More Tampering with Nursery Rhymes

My attention was drawn to this strange story on the BBC site.

A charity called 'Bookstart' has changed:

'What shall we do with a drunken sailor'   to

 'What shall we do with the grumpy pirate.'

The story mentions other expurgations of nursery rhymes, include a general condemnation of any mentioning pigs.

I wanted to record the imbecility. Further comment seems unnecessary.

Google Chrome

When it first appeared I hated it because I couldn't find any easy way of managing the bookmarks. After a month or two, someone pointed me to the bookmarks manager, which was somewhere I'm almost sure I'd originally looked in vain. I gather Chrome quietly updates itself  all the time. That's wonderful while it works, but I hope they never make a bad mistake.

I like the way it handles tags, and shows frequently visited sites on the home page, but I still have some reservations. When I bookmark a site, I have to move the mouse very cautiously to avoid the bookmark going in the wrong place, and there's no indication that it has gone anywhere even when it has. There are a few sites that don't look their best with Chrome - over wide margins sometimes obscure material I want to read, and on one site every time I move to another page I have to press the maximise button before I can read it.

Still, overall I'm growing quite fond of Chrome and it is now my default browser. 

Big Prime Numbers

When big pimes are discovered, they are always Mersene numbers, of the form 2^p - 1 for p prime.

I used to assume that was because the binary epresentation of such a number consists entirely of 1's so that the number could easily be generated in instalments in a computer, but while browsing through Hardy and Wright's Introduction to the Theory of Numbers, I came upon another relevant fact.

For some Mersenne numbers there is a very short short cut to finding whether they are prime.

If the prime p is greater than 7, and of the form 4n + 3, that is if it leaves remainder 3 when divided by 4, then:

 if 2p + 1 is prime, that number is a factor of 2^p - 1, otherwise 2^p - 1 is prime.

So, for example, to check whether or not 2^19 - 1 is prime, consider 2*19 + 1 = 39

39 is not prime, therefore 2^19 - 1 is prime.

To check whether or not 2^251 - 1 is prime, consider 2*251 + 1 = 503; that is prime and is therefore a factor of 2^251 - 1 which is therefore not prime.

Next time you hear of the discovery of a large prime of the form 2^p - 1, check to see if p leaves remainder 3 when divided by 4; I bet it will.

A wayside shrine

About two years ago a young man aged about 20 was killed on the nearby main road. Ever since people have been lodging flowers between two branches of a tree at the side of the road. I don't think those responsible live at the house nearest to the tree, because I've seen someone arrive, deposit flowers and the leave.

Recently I noticed a few Christmas decorations and two paper plates with bits of food. I suspect someone had delivered Christmas dinner, though only potatoes were left when I noticed it, so I expect the foxes had eaten the rest.

I suppose that paying tributes to the victim may now have become such a deeply ingrained habit, that to stop would feel disloyal. I find it most depressing.

I wish people would think of less banal ways of remembering someone. One could read some of their favourite books, or tend their favourite part of the garden, though not in an obsessive attempt to preserve it in precisely the same state as they knew it, and there is always the traditional memorial - a tombstone.

Radio Four discussed a book I'm reading.

This morning's edition of In Our Time was devoted to Henry David Thoreau, best known as the author of Walden and Civil Disobedience.

For the last few weeks I've been reading a book containing both those works together with various essays on Thoreau. My impressions are recorded on the books page of my web site.

A Poetess on Radio 4

Listening to Radio 4 as I took my morning bath, I heard an interview with the winner of the T. S. Eliot poetry prize. She read one of her poems, which was about (what her poetry is about).

 I found it quite incomprehensible, not just in some respects puzzling, but so baffling that I could find no clue as to what it was supposed to convey, unless that bafflement was itself the message.

Between the ages of about 15 and my early 40's I used to read a fair amount of poetry, but then gradually lost interest.

