Rolf Harris' Portrait of the Queen
As suggested by Michael Keane, actor, real tennis player and cricket tour host from Stockwell, London.
1926. Elizabeth "Lilibet" Alexandra May Windsor born 21st April, 2:40am, 17 Barton Street, Mayfair by caesarian section - only a lowly Princess of York, 3rd in line to the throne - never expected to take the throne in her lifetime.
Also born in this year: Time Magazine, the Walt Disney Corporation.
1930. Rolf born in Perth, Australia (around the same time as Margaret, the Queen's sister, around the same time that Pluto is discovered. Is the discovery of a cold, hard block of ice floating in the dead of space at all symbollic? We shall see). Rolf is born to Crom and Agnes Harris from Cardiff in Wales. He's named after Rolf Boldrewood (aka Thomas Alexander Browne) who spent 25 years of his life as a squatter, 25 years as a civil servant and the remaining 40 years of his life as a novelist. Boldrewood/Browne is best remembered for Robbery Under Arms - set in the bush and goldfields of Australia in the 1850s, it follows Dick Marston and his brother Jim in their escapades alongside their cohort Captain Starlight (no, I'm not kidding) whereby they engage in cattle theft and ROBBERY UNDER ARMS. Agnes Harris was rather fond of him and so named her son after the writer..
1934. Queenie meets the future Prince Philip. She's aged 8. Adolf Hitler becomes Fuhrer of Germany. Just saying.
1935. There's a major Royal Rumble. George V dies, King Eddie 8 steps up. Then he meets Wallis Simpson who releases him from an unknown sexual dysfunction through practices learnt in a Chineese brothel - mostly featuring BDSM. At least according to Dr. Alan Campbell - Don Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time. Edward VIII abdicates the throne to marry her. It's her third marriage. Scandal abound. George the VI steps up and becomes King-Emporer of the British Empire. This is all dramatised somewhat notably in a recent filmed play about some speech or another.
1936. Lilibet Windsor meets Phil for the 2nd time. She's aged 11.
1937. Elizabeth meets Philip Mountbatten for the third time - and it's the charm. She falls in love. They begin to exchange letters.
1943. Rolf has his first exhibition in Perth.
1945. The Queen marries Philip. They receive 2500 wedding gifts. 2501 if you include the Blitzkreig bombing of Dresden in Germany.
1946. They have to rush through the paperwork to ensure that their first child, Charles, is born a royal prince. Had that paperwork been later, he wouldn't have had any royal entitlement. Unluckily for us they got it through just in time.
1948. Rolf Harris becomes a swim teacher, then one morning awakes to find himself paralysed in an awake coma. He's rushed to hospital and stays there for several weeks. He has an epiphany to move to London and become an artist. George VI begins to get ill.
1950. He moves to London and becomes and artist. George VI dies.
1951. Rolf stars art school and immediately is offered a job on Fuzz- a puppet/cartoon show. The Queen has her coronation to co-incide. It annoys Scotland as she picks the regnal name Elizabeth II, and they never had a Liz the 1. The new Prince Philip is a little peeved as they instate the house of Windsor (her name) and not the house of Mountbatten (his name). He laments how he's the only man in the country not to be able to name his children with his own surname.
1952. The new Queen visits Melbourne, Australia (things are starting to become cyclical) and in her honour the Moomba festival starts (we'll revisit this in 1973 with Rolf).
1954. Harris monopolises BBC and ITV - unheard of at this time - he's the only person to appear on the Beeb and commercial TV.
1955. Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport is released, inspired by Harry Belafonte's calypsos. It's about an Australian stockman on his death bed. The recently deceased taunts us from beyond the grave with his seemingly never-ending demands to "Tie me kangaroo down, sport" or "Take me koala back, Jack" or "Play your didgeridoo, Blue." The song culminates in an gruesome orgy of violence as the ghoulish cadaver demands to have his skin rendered from the body and after being skinned, and in a feast of filth have the strips of flesh from his buttocks nailed to the shed wall to cure into leather in the sun.
Rolf offered four unknown musicians royalties for the song, but they turned him down, thinking the hideous murder ballad would be a flop. They opted for the recording fee of £28.00.
For the song Rolf invents the wobble board - it's made from Masonite (invented 1924 by William H. Mason - and used in construction of houses and toy models. If kept painted it will last the life of the house).
Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport inflames the passion of so many women that the oral contraceptive pill moves into the final stages of testing.
1956. Rolf marries his darling Alwen. He appears regularly at Clement Freud's Royal Court Theatre Club in Sloane Square where he serenades the debutantes and their escorts.
1958. Rolf develops a tour in America -a stage show using only Dulux emulsion paint. It is this tour where he hones his catchphrase, "Can you tell what it is yet?" The show is so popular it forces commercial television into Australia.
1959. Rolf pioneers beatboxing, beating Doug E. Fresh, Swifty, Buffy and Wise's 1985 efforts. And they claimed they were the inventors of the form.
1960. Rolf returns to the UK and settles here. This inspires the Beatles to form and release their first record.
1961. Rolf comperes a Beatles show at the Finsbury Park Empire.
1963. Jake the Peg is released. It is voted the fourth best Australian single of all time in a recent poll.
1966. Rolf receives an MBE.
1973. Rolf is crowned King of Moomba, the very festival that Queen Liz 2 inspired in 1952. Official Moomba means, "let's get together and have fun." But in Victorian slang "moom" means "anus" and "ba" means "in." I'll leave you to decipher.
1975. Rolf is given an OBE.
1977. Amthony Blunt is unmasked as a spy. He was in charge of portraits of the Queen. Rolf Harris would later paint a portrait of the Queen, had Blunt been allowed to stay in his position he would have been in a position to pass secrets about Rolf Harris' portrait of the Queen to the Russians.
