Anarchy in the... no, sorry, I can't bring myself to type it

On Friday, <3 and meself went off to Newbury to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain for an evening of culture and sophistication. From the "real classical music like what this is" (the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy) to the "Yorkshire folk song" (Wuthering Heights, sung swing-style) I had a great time. Seven ukuleles (we are faithfully assured that the one on the right was a bass uke, not a guitar) played well by some people with good vocal skills (a couple of them are really good singers) and a serious sense of fun — what more could you ask for? Of course, being uke players they had to do a George Formby song and, with typical lack of respect for expectations, they performed Leaning on a Lampost in Russian folk style (think Kalinka). Too many highlights to mention.

Technical

As a bit of a diversion to the norm, I thought I'd flag up some humour. Who can resist a good blonde joke? And this is one of the best I've heard in a long while.

Happy New Year!

Well, after a couple of weeks offline, I'm back up and running. Xmas and new year were good (and thanks are due to loads of people for nice prezzies), though marred by some 2.5 hours of delay on the way back at Dublin airport and the demise of our car on the way to Devon for the new year. Thanks to our rescue company we were provided with a loan car for the weekend, which meant we could actually go ahead with our new year plans

...Which were to be in Bideford, my home ancestral, which has long been the scene of some great revelry but over the last few years (since I moved away!) it seems to have become one of the top spots to celebrate new year, with a massive party on the quay — a town with an adult population around 30,000 (half of whom are over 50) was home to a free outdoor party with an estimated 15,000 attendees. And fun it was too — great kudos to Jude, the DJ lady who spent much of the night prancing around on the stage whipping up the atmosphere.

Bideford at new year (image nicked from the BBC)

Last year I had one resolution: to eat some stinging nettles. I succeeded (they are a lot like spinach when cooked). I think I will stick with these achievable, expand experiences in a small (edible) way type resolutions. So this year I will expand into two resolutions: eat tripe and smoke my own bacon (and probably other stuff too). Both eminently doable, but easy to not get around to. Watch this space...

Don't Have a Cow, Man

This week the Advertising Standards Authority gave a ruling on complaints against an advertisement for purveyor of processed meat products Burger King. I haven't seen the advert in question, but apparently it "showed a man singing in a field singing '1.99er. They're only 1.99'. Towards the end of the ad a cow walked past in the background wearing a blanket with the Burger King logo." There were a few variations on the complaint but one main point was that "it was offensive to show a live cow in an ad for Burger King, who sold beef products."

The complaints were not upheld, but the ASA noted that "viewers, including meat eaters, would not necessarily want to be reminded where meat products came from."

Now, it's time for me to get into rant mode, if you'll excuse me...

Why the bloody hell is it so offensive to know where meat comes from? Animals are reared and slaughtered for our consumption, and that includes cattle, those adorable little chicks, and sweet fluffy baa-lambs. That's how we get beefburgers, chicken nuggets and shepherd's pie. We all need to know that we are the cause of death on a vast scale and make a decision. If we can't live with that then we should be vegetarian (or, more appropriately, vegan). Otherwise, we should decide what level of "inconvenience" is acceptable for livestock and make our purchases accordingly.

Personally, I am comfortable with eating meat, but have concerns about the welfare of foodstock, so try to buy meat from sources where I know high standards are maintained. In most cases this now means buying from local sources which avoid intensive rearing practices.

Make your choice, but don't pretend that meat comes from anywhere other than dead animals.

Apologies for going off on one there. The whole BK ad ruling (and others) can be read here (PDF document, so Adobe Reader or other PDF reading software is required).

Artifinished Intellistuff

The waiting is over for this year... I checked my student page on the OU to find this year's course result. It's not as good as most of my previous results, but given how tough I found this course, I am very happy. I can relax now and get ready for the next course to start in January. Tonight deserves a celebratory jug of ale, methinks.

Fungi to be With

This weekend was good. It was the annual "trifle party" hosted by V&K in Cardiff, which is a great opportunity for a group of friends to meet up (many of us don't see each other very often) and eat, drink and be merry. This year we hunted werewolves and discussed the nature of organic salt (wishing that one of us was a chemist).

On our return home I discovered an early Xmas present had arrived from the father-in-law: a baby hazel tree with roots infected with truffle. This is fantastic and a really cool idea for a present. You never know: in a few years we may have truffles growing in our own garden (time to consider buying a pig!).