I quite like the cheerful jingle of humorous light verse, but have come to mistrust what is called 'serious' poetry. That now strikes me as an attempt to present difficult ideas with obscure indirection, so that the wilful impenetrability of the exposition shall match the intractability of the subject matter.

If we are to get to grips with difficult ideas, we need to be discuss them in a very different way,  in the plainest of plain prose, possibly augmented  in emergencies by a little symbolic logic.

As the prize was set up by Eliot and the winner was a young lady living on one of the Shetland Isles, the following thoughts of Eliot's seem pertinent:

Under the bamboo

Bamboo, bamboo

Under the bamboo tree

Two live as one

One lives as two

Two live as three

Under the bam

Under the boo

Under the bamboo tree.

Where the breadfruit fall

And the penguin call

And the sound is the sound of the sea

Under the bam

Under the boo

Under the bamboo tree.

Where the Gauguin maids

In the banyan shades

Wear palmleaf drapery

Under the bam

Under the boo

Under the bamboo tree.

Tell me in what part of the wood

Do you want to flirt with me?

Under the breadfruit, banyan, palmleaf

Or under the bamboo tree?

Any old tree will do for me

Any old wood is just as good

Any old Isle is just my style

Any fresh egg

Any fresh egg

And the sound of the coral sea.

T.S.Eliot, Sweeney Agonistes, Fragments of an Agon.

Barack Obama may turn out to be a great disappointment

I've just listened to part of a speech he made, and noted two promises.

He said that in the next two years he'd double the output of energy from alternative sources. He also promised to computerise all American medical records.

Alternative energy is both very fashionable and relatively new, so the annual rate of increase is a high proportion of the total. Output might well double in two years without any intervention from the president elect. Furthermore it takes quite a while to build and commission new generating equipment, so it is unlikely that anything Obama does do will have much effect in the next two years. The promise about energy is empty.

The promise about medical records should worry all Americans. There have been attempts to computerise all medical records in England too. The cost has been enormous, but the system still doesn't work properly. Obama sounded a bit like Harold Wilson promising in the 1960's to harness the 'white heat of the technological revolution' for the public good. Has he an ulterior motive for building a central database of information about the entire population ?

A cheerful post

Reviwing my posts on this blog, I notice that a great many are complaints. I've decided to try not to sound like a grumpy old man, even though that's proably what I am.

So here's a cheerful post.

I think I may have discovered an osmotic cure for toothache.

Last weekend a tooth started to ache, especially under pressure. It felt disturbingly like an abscess. That was worrying because I feared my dentist might be unavailable until after Christmas, and possibly till the new year. I feared I might eventually have to pull the tooth out myself with pliers - abscesses unattended can be very painful.

Then I remembered my Rinstead Pastilles, pink antiseptic disks recommended for gum infections. I wedged one between my check and the part of the gum containing the root of the recalcitrant tooth and let is dissolve slowly overnight. A bit of it was still there in the morning, and the tooth was a little less sensitive,

Thereafter the toothache gradually went away. It might have gone away anyway, even without the Rinstead pastille, but I have a theory of how that could have helped.

I don't think  it was the antiseptic soaking through the gum into the infected tooth. Much more likely is movement of water in the opposite direction.

I guess that the surface of the gum is a semi permeable membrane. In between the gum and the pink pastille would be a saturated solution of whatever the pastille is made of, and that solution would almost certainly have a higher molar conentration and hence a lower osmotic pressure than the fluid inside the gum, so that water would diffuse outwards in the direction needed to remove the difference in pressures. That would have dried out the accumulated fluid causing the toothache.

Perhaps a sweet would have worked as well, except that it might have dissolved faster instead of lasting all night, but I like the idea that sucking a sweet might cure toothache.

 

Peanut Panic

Peanut Panic

Follow this link for the whole story.

As I'm not sure how long that link will be available, I've quoted some of the highlights. 

"A peanut on the floor of a US school bus recently led to evacuation and decontamination for fear it might have affected the 10-year-old passengers."

