Café Culture. I am having another lazy day at home with
the papers. The weather is iffy and
bleak, I had a hard week at work, and I am so not in the mood for anything but
the papers. In years past I would have
battled the elements and dragged myself to the Grand Café to eat a large
breakfast, drink several cups of café latte, and read every newspaper in the
house. But some time ago they got this
idea that their customers go there because they don’t know how to cook, rather
than to experience a pleasant few hours, and changed their service. They stopped making my favourite breakfast (poached
salmon, boiled egg, green beans), stopped supplying free newspapers, turned up
the music, and generally made one feel that one was outstaying one’s welcome
after 45 minutes. So now I cook my own
salmon, buy my own newspapers, brew my own coffee, and stay at home.
The Archers. I stopped listening regularly to this
radio soap opera some years ago when they killed off Nigel because ‘he was so popular’?!?!?,
but in a house like mine where the radio is on more often than not I still
sometimes get snatches of the various storylines. What I don’t get is, why are there so many
problems in this programme? I have
enough problems of my own, thank you very much.
When I turn on the radio I want either news or comfort. Soap operas should be soothing, cosy, and
reassuring, like hot milky tea and hobnob biscuits. After a hard day’s work I want to be able to
turn on the wireless and relax, sit back in an easy chair with a cup of hot
cocoa and an after supper morsel at my elbow, and listen with quiet
contentment, knowing that in this make-belief world of Common Country-folk at
least life is good and the people decent.
Instead I get a steady diet of catastrophes, interpersonal strife, and
rampant human nastiness. Who wants to
listen to that?
Polygamy &
Homosexuality. The Observer has a
special spread about African attitudes to homosexuality this Sunday. This is a huge topic, but the one aspect that
really made me prick up my ears was the comment made by Simon Lokodo, a
minister of Uganda
famous for his anti-homosexual stand. He
said, and I paraphrase, in the West you abhor polygamy, in Africa
we abhor homosexuality; each to his own.
I would have thought that polygamists would encourage homosexuality (in
men, at least). Since there are roughly
equal numbers of men and women, every practicing polygamist deprives several
other men of a mate. If those other men
are gay they don’t need a wife, and ergo won’t cause trouble for the
polygamist. Interestingly enough, in
pre-colonial times homosexuality was common and encouraged amongst warriors,
partly no doubt to foster team spirit (like among the ancient Greeks) but also
I suspect to protect the polygamists from the wrath of the warriors. Lesbianism, too, seems to me more compatible
with polygamy than monogamy. If you have
loads of wives, who will feel neglected by you because of their sheer number,
surely it is better if they take pleasure with other women, rather than with
men who might land you with an illegitimate child?
Manipulating
parasites. Neuroparasitology (the
science of how parasites manipulate the behaviour of their victims) has been much
in the news recently; unfortunately it is such a new subject that there aren’t
any books about it yet, just articles in scientific journals. I shall do a full length blog post on the
subject soon, after the Bodleyan has yielded up some info. In the meantime, consider the following two interesting
factoids. (a) Taxoplasma
gondi is a one-celled animal that infects warm blooded animals, mostly
cats. The creature grows inside the cat
and exits via the anus. Then it waits
for a rodent to ingest it. However, it
can’t develop inside a rodent, only inside a cat. So it changes the behaviour of the rodent to
run around in broad daylight in places that smell of cats’ urine, thus maximising
its chances of being eaten by a cat.
Approximately a quarter of humans are also infected with this
one-celler, and if the human is pregnant this can damage the foetus. Also, there is some evidence that infected
humans (about a quarter of the population in the UK )
behave more recklessly and are involved in more accidents – like the mice! (b) Tapeworms and similar parasites produce
chemicals that suppress the immune system of their victim to an extent, to make
sure they don’t attacked. This is
similar to the human foetus producing chemicals that stop the mother’s immune
system attacking it – sometimes this doesn’t work and the foetus is
spontaneously aborted! An interesting
side effect of a parasitic infestation can be a reduction in the auto-immune
diseases of the victim, like Crohn’s and asthma (again, similar to a woman’s
diseases being in abeyance while pregnant and subject to the foetus’ chemical
manipulations). By the way, there is a
theory that says the reason why these diseases are more common among richer
populations is that the part of the immune system that is supposed to deal with
internal parasites has got nothing to do (no parasites in most of us) and out
of sheer frustration attacks our own tissues.
Fascinating stuff, don’t you think?
Perfume Fish. I am happy to report that my Perfume Fish
– nicknamed Freddy in memory of my sadly departed goldfish – is working out
very well. His mouth opening is just
large enough to stuff a bit of cotton wool through, and his belly capacious
enough to contain enough of the fluffy stuff to soak up the three or four drops
of perfume needed to see me through the day.
The mouth opening is not wide enough to use a little funnel or even the
perfume bottle itself, but I fashioned a little funnel from a bit of plastic
and it works very well. The only
drawback is that perfume smells different on people and fish. When I put it on my skin it mingles with my
body odour, resulting in a – to me – very delicious fragrance, whereas when I
use my ‘gefilte fish’ the smell remains exactly as it comes from the
bottle. Incidentally, it occurred to me
that filling the fish with mosquito repelling scents when visiting places frequented
by these menaces might work, too!
Art Fakers. Apparently there are increasing problems
with faked paintings etc, partly because there are any number of experts who
turned bad and actively participate in misleading the buying public by giving
fallacious ‘expert’ opinions. This is an
interesting topic; my default position is that a work of art should be judged
on its own merit, not on whether a particular individual has created it. If the craftsmanship, materials used, skill
employed, etc is exactly the same, and the artist is long dead, ie isn’t
deprived of the fruits of her/his labour, what is the problem? Why should a painting be worth millions if
painted by one person, but worthless if done by another? I tried a little thought experiment to test
my point. (a) Imagine we discover a new cave painting,
apparently much older than the 40,000 years they are usually thought to be, a
find which would lead us to believe that, say, the australopithecines were
ardent artists, and made us change our views of the early history of our human
ancestors – and it turned out to be a 20th century prank! (b) Now
imagine that there was an artist 40,000 years ago who painted on the inside walls
of caves. So amazing were the paintings
that s/he spawned lots of copycats, who painted just like s/he did, using the
same materials, techniques, compositions, and painted in similar locations. If we found out about this, would we destroy
the copycat cave art? (c) Lastly, imagine there was an artist who lived
40,000 years ago and discovered an ancient cave painting, hundred of thousands of
years old, and liked it so much s/he decided to paint a mural in the same style
etc as an homage to the original painter.
If we found out about this, would we destroy this painting? Or would we treasure it as the only surviving
painting of its kind, since the ancient original had long since been destroyed? Food for thought.
