Sherlock wins

I don't watch much television any more. Who do you think you are? can generally be guaranteed to have me watching, and the odd documentary, but mostly I stick to the radio and the internet.

Thus I didn't watch the first episode of Sherlock on July 25... I left it to cause a furore because it beat Tom Cruise's Top Gear appearance into second place, and then eventually watched it on the BBC iplayer.

I feared the worst really. I am a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, but so much of what makes Holmes, Holmes is stuck in the 19th century - or at least the turn of the century. The familiar "ripper" London of Hansom cabs, dark allies and undeserving poor, the gaslight and of course the poor old plods trailing along behind Holmes, nearly always as much in the dark as the poor reader.

It seemed unlikely that any writers would have been able to translate Conan Doyle's Holmes into a workable 21st-century character, and there are some places where one has to suspend one's disbelief. Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes is an apparent security expert who can't work out how to disguise his identity in text except by borrowing other people's phones, a genius who has subsumed a huge amount of knowledge and yet is someone who takes longer than the viewer to understand the role of the cabbie in the opening episode. That, more than anything, was the flaw in the first episode... Conan Doyle's Sherlock always gets there first.

He has a slightly other-worldly look, which may partly have been the result of pneumonia, where his skin was porcelain white for a proportion of the episode... but then that might have been deliberate, to indicate the hours he spends in laboratories, microwaving eyeballs or flaying dead bodies.

The role of the police, and their relationship with Sherlock Holmes was ambiguous in the books, and is ambiguous here too, although it is a lot less believable nowadays that any policeman worth his salt would allow a member of the public to go tramping over a crime scene, tampering with evidence. Forensic science has come a long way since Holmes's day, and in some cases has replaced the painstaking analysis which was the only option then. It was refreshing to see that the writers met that head on, in the hostility of LeStrade's sidekick.

However, those small quibbles aside, I thought the writers had done a good job in bringing the stories up to date, and directors and actors did a superb one in bringing them to life. Despite his self-diagnosed sociopathy, Holmes was intriguing and clever and it was a pleasure to watch how cleverly the writers had adapted the stories to fit.

I was initially wary about Martin Freeman as Dr Watson...I have always imagined someone much bigger and older in the role, but he won me over almost immediately. I see it now.

I watched the second episode with baited breath, with my daughter, and we were both on the edge of our seats. Of course we know the main protagonists are in no real danger... but you never know when a subsidiary character might be sacrificed to plot, especially in a series which is a paltry three episodes long.

More! More! We enjoyed every minute of it, and long for more of the same. We profoundly hope they manage to make a Christmas special, even if the newspaper reports are right and the next proper series is unlikely to be out before next year.

Corexit warnings

Passionate Sea Turtle action group member talks about the effects of using Corexit in the Gulf.

Time for another email to BP.

Write letters/email about Niger

International Oil companies have devastated regions of Africa in the course of extracting oil from the Niger Delta. Instead of enriching the people, it has impoverished them, with environmental impact of the scale now being seen in the Gulf of Mexico, quietly ravaging the environment for many years.

Two companies stand out. Why not write to them and demand to know what they are doing about it, and how they are helping with famine in the region? More information here.


Royal Dutch Shell plc
Carel van Bylandtlaan 30
2596 HR DEN HAAG
The Netherlands

Postbus 162
2501 AN DEN HAAG

Tel. +31 70 377 9111

Exxon Mobil
ExxonMobil House
Ermyn Way
Leatherhead
Surrey, KT22 8UX

Tel: +44 1372 222000
Email: General Enquiries

Facing Africa

Went in to wish my son goodnight, at a very late hour last night, and found him watching a documentary on Facing Africa, a charity which rebuilds the faces of children afflicted with a variety of diseases that ravage the face. Last nights (this morning's) programme focussed on children who have suffered from Noma.

It seems that a combination of malnutrition and infection, eats away at the structure of the face. Some children die, but others survive with the most horrific injuries to their faces. They are not easy to look at, because it is unexpected and incongruous to see a child with half a face. It is heartbreaking to see a child living under a scarf because people shy away from them.

I didn't think I had heard of Noma, but I had, there was a documentary years about about the boy David, a boy from the jungles of Peru who was adopted by a facial surgeon, who built him a new face and adopted him as his son. I think I assumed it was a jungle disease, and rare... I had no idea that there were hundreds of children in Africa, dealing with the aftereffects of the disease.

The documentary was completely gripping, and difficult to keep watching. I don't do operations really, choosing to look away.

I felt so sorry for the children who didn't get to be assessed and operated on - and the one whose case was so complex she only had the first of a series of operations. Her case was the worst they had seen, and the poor child had the additional problem of an infection after the surgery.

The Facing Africa website says that malnutrition in children is the biggest cause of Noma... and that eradicating hunger is for governments. In a way that's true, but I do believe that we could be doing more individually to help draw attention to areas where people are in crises. It seems that there are any number of children starving in Niger, for example.

How about demanding that the International Oil Companies who have sucked so much out of Niger, should put something back again? Reparation along the lines of that being demanded in the Gulf would go a long way towards helping those people: and writing a couple of emails to demand it costs nothing.

It's shocking to realise that this technique is being used in the UK. I think we need to know where and why people are using hydraulic fracturing, which seems to be a method which causes environmental destruction and has the potential to cause health problems for people in areas where it is used - particularly in a small, population-rich area like the UK.

Disgruntled of Uxbridge

I complained to the BBC the other day. In the past I have usually sent a comment or suggestion, rather than a formal complaint. But I was so enraged by the lack of coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill, that I decided to write and complain that the online website news team seem to have got their global priorities in a mix, reporting on Glastonbury and the World Cup in such detail, and only posting a few short (less than a minute) films on the Gulf Oil spill, and those just a few of the residents moaning about not being able to swim.

