Symbolic Forest

Note to self: be more careful with the leftovers in future. Two day old Chinese food with prawns in isn’t good for my stomach, clearly. That was at least part of the reason for my absence over the past couple of days. There were other reasons, too, of course – when I wasn’t in bed or throwing up, I was travelling round half of Yorkshire, escorting kissograms and delivering cats. Despite my illness, despite still spending most of the weekend in bed, I didn’t get much sleep.

Keyword noise: Chinese, food, illness, leftovers, prawns, seafood, sickness.

As I haven’t done it for a while – stop sniggering at the back there – it’s time for Recent Search Requests.

neverwhere – look here, or possibly here.
have you tried turning it off and on again poster – if you give me ten minutes I’m sure I could knock one up
symptoms of hypoxia in dog – I’d imagine they’re fairly similar to the symptoms in humans – irritability, aggression, light-headedness, inability to concentrate, and eventually fainting.
movie shoot on millennium bridge – I took a photo, but beyond that I know nothing
public domain sailing ship images – sorry, none of those here.
british railways sign font – you’re probably after either Gill Sans or Rail Alphabet.
bagpiping sexual practise – I really have no idea. Does it involve horrible screechy noises, and men in skirts? Or is it related to teabagging? The mind boggles.
angel london underground strawberry beer – see, despite staying near The Angel recently, I still don’t know any pubs round there that sell it. Better do some fieldwork, I think.
Takin’ Over The Asylum was the classic BBC Scotland drama series starring Ken Stott and David Tennant, back before he was famous. It really was very good indeed, and I wish I could see it again some time.
naked norfolk girl – that’s definitely enough search requests for today, I think.

Keyword noise: bagpipes, Gill Sans, hypoxia, internet, Millennium Bridge, Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere, Ken Stott, searching.

Big Dave’s on holiday all this week, and most of next week too. I’ve been getting on with my work, have coped on my own, and haven’t had to call him up for anything.

This might not sound unusual to you – how many of you call your co-workers for help when they’re on holiday? Indeed, it’s not unusual to me either. The other way round, though, it’s routine. When I’m on holiday, I end up with Dave on the phone at least once a week, usually more.

The last holiday I took, in fact, he managed to pull a blinder. It was my first morning on holiday. I woke up, went to a greasy spoon for a fry-up, and wandered back to my room for a shower. I strip off, get in the bathroom, turn on the shower, get in…

“Your phone’s ringing!”

I turn the shower off again: and, indeed, brrring brrring. It’s Dave, of course, having trouble with something that has to be done every day. I have to talk him through some basic computer commands that he really, really should know how to use.

What’s galling is that he’s above me, officially. He gets paid more than me, too. He still needs to phone me for help, though. I wonder when he’ll next be getting in the shower…

Keyword noise: Big Dave, holiday, shower.

Or, photo-post of the week.

I had to go out shopping for new trainers on Sunday. I took the camera along too, though, which meant I went on a bit of a detour.

I like the third one best – the thumbnail doesn’t do it justice.

Keyword noise: Arnos Grove, clouds, ferry, ferry terminal, London, London Underground, North Woolwich, panorama, photography, pier, railway, Thames, underground, Woolwich, Woolwich Ferry.

Today’s top news story: Ian Gibson, a Norwich MP and former scientist has announced that a cluster of child diabetes cases in Norfolk may be caused by inbreeding. Cue, of course, all the usual jokes about Norfolk stereotypes: country yokels marrying their sister, and so on. Dr Gibson, interviewed on Today,^* seemed rather affronted by any suggestion that he was being insulting. His response: he was using “inbreeding” in a purely technical manner which us laughing yokels don’t understand. I see.

Much as Dr Gibson has been criticised for “not understanding genetics” and so on, he may well have a point. As I’ve mentioned before, people don’t move around very much. In years gone by, people moved around even less; migration is hard work. It’s not too surprising, in other words, to find that illnesses with a strong genetic factor may have strong regional variations too.^** It might be simplistic to say “diabetes may be regionally concentrated because of inbreeding,” because there are lots of other causative factors involved. You can’t pretend, though, that regional variations are unlikely to exist.

* only a few minutes ago! Damn, this blog can be up-to-the-minute occasionally.

** My psychotic aunt – clinically diagnosed, I’m not just being rude about her – is from Norfolk too. I wonder if anyone has looked to see if there are similar clusters of mental illnesses with a strong hereditary component.