1979. A man with a starting pistol fires blank shots at the Queen. The Queen is praised for her excellent horsewomanship as she was mounted at the time.
1980. A man breaks into the Queen's bedroom and sits on her bed. They talk for 7 minutes before he is escorted out. Who knows what they discussed.
1991. Rolf Harris' Stairway to Heaven is released and despite major criticism inspires South Africa to end apartheid. Maybe.
1992. Rolf presents Animal Hospital.
1994. Charles and Diana divorce.
1995. Diana is killed in a car crash in Paris.
2001. Rolf is exhibited at the National Gallery, London. 9/11 strikes.
2003. Rolf paints the Queen. Normally the Queen doesn't comment on pictures of her. She makes an exception for Harris. She says it looks friendly.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Ontology, or therein perhaps, The Meaning Of Existence
Ontology
as suggested by Benois Charland, hirsute actor from London and Christopher Bailey, originally from Canada, now of Debden, Essex, and actor and bowling lanes worker with a Starbucks fetish.
Ontology is the domain of what is. An objective reality. Of Epistemology (that's what the chain of events are that lead up to us knowing something). Anything that employs the verb, "to be." It's the study of being and trying to find a catagory to grouup things in.
For example, I can be considered a human, an animal, a caucasian , an actor, a man and an idiot all simultaneously and separately. Am I one? Several? All? None of these things? That's ontology.
Ontology asks us whether the catagroies we put things in are universal. Can a person be good? In what way are apples and oranges different and the same? Is fake money real?
Plato would say that if you give it a name it exists, others would say that when you name something, say a table, its your mind remembering the idea of a table and all the things that make it, well, table-y. As an example, you may not have a "society" because what IS a society, exactly? Can you hold it in your hand, or paint a picture of it? No, but it does describe a bunch of people with similar characteristics. This is what we're concerned with in ontology.
People that ascribe to these thoughts are called nomilalists. They'd might say things like, "You don't have universalisms like strength or humanity, they don't exist. Not properly, like." They'd say they are things you can think about, oh yes, you can think about them, but not have them. Not really hold them tight.
So, if ontology is looking at how we group things - how DO we group things?
Bundle
Well, there's the elegantly named bundle theory, where you, yknow, bundle things together. Like a
philosophical fruit salad.
Dialectics
Or there's peer-to-peer comparisons, or if you will, dialectics. Which is basically down to how you argue things out. A dialectic is an argument between two people who want the same thing. That's a different thing to a debate.
A Debate
Which is where you want to tell someone their wrong. Again and again. Year after grinding year. Dialectics vs debates, like a first date vs marriage.
Value
Then there's value theory. In this we go, "That power station will give electric power to the masses." But then someone else goes, "Yes, but it'll also turn the children into snake-skinned, bug-eyed Susan-Boyle-a-likes, but with the legs of a raptor and with the ability to see round corners." Through this informed discussion, we work out how valuable something is.
Finally, Metaphorical consideration
"I won an argument." What's an argument? "Something that you win or lose." Oh.
OK
But all of these are just methods we use to work out what a thing is worth, what a thing means, or even what a thing is. It's what-ness, it's thing-ness. It's quidditas.
Let's look at where ontology comes from and what it contains.
Monism
Which says that everyone and everything is part of everyone and everything. The universe is one whole thing and we're just cogs inside it. We don't have a beginning or end as we're just a continuation of the eternal.
Ontological pluralism
The opposite of Monism. There are loads of things and we're different people from one day, or one second, to the next.
We've said how Plato talked of all nouns existing because they are nouns, but then Aristotle went on to say that we should look at the ways in which everything is connected property of everything that's even existed.
Conclusion
And that's your primer on ontology - the method of grouping things and understanding what exists and how exists and if anything doesn't exist. Now you may think I've got some of this wrong, but as they say - just because it's wrong doesn't mean it's not true. If you fancy providing any examples or counterexamples to say I'm wrong I would like to assure you that your counterexamples depend on construing my thesis in a way I had not intended. I intended my thesis to be no counterexamples and to always be right.
Welcome to ontology.
PS How many existentialists does it take to change a lightbulb? Two. One to change it and the other to notice how the lightbulb represents a beacon of subjectivity illuminating the Cosmic Netherworld.
as suggested by Benois Charland, hirsute actor from London and Christopher Bailey, originally from Canada, now of Debden, Essex, and actor and bowling lanes worker with a Starbucks fetish.
Ontology is the domain of what is. An objective reality. Of Epistemology (that's what the chain of events are that lead up to us knowing something). Anything that employs the verb, "to be." It's the study of being and trying to find a catagory to grouup things in.
For example, I can be considered a human, an animal, a caucasian , an actor, a man and an idiot all simultaneously and separately. Am I one? Several? All? None of these things? That's ontology.
Ontology asks us whether the catagroies we put things in are universal. Can a person be good? In what way are apples and oranges different and the same? Is fake money real?
Plato would say that if you give it a name it exists, others would say that when you name something, say a table, its your mind remembering the idea of a table and all the things that make it, well, table-y. As an example, you may not have a "society" because what IS a society, exactly? Can you hold it in your hand, or paint a picture of it? No, but it does describe a bunch of people with similar characteristics. This is what we're concerned with in ontology.
People that ascribe to these thoughts are called nomilalists. They'd might say things like, "You don't have universalisms like strength or humanity, they don't exist. Not properly, like." They'd say they are things you can think about, oh yes, you can think about them, but not have them. Not really hold them tight.
So, if ontology is looking at how we group things - how DO we group things?
Bundle
Well, there's the elegantly named bundle theory, where you, yknow, bundle things together. Like a
philosophical fruit salad.
Dialectics
Or there's peer-to-peer comparisons, or if you will, dialectics. Which is basically down to how you argue things out. A dialectic is an argument between two people who want the same thing. That's a different thing to a debate.