Reading websites from around the world, watching videos posted on youtube, I felt that the picture I was receiving from those things was of a continuing catastrophe, affecting millions of people, and possible destroying irretrievably a unique environment and the associated wildlife. That wasn't the picture I had from the BBC, who appeared to think the story was no longer newsworthy. That little they had was buried in the Americas section of the website.

I was hoping it would prompt them to devote more time and space to the story, what I hadn't expected was that they would come up with this.

Of all the angles in the world they could have chosen, they've set out to find the only people with a good word to say about BP, and to report it. I have now made a second complaint to the BBC, this time about bias. If they had been reporting fully and fairly the situation in the Gulf of Mexico and had then added this report, then fair enough. But to publish this with no balancing information about what the majority of Americans feel... and an update on the actual impact of the oil spill at the moment, and more especially the environmental impact of the widespread use of Corexit in the Gulf... I think that is about the most extreme case of biassed reporting ever. Where is the balance? It's mad... they have rules about putting forward balance view in the most ridiculous cases... and then don't with something as important and potentially world-changing as this.

BP ignored safety concerns

Shocking article over at ProPublica, about BP's cavalier approach to safety and safety concerns. They should be ashamed of themselves.

For some years I have watched people defend capitalism, on the grounds that it is the "best" system, as though market forces would do whatever was necessary in the way of controlling the companies. I think one only has to look at Dow Chemicals (took over the company responsible for the Bhopal disaster; still hasn't cleaned up or revealed which chemicals caused the illness and deaths) Shell Oil (responsible for terrible destruction in the Niger delta, and now BP, to see that market forces in our capitalistic system are mainly concerned with profit, and not people, environmental responsibility or the future of the planet.

For years people have assumed that the alternative to capitalism is some sort of communism, but I think there is a middle way, which most people would support: a way of being ethical, people and environmentally friendly, and putting the planet first and profit second.

Many of the companies who have grown into successes recently have had good credentials for this... maybe it is time we as consumers demanded that the big old lumbering corporations should catch up.

If we used the free market to influence the companies who have been behaving so badly, we could collectively have a beneficial effect. I only hope that the doomsday scenarios are overstated, and that we still have time to put this into action.

Gulf Emergency Summit speeches

After hearing the speech made by Kindra Arnesen, I was moved to watch the other speeches at the summit. I don't care about governments, I don't care about big businesses, I don't care about the motives or the guilt for the accident. We have to live with what has happened and respond to it.

I DO care, passionately about people - they matter to me, whether in the US or India or Africa... I don't care, people are more important than things, than profit, than politics.

I do care, passionately, about our planet, and how we are looking after it for the future.

For me, it's a very practical thing... we need the people who have the expertise to cope with this problem, to be dealing with it. We need the American government and BP to be opening up their response to allow whoever has the expertise to solve the problem, to solve it... and if they can't solve it, to look practically at what needs to be done to protect the people and the environment to the best of their ability.

In each case, I have only linked the first part - on youtube the second or subsequent parts will be linked from there:

Kindra Arnesen's speech.


Raymond Lotta's speech.

Cindy Sheehan's speech.

John Clark's speech.

If you have other links please send them to me.

Real news from real people

Kindra Arnesen gives a speech about the things she has witnessed during her observation of the clean up in the gulf. It is amazing to me that this information seems not to be of interest to mainstream media.

Understanding gravity



I saw this story on the BBC website, read it and felt like someone had plunged my brain into fog. I can only assume that the journalist either doesn't understand the subject very clearly himself, or was in a hurry. It isn't often I feel that understanding has been sucked out of me and replaced with confusion.

So, I went searching for a better explanation, and found it on the ESA site. There is a PDF to download which was produced in advance of the mission to map the earth's gravity, and which has good and simple explanations within it. Also a great illustration showing the lumpy nature of earth.

It came as a surprise to me to realise that gravity wasn't uniform across the whole world. I remember my geography master at school treating with derision a book which suggested it wasn't, and that high mountains might have less gravitational pull than the plains. However, that's exactly what the article on the ESA site says.

There are a number of things which affect the strength of gravity. Apparently we weigh less at the equator than at the poles, because the shape of the earth is not truly spherical and bulges out in the middle, around the equator. As gravity weakens the further out from the middle of the earth you are, this makes gravitational force weaker where you are further from the centre.

There are other things which influence the gravitational force, including the composition of the earth's crust. Learning about the variations caused by those factors may help with tracking changes due to volcanic and earthquake activity.

Mapping the earth's geodesy, or shape, will allow scientists to calculate relative heights more easily, and to work out what influence the tides and currents are having on the shape of the oceans. It will allow more accurate measurement of relative heights, and provide much more accurate information about mountains and natural features.

It's very clever. As measurement of gravity gets more difficult at a distance, the Goce satellite has been travelling at the low level (for a satellite) of 250 km.

Crops destroyed

A report on US tv of crops in the Mississippi delta area being destroyed by a mystery disease is being propagated around the web.

Various articles are linking this to the use of Corexit in the Gulf, to disperse the oil. Apparently, despite being banned from using Corexit in the North Sea and any of the seas around the UK, BP has seen fit to use it in the Gulf of Mexico.

I am appalled that they think this is appropriate. It seems that it was already known before they used it that use of Corexit may actually cause the water to lose oxygenation and prevent some of the biological solutions from being used.

There is a report which I have not confirmed independently thus far, that Russian scientists are reporting to their government that this is the biggest environmental catastrophe ever to have faced our planet, much worse than is being reported here or in the US, and that fractures in the sea bed are leaking oil more quickly that the blown-out rig.

I can't decide at present whether the naturally doomladen media are under reporting in the UK or over reporting in the US, but in these internet-enabled times, it is hardly likely that reports in Russia, the US or the UK can be kept local.

I feared that war was going to end the world twenty years ago. I fear that greed and stupidity may do it now. Is the sky falling? I do not know whether I am overreacting or underreacting myself, but it is hard to know how I can muster an appropriate response to this... or how I can prepare for the worst if it should happen.

