The Right Thing to Do
Last month riots and looting erupted in London and spread to some other major cities in England. Recent stories have reported that 75% of those arrested were “known to the police”. So what about the rest? Some stories reported arrests of ordinary people with ordinary jobs who thought they’d pop into some of the shops and help themselves.
So why did these people do it? Maybe they were caught up in the “excitement”. Maybe they also did it because they thought there were so many people involved they wouldn’t get caught. So, was fear of getting into trouble the only thing which previously held these people back?
We see this behaviour on a small scale every day. How many times does a car scream past you, slam on the brakes as it approaches a speed camera, then roar away again. They’re not interested in obeying the law, just in not getting caught.
It may be a naive hope, but maybe one day everyone will do the Right Thing simply because it’s the Right Thing To Do.
Hoodies, parkas and a change in perception
Every time I see a group of kids hanging around wearing hoodies, I feel a bit anxious. Why? I don’t know. Mostly, they’re just hanging around, talking and having harmless fun. But it’s not the way we looked when we were kids, I’m sure. And something about that makes me think something sinister’s going on – there’s going to be trouble.
Then I thought back to my childhood days. Yes, we dressed differently to the kids today, but we also dressed differently to the previous generation. And what did that previous generation think of us? The way I remember, we were just mucking about, having fun. Some of us had parkas, some of us those snorkel jackets, those ones where if you zipped up the hood it stuck miles out the front making you look like a reject from Jabba the Hutt’s Tatooine palace. We wore our jackets just by the hoods; they streamed out behind us like capes as we tore around the neighbourhood on our bicycles.
We must have looked like right tearaways, maybe even instilling a little unease. How different were we from the kids of today?
So what’s changed? Me and my perceptions. Before you know it I’ll be prefixing all my complaints with “When I was young…”.
Rain
Promise of morning glory
Stolen
By precious drops of crystal rain.
Bleak Future
A teacher talking to the class
Explaining all that’s come to pass
Smoke and oil across the land
Poisoning the sea and sand.
The teacher says we’re just not trying
To save the animals from dying.
A girl of 8, she raised her hand
Her big brown eyes looked kinda sad
“But surely we should change our habits
Or what about the bunny rabbits?
I’ve one at home
He’s really sweet
With floppy ears and fluffy feet.”
The teacher struggles – what to say?
He tells them it will be okay.
But when the kids look in his eyes
There’s something there
They see he lies.
False memories?
Memories. They’re funny things.
Generally rock solid just after the fact, but they tend to change over time. Eventually they can become less a memory, more a fantasy. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve re-read a book after several years, only to find that I’ve vastly exaggerated the ending in my own head. The same goes for films.
Then there’s old TV series. When I watch them now, they’re not nearly as good as I remember. But then, I’m basing them on a child’s memories.
So now I have to wonder about the weather. I’m firmly convinced that “summers were better when I was a kid”. Of course, being able to constantly moan that the past was better is one of the cool things about getting older. But is it true about the weather? Sure, 1976 was an amazing summer. It was a drought, with associated hosepipe bans and whatnot, but all I remember is fun summer days. Was it always great in August or was is usually like it is now? 20 degrees, raining, occasionally we see the sun. People are wearing coats. Last week it got warm and my flat and I opened a window, wondering what was going on. Then I realised that it’s mid-August – isn’t it supposed to be like this?
I think it did used to be better. But that’s only what I remember.
Planet Earth
We had a planet, called it home,
We killed the trees to make our throne.
We let our poisons touch the water,
Killing father, mother, daughter.
Our putrid smoke made stale the air,
Our planet’s beauty now laid bare.
Animals, plants, their day has past,
The human race? I am the last.
Death of a Butler
“Call that toast, it’s burnt right through!
I think you know what you must do.”
“Yes, I know,” the butler said,
And shot himself clean through the head.
His brains exploded, quite a mess,
Splattered over Madame’s dress.
Sir looked at butler, “Oh my God!