A Debate
Which is where you want to tell someone their wrong. Again and again. Year after grinding year. Dialectics vs debates, like a first date vs marriage.
Value
Then there's value theory. In this we go, "That power station will give electric power to the masses." But then someone else goes, "Yes, but it'll also turn the children into snake-skinned, bug-eyed Susan-Boyle-a-likes, but with the legs of a raptor and with the ability to see round corners." Through this informed discussion, we work out how valuable something is.
Finally, Metaphorical consideration
"I won an argument." What's an argument? "Something that you win or lose." Oh.
OK
But all of these are just methods we use to work out what a thing is worth, what a thing means, or even what a thing is. It's what-ness, it's thing-ness. It's quidditas.
Let's look at where ontology comes from and what it contains.
Monism
Which says that everyone and everything is part of everyone and everything. The universe is one whole thing and we're just cogs inside it. We don't have a beginning or end as we're just a continuation of the eternal.
Ontological pluralism
The opposite of Monism. There are loads of things and we're different people from one day, or one second, to the next.
We've said how Plato talked of all nouns existing because they are nouns, but then Aristotle went on to say that we should look at the ways in which everything is connected property of everything that's even existed.
Conclusion
And that's your primer on ontology - the method of grouping things and understanding what exists and how exists and if anything doesn't exist. Now you may think I've got some of this wrong, but as they say - just because it's wrong doesn't mean it's not true. If you fancy providing any examples or counterexamples to say I'm wrong I would like to assure you that your counterexamples depend on construing my thesis in a way I had not intended. I intended my thesis to be no counterexamples and to always be right.
Welcome to ontology.
PS How many existentialists does it take to change a lightbulb? Two. One to change it and the other to notice how the lightbulb represents a beacon of subjectivity illuminating the Cosmic Netherworld.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Cheese Consumption
Cheese Consumption
As requested by David "Gubba" Gubb, originally from Norwich, now a Regulatory Operations Associate in Peterborough. He was once the president of the oldest rowing club in the world - Braesenose College, Oxford.
Cheese is a collective name for milk-based food products. The word cheese comes from a proto-Indo-European word, "kwat" meaning, "ferment" or "sour."
According to Pliny the Elder, cheese was a sophisticated enterprise even by the founding of the Roman Empire, and so predates recorded history. Some propose cheese was discovered between 8000-3000BCE.
The legend of cheese runs that an Arab trader was storing milk in a container made from the inflated stomach of a sheep when the rennet in the organ turned the milk to cheese.
Ancient Greek myth (circa 800BCE) credits Aristaeus with the discovery of cheese. And bee-keeping. And how to make nets. Busy guy. But not all his idea. He was taught this by the Myrtle-nymphs (the nymphs of the flower Myrtle, if you must know. A plant related to eucalyptus).
However, it was the Romans that spread cheese like some lurid amused bovine spread across Europe. And with the fall of the Roman Empire (on September 4th, 476ACE - a Monday. Ever since, Mondays have never been the same again) people could no longer engage in long-distance cheese trade, or gamble of cheese futures. Presumably one of the few things you could engage in 1500 years ago. This meant they had to spend their time developing their own cheeses.
Britain leads the way in diversification of cheese with over 700 different cheeses (and these only the ones that are officially recognised). France and Italy have about 400 apiece.
Whilst on France, indeed, Charles DeGalle - a staunch favourite of Phil Mann's Full Minds (Phil Menn's Full Mind?) and classic Frenchman that everyone outside France loves to hate, once asked of his own country, "How can you govern a country in which there are 246 kinds of cheese?" I guess you had to be there.
Making Cheese
This is hideous. To make cheese you must seperate the milk into curds and whey by souring the milk with vinegar, acid or bacteria and adding rennet. Some cheese-making bacteria is related to menigitus, pneumonia or necrotising fasciitis (that's the real-life zombie flesh-eating disease to you and me.) Think about that the next time you're scoffing down some Port Salut.
It's this bacteria that when reacting and producing carbon dioxcide creates the holes in Swiss cheese.
The cheese is now curd (a lumpy white thing) and the whey (the white juice like you get in sealed packed of mozzerella) is removed. This whey is used as an additive in processed foods, dried and sold as body-building powder or you can drink it. In fact in the 1700s they enjoyed this particularly delightful beverage.
Chin Chin
Take a quantity of whey - or cheese juice.
Mix it with white wine.
Pour in boiling water like you're making a nice cuppa
Syphon and sieve off the curd and sediment that settles at the bottom (yum!)
Add a few teaspoons of sugar (this for the builders among you)
A dash of lemon balm and a slice of lemon.
"Enjoy" your hot, cheesy, lemony, alcoholic soup in a traditional wooden tankard.
Anyway
Some cheese are just drained, salted, packaged and sold. Others have to be heated, stretched, cheddared, washed, salted, ripened, have mold spore cultures prepared and added and preserved through chemicals. To cheddar a cheese you must chop off the corners while it's setting and reform it several times. This stops the edges drying out.
The softness of a cheese is determined by its water content. Cheeses with a slightly higher water content are better for melting and employed usefully in snacks on toast. These semi-soft-to-firm cheeses like Emmental, Gruyere, Gouda, Edam, Jarlsberg and Cantal are perfect.
Processed Cheese
...has an extended shelf-life, resistance to seperation and a strong uniformity. Like the Red Army. It's made by taking normal cheese and adding unfermented cheese, emulsifiers, salt, colouring, whey, sodium phosphate, potassium phosphate, tartrate and citrate, cream, milkfat, water and spices. There are three types of processed cheese.
Stilton is a village near Peterborough, once famed for its cheese and an important coach stop on the Great North Road as it is 70 miles North of London. Daniel Defoe was fond of Stilton's cheesy comestables.