Despite all of this cool stuff (and more), the best bit of the weekend was meeting up with an old school friend who I haven't seen since 1988, but I have been in intermittent contact with for the last couple of years thanks to Friends Reunited (hey, it works sometimes). We wandered around town and sat and drank coffee and talked for a couple of hours. A lot has happened for both of us and it is great to get some catching up done. We're hoping to get together with a couple more of the lads in the new year.

ePolitico

Something I had almost forgotten about. Last time I used writetothem.com to contact my MP I was encouraged to sign up for a new service whereby you can express an interest in hearing about what your MP is up to and when 25 people have done so within a constituency, the MP would be notified and asked to send something which would be mailed to all the signatories. The notification would be repeated as more people sign up (to a maximum of once per week to hopefully avoid too much annoyance).

Well, yesterday I received an email from hearfromyourmp.com saying that my MP had responded to the sign-ups. Following the link, I found that he had put up a kind of straw poll on ID cards and detention of terrorist suspects, and the site had set up a forum for discussion. I get the impression my MP, Ed Vaizey is rather keen to use this sort of facility to keep in touch — or at least keep up appearances. Fair play to the man.

What interests me most is the growing set of online tools to help us engage in the UK's political process, even in a small way. This can only be a good thing, and long may it continue...

Wannahave

It happens every year and I always feel rather uncomfortable about it, but various family members and friends ask what I want for Xmas. For some reason they don't seem satisfied by the stock answers of "world peace" or "my two front teeth", so after some nudging by <3 I've put up a web page with a few ideas on it. Yes, it includes socks. No, I'm not being facetious — there are few items of clothing as fine as a good pair of woolly socks. <3 made me a pair a few weeks ago and they are fantastic — wearing them now as it happens.

Of course, in lieu of a present, I would be more than happy to receive pledges to make someone laugh, or at least smile. Ideally this should be inflicted on a perfect stranger. There you are, your mission for the winter: make a perfect stranger grin like a loon for at least a few minutes. Normal service will be resumed with the next post...

Trees, Cookies and Roast Pork

We returned home on Friday to find a "missed you" card from TNT. A quick phonecall and the consignment was delivered the next day (very good of them to deliver on a Saturday) and inside was... our hedge! 52 young trees, most of which were no more than whips, but all looking in good condition. A few hours' work over the weekend and we now have what looks like a row of sticks shoved in the ground next to our fence. All we can do now is wait and hopefully, the spring will see a load of new greenage marking the edge of our garden.

While I was digging, <3 was hard at work baking -- and I did a little myself in between hedge planting stints. Between us we now have a sizeable portion of what <3 describes as the EU Cookie Mountain: fudge, choc chip cookies, gingerbread, parkin, cinnamon and almond blobs, biscotti, figs in marzipan and shortbread. Very large quantities of everything, largely for distribution to friends and family over the next couple of weeks.

The culinary icing was put on the metaphorical cake with a roast Sunday lunch based around a piece of pork shoulder from the local Dews Meadow Farm, which produces some excellent pork (and related products). I think this was probably the best roast I have every cooked -- everything came out just right. We are rapidly becoming more and more convinced by the wisdom of buying our meat from local producers who use non-intensive farming methods. Aside from ethical issues regarding the treatment of animals, and the desire to reduce "food miles", this joint did not cost much more than something similar would have cost in a supermarket and tasted so much better.

Who Cann?

The Internet is a massive, distributed network comprising many smaller networks. Much of it is, however, ruled over by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which, as its title suggests, is responsible for allocating top level domain names and IP addresses (those "dotted quads" like 66.249.87.104), which amounts to a phenomenal amount of power. ICANN happens to be a USian organisation. Whether they do a good job or not and if they should be doing it at all has been a matter of debate since they were first established (in 1998).

Recently an international debate has taken place and it has been decided to let sleeping Quangos lie and leave ICANN holding the bag of numbers, despite proposals from the EU and others to form an international regulatory body. There will be a toothless international talking shop to discuss Internet strategy, etc., but that's about it by the looks of it.

What is quite interesting is that a letter from US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has become publically available arguing why the US should be allowed to keep control of the Internet. Condy says, "The success of the Internet lies in its inherently decentralized nature, with the most significant growth taking place at the outer edges of the network through innovative new applications and services. Burdensome, bureaucratic oversight is out of place in an Internet structure that has worked so well for many around the globe." Now, I realise that what she is arguing is that there shouldn't be an intergovernmental bureaucracy to run the Internet as it would inevitably be slow and heavy, but it amuses me that she believes that to take advantage of the Internet's decentralised nature it should be run by a single, USian body. Go figure.