BBC News priorities

Looking at the BBC news front page this morning, you wouldn't think we had a care in the world. Sport stories dominate the front page, from news about the World Cup and trivial stories about the royals playing baseball.

There are two reports about the hot weather, one about a planned trip of the prime minister, and a few home stories about the unemployed being moved to council houses in areas where there are jobs. Is there anything about the Gulf Oil Spill at all today? Not on the front page... Kylie headlining Glastonbury is there though.

The BBC News page seems to have metamorphosed into a cross between a red-top tabloid and a teen magazine, to me. If you want to know what's happening in the Gulf, you have to drill down through world-Americas-oil spill reaches Florida Beaches. Even then, you wouldn't think that this was an important story... it has a 43 second story about a couple of Florida residents talking about not being able to swim on their oil-covered beach.

All the stories linked to the Gulf are less than a minute in length. It's almost as though they don't want to cover it. Did BP send all the BBC correspondents home?

I have subscribed to the BP briefing on the Gulf... and intend to repost the contents of their briefings here. I can't believe that the general media are letting the story drop down, when it could affect the futures of everyone, not just those unfortunates who have had their livelihoods and wildlife destroyed in the Gulf of Mexico.

This is the most recent press briefing from BP:

WASHINGTON -- Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the National Incident Commander for the Deepwater BP Oil Spill response, briefed the media Saturday.

A downloadable audio file of the conference is available here; a written transcript follows:

ADM. THAD ALLEN: Good morning to you all. A couple of updates and I'd like to talk a little about the weather and then we can go to your questions. As of midnight last night we were to recover 24,548 barrels through the top hat recovery system.

That was 16,338 barrels from the Discovery Enterprise and another 8,210 barrels were flared after being recovered on the Q4000. That continues and we are looking to add the third vessel to that organizational structure next week. We are installing the vertical riser pipes. They will do that right now. That will take us to 53,000 barrel capacity sometime next week.

In regards of the relief well, a Development Driller III which is the lead rig on the relief wells is now at 11,141 feet below the sea floor. We are ready to run today the third ranging run. A ranging run is when they withdraw the drill pipe and put flexible wire down the pipe that emits an electrical signal that picks up sea and magnetic resonance from the pipe itself. They'll do this every couple of hundred of feet as they drill down to slowly close in for the final interception of the well. That continues.

Development Driller II is at 6,529 feet below the sea floor and continues to make progress. As I mentioned earlier we are trying to expand our collection capability and we have finished completing the insulation of the free standing riser. That will be connected to the Helix Producer. And in turn will be connected to a shuttle tanker, the Loch Rannoch which is capable of 100,000 barrel capacity

Moving forward to actually set up the second vertical riser pipe we'll expand our capacity as we move to the new containment system that will be available in mid-July. Just as a note, sometime next week we'll reach a decision threshold with the current containment cap. At that point we'll be a capacity of 53,000 barrels to be able to move to 50 to 80,000 barrel capacity requires us to remove the existing containment cap and put one of three options on that will actually seal that wellhead either over the cut off phalange or by either removing the phalange where the riser pipe was cut and actually bolting on a new one.

Those discussions are underway and will culminate with a meeting next Wednesday that will be chaired by Secretary Salazar, Secretary Chu, government agencies and scientists to take a look at the final plans and to look at next steps moving forward.

We are watching the Tropical Storm Alex. As you know, it's moving westerly and slightly to the north. We've been in constant contact with National Hurricane Center. We continue to do that. We understand that it's moving westerly. At this point it does not threaten the site but we know that these tracks can change and we're paying very close attention to it.

As I briefed the last couple of days, our threshold is gale knot – excuse gale force winds that are predicated within a 120 hours accompanying one of these storms to start the process of redeploying our assets in the wellhead area.

A couple of other updates. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson will be traveling to New Orleans and other areas of the Gulf this coming week. And she'll be Thursday, July 1st through July 3rd. I will be traveling to the Gulf on Monday with Secretary Nalpolitano and Carol Browner where we will have meetings and updates with the local commanders and I will hold a press event from New Orleans on Monday.

Tuesday I intend to be with the Vice President and his travel in the Gulf region. With that I'd be glad to take your questions this morning.

Operator: At this time, I'd like to remind everyone in order to poise any question please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment. First, you have the line of Molly Fiske with the LA Times.

Molly Fiske: Hello sir. Thank you for taking the question. My question is regards the weather. I am curious about where the vessels – sorry, how many vessels would be brought to safe harbor, where they would be brought specifically the Discover Enterprise and how long it would take to return them after should the storm pass?

Thad Allen: Ma'am, it depends on the type of vessel and how long it takes them to disconnect from the scene. To give you an example, the time to secure and evade the storm for the Discover Enterprise would be about 114 hours. The time to secure and evade the storm for the Q4000 would only be 56 hours. This has to do with the type of vessel they are, the type of moorings that are involved and their speed of advance.

The Discover Enterprise is fixed to the wellhead by a fixed riser pipe. The Q4000 is connected to a much more flexible mooring and can be disconnected much more rapidly. The time back on scene to restart for the Discover Enterprise would be about 38 hours. It's more for the Q4000. Its 90 hours to set up that flaring process that's boom arm or the gas and the oil are actually ignited and flared off.

So it varies with the type of vessel, how they're actually moored out there. It also – where they will go will be entirely dependent on the storm track, how fast the storm is coming in and the direction its coming from.

There are four quadrants in a hurricane that are very – that have varying degrees of danger and the lower left quadrant is the least dangerous. So we would be looking at the track itself. The best place to seek safe shelter and we would move the vessels in that location.

Operator: Next you have the line Lisa Leff with the Associated Press.

Lisa Leff: Thank you Admiral. Based on the 120 hour window that you cited and how fast this storm seems to be moving, when are anticipating (inaudible) as soon as you have to start that process of shutting down the containment?

Thad Allen: Well the threshold to activate our hurricane plans right now is 120 hours out when we expect gale force winds at the wellhead. We know that it takes 114 hours for the Discover Enterprise so we're watching the storm track and when we think the storm has turned in such a matter that we'll approach the wellhead and 120 hours out we can anticipate gale force winds, that will activate the plans.