Although this small market village progenated Stilton cheese it is FORBIDDEN BY LAW to make it there. Due to the cynically and ironically named Protected Geographical Status of the cheese, you can only make Stilton cheese in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire but NOT in North-West Cambridgeshire where Stilton actually is.
Cheese Consumption
The list of those making the most cheese contains few surprises:
France is also the world's biggest exporter of cheese, although to give you an idea of scale, it's the third most prolific cheese maker in the world and only exports one third of its cheese.
Ireland, on the other hand exports 75% of its cheese. Probably because even the Irish won't eat it. Even more unsurprisingly, America makes the most cheese. But exports very little. Remember that in just a moment, won't you?
In terms of cheese eating (consumption) - France surprises us again by not being number 1. Greece leads the way here. Every person in Greece (on average) eats 30kg of cheese a year, where feta cheese acccounts for three quarters of this. That's 62 grams of feta a day. The weight of a tub of hairgel, or the average man's wrist watch. A wristwatch of cheese a day keeps the (somethingsomething) away. In France they eat 24.6kg of cheese a year.
America is 13th on the list, consuming 15kg per year per person. But let's recap. So on the first list we found out that America makes more cheese than anyone else in the world. But they only consume the 13th highest amount in the world. So what happens to the rest of it? Well they don't pack it off to starving Africa as we've already found out that America exports very little of their cheese.
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO AMERICAS CHEESE? Presumably its being piled up somewhere in a vast resevoir. A huge mountain of cheese looming over the American people.
Just to finish up, I'd like to answer a few questions about cheese.
Can you freeze cheese?
Yes, please.
At what temperature should I serve cheese?
Well if you're going to do it properly, take it out of the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature before serving. It improves the flavour.
Is the moon made of cheese?
Don't be like the wolf. There's an old folktale about how an animal often preyed on by wolves (let's call her a hen) tricks the wolf into thinking that the reflection of the moon in a deep well is actually a cheese floating in it. And as wolves love cheese more than they love the hunting and catching of small flightless birds, the wolf literally leaps at the opportunity and drowns horrifically like in all the best children's tales.
Can you make Human cheese?
Well, kinda. You have to add a bit of cows milk as human milk is a little low of protein. It is possible though. Apparrently its quite sweet.
When did our most famous cheeses come about?
Cheddar was invented circa 1500, Permesan in 1597, Gouda in 1697 and Camenbert in 1791.
As requested by David "Gubba" Gubb, originally from Norwich, now a Regulatory Operations Associate in Peterborough. He was once the president of the oldest rowing club in the world - Braesenose College, Oxford.
Cheese is a collective name for milk-based food products. The word cheese comes from a proto-Indo-European word, "kwat" meaning, "ferment" or "sour."
According to Pliny the Elder, cheese was a sophisticated enterprise even by the founding of the Roman Empire, and so predates recorded history. Some propose cheese was discovered between 8000-3000BCE.
The legend of cheese runs that an Arab trader was storing milk in a container made from the inflated stomach of a sheep when the rennet in the organ turned the milk to cheese.
Ancient Greek myth (circa 800BCE) credits Aristaeus with the discovery of cheese. And bee-keeping. And how to make nets. Busy guy. But not all his idea. He was taught this by the Myrtle-nymphs (the nymphs of the flower Myrtle, if you must know. A plant related to eucalyptus).
However, it was the Romans that spread cheese like some lurid amused bovine spread across Europe. And with the fall of the Roman Empire (on September 4th, 476ACE - a Monday. Ever since, Mondays have never been the same again) people could no longer engage in long-distance cheese trade, or gamble of cheese futures. Presumably one of the few things you could engage in 1500 years ago. This meant they had to spend their time developing their own cheeses.
Britain leads the way in diversification of cheese with over 700 different cheeses (and these only the ones that are officially recognised). France and Italy have about 400 apiece.
Whilst on France, indeed, Charles DeGalle - a staunch favourite of Phil Mann's Full Minds (Phil Menn's Full Mind?) and classic Frenchman that everyone outside France loves to hate, once asked of his own country, "How can you govern a country in which there are 246 kinds of cheese?" I guess you had to be there.
Making Cheese
This is hideous. To make cheese you must seperate the milk into curds and whey by souring the milk with vinegar, acid or bacteria and adding rennet. Some cheese-making bacteria is related to menigitus, pneumonia or necrotising fasciitis (that's the real-life zombie flesh-eating disease to you and me.) Think about that the next time you're scoffing down some Port Salut.
It's this bacteria that when reacting and producing carbon dioxcide creates the holes in Swiss cheese.
The cheese is now curd (a lumpy white thing) and the whey (the white juice like you get in sealed packed of mozzerella) is removed. This whey is used as an additive in processed foods, dried and sold as body-building powder or you can drink it. In fact in the 1700s they enjoyed this particularly delightful beverage.
Chin Chin
Take a quantity of whey - or cheese juice.
Mix it with white wine.
Pour in boiling water like you're making a nice cuppa
Syphon and sieve off the curd and sediment that settles at the bottom (yum!)
Add a few teaspoons of sugar (this for the builders among you)
A dash of lemon balm and a slice of lemon.
"Enjoy" your hot, cheesy, lemony, alcoholic soup in a traditional wooden tankard.
Anyway
Some cheese are just drained, salted, packaged and sold. Others have to be heated, stretched, cheddared, washed, salted, ripened, have mold spore cultures prepared and added and preserved through chemicals. To cheddar a cheese you must chop off the corners while it's setting and reform it several times. This stops the edges drying out.
The softness of a cheese is determined by its water content. Cheeses with a slightly higher water content are better for melting and employed usefully in snacks on toast. These semi-soft-to-firm cheeses like Emmental, Gruyere, Gouda, Edam, Jarlsberg and Cantal are perfect.
