by the middle ages and the Crusades in particular. Strangely, I'd never had the occasion to read this before, and when I chanced on a remaindered copy, it made its way to the top of my reading lists.
It is not a work on Roscrucians, Masons, conspiracy theories - Dan Brown fans be warned.
It is interesting from the start, covering a brief history of the crusades in general, before focussing more on the Templars, though they are never considered in isolation - it is not a work that lists the names of all knights and their deeds to the exclusion of all else. It a plan that works exceedingly well at introducing the foundations of the Temple in context. He clearly states in the introduction that this is not a masterwork of historical writing, but a tale of the Templars. There are no footnotes, which I did wish for, but there are translations of all quotations (whilst I can struggle through some untranslated passages, and even occasionally enjoy the challenge, I do not have a ready command of ancient languages, though I would prefer to see the translation with the original alongside).
My only real gripe (again, we are forewarned in the introductory piece, so I cannot be too harsh), it that he picks and chooses history to present. Where there are three versions of an event, one will be presented. Whilst it is not grossly inaccurate (though many points are widely open to debate), it is misleading, as there is no aside (or footnote) to bring your attention to the fact that this is a contentious point, or perhaps even direct you to other accounts of the event.
It's not a book to base research on and it was never intended to be. It was meant to take the path of the Templars, threading through history, the background, some background political dealings and highlight the magnificence of the Templar order. The story as written is compelling, entertaining and very enjoyable and more or less accurate. It whets the appetite, and would serve as an excellent and gentle introduction. Past that, those wanting more historical detail, background, and a more rigorous treatment may want to investigate Malcolm Barber's "The New Knighthood" for Templar material and Steven Runciman's excellent three volume History of the Crusades.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 07:27 PM
May 25, 2005
Luke, I am your faaaargh! It burns! It burns!
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."Herbert Spencer
Yesterday, my friend Bob brought this story to my attention. In short, two people in england thought It a brilliant idea to make light sabres for themselves and then have a duel.
Whilst I've done this myself and had a good many mock battles with my brother (and if it wasn't Star Wars, it was Captain Blood), typical stand-ins for light sabres were cardboard tubes, sticks, plastic piping, and, on the very rare occasion, the authentic plastic replica merchandise. Thankfully, I was far less imaginative than these people.
They, for their own unfathomable reasons, used fluorescent lighting tubes, poured in petrol (gas), lit them to make them glow and commenced whacking at each other.
And, aparently, filmed it.
Putting aside the small details that the fumes from petrol are explosive, that the phosphor compound inside the tubes is highly toxic, that glass typically weakens quite a bit with heat...
Perhaps someone might have thought that banging two sticks of very thin glass together might cause one or both to break.
Burns are terrible things. I've had a few third degree incidents, and they are not experiences I would care to repeat. I can sympathise with the suffering they're doubtless experiencing. But, really, whacking away at each other with what amounts to exceedingly long and fragile glass pipe bombs dilutes this somewhat.
As my friend put it when he sent me the article: "Leads to Darwin Awards, the path of stupidity does."
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 11:20 AM
May 23, 2005
My computer never cras
"But his doom
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witness'd huge affliction and dismay"Milton, Paradise Lost.
Yesterday, my computer glitched. A lot of folders went missing - notably my documents and the few things I had on my desktop. Thankfully, by working on several computers, I did have copies of most things, and all the code on the server was more-or-less up to date. I'd thought that this ad-hoc system would actually serve me well in the event of disaster. To an extent, it did. But not well enough. A more systematic approach would have been much better.
Yes. Backups. We've all heard the sermon before. I should have backed up more often. Backups are a chore, and one that's easily put off until later. Or later. Or maybe next week. And, of course, it's only things that I've been working on and I can recreate that readily enough, can't I?
Quite often, it's not until you have a glitch that eats files or a hard drive crash that you appreciate the true value of a backup. And now that almost everyone has a CD burner, backups aren't really expensive. The expensive part in the equation is time, and the little time it takes weekly to burn off a CD is really quite miniscule compared to the time it'll take to repair or recreate everything. Even some things you might not consider. How long did it take to get that MP3 collection near complete? What about your emails, especially if you have registrations codes there? Your internet bookmarks?
Today, the system gets a wipe and all things reinstalled, and what I have left will be put back where it was. So all I've really lost is a handfull of notes, a couple of lists of books that I was looking for, a voicemail and about a day of reinstallations.
Save your data. Even a well behaved computer can become truculent and spiteful.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 11:13 AM
May 19, 2005
Early man goes to market
Dismayed to find the British Museum no longer has pristine arranged Victorian collections, arranged and arrayed, labelled and definitively catalogued. I loved that about the old museum arrangements. Show me cases full of bones, labelled, shells arranged row on row, where I can try spot the difference between barnacles. That's a museum.
But now...
Piltdown man is on display. Banksy, "artist who depends on trying to one up the establishment for funnies", has slipped an (admittedly amusing) rock into the display. It wasn't noticed, which probably took all the wind out of his sails.
It was placed beneath a limestone statue, a 1st Century tombstone found in Tower Hill and a case full of statuettes from Roman Britain in Gallery 49.
Banksy had placed it alongside a caption, stating: "This finely preserved example of primitive art dates from the Post-Catatonic era and is thought to depict early man venturing towards the out-of-town hunting grounds."
He added: "The artist responsible is known to have created a substantial body of work across South East of England under the moniker Banksymus Maximus but little else is known about him.
"Most art of this type has unfortunately not survived. The majority is destroyed by zealous municipal officials who fail to recognise the artistic merit and historical value of daubing on walls."
Much as I love museums, I do know that some (Melbourne, this is you) have become shallow echos of what they were, paying homage to 'ease of understanding' over genuine knowlege, patchwork displays asking pointless politcally correct questions over crowded cases briming with mystery.
Onya Banksy.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 10:21 PM
If you sympathised with Tippi Herdren, don't go to Houston
"That's the damndest thing I ever saw! I don't know, it seemed to swoop down at you deliberately!"
"They were just going crazy. They were attacking everybody that walked by."
For me, the Birds was the weakest film produced by Hitchcock. The cinematography, is, of course, wonderful, as it always is. Using seagulls as instruments of terror simply misses the mark for me. Perhaps it's because where I grew up, every summer without fail, the trees were full of birds that would attack (their comfort zone was typically about 50 feet, and woe betide invaders). Mostly they would swoop as a warning, but it wasn't uncommon for them to hit heavily with beak or claws and gash the odd scalp here and there. It was just part of playing outside. They were perhaps a little over zealous in protecting their nests, but you can't really fault them for that.
The Houston version of these, it appears, have unionised, and it seems a militant union.
Large black grackles have been attacking people in Houston. Quite a lot. Terrirotial, they're attacking people, and attacking the people who try to assist the fallen.
So, for any Houstonites, you might want to try some of the things we did:
(While the first quote is from the movie, the second is from Constable Wilbert Jue of Houston, May 17, 2005)
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 03:34 PM