Operator: Next sir you have the line of Mark Waller with the Times Picayune.

Mark Waller: Thank you for taking our questions. I guess a two part thing. One is it looks right now like Alex is going not towards the site but one question I would have is how do you decide at what point in the so-called cone of uncertainty do you have to be in order to pull out. I mean you have to be on edge of it, in the middle of it or anywhere near it.

And another question is you know it has been known to happen in the past for a storm to flare up all of sudden right in the middle of the Gulf somewhere you wouldn’t have a whole lot of time to deal with it. So do you have any contingencies for that type of scenario?

Thad Allen: Well on the first question, we are engaged constantly with the National Hurricane Center. We're in discussions with NOAA and FEMA. Secretary Nalpolitano is on daily call with all the principles. We're tracking the weather very closely.

You know at some point you know models are just models and we're going to have to look at the real world and at some point there may have to be a decision taken in the best interest of the safety of our personnel and the safety of the well site but those parameters I laid out of 120 hours are the general parameters.

We all know that the weather is unpredictable and we could have a sudden last minute change. At that point it will be the collective best judgement of the federal team working together with the best advice we can get from the Department of Commerce, NOAA, and the National Weather Service.

And sir, could you repeat the second question again?

Mark Waller: Pertaining to Alex but just for future planning has been there cases in the past like I think Cindy a few years ago, or storms that flare up right in the middle of the Gulf without much notice before they get near or you know before – you know you don’t have several days to watch them coming and that kind of thing.

So I was curious to know what you guys are thinking about that. What you would do in that kind of situation?

Thad Allen: Thanks for helping as a follow up there. There are ways we can move off quicker that’s not the most desirable way to do it. As you know we had a, a potential problem with the top half containment cap on the well bore two days ago and the Discovery Enterprise actually released the containment cap and moved away with the riser attached to it.

There are certain ways where they can move quicker. You start risking the damage to equipment and these are emergency procedures that you would not want to do normally. And you always have to react to the situation at hand. Hopefully, we’ll have as much advance notice as possible but I will, I will over the next 24 to 36 hours give you more detailed release on exactly if there were a popup storm what kind of emergency procedures would take place and in what sequence.

Operator: You now have the line of Brian Walsh with Time Magazine.

Brian Walsh: Hi, Admiral there have been complaints from Gulf State Governors about not getting resources fast enough. Are they using all the resources you’re putting in, you’re making available to them? When it comes to National Guard, for instance, you know are they actually – whether it’s Louisiana or other states do you think they’re carrying that out or are they holding up there end of the bargain as well?

Thad Allen: Well, it depends on what resources you’re talking about. I think the three most critical resources right now I would say are probably personnel, various types of boom and skimming equipment, boom and skimming equipment is being procured and deployed as fast as we can get it, whether it’s a source that’s providing it or from a manufacturer.

And the fact of the matter is as the storm widens, we can’t – we used to be able to say we will take it from one area and move it to another but as you know we’ve got oil impacting from the Panhandle of Florida down to West of the Mouth of the Mississippi River. So it’s not a matter anymore of redeploying a resource.

It’s a matter of amassing everything we’ve got all along the coast because oil is really in determinant where it’s coming ashore. So what I’ve told my folks for the foreseeable future, even past the (inaudible) we’ve had for boom and skimmers we just keep ordering them and the more we get the more we’ll keep deploying with the highest need area because they’re – they are the rarest resource we have right now and the most critical.

Regarding personnel, the Governors have the authority right now to (inaudible) call 17,500 National Guard across all the state. The states have done that to varying degrees. If there is a request by a Governor to call up the National Guard, the federal officing coordinator takes a look at that and acts on it.

And I don’t believe there are any deployments to National Guards we have not approved at this point. There’s a total of about 1,358 National Guardsmen deployed out of the 17,000 and 500 that have been authorized for recall.

Operator: You now have the line of Kerrie Sanders with the CNBC nightly news.

Kerrie Sanders: Thank you very much. I’m curious if you can, sir, can you provide some sort of hard numbers. How many vessels would have to be secure and evade a tropical storm or a weather event currently in the operation, how many personnel and if you don’t have a hard number of personnel just give us a rough estimate. And the final part of that is would any single person be left behind or would every person be physically removed?

Thad Allen: Those are all good questions. Since I can’t – I probably won’t give you the answers to the accuracy, you’ve got to let me tell you the numbers that I do have. As of today, including Coast Guard, National Guard, Contractors, BP and volunteers, we have a total of 38,634 involved in this response.

Regarding vessels, including vessels of opportunity, which we have nearly 3,000 barges which are used to, to, to – for skimming operations and to block passages and entrances to bays, skimmers which are about 430, other vessels that are out there in support including Coast Guard Command and Control vessels are about 2,700.

The answer to all of those is that the safety of life is number one priority, we would move well in advance of the storm to evacuate personnel, that would require us at some point to move our vessels of opportunity off the water and as we get instead the 120 hour time frame start redeploying our personnel to safe shelter.

We would keep certain personnel later into the evacuation but all non-essential personnel will be moved to alternate locations were they could do things like data entry and some of the logistics support that could, could be done from an alternate site, they would do that.

The last thing that would happen is our incident commanders and the folks that are forward deployed would, would move to the state emergency operation centers where we would be co-located with our partners, either the commanders or their representatives in some cases and we would stay there until we saw the results of the storm but in any case, the safety of our personnel is, is really, really important and number one.

The other thing we need to be mindful of – that we need to be able to move our personnel where it doesn't conflict with the general public evacuation that would be worked in association with the states and with FEMA as well.

Operator: Next you have the line of Mark Seibel with McClatchy.

Mark Seibel: Yes, this is Mark Seibel with McClatchy, Admiral, I have two questions really, the first is you, you talk about how many hours you need for the Discover Enterprise an Q4,000 but what about for the Development Driller II and III? How many hours do you need storm warning before you evacuate those or they cease operations, suspend operations?