Processed Cheese
...has an extended shelf-life, resistance to seperation and a strong uniformity. Like the Red Army. It's made by taking normal cheese and adding unfermented cheese, emulsifiers, salt, colouring, whey, sodium phosphate, potassium phosphate, tartrate and citrate, cream, milkfat, water and spices. There are three types of processed cheese.
- Pasturised processed cheese
- Pasturised processed cheese food (which MUST contain at least 51% "optional cheese ingrediants")
- Pasturised processed cheese food spread (which MUST be spreadable at room temperature and less than 60% water).
Stilton is a village near Peterborough, once famed for its cheese and an important coach stop on the Great North Road as it is 70 miles North of London. Daniel Defoe was fond of Stilton's cheesy comestables.
Although this small market village progenated Stilton cheese it is FORBIDDEN BY LAW to make it there. Due to the cynically and ironically named Protected Geographical Status of the cheese, you can only make Stilton cheese in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire but NOT in North-West Cambridgeshire where Stilton actually is.
Cheese Consumption
The list of those making the most cheese contains few surprises:
- The United States of America - 4,275,000 metric tonnes
- Germany - 1,927,000t
- France - 1,884,000t
- Italy - 1,149,000t
- Netherlands - 732,000t
France is also the world's biggest exporter of cheese, although to give you an idea of scale, it's the third most prolific cheese maker in the world and only exports one third of its cheese.
Ireland, on the other hand exports 75% of its cheese. Probably because even the Irish won't eat it. Even more unsurprisingly, America makes the most cheese. But exports very little. Remember that in just a moment, won't you?
In terms of cheese eating (consumption) - France surprises us again by not being number 1. Greece leads the way here. Every person in Greece (on average) eats 30kg of cheese a year, where feta cheese acccounts for three quarters of this. That's 62 grams of feta a day. The weight of a tub of hairgel, or the average man's wrist watch. A wristwatch of cheese a day keeps the (somethingsomething) away. In France they eat 24.6kg of cheese a year.
America is 13th on the list, consuming 15kg per year per person. But let's recap. So on the first list we found out that America makes more cheese than anyone else in the world. But they only consume the 13th highest amount in the world. So what happens to the rest of it? Well they don't pack it off to starving Africa as we've already found out that America exports very little of their cheese.
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO AMERICAS CHEESE? Presumably its being piled up somewhere in a vast resevoir. A huge mountain of cheese looming over the American people.
Just to finish up, I'd like to answer a few questions about cheese.
Can you freeze cheese?
Yes, please.
At what temperature should I serve cheese?
Well if you're going to do it properly, take it out of the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature before serving. It improves the flavour.
Is the moon made of cheese?
Don't be like the wolf. There's an old folktale about how an animal often preyed on by wolves (let's call her a hen) tricks the wolf into thinking that the reflection of the moon in a deep well is actually a cheese floating in it. And as wolves love cheese more than they love the hunting and catching of small flightless birds, the wolf literally leaps at the opportunity and drowns horrifically like in all the best children's tales.
Can you make Human cheese?
Well, kinda. You have to add a bit of cows milk as human milk is a little low of protein. It is possible though. Apparrently its quite sweet.
When did our most famous cheeses come about?
Cheddar was invented circa 1500, Permesan in 1597, Gouda in 1697 and Camenbert in 1791.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
How To Train A Homing Pigeon
How To Train A Homing Pigeon
Pigeons are animals. Let's start with the basics.
Life. They are alive. Not "dead" like stones, gases or liquids.
Archea. They came from single cells.
Multicellular eukarote are metazoa or animalia organisms, they're motile (they move), and they're heterotrophs (they ingest other organisms)..
Phylum cordata they are animals with vertibrae or close related. As embryos they have a notochord (a tiny spine), a dorsal nerve cord (becomes the spinal cord), an endostyle (a groove that's on the ventral wall of the pharynx which produces mucus to gather food particles) and a post-anal tail.
Subphylum vertebrata They have a backbone and spinal column
Class - Aves. They are birds. They are winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animals. The earliest known bird is the archaeopteryx (meaning Ancient Wing), which was around during the Jurassic period. It was like a magpie but about half a metre long. It lived in Germany.
Birds have no teeth, a four-chambered heart and wings. Most birds fly. Ones that don't include penguins, chickens, and the New Zealand Moa - now sadly extinct. They were 12ft Ostriches and died out around 1500 AD.
The smallest bird is the Bee Hummingbird. It's about 5 centimetres or 2 inches long. Nowadays the biggest bird is the 9ft ostrich. The biggest ever bird, however, was the Elephant Bird from Madagascar. It's scientific name was the Aepyornis Maximus, and was about 1/4 of the size of a T-Rex.
Birds are social monogamous - meaning for one breeding season at a time, or up to several years, they pick a single partner but rarely for life. Birds that do mate for life include swans, geese, eagles and some owls. But don't worry, if their partner dies, they grieve but move on and find a new partner eventually to stop them from being lonely. A few birds are also polygymous (have many females) or polyandrous (have many male mates).
There are a few theories about how flight started:
Dodos are also Columbiformes.
Migration
Bird populations migrate along a flyway. There are 11 major ones. Highlights include:
They know when to go due to the timing of the day length. Even captive birds fly in migration directions before returning to their cages.
They navigate by the sun and the moon and use them as a compass. They automatically correct their direction based on the time of day or night. They also use magnetoception. There are a lot of nerves in the upper beak which contains biological magnetite - the most magnetic of all naturally occuring minerals on Earth. Magnetite is also found in the brains of bees, termites and fish. And in the same place (behind the nose) in humans.
The chiton - a mollusc also called a "sea cradle" - which looks like a giant tongue has teeth made of magnetite.
