Jam tomorrow – Eurostyle

I won’t bore cherished scientists with the true, Latin origin of this phrase, which Lewis Carroll parodies in Alice,  but let me draw attention to CS Lewis’s Hymn to Evolution –  which I think should become the EU’s mantra:

Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future’s endless stair:
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice in the present,
Joy or sorrow, what are they,
While there’s always jam to-morrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we’re going,
We can never go astray.

(to the tune, Mannheim, ‘Lead us, Heavenly Father, lead us’)

Intellectual Honesty

It was in my first year at college (read Uni these days) that I realised that many people hate to admit that they don’t understand something, or that they are unfamiliar with something or someone.   My school, perhaps unusually, had drummed it into us that it was our duty as students to ask questions when we did not understand, so that we could learn and thereby cease to be ignorant.   That was what education was about: if you don’t ‘get it’ – ask! Continue reading “Intellectual Honesty”

Three in a Row?

I know, I know hogging the front page.

Soutie has kindly brought it to my attention elsewhere that unless someone (anyone) steps forward in the next several days with a picture for the Photo Comp. I shall win by default, being the only soul brave or stupid enough to post an entry therein.

Besides being a crying shame, just try to imagine just how difficult it will  be to put up with the arrogant  and condescending outbursts that may  result from such an eventuality.

So buck up, children and let’s not let the side down, eh, eh.

 

Marmalade: reduced sugar.

I had a difficult mathematical calculation for a woman of limited mathematical ability: how to calculate the right ratios for a ‘reduced sugar marmalade’ (without resorting to sugar substitutes) from the existing figures!

I had the specific amounts of ‘sugar to fruit’ from Earlybird, who had success – then googled to see what recipes were out there. Not many. I didn’t have the amount of water I should use. And anyway I had a different weight of oranges than any of the recipes I found!

Anyhoo, maths and estimates done, this is what I came up with:

Reduced Sugar Marmalade

2kg Seville oranges, 4 litres water, 2 lemons, 2.75 kg sugar.
(My original recipe has a ratio of ‘fruit to sugar’ of 1:2: so 2kg of oranges would require 4kg sugar- so the reduction in this recipe is significant) Continue reading “Marmalade: reduced sugar.”

February Poetry Comp. – Casabianca

OK, I did not know it was called that either, but after all I’m just a retired techie (right Janus?)

Except for the original, all  the versions I know are “unsuitable for family viewing” as they say here in rural Maryland.

So let us innovate, if you wish you can keep the first line, or if you choose, change it to set the scene elsewhere, but keep the ballad meter and the a-b-a-b rhyming scheme.  Short or long is OK,  the original is an unending twenty verses of Victorian melodrama.

Continue reading “February Poetry Comp. – Casabianca”

February Creative Writing Competition.

I’m off!  Not a flounce, but I’m off to visit the UK or what may still  remain of her on February 22nd.  It’s my sister’s seventieth birthday in early March  and I promised to take her out to dinner.  How she has arrived at such a great age is beyond understanding as I am still a young fella.  So judging this one may be a bit complicated, but I will have sufficient electronic hardware with me to manage  a smallish space mission so I expect it will be achieved.

Theme?  Yes, in keeping with the activity the title is “The Journey” the required words are “androgynous” and “philosophical”.

Fond as I am of the novel form I am restricting this one to a minimum of one thousand and maximum of two thousand words (sorry Ferret).

Closing? Let’s make it midnight (GMT) on the very special day, February 29th 2012 .