And the other question I have really is about the ranging runs, I think you said they are doing their third ranging run and I'm trying to figure out how often they're, they're doing them or I'm interested in that? Do you know what depth they were at when they did the first ranging run and then the third ranging run?

Thad Allen: I've been following this for a couple days so I've got a lot of numbers in my head, I'll get back to you with the exact point on the, on the first ranging run, I believe it was a little over 10,000 feet below the sea floor but again, let me explain how this works.

When they get to a certain point and they think they're near enough to the well where they can detect it, they withdraw the drill pipe back up to the nearest casing and then they extend a wire down into the well bore that they have just drilled, that wire – and that's an electrical, electrical signal that can pick up the magnetic field that's durated by the metal pipe and the other well bore.

They then get a approximate distance and a bearing if you will to the, to the well bore, they withdraw the line and then they drill about 200 more feet at an angle getting in closer and then they stop, they put the wire back down and they do that again, and they do it very, very gently in couple a hundred feet bites if you will, and then take another range so they don't inadvertently run into it, and when they think they're close enough down to about five feet, then they would turn the drill bit directionally and go in and attempt to intercept the well at that point.

For that reason, about the last 1,000 feet become much slower in terms of progress than the drilling to date and they are continuing to do that. One other thing they have done is there's a vessel moored very close by up at the top that is full of mud, on the chance that they nick the well bore and they think there might be a problem, they can immediately put mud into the well bore to prevent any oil from coming up, but this is a very slow, very precise process moving forward. Was that responsive?

Operator: Next you have a follow-up from Molly Fiske with the LA Times.

Molly Fiske: Yes sir, I, I don't know if you're the right one to ask but I – it's a general question about the storm plans. The personnel who would be recalled, would they still be paid for their standby time and I'm specifically interested in the, the (stop) on the – pardon me, vessels of opportunity or the beach crews.

Thad Allen: I do not know the details on that but we will get that and we will, we will, will issue a statement later on today on it. I just don’t know off the top of my head. I’m not sure that I’ve been advised of that but we’ll get you the answer.

Operator: And you have a follow up from the Associated Press by Lisa Leff.

Lisa Leff: Sir, based on all the scenarios and time estimates that you have right now can you give me a range for how long the containment efforts would be offline?

Thad Allen: We believe that if we had to disconnect it would take us between disconnecting and the transit to safe harbor back out and reconnecting would be about 14 days.

Operator: And you have another follow up from Mark Waller with the Times Picayune.

Mark Waller: Yeah, another potential evacuation related question. Do we know where personnel, some of the company personnel, BP people and so on, might, might be evacuated to and what I’m imagining is you know are, are citizens going to be aware that you know hotel rooms in Baton Rouge or Jackson or places like that might be, might be even more full that usual because of the evacuation of people from this effort? Or do we, do we know where they are going?

Thad Allen: Well, first of all it will depend on where the storm comes ashore and how we might have to alter our operations. Again, the 35, over 35,000 people that I talked about are across four different states. It’s highly unlikely they all would be impacted in the same level and I think the 35,000 people as a percentage of the general population is not a very large number and it depends on the type of functions.

There are certain functions that are being done around the coast that might be able to be operated out of BP’s Headquarters in Houston. But the real important connection for us is that our people that are actually managing the response on scene are hooked up and are working with the local Governors and local leaders in emergency operation centers.

So it’s, it’s kind of a situation specific. But my, my own personal opinion is the entire personnel that we have down there is a percentage of the entire population, would not make it very consequential in terms of the impact of an evacuation.

Operator: Your next question is from (Vivian Quo) with CNN.

(Vivian Quo): Yes, sir, could you tell me a little bit about the chain of command here, so would it be NOAA who first identifies the, the, the danger and then alerts BP and then alerts you? How does that work?

Thad Allen: We’re all pretty much co-located. Let me – we have two incident command posts, one in Houma, Louisiana, the other ones in Mobile, Alabama; between those two command posts they cover Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Above them is what we call an area of unified command that is in New Orleans. And it co-located at all those command posts are folks from NOAA, Commerce, BP, the state and in some cases parish and other representatives.

They meet everyday, get an operations brief, and we would all be watching – this would be a jointly agreed upon decision when the thresholds were met, all of the stakeholders would be included that are all right here, included now in the response operations. The larger issue though would be that, that chain for the response actually comes up to me as a National Incident Commander and at the same time we could be activating Stafford Act Response headed by FEMA, both of us under Secretary Nalpolitano at Department of Homeland Security.

So it’s going to be critical that FEMA, the Coast Guard and the National Incident Command are integrating everything they do and that’s been the subject of an intense discussions planning and coordination for a number of weeks now and the goal would be to integrate the response operations with hurricane response, keeping in tact the chain of command for the oil response but being integrated and understanding what FEMA was trying to do on the Stafford Act aside. Was that responsive?

Operator: We now have a follow up from Mark Seibel with McClatchy.

Mark Seibel: I’m sorry, Admiral, to have to ask this again, either you didn’t answer it or I forgot to write down the answer. How many hours do the Development Driller rigs need to – in a storm warning.

Thad Allen: I think right now – let me repeat all. Discover Enterprise we indicate would be 114 hours, Development Driller 3 which is the lead driller for the relief well would be 104 hours, the Q4000 would be 56 hours, and right now I have Development Driller 2 and the sheet I have in front of me at 143 hours which exceeds the 120 hour time limit.

So we'll get a check on that and get to back to you. And would you like to the restart times?

Male: Great.

Thad Allen: Once they're back on sea to restart it would be 38 hours for Discover Enterprise, 72 hours for the Development Driller 2, 72 hours for Development Driller 3, and 90 hours for the Q4000.

That has to do with the fact that they have the Grandry arm that does the flaring. My guess is the difference between the Development Driller III and II time is dependent on where they're at and the types of drill equipment. They're not quite same configuration. They're very close but they're two different designs in their vessel.

