Paying for the BBC

Five years ago I was quite pleased to learn that I no longer needed to pay for a Television license, though I wasn't sure that I deserved the concession. Recently, when I heard that from next Summer I shall have to pay I was quite irritated - it will be one more bill to keep track of, and losing something one has grown used to is annoying and much worse than never having it.

Do we need television licenses at all? Most of the television I watch is financed either by advertising, or through my Virgin Media Subscription.

The BBC news services may be a special case and coud possibly be financed by a governemnt grant, but I think that the great majority of BBC's output is entertainment, and could be financed in the same way that other entertainment is financed.

Solving our Irish Problem

Mr Trump appears to be very upset at not being allowed to buy Greenland. I suggest we offer to sell him Northern Ireland. Then he could deal with the border problem and we'd no longer need to worry about the Backstop.

Harvest

I've just eaten my first home grown tomato of the year - of a heritage variety called Whippersnapper

My tomatoes seem to be ripening a bit later than usual, but now they've started there will be many more to follow.

Feeling diminished.

After years of idleness I've started to bring my web site up to date. Today I uploaded a new garden page  with pictures of the new garden. Looking through the site I realise how much less I do these days than I used to do. If I deleted everything that's out of date my site would be much slimmer than it is.

Alas!!

Puzzling Names for Elusive Entities

I've been reading some theoretical Physics and thought the names of the various quarks most misleading.

Up and Down are the pair that make up most of the matter we usually encounter, but there are also Strange, Charm, Top and Bottom quarks. The names are entirely arbitrary, but four of them misleadingly suggest some geometrical significance..

It would be much better to use names that are clearly arbitrary. I suggest  the names of foods.

Up and Down could be replaced by Bangers and Mash, Strange and Charm by Strawberries and Cream, and Top and Bottom by Haggis and Nips.

If we want to make  a concession to transatlantic tastes we could replace one of  those pairs by Peanut Butter and Jelly.

Innumeracy in High Places.

M. Jacob Rees-Mogg has commanded his minions to use only Imperial units for measurement, and to avoid the word 'equal'.

Imperial measurements may amuse people who enjoy vague chatter about quantities but they are quite unsuitable for calculation. Compare the conversion of litres to cubic centimetres with the conversion of gallons to cubic inches. Anyone asked to make the latter conversion is likely to start by asking 'which gallon?' and to struggle even when that question has been answered

Abandoning the notion of equality would make Mathematics extremely difficult.

I find it even harder to believe in Mr. Rees-Mogg than in the other Westminster Folk.

Westminster Folk

I no longer believe in British Politics.

I don't mean that I don't trust British politicians - I don't but my disbelief is much more profound than that.

I've lived through many governments and political leaders outside government. I've disagreed with most of them about one thing or another, and have disagreed with some of them about almost everything, but until now I never struggled to believe in their existence.

Now public affairs look and sound like a comedy act mostly performed by distinctly mediocre actors.

Perhaps we could call the sit com 'Westminster Folk'

If someone wrote a computer game we might call it 'Confidence and Supply'

Fans

As hot weather arrives, people start to tell of sleepless nights spent surrounded by fans. The fans may be more of a problem than a solution.

Fans consume electrical energy and release it as heat, partly in the mechanism of the fan, and partly in motion of the air. The stream of air generated by a fan quickly dissipates into eddies and soon fades away into random motion of individual molecules, what we usually call 'heat' So a fan is likely to make the room as a whole warmer.

Sometimes parts of a room may be cooled. If one part of a room is cooler than another a fan could be set to move air from the cooler part of the room to the warmer thus changing the distribution of heat but the cooling effects of a fan usually depends on evaporating water, so a fan blowing air over a moist sweaty body may cool that body. That will only take place while the sweaty body exposes itself  to the output of the fan. Sometimes sweaty bodies leave fans switched in their absence, expecting the room to be cooler when they return. They are likely to be disappointed.

Sorting Out Ireland

Concern about the status of Northern Ireland is the principal impediment to persuading Parliament to approve arrangements for Britain to leave the EU.

I propose a referendum in Northern Ireland to decide whether or not to accept the so called 'back-stop' Were Nothern Ireland to approve its partial separation from the rest of Britain, there would be less reason for the rest of Britain to object.

Confusing Abstraction and reality.

I wince every time I hear someone say something like 'hot temperature' or 'expensive prices'

I suspect there's a name for such confusions, but I can't recall it. Perhaps some reader of this blog will enlighten me.

There is one context in which there's case for calling a price expensive. People who trade in financial futures buy or sell the right to trade in stocks or commodities at a certain price. If the cost of a particular option seems rather high, one might say' that's an expensive price', but so far as I know futures traders never do say that.

Chats with cats

I often talk to the cat, even though she is deaf. Perhaps she can lip read!

In her way she talks back.Sometimes it's clear that she wants something - either food or a door opened, but sometimes I think she's just acknowledging my existence. A meow then signifies something like 'I see you and accept your admiration'.

We humans often struggle to think of something to say in circumstances when saying something is considered polite. It would be so much easier if, instead of having to formulate a vacuous sentence that just appears to say something, we could simply meow.

Breach of Copyright ?

The debate about a newspaper's publication of an ambassador's emails has not so far mentioned copyright. I imagine that copyright belongs to the Foreign Office, so that publication without their permission would be grounds for at least a civil action.