Daily Grind Wonderings, wanderings and waffle

Here’s an idea for a clock/wall-installation:

It’s two wall hangings, with a clock in the hanging that has the hands.

Feel free to give a critique. I’m no artist, if you can’t tell, just rustled that together with Gimp.

Another superb series ended last night. James won as I’d expected, though it would have been great if Emily had won - taking a gamble on some of her amazing creativity. One of the people who ate one of her dishes said that he’d rather barbecue his tongue - he didn’t even try the dish, which shows what a prat he is.

A very enjoyable series! I’m still a dreadful cook - but there’s something very appealing about watching cookery shows.

A sample of the latest top headlines from a New Zealand news site:

Man guilty of murder for stabbing wife to death
Man guilty of manslaughter of two-year-old step daughter
Alleged hit and run driver faces further charges
One dead in collision on SH1south of Christchurch
Parking warden on scooter attacked by 60 year-old
Handless body murder trial jury retires
Man admits trying to have sex with goat

No good news. Unless you’re a goat maybe?

Horizon program last night on TV was pretty interesting. Its premise was to scientifically discover if various things do actually say what they’re supposed to: organic food is better for you; clothes can be washed at 30c; anti-oxidants actually work etc.

The one about organic food was interesting, as Professor Regan (the presenter) had three items to discuss:

- nutrition
- animal welfare
- something else that eludes me at the moment.

The one on animal welfare was so naïve, apparently the professor is totally happy with a female sow being clamped, so that the piglets can suckle without risking them being crushed. This is what would happen in a pig’s natural environment. The battery pig farmers apparently lose 10% of piglets to crushing. All the farmers are interested in is their profit margins - definitely not animal welfare. I’d much rather see piglets running around a field and rooting for food.

The professor also missed out on pesticides - they haven’t been proven to be safe in food - so why bother having them in food? It took a while for the real effects of DDT to be discovered.

Blah blah blah.

Just purchased a couple of t-shirts from djtees and am really happy with them. Loads of different designs on their site, order to delivery takes about three days.

I also informed them that their site didn’t work correctly with the Safari browser - a week later I login and place my order - so kudos to them (even if they didn’t bother replying to my e-mail).

Yesterday started off as per all usual stag parties - in a spa, of course! It was very good for the body and the soul, though not sure about all the old men walking around with nothing on. Some of the steam rooms were amazing - you couldn’t see beyond the end of your nose.

Then we had a few drinks at the Cow pub, owned by Tom Conran and is apparently where Hugh Grant can be seen at times, though we didn’t.

Then we did seven holes of St. Andrews Golf Club in a golf simulator at Urban Golf.

Around the corner was Blacks, a private-members club, that supposedly has a Charles Dickens theme to it. My friend is a member - so that was handy!

One of our party is the second-in-charge at BBC Radio 1; another was the Japanese president of a big oil company…. shmooze..

Might put up some pics, if my friend lets me!

Civilized or not?

This has been bouncing around in my head for years and years, getting a refresh when I was in Laos and Cambodia. We went into a couple of hill-villages, where all the huts were made out of wood, reeds and mud etc.

Some people in the “Western World” want to do everything to “civilize” these communities - giving them education, satellite TV, mobile phones, Mercedes Benz cars, heath-system, unemployment benefit and drug counselling. The Missionaries are even worse - indoctrinating them into Catholicism, or taking them away from their own religions; quite a few of the Laos communities are into Animism, where they worship animal/plant spirits. I find Animism far more appealing than living one’s life from a doctrinal book of part fact/fiction.

Once you see the kids playing happily in these hill-villages, you begin to wonder if they actually do need to be sent to school and go to university, when the whole community just works in the fields and fishes.

Little hands need to be cut off. My nephew’s friend decided to reset my router, therefore losing all the ADSL connection settings (VPI=0, VCI=38 for future reference!). Made me pretty angry.

“Bush Says Darfur Crisis Needs to End” - ten out of ten Mr Bush.

I have to say that this series is absolutely superb. David Attenborough is a hero of mine and has been ever since I can remember.
I’m not looking forward to this being the end of the “Life” series - still have my eyes on the complete DVD collection - The Life Collection : David Attenborough (24 Disc BBC Box Set).