Male: OK.

Joe Klinker: Operator this will be the last question.

Operator: OK, our last question comes from the CNBC Nightly News by Kerrie Sanders.

Kerrie Sanders: With the 120 hour sort of window that you're working in and with the information that the folks at the National Hurricane Center are providing can you currently say that that 120 hours will begin sometime on Sunday between noon and four or when is it with the data you currently have, when would that 120 hours kick in with the movement of the storm with the current of uncertainty.

Thad Allen: Well where it's at right now we don’t have any indication that we would reach gale force winds at the well bore as the storm passes. If we get an indication that we have a chance for gale force winds at the wellhead, a 120 hours out in advance that’s when we'll make the decision.

Of right now we have not meet that threshold. Is that responsive?

Operator: Your line is closed. Sir you may continue.

Thad Allen: The next question?

Operator: There are not further questions.

For information about the response effort, visit http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com.

Sex and female sexuality in 19th century America

Stumbled over an interesting article about Clelia Mosher, a professor at Stanford University who studied female sexuality between 1892 and 1920. She conducted surveys which reveal what family historian generally know more clearly than the general public: that Victorians were just as interested in sex as we are.

How do family historians know? Because 6 out of 10 Victorian brides were pregnant, that's how. The picture we have of a sternly disapproving society and virginal womanhood who barely knew which bits were involved in procreation is a bit misleading.

It is true that women often knew very little about the way in which their own bodies worked, but I think that actually that's pretty much true even today. Many women confuse menstruation with ovulation, don't understand the physical process of pregnancy and giving birth. The difference is that today, that's a choice.

"In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change." -Thich Nhat Hanh

I realised some time ago that my father had taught me an important lesson: how to listen. That's because he rarely does, which forces everyone else to try. I didn't realise until today why I find the conversations we have so frustrating and pointless, but the above quote sums it up: generally he is fixed in his idea about things, and there is no possibility for change.

Now you see it...

Debenhams have apparently launched a campaign to highlight the amount of photoshopping which goes into the images which we routinely see in magazines and on the walls of retailers. The example they use is of a model who looks perfectly wonderful in a bikini, but is then "improved" by photoshopping, to make her look even more unattainably thin.

Photoshop disasters blog frequently has examples of photoshopping models going wrong - or as in that case, being completely unnecessary.

I would like to know where the drive for thinner and thinner models comes from. Most of the men I know prefer women to be slim, not thin, and have a womanly shape, not a shape like a teenage boy. Many of them like women to be even more voluptuous than that.

I think that fashion has a great deal to answer for. It isn't just women who are thin who like to wear nice clothes, and to look nice, although you would be forgiven for thinking that it was. Even the retailers who aim at women of larger sizes tend to use models that barely qualify as plus size. I love these people, who display pictures from their clients - real women wearing real clothing. (See Riva Lizette Nowell in the Bella dress from Holy Clothing, above.)

I'm fully behind the Debenhams campaign... I'd like to see more clothing manufacturers showing their clothing on real women, and acknowledging that even the less perfect among us can look amazing in the right clothing.

Hospital deaths peaks at weekends

Dr Foster reports that you are more likely to die if admitted to hospital at the weekends than at any other time. This comes as no surprise to anyone who has spent lengthy time in hospital. It came as a surprise to me that hospitals are run as though people fall sick only during the week, during the day time.

Before I spent a lot of time with my husband and latterly my son in hospital, I presumed that hospitals would be practical and reflect human reality, which is that people get ill and are ill constantly, not to a timetable. It came as a shock to find that services shut down at the weekends, that a single junior doctor might be expected to trail around the hospital over night and at weekends, putting in drips and reviewing medication.

It makes me very angry to see that senior consultants "prefer to work office hours"... because generally, they don't, as far as I can see. When was the last time you went to the hospital and actually saw the senior consultant that was on your paperwork, rather than a registrar or junior doctor?

It seems to be worse in some areas and better in others. Obstetrics and Gynaecology seem to be more or less completely in the hands of junior doctors, unless you are lucky enough to have any complication at a time when a consultant is accidentally on duty or on the premises.

Paediatric consultants seem to be on duty and at the hospital far more frequently than the consultants in other areas.

There are other factors too, I think. The gradual destruction of the GP out of hours services means that people are far more likely to end up at hospital at the weekend than at any other time. The pattern of drinking in the country means that people are far more likely to come to harm on a Friday or Saturday night than at any other time of the week.

There are many aspects of our health service that seem to make little sense to someone outside the NHS, and this supposition that people and their ailments will respect working hours is one of them. The idea that a junior doctor might be capable of overseeing a whole hospital of patients overnight at the weekend, when there are likely to be just as many if not more patients in need of help, is just bizarre. I wonder why, with the huge number of administrators in the NHS, this hasn't occurred to them directly.

OFFCOLOUR

I can't work out why this blog doesn't have headings when the heading appears in the layout... but anyway... prepare for a rant.

This page gives the appearance of being a page about a "new" philosophy of colours related to birthdays. The name is ugly and clumsy, Colorstrology, but it purports to be something that links people with their spiritual colour.

If you look at it closely, it is sponsored by Pantone... what it doesn't make clear until you dig, is that the whole thing seems to be a Pantone marketing ploy.

I think Pantone, and any company who does this sort of deceptive marketing on the internet, is misjudging the public rather badly. Those who believe in astrology, who might be drawn into a new aspect of it, will feel very angry with Pantone if they discover that it is simply marketing crap.

I don't know whether they believe the astrology colour stuff... but if they do then this is a cynical marketing ploy which exploits something they think is real, and if they don't, then this is cynically manipulating those susceptible to such things for financial gain. Either way, which company wants to be associated with *either* of those things?

Those who look with disdain upon astrology and all things related to astrology, are not likely to view it in a positive light at all. Those with experience of the internet, who mostly hate sites which blare loud music at you while they tell you what they're about, will hate it for that reason.