Clean this up, you lazy sod.”
Butler smiling weakly said,
“Sorry, Sir, I’ll soon be dead.”
He grabbed a cloth, and though he tried,
His eyes glazed over, then he died.
Where did all the money go?
Where is all of this? (Image by epSos.de via Flickr.)
I’m writing this because I have no clue. We frequently hear how various countries owe billions of pounds. So who has it all?
Sometimes I imagine a person in a villa at the top of a mountain somewhere, surrounded by piles of cash. Or maybe inside an extinct volcano covered by a big sliding door with a lake on top.
I don’t know if all the countries have met together and worked out if they can cut some of the debt off, lower the total amount of debt out there. For example, all get together and see who owes what to whom and maybe shuffle things around so that if one country owes money to a second country and that second country owes money to a third country, the first country could give money straight to the third country. Of course, the second country probably wouldn’t go for that – they need the money now!
Of course, if a country looks like it’s going bankrupt, all the other countries band together and bail them out. But all those other countries are also heavily in debt, so where do they get the money to lend? I assume they borrow it. From the IMF? But all these countries are already contributing to the IMF. Do they send money to the IMF so they can borrow it back to lend to someone else? I’m confused. It’s a good job I’m not in charge of all this.
I addition, I guess all sorts of private concerns can buy up debt. So maybe there’s a lot of debt owed by countries held by private companies.
So at the end of all that, I still don’t know who has all the money. All I know for sure is it’s not me.
Dishwashers, mugs and Quantum Tunnelling
A few weeks ago I arrived at work to be told that my coffee mug had suffered an unfortunate dishwasher accident. Apparently the force of the water in the dishwasher had blown my mug apart! This mug had been with me for years, so understandably, the sight of the broken handle was almost too much to bear. But, accidents happen. Half of the handle was missing, and when the dishwasher broke down that very evening, everyone assumed that the handle was stuck inside somewhere.
The dishwasher was fixed and the incident forgotten. The handle was never found.
A couple of weeks later the handle turned up – in the mug cupboard opposite the dishwasher.
Now it’s Nobel Prize time – quantum tunnelling of a mug handle through two large barriers!
Quantum tunnelling involves teensy-weensy particles (for example electrons) tunnelling through a barrier, which classically, would be impossible.
We now see evidence of a large object, billions of times more massive than an electron, tunnelling through both the dishwasher door and the cupboard door! The probability of this, while finite, is so small to be mathematically impossible.
So I’ll write a paper on it and get famous.
Although, thinking about it, I guess the probability of someone telling a little fib after accidentally breaking the mug while putting it away in the cupboard it a bit higher, I suppose.
Hold the paper. More research required.
The sock lottery
A generic sock
It’s a well known fact that socks vanish, often under mysterious circumstances. This “black hole of socks” has never been adequately explained, but has been linked in the past both to “laundry day” and separately to “messy teenagers”.
This post is about neither. This post is about the “sock lottery”.
Every week I do my laundry which among other things, includes seven pairs of socks. Fourteen socks. I’ve got this thing where I always hang socks on the dryer in pairs. This way I can both satisfy myself that none of my socks have succumbed to the aforementioned black hole, and it’s easier to pair them up before putting them away.
Now, here’s the thing. On many occasions the first seven socks I’ve pulled out of the washing machine have all been different. Obviously this is quite a rare event, but it’s not unusual that the first five socks don’t match. How can this be? Mathematical genius that I am, my head hurts even thinking about how to work this out, but surely the odds are against this?
So I would like to know why I only win the (very) occasional tenner in the National Lottery? One would think that, having beaten the odds so convincingly in the world of socks, I could do the same when the big bucks are at stake. Sure, the odds of winning the lottery are much higher than the whole sock thing, but I’m not greedy. One of those medium-sized prizes would do me just fine.
Then I suppose, looking at it another way, I actually want socks to come out in pairs. So one might argue that even when the odds are clearly in my favour, I still can’t win.
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