Magnetite is an iron oxide with the chemical formula Fe3O4 or FeO-Fe2O3. It's brittle, black, twice as hard as chalk and half as hard as diamond in large quantities.
Also, in the eyes of pigeons there are photoreceptor cells. Inside there is a light-sensitive molecule called cryptochrome which when in contact with blue light splits into two molecules each with a spare electron. The spinning of these electrons is affected by magnetic fields which in turn affects the light sensitivity of the retinal nerons (like a tiny brain in the eye) which enables the bird to "see" or rather "visually sense" the magnetic field.
With humans, this sense is in the nose, and studies have proved that it is affected by large magnets. Some people find their magnetoception is improved by having magnetic implants under their skin.
Birds use this sense to navigate both globally and locally.
How to Train A Homing Pigeon
And now on to the climax. To find a good homing pigeon:
Thirty-two pigeons have been decorated with military honours for war contributions, including GI Joe, Paddy, Commando and William of Orange.
Pigeon is the cheap option for sacrifice if you can't afford a more expensive animal according to the Jewish Tanakh. They're also the only birds you're allowed to use for a korban sacrifice.
Pigeon breast is very tasty and kosher.
Don't get too carried away as 19% of all species of pigeon are endangered.
Pigeons are animals. Let's start with the basics.
Life. They are alive. Not "dead" like stones, gases or liquids.
Archea. They came from single cells.
Multicellular eukarote are metazoa or animalia organisms, they're motile (they move), and they're heterotrophs (they ingest other organisms)..
Phylum cordata they are animals with vertibrae or close related. As embryos they have a notochord (a tiny spine), a dorsal nerve cord (becomes the spinal cord), an endostyle (a groove that's on the ventral wall of the pharynx which produces mucus to gather food particles) and a post-anal tail.
Subphylum vertebrata They have a backbone and spinal column
Class - Aves. They are birds. They are winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animals. The earliest known bird is the archaeopteryx (meaning Ancient Wing), which was around during the Jurassic period. It was like a magpie but about half a metre long. It lived in Germany.
Birds have no teeth, a four-chambered heart and wings. Most birds fly. Ones that don't include penguins, chickens, and the New Zealand Moa - now sadly extinct. They were 12ft Ostriches and died out around 1500 AD.
The smallest bird is the Bee Hummingbird. It's about 5 centimetres or 2 inches long. Nowadays the biggest bird is the 9ft ostrich. The biggest ever bird, however, was the Elephant Bird from Madagascar. It's scientific name was the Aepyornis Maximus, and was about 1/4 of the size of a T-Rex.
Birds are social monogamous - meaning for one breeding season at a time, or up to several years, they pick a single partner but rarely for life. Birds that do mate for life include swans, geese, eagles and some owls. But don't worry, if their partner dies, they grieve but move on and find a new partner eventually to stop them from being lonely. A few birds are also polygymous (have many females) or polyandrous (have many male mates).
There are a few theories about how flight started:
- Cursorial (from the ground up) - The early birds were running along with their wings out, trying to keep their balance, the feather grew naturally for warmth and speed and eventually they picked up enough lift to keep going into the sky.
- Arboreal - From the trees down. They were up in the trees and jumping down, and the feathers and wings helped with landing. Then, they threw themselves at the ground and missed.
- WAIR - Wing Assisted Incline Running. So, right, they were running up a hill, and then the hill ran out and they kept running and just lept into the air and kept running into the sky until they were flying.
Dodos are also Columbiformes.
Migration
Bird populations migrate along a flyway. There are 11 major ones. Highlights include:
- Atlantic - Connects the Appalachians to Jamacia via the West Coast of the US.
- Central American - Down from central Canada to the tip of South America
- Pacific - From Alaska to Patagonia
- East Atlantic - Greenland, West Europe, curling around to the East to Southern Africa
- Central Asian - from the top West of Russia, straight down to Iraq and Yemen, then veers off toward Sri Lanka.
- East Asian - Zig-zags from Australia to Russia, then New Zealand and screws back to Japan.
They know when to go due to the timing of the day length. Even captive birds fly in migration directions before returning to their cages.
They navigate by the sun and the moon and use them as a compass. They automatically correct their direction based on the time of day or night. They also use magnetoception. There are a lot of nerves in the upper beak which contains biological magnetite - the most magnetic of all naturally occuring minerals on Earth. Magnetite is also found in the brains of bees, termites and fish. And in the same place (behind the nose) in humans.
The chiton - a mollusc also called a "sea cradle" - which looks like a giant tongue has teeth made of magnetite.
Magnetite is an iron oxide with the chemical formula Fe3O4 or FeO-Fe2O3. It's brittle, black, twice as hard as chalk and half as hard as diamond in large quantities.
Also, in the eyes of pigeons there are photoreceptor cells. Inside there is a light-sensitive molecule called cryptochrome which when in contact with blue light splits into two molecules each with a spare electron. The spinning of these electrons is affected by magnetic fields which in turn affects the light sensitivity of the retinal nerons (like a tiny brain in the eye) which enables the bird to "see" or rather "visually sense" the magnetic field.
With humans, this sense is in the nose, and studies have proved that it is affected by large magnets. Some people find their magnetoception is improved by having magnetic implants under their skin.
Birds use this sense to navigate both globally and locally.
How to Train A Homing Pigeon
And now on to the climax. To find a good homing pigeon:
- Examine the feathers, they should be smooth, slippery and full of natural powder.
- The feet should be white and full of powder - the whiter the legs the healthier the pigeon.
- The pigeon's pectoral muscles should be strong. If they are weak the tail sticks up at the back and will be dented. Healthy pigeons have straight tails.
- Other muscles should be firm and streamlined. If they're too bony it means it has poor stamina and will be a slow flier.
- Gaps in the wing feathers mean poor flying. A strong pigeon will try to stop you looking at its feathers.
- Check for pararsites, mites and feather lice.