I presume they put money into it on the hope that it would provide positive exposure, but that isn't what I think they will get. They'd do better to find something honest about their product and promote that instead.

I was moved to write to the BBC over their news coverage yesterday. I listened to the six thirty news headlines on Radio 4, which included two novelty items: one story about the European cup having been played for by two teams of policemen a couple of decades ago, when it was lost and handed into the police at Sheffield; and one on the Indian police force having arrested a "spy pigeon" which they suspected was working for Pakistan.

It's often the case that on slow news days, the last heading is a novelty or good-news item, but on this particular day, the president of Guatemala had declared a state of calamity, following an eruption of the volcano Pacaya which overshadows the capital, Guatemala City.

I only happened to know about this because I am subscribed to a couple of sites which seem to report on every natural disaster, in case this should be a portent of global warming gone mad, or the beginning of the end. It's an efficient way to be notified of all the significant weather, tectonic and volcanic events in the world.

Once upon a time, I turned to the BBC for what I considered was a balanced and intelligent view of the world, but more and more they have turned from their previous position as the broadsheet of broadcast news to a position which is now teetering on the brink of becoming the red-top tabloid of broadcast news.

They are covering more and more entertainment, celebrity and pop science stories, and less and less in-depth news stories. Where once you could have kept pretty much up to date and aware by following the BBC news site, I don't think that's the case any longer. They do have the story on their website now.

While they pay lipservice to the ideas of citizen journalism, having facilities to enable you to send in your best photograph, or your view if you are involved in the stories of the day, actually theirs is a pretty unresponsive site, which picks and chooses which stories they want a response on, and moderates hard on the replies to those they have chosen to cover.

As for standards of journalism, I think those for the online news site are pretty low, and sinking every day. I find myself migrating more and more to the Guardian News site. I make occasional forays to the Times, but their nnouncement that they plan to charge for access later in the year has put me off it. It will be interesting to see what effect that has later in the year.

Oh Lord. I just realised I have posted a whole blog complaining bout standards in the BBC. I must be getting old.

Wonderful round up of the current review of home education on Jem's blog here.

The point is: they had already made their minds up... and are having a bloody time trying to prove that they have the evidence they say they have. But the way this government behaves, will that matter?

Looking forwards to the past

I must admit that before I studied the stone age with my children, I had a very Hollywood or cartoon vision of the people. I studied the stone, bronze and iron age at school, but had the impression that the people were brutish and barbarian, and not at all the intelligent people that we like to think we are.

I knew that the monuments and circles like Stonehenge were designed to line up with the movements of the sun, without ever questioning how on earth primitive man, with no compasses, clock or calendars could possibly have found this information.

A night under the stars, watching for meteor showers and talking with my children about the life of the stone age people who lived in our garden, taught me more than months of lessons in school. I realised that I would be an ignorant townie and probably starve if dropped into the stone age world of flint knapping and hunting deer. Or die of poisoning, eating the wrong berries or plants. Or die of exposure, unable to build a house without a ready supply of bricks and mortar from a local Wickes (which is itself built over a bronze age habitation).

I realised that the people of that time were not much different from us in appearance or intelligence, but they had to be educated to be able to do most things for themselves... a man would have to be able to make his own weapons and tools, build his own house, make his own clothes, catch his own food. Their intelligence wasn't less than our is, but it was all directed towards survival skills and being able to do all the necessary things oneself. Goodness what happened if you got sick or hurt. Well... you died, if you didn't have close family to look after you.

In today's world you can go through life quite incapable of catching or killing your meals, unable to identify plants and herbs, unable to build houses, make your own clothes, or even cook our own food.

In their world, there was a magical economy...you didn't waste anything, and used whatever was the appropriate tool for the job. In our world, we have become careless of the raw materials we have at our disposal, and unthinking about throwing away anything which doesn't serve our needs at the moment.

This is a change which happened only recently: my grandmother never threw away a useable jar, piece of string or elastic band. She remembered a world without packaging, where you took your own jug to the inn for beer or bag to the grocers for eggs, and the world of the second world war, with rationing and shortages of sugar and meat.

Our modern world became blase with plastic and oil and we have frittered away the resources which in years to come we may be held to account for. Our morass of plastic which washes up in the stomachs of albatross chicks inadvertently fed poison by their parents. Plastic tags, trashy plastic toys, plastic bottles, plastic bags and packaging and useless little tokens of our throwaway society. For years, because we haven't had to think about where our food is coming from, where our next piece of plastic is coming from, we haven't thought at all... I recently heard a talk on radio about how our grandchildren may regard our profligate use of the worlds resources on stupid bits of unnecessary plastic... you used it...for what!? to hold new pairs of socks together? To attach price tags?

My feeling is that while we think our lives are full of worry and economic angst, we are probably living now in the richest and least worried state of all time and will look back with envy at a time when - in the west - we don't have to struggle to survive. I don't believe the doomsday predictions about 2012, but that's not to say that I don't think the Maya knew what they were talking about: it is the end of one age, and the beginning of another, and it is possible that there are changes ahead whether due to climate change caused by us or climate change caused by natural cycles or climate change caused by the end of an astronomical phase ending in pole shifts and disasters... but which ever way, we will begin to see changes caused by the climate shifting.

We need to change back, to go back to being people who conserve the things they have, who know about the natural world and what burns/doesn't burn, what can be eaten/can't be eaten and how to use old tech to do the things we want, in case new tech lets us down.

I found this website, Primitive Ways, which has lots of information about making your own baskets or tanning your own hides, and also a fascinating article about the belt which the iceman Otzi carried with him on his last journey cross the pass in the mountains. It reminded me how wrong I was to regard early man as ignorant or unintelligent, for what intelligence there was in the things that he carried and the things that he'd made.

That's not to wish us all back to the stone age in the years to come, but to hope that we learn to apply some of the economy and intelligent use of resources that were a necessary feature of those times.