Keyword noise: diabetes, genetics, hereditary illness, Ian Gibson, illness, inbreeding, migration, Norfolk.

Well, I’m glad I’m not going anywhere today. Not just in a plane, but anywhere that might involve driving past an airport, because no doubt the traffic around them will be awful too.

Today demonstrates the horror of 24-hour news. I’m just as bad as everyone else, refreshing the BBC News site every five minutes to get the latest on the Terror Alert. The news reports, meanwhile, are filled with hyperbolic phrases such as “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”.^* No it isn’t. People have imagined it. To quote The Princess Bride, “I do not think you know what that word means.”

The government seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place, when it comes to statements. “We have arrested everyone involved, apart from the ones we haven’t”. “This is nothing to do with race, but we’re talking to Community Leaders about it.” How do you become a Community Leader, anyway? Are there elections?

No doubt bottled liquids will be confiscated on planes for the next few months, before everything goes back to normal, and the next terrorist attack comes along with something completely different. The ones that get through are never the ones you expect, after all.

* To be fair to the media, it was a police spokesman who came up with that exact phrase.

Keyword noise: airport, security, false alarms, flying, terrorism, travel.

Things that would make my life better:

• A better job^*
• Living away from the parents
• A social life that is closer to home
• A partner who, also, was reasonably close to home
• The self-belief to always do what I want to do.
• The wisdom to know what I need to do.
• And the self-confidence to be content with what I can do, rather than being disappointed at not doing what other people can.

This post was brought to you by Self-Reflective Lunchtime Breaks, Ltd – purveyors of angst to twentysomethings everywhere. Feel free to add further suggestions.

* but “better” is such a nebulous term there.

Keyword noise: angst, self-reflection.

As mentioned the other day, I spent most of the weekend at Caption, the annual small-press and self-published comic convention in Oxford. It wasn’t somewhere I’d visited before – I’m someone who looks on people who can draw properly with awe and admiration – but it turned out to be a nice day out. Held in a community centre which felt like an overgrown collection of church halls inside, it was a nice quiet relaxed event. “Ooh, it’s a bit quiet this year,” said the people I was with, who were veterans, but I didn’t mind that myself. It helped that it was on Cowley Road, which made it easy for us to pop out for a meal in the early evening, then nip back to the convention. And, unlike the centre of the city, Cowley Road isn’t completely flooded with tourists.

Keyword noise: Caption, comics, Cowley Road, indie, Oxford, self-publishing, small press, zines.

Yesterday, I mentioned in passing that my friend W’s birthday is upcoming; but it didn’t register that W’s birthday is today. So, if you’re reading, happy birthday!

(I don’t think W reads the site very often, but he has looked at it occasionally)

Keyword noise: birthday, celebration.

Lounging around on a sunny Sunday morning, I was planning, plotting, and thinking of things to write here. Planning on writing about the cake K was promising to bake, or W’s upcoming birthday, or yesterday’s trip to Oxford with C and P and various other people. And I started thinking: why do I refer to people by letter like that?

I quickly realised where I might have got it from: the scientist and writer Jeremy Bernstein. I have, somewhere on my shelves, a copy of his book Experiencing Science, a compilation of articles he wrote for the New Yorker. It is mostly a series of pocket biographies of prominent scientists, from Kepler through to Oppenheimer via Lysenko, Franklin, and others; but at the end of the book is a slightly strange, partly fictional essay on the work of Turing and Gödel. In which all the main characters – the fictional ones, at any rate – are referred to by their initial letters. K, W, and so on.

I can’t say I fully understand Gödel’s theorems. My maths isn’t that good. I do love its implications, though. It underwrites and undermines the whole of computer theory; and, as someone who works in IT, I know from experience that computer theory hardly ever matters in real life. Someone once asked me, politely, to shut up, on a train, because I was trying to explain Gödel’s theory rather loudly to Δ and I hadn’t realised we were in the Quiet Coach. I try to reread Bernstein’s book every year or two, and not just for the Gödel chapter; clearly, though, it’s been a bigger influence on my own writing than I’d realised before.

Keyword noise: biography, books, Experiencing Science, Gödel's Theorem, influences, Jeremy Bernstein, journalism, Kurt Gödel, maths, pen portrait, pocket biography.