- Start with young birds.
- Create a fly pen so they can fly but not escape. Feed them in their loft so they know to go there for food.
- Start to let the pigeons fly outside the pen. They WILL go crazy at first, flying around or diving to the floor.
- After a few days they'll start going off in a flock and coming back together for about an hour at a time.
- At this point take pigeons out 5-10 miles and let them fly home.
- Every time they omplete a distance 3 times, make it further away.
- Work your way up to about 50 miles as that's their limit. Although they have been known o do up to 200 miles.
- Train once a week, changing the direction from the loft and the direction of release.
- In winter only release them on clear good days.
- Keep them hungry before a flight so they have something to return to.
Thirty-two pigeons have been decorated with military honours for war contributions, including GI Joe, Paddy, Commando and William of Orange.
Pigeon is the cheap option for sacrifice if you can't afford a more expensive animal according to the Jewish Tanakh. They're also the only birds you're allowed to use for a korban sacrifice.
Pigeon breast is very tasty and kosher.
Don't get too carried away as 19% of all species of pigeon are endangered.
How To Fire A Cannon Correctly
How To Fire A Cannon Correctly
As suggested by Amy Brewer, a cannon lover from London Town, student and business manager in Edinburgh. She shares her birthday with both her parents and she's an only child.
A cannon is a piece of artillery that fires a projectile. usually using gunpowder and sometimes other types of propellant.
Being a type of artillery, this originally meant, "any infantry armed with projectile weapons," but the term has changed to refer to, "engines of war" that operate by projectile of munitions beyond the range of effect of personal weapons.
Engines of war - although sounding modernist or futurist (they being obsessed with the production of machines to do things for humans - baking, manufacturing, killing), they have operated since antiquity. Machines of war have been used to break or circumnavigate city walls or fortifications in siege warfare.
It all started with battering rams and catapults or siege towers. The biggest being Demetrius Poliorcetes' Helepolis (lit. the Taker of Cities). Nine stories high (as big as ten double deckers stacked one on top of each other) and iron plated, it weighed 180 tonnes - requiring 3500 men to operate it. Demetrius was King of Macedon in 294 BC. He also made a battering ram 180 feet long - longer than a football pitch and taking 1,000 men to operate. Neither worked.
An early form of cannon is of course a cross bow - one of the earliest being the Gastraphetes in 285 BC. These were soon accompanied by oxybelles - giant cross bows that fire giant spikes.
Later on came gun powder - its first recorded use on January 28th 1132 - a Thursday (Jan 28th is also the birthday of Ronnie Scott, Acker Bilk, Robert Wyatt, Nicolas Sarkozy and Elijah Wood). On this Thursday General Han Shizhong of the Song Dynasty used it against the city of Fujian. He won.
It caught on in Europe big time during the Hundred Years War (actually 116 years) (actually 7 wears - the Edwardian War, Caroline War, Lancastrian war, Breton war of succession, Castilian Civil War, the catchily named 1383-1385 war and the War of Two Peters).
In case you were wondering the two Peters were -of Castille and -of Aragon. They were fighting over Castille and fighting over Aragon. They both wanted each other's crown. Castille won, but both Peters ended up looking like a couple of Dicks.
Anyway, during the (false) 100 Year War, cannons got powerful enough to - get this - Knock Down Roofs. Up until 1430 most cannons were static, unweildy and inaccurate. They were mainly used for defence. In fact Joan of Arc came a cropper against them here on British soil.
Cannons, or bombards as they're currently known in this period are muzzle loaded tubes that fire stone or metal balls. Or just any old rubbish lying around. Bombard is from the French form of a Greek word meaning a humming noise.
Some notable examples from the time period include the improbably named Mons Meg - 4 metres long and fired cannon balls half a metre in diameter. Or the more improbably named Philip The Good. There's the Pumhart von Steyr (Steyr by name, slayr by nature) - an 8 tonne, 2.5 metre party popper - shaped exactly like the irritating festive decoration. It fired 700kg, 80cm balls. Then there's Mad Meg, Lazy Mette, Lazy Grette and the Grose Bosche, which in German means Big Gun. How very German indeed.
These were the Superguns - flinging their huge big balls around and extremely dangerous to know. The balls were bigger than 50 centimetres in diameter and took so much powder to fire they'd often simply explode on the spot and kill the irreplacable gun crew. Sometimes they even took out their own Kings - as James II - a big advocate what would nowadays be the NRA - found out when on the 31st August 1460 (a Friday) his cannon exploded and killed him.
Cannons got smallers and lighter and were used on both sides of the war and as the 15th Century dawns the word "cannon" passes frequently into use.
The world cannon is from the Italian "Cannone" meaning "Large Tube" (calm it, you at the back). The plural, "cannons" is a recent Americanism, where before the plural of a cannon was cannon.
So now we get to the crux of the subject - How To Fire A Cannon Correctly.
Firstly, for muzzle-loading cannons
Rifling is measured by the formula T =((CD²)/L x √(((SG)/10.9))) where T = twist, C = either 150 or 180, D = bullet diameter, L= bullet length, SG = specific gravity of bullet and SG =(Vps) / (Vpw) where v = volume , p = density, s=sample and w=water and was developed to help bullets and cannon balls go faster.
Pachelbel's Cannon
Just in case you came to this page looking for Pachelbel's Cnnon (or Kanon und Gigue fur drei violinen mit Generalbass) - a German baroque pirece written in 1694 but undiscovered and unpublished until 1919. Thought to be written for JC (not JS) Bach's wedding.
It's three violins playing the same piece on top of each other but starting at different times over a bass playing the same two bars over and over.
Although due to the way it slots together it actually creates a pattern of Dmaj tonic, A Maj dominant, Bmin submediant, Dmaj 1st inversion, G maj subdominant, Dmaj tonic, Gmaj subdominant and Amaj dominant. Also known as the plagal sequence.