"Professor Nicolas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School ....  said the number of US schools declaring themselves to be entirely "nut free" - banning staples like peanut butter, homemade baked goods and any foods without detailed ingredient labels - was rising, despite clear evidence that such restrictions were unnecessary. 

"School entrances have signs admonishing visitors to wash their hands before entry to avoid [nut] contamination." 

He said these responses were extreme and had many of the hallmarks of mass psychogenic illness (MPI), previously known as epidemic hysteria."

"John Collard, nurse consultant and clinical director of Allergy UK, said people in Britain were also going overboard in their reaction to allergies.  "I heard a similar story in the UK about a school making children wear gowns over their clothing during meal times so there would be no contamination fear from milk."

I'm inclined to giggle at much of that  especially the peanut on the bus, and the ritual hand washing enjoined on those entering schools, but the ban on home baking appals me.

If home baked food is held to be a danger when taken to school, it may soon be thought dangerous even at home, so we might eventually be forbidden to eat cakes or pastries unless they come stale and  in labelled supermarket packets. After all, might not some otherwise be eaten by a visitor allergic to some of the ingredients?

Legitimate visitors could with an allergy could ask about the ingredients, but what about illicit intruders ?  

These days we are supposed to make our houses safe for burglars, and the secrecy with which they ply their trade makes it hard for them to ask what snacks they may safely nibble to fortify them while ransack our houses and steal our valuables. While I should be delighted to hear of a burglar dying in the act, many influential people show a perverse determination to prevent poetic justice whenever they can.

Annual Letter

As I receive annual letters from quite a few people, I've written one myself, but instead of sending it out by post or email, I've put it on my website.

It consists mainly of links to entries in this blog, and to a few pictures, so most of the contents will be familiar to the conscientious few who visit here regularly, but for the benefit of anyone who wants to take a look, here's the link 

Santa Clause revealed

I had never suspected that Santa might be a mere grammatical abstraction until today, when I read a notice  displayed by an unusually knowledgeable shopkeeper advertising 'Santa Clause Figures'. I was too shocked to notice the price.

If Santa is a clause, seasonal festivities are imperilled, for he would only have to mislay his finite verb to become a mere phrase. I very much doubt whether Santa Phrase would be capable of negotiating those chimneys that remain, never mind about insinuating himself into the interstices of  a central heating system.

The possibilities are most alarming. No wonder that The Powers That Be have conspired to conceal the truth. The expedient of just omitting one letter was brilliant psychology. Who thought of it?

I wonder if the Official Secrets Act has been broken. Will the anti-terrorist police be involved?

I fear I may already have said too much for my own good, so I shall say no more.

Fund managers and their sponsors.

The latest financial scandal seems to involve a pyramid scheme, a type of fraud that is so well known it should deceive only the most naive and inexperienced, yet it seems to have deceived the fund managers of numerous institutions, not only relatively soft targets like local authorities and pension funds, but even Santander, the supposed saviour of much of the British banking system.

The poor performance of fund managers is a matter of public record. Their funds usually under perform stock market indices, so that they do worse than they would if they invested at random. Why then is so much money entrusted to them ? Part of the answer is that our government recruits many of their customers, or perhaps it would be better to say conscripts them.

Most people are required to place savings in pension funds, where, of course, someone 'manages' them. Not only does the government thus prevent people from managing that part of their savings themselves, it goes further and places obstacles in the way of any who try to manage the remainder. The principal obstacle in Capital Gains Tax. Any investment policy accumulating sufficient assets to replace a pension would incur some liabilities under the tax, and as that is based on money value not real value there could be a tax liability without there being any gain. Even when no tax is liable, it would be necessary to keep complicated records and to perform involved calculations to prove that, probably requiring employment of an accountant, whose fees would further diminish the fund saved.

Don't believe the people who say our financial ills require more regulation by government. Government regulation has long been part of the problem.