Italy - Barcelona - Chicago?

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Originally it was suggested that I attend a meeting in Italy.

Then it was realised that it was actually in Barcelona.

Then it was realised that it was on issues of no relevance to me.

Then it was suggested that I attend an 'operations' meeting in Chicago in the week before Easter.

Two thoughts cross my mind:

1. They seem really keen to send me somewhere. Anywhere.

2. Where will the final destination be? Swaziland? Brazil? North Korea?
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Should you be in the Fisheries department?

Some people carry a load through life.
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Earth Hour

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We did it.

But then we always have a candlelit dinner on a Saturday.
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April = Travel

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You saw the Nigerian's efforts at false documents a post or two back.

This was one of the passports scans I sent them in return. (When I put my fake documents on-line, I put a 'disclaimer' across them to show that they are false. In this case, in faux Hindi.)

Busy month ahead. I will be heading to Sydney in the first week of April to sit in on an audit of the lab up there and, all things being well, to Italy at an as yet unknown date, but in April, for a chemistry love-in. Better not take Rogan's passport.
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Well, that's democracy for you!

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A group I belong to is holding elections at the moment.

The last place on the ballot paper reads as above.

Wish some of the regular elections gave this option too.
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Dumb & Dumber

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I used to play with Nigerian scammers. See here.

I don't anymore but I still get the occasional email offering me 25 million US dollars to help them.

One came today with a swodge of supporting information, that was supposed to verify the bona fides of the scammer.

Above, you can see the earnest gentleman, a respected member of the Nigerian bar.

Now, compare his photograph to that in the following three supporting documents:





The depressing thing is that people fall for this stuff. These guys make millions upon millions of dollars from gullible people.
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The quince bites back.

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Quince meets Rat.

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Ever wondered what it looks like when rats eat your quinces?

Of course you have!

Well, now you know.
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If it's not one thing...

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I had seen that something was eating my quinces.

Went out tonight fully expecting to shoo away a possum.

Uh-uh. Rattus rattus was eating my quinces.

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Poems

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Got a call from the editor of TableAus, the Australian Mensa magazine. They are going to publish one of Mr Newbery's poems in the next edition.

You can read it here.
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Pro Carbon Tax Rally - March 12th

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Margaret and I are in there somewhere.
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Pushing barrows

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My issues with the good Professor Grayling seem to have created some confusion, here and on Facebook.

I do not feel the need to enter into a debate on vegetarianism, as such. It was not the point of the post.

I do feel strongly that a person in a position of influence and power should not lie, and continue to lie once he has been shown his information is blatantly false, to push a personal barrow.

On any issue.

I took issue with Dr Helen Caldicott many years ago when she was campaigning against the French nuclear testing in the Pacific. I was strongly against the tests as was Dr Caldicott but, full of passion, she talked rot. Easily disproved rot. And my campaigning was weakened by association.

I rail against any politician, usually but not always the Opposition, who abandons truth in an effort to instil fear in voters.

If you can't win your case with the truth, perhaps you don't have a case.

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Back to the Professor, briefly:

He claims meat is full of bacteria. And defecating bacteria to boot. Oh, poo!

But we humans are made of meat.

And if we get a cut that permits bacteria to enter our flesh it gets red, sore and pussy.

So, is our flesh, or any animal's flesh, full of bacteria? No, it is not. Our bodies react badly to the presence of bacteria.

I am not making a case for or against meat eating.

I am making a case for the use of truth.
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Extended dining room.

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Here was my bird feeder. I used to put seed for the doves and lorikeets here and put meat for the magpies on another dish on the ground. The children just would not play nicely together. Especially the lorikeets.

But on Sunday I found a cat eating from the magpie meat.

Time to extend the feeder.

...and how you say it.

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Wit a remarkable lack of presentation, the professor replied:

Dear Lee Kennedy
Thank you for your email and the accompanying letter. And for the nice things you say about some of my writings. We disagree about meat: you have a desire for logic and rational thought and yet you are 'saddened' and upset because of what I say about meat, and impute this to being saddened and upset because, by your lights, I fail in logic and factuality in talking of meat. Your points, however, simply won't do. For a start the fact that someone is 'saddened' that someone holds a different point of view does not wash with me; disagreement is the motor of clarification and debate, and sometimes disagreements are a datum that have to remain. I am not stopping you from being a graveyard for parts of deceased farm animals, I am telling you my take, and you are very free to think otherwise. As to facts and logic: Consult your dictionary for 'defecate', for example; and for 'carrion'; check with a microbiologist whether the contemporaneous existence of bacteria and antibiotics is possible; ask yourself whether it can really possibly, conceivably be true that deceased animal flesh can be bacteria free; read up a bit on factory farming and the use of growth hormones and antibiotics in cattle destined for the slaughter-house; read up on the effects of human over-exposure to antibiotics and their consequent reduced efficacy. I leave you to look up and verify the economics of meat versus cereal production and how many people can be fed by each method; I would especially look at the square mileage of rain forest being felled annually for running beef cattle in the Amazon basin as an indicator, and also at the staggering percentage of climate change carbon output from the meat industry. And you fail to accept that having raised the health and economic points, my own chief reason for being a vegetarian is a personal ethical one. You have made a different ethical decision: that doesn't sadden and upset me: my emotional responses are confined to the animals in the slaughter house. Good wishes - Anthony Grayling

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Dear Professor Grayling,

Thank you for your most interesting response.

My principle concern is the nonsense about defecating bacteria. They don't. If this strange assertion were true the same must apply to other foods that contain bacteria: Does that mean you don’t eat yoghurt because of the billions of bacteria ‘defecating’ in it? Or cheese. Or coffee? Or Cocoa? Or vinegar? Or sourdough bread? Or soy sauce? Or vitamins B2 and B12?

Nor are they swarming on meat the way you claim. If they were, those strange people who eat Steak Tartare and Beef Carpaccio would have died from food poisoning long ago.

Being an Approved Analyst under the Food Act here in Victoria I am not totally ignorant of the compositional and health aspects of food.

But I feel that you are misusing a position of trust by perpetrating quite bizarre notions about meat in a high-voltage, high emotion diatribe.

That is not to say I am anti-vegetarian; nor does it mean I am pro-meat. It just means I prefer calm and factual discourse.

Sincerely,

Lee Kennedy.

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No reply, so I assume that is the end of the correspondence. Calm or otherwise.
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