As suggested by Amy Brewer, a cannon lover from London Town, student and business manager in Edinburgh. She shares her birthday with both her parents and she's an only child.
A cannon is a piece of artillery that fires a projectile. usually using gunpowder and sometimes other types of propellant.
Being a type of artillery, this originally meant, "any infantry armed with projectile weapons," but the term has changed to refer to, "engines of war" that operate by projectile of munitions beyond the range of effect of personal weapons.
Engines of war - although sounding modernist or futurist (they being obsessed with the production of machines to do things for humans - baking, manufacturing, killing), they have operated since antiquity. Machines of war have been used to break or circumnavigate city walls or fortifications in siege warfare.
It all started with battering rams and catapults or siege towers. The biggest being Demetrius Poliorcetes' Helepolis (lit. the Taker of Cities). Nine stories high (as big as ten double deckers stacked one on top of each other) and iron plated, it weighed 180 tonnes - requiring 3500 men to operate it. Demetrius was King of Macedon in 294 BC. He also made a battering ram 180 feet long - longer than a football pitch and taking 1,000 men to operate. Neither worked.
An early form of cannon is of course a cross bow - one of the earliest being the Gastraphetes in 285 BC. These were soon accompanied by oxybelles - giant cross bows that fire giant spikes.
Later on came gun powder - its first recorded use on January 28th 1132 - a Thursday (Jan 28th is also the birthday of Ronnie Scott, Acker Bilk, Robert Wyatt, Nicolas Sarkozy and Elijah Wood). On this Thursday General Han Shizhong of the Song Dynasty used it against the city of Fujian. He won.
It caught on in Europe big time during the Hundred Years War (actually 116 years) (actually 7 wears - the Edwardian War, Caroline War, Lancastrian war, Breton war of succession, Castilian Civil War, the catchily named 1383-1385 war and the War of Two Peters).
In case you were wondering the two Peters were -of Castille and -of Aragon. They were fighting over Castille and fighting over Aragon. They both wanted each other's crown. Castille won, but both Peters ended up looking like a couple of Dicks.
Anyway, during the (false) 100 Year War, cannons got powerful enough to - get this - Knock Down Roofs. Up until 1430 most cannons were static, unweildy and inaccurate. They were mainly used for defence. In fact Joan of Arc came a cropper against them here on British soil.
Cannons, or bombards as they're currently known in this period are muzzle loaded tubes that fire stone or metal balls. Or just any old rubbish lying around. Bombard is from the French form of a Greek word meaning a humming noise.
Some notable examples from the time period include the improbably named Mons Meg - 4 metres long and fired cannon balls half a metre in diameter. Or the more improbably named Philip The Good. There's the Pumhart von Steyr (Steyr by name, slayr by nature) - an 8 tonne, 2.5 metre party popper - shaped exactly like the irritating festive decoration. It fired 700kg, 80cm balls. Then there's Mad Meg, Lazy Mette, Lazy Grette and the Grose Bosche, which in German means Big Gun. How very German indeed.
These were the Superguns - flinging their huge big balls around and extremely dangerous to know. The balls were bigger than 50 centimetres in diameter and took so much powder to fire they'd often simply explode on the spot and kill the irreplacable gun crew. Sometimes they even took out their own Kings - as James II - a big advocate what would nowadays be the NRA - found out when on the 31st August 1460 (a Friday) his cannon exploded and killed him.
Cannons got smallers and lighter and were used on both sides of the war and as the 15th Century dawns the word "cannon" passes frequently into use.
The world cannon is from the Italian "Cannone" meaning "Large Tube" (calm it, you at the back). The plural, "cannons" is a recent Americanism, where before the plural of a cannon was cannon.
So now we get to the crux of the subject - How To Fire A Cannon Correctly.
Firstly, for muzzle-loading cannons
- If just fired you'd cover the air vent to choke the barrel and suffocate any sparks
- Insert a damp sponge to swab the barrel and clear out hot debris. This might seem like a waste of time but in a REAL WAR SITUATION its necessary and improves accuracy.
- Insert the priming charge after removing it from its paper bag. If your cannon has a flash pan - fill that first. Then the propellant charge goes in.
- Ram the charge into place using a ramrod.
- Add wadding and ramrod to hold the charge in place.
- Add the projectile.
- Use more wadding and ramrodding to hold the projectile in place, this also creates a seal to prevent gaseous escape.
- Insert priming fire or fuse after removing the air vent cover.
- Aim cannon taking into account distance, trajectory, slant range, inclination angle, horizontal distance and the formula Rs=√x²+y² = √( (2v²cos²θ)/g) ( (sinθ/cosθ) - m) + ((m(2v²cos²θ)/g) (sinθ/cosθ)-m) etc...
- Light fuse
- Run
Rifling is measured by the formula T =((CD²)/L x √(((SG)/10.9))) where T = twist, C = either 150 or 180, D = bullet diameter, L= bullet length, SG = specific gravity of bullet and SG =(Vps) / (Vpw) where v = volume , p = density, s=sample and w=water and was developed to help bullets and cannon balls go faster.
Pachelbel's Cannon
Just in case you came to this page looking for Pachelbel's Cnnon (or Kanon und Gigue fur drei violinen mit Generalbass) - a German baroque pirece written in 1694 but undiscovered and unpublished until 1919. Thought to be written for JC (not JS) Bach's wedding.
It's three violins playing the same piece on top of each other but starting at different times over a bass playing the same two bars over and over.
Although due to the way it slots together it actually creates a pattern of Dmaj tonic, A Maj dominant, Bmin submediant, Dmaj 1st inversion, G maj subdominant, Dmaj tonic, Gmaj subdominant and Amaj dominant. Also known as the plagal sequence.
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