Unfortunately I fear that the tragedy of the commons indicates that we may postpone taking action until it is far too late - and by taking action I am not just talking about recycling and using low energy light bulbs, but planning for rising sea levels, changing food production methods and a world where maybe nothing will happen at the touch of a button, and we may need to learn to be responsible for ourselves.

Einstein is quoted as having said: I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

I think he would have imagined a fight between two worldly powers, and not a fight against environmental changes, but if we get it wrong, he's right anyway. It's back to the stone age.

My version of a Unicorn chaser...

WHYohWHYohWHYohWHY
Ok, it takes me quite a long time to get up a head of steam on anything... I am a relaxed live-and-let live sort of person usually. But this has to be the giddy limit as my grandmother would have said: Watford Council are banning parents from supervising their children in playgrounds.

I think there is a danger to our children from people - mostly men - who prey upon them sexually. Yes, yes, I know women do too, as a notorious case which recently went to court shows very clearly... but in 20 years of working in a legal department, my sister has never come across a single case, where she has seen thousands involving men. The number of women involved is tiny.

If you look at the proportion of people in gaol for any reason, and how many of those are men and how many are women, the truth is that there are 20 times as many men, even though you are more likely to be sent to gaol as a women if you are taken to court, and for lesser offences.

The point is... even though more men offend than women do, you are still twenty times more likely not to be an offender, and children are more at risk from accidents and poor supervision than from sex offenders. Even then, I would say a child who cannot be supervised by their parent will be more at risk from an offender than they would be if other parents were in the park.

I think this decision by Watford Council sends out all the wrong messages: parents can't be trusted, children are better off with stranger professionals than their parents, and all people must be regarded as offenders until proven otherwise.

I hate HATE it. I didn't consider myself to be the sort of person to say this, but this country is going to the dogs. The RSPCA-organised, bolt-gun executed dogs.

I wonder if there will ever be a time when the date of September 11 goes back to being an ordinary day? I don't think so, not in my lifetime. It was the day which seemed to be the end of the world, when everywhere seemed vulnerable. Thousands of miles away from New York, it seemed to me that if New York and the Pentagon weren't safe, there weren't many places that were....

I asked my daughter what memories she had of the day, but she was six then, and barely understood what was happening. I remember them asking me if what was happening was close to us, and I told them no, it was in America a long way away, and their interest in it dwindled. Only I was transfixed to the screen, fighting the impulse to phone my family and tell them what I had seen. I wanted so much to make contact with them, but I realised immediately this was a world-changing event, as soon as the second plane hit. I realised the the invulnerable place America had occupied was gone.

It seemed dangerous to be anywhere near a city, because we couldn't see how big this thing was, initially. Would it be a continual series of plane hijacks and crashes all over the world, against western targets? Would London be next, or Paris, or Rome? Initially I just assumed that they had chartered an aircraft and crashed it - I didn't realise the horror of the event for some days. Then I had a dream some nights later, of being in one of the planes, and I felt the letting go, the calm, realising there was nothing I could do, nothing that could stop the plane crashing, and feeling it wheel under me and crashing.

It felt like there was nowhere safe for a long time, and for months I looked up if I heard the sound of an aircraft. Being in London, near tall buildings seemed dangerous for a long time. It's hard to explain how it seemed on that day... hard even for me to remember how those events made me feel unsafe, even though I was a long way away from the bright autumn morning, the smoke and the dust.

I wanted information, wanted more and more and more, maybe a morbid curiosity, I don't know, I needed to feel that "they" were telling us what was happening... that I would know if planes were going to suddenly drop out of the sky in Europe too. Maybe that should be a selfish curiosity, but in fact I felt immense and overwhelming empathy for the people caught up in the real life events in New York and the Pentagon and elsewhere that day.

I knew, without a shadow of a doubt that there were good people facing terrible choices when they started to jump, and that there were brave and wonderful people caught up in the towers when they collapsed. It was obvious that the people left in the building must have been the rescuers, the firefighters and the paramedics, those who were trapped and those who chose to stay behind to help them. It was easy to empathise, seeing everything firsthand through the medium of television and the internet... knowing that what I saw was as real to me as someone living thirty or forty miles away from the twin towers.

That feeling that we were under threat diminished in the weeks and months, until the bombings in London revived the feelings again, but even then I didn't feel that same end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it feeling I'd been overwhelmed with on September 11. With each passing year, it fades for me, but of course I know that isn't likely to be true for the people who witnessed or experienced it first hand, or lost someone beloved. I know they will be changed forever, with no going back.

This is an experiment to see if embedding works on Blogger. Yay! it does. The video is of my son, Ali, covering the world spins madly on. I think he has a great voice... but I suppose I might be biassed.

Stumbled over one thing which led me to another which led me to another and I landed on this page. It's wonderful, and well worth the time to watch the videos. The picture came from another blog called Tiny House Design, which has lots of interesting stuff in it, including an article about Phoenix Commotion, which built the house above.

Dan Phillips takes materials which no one wants and turns them into fantastic houses for single parents and artists.

I've long had a dream of running my own scrap store... we have to trek over to Watford to get to our local scrap store, and I think it could be a fantastic thing. Many scrap stores only take fabric and small items for art recycling - my idea would be to have a proper scrap store which is self-sustaining, and recycled everything from furniture and building materials to jewellery and beads... all donated items, all given away for free.

I'd like a big site, and to be able to run home ed classes, demonstrations, a cafe and training post as wel as the scrap store. The troube is I have learned from the virtual world that to be succesful you need to specialise. My trouble is I am a jack of all trades by nature. I want to do everything at once.

I also love housing which has an organic aspect - the rolling curving roof of the fairytale house above appeals to me, and I would love to design something similar... I think I might try it out in Second Life.

I note that Dan Phillips is using bottles and recycled glass in the walls of his houses, which is something which my hero Hundertwasser did some decades ago. You can find a lot of images of his existing work on the Flickr group 100wasser.

Following another story in the revelations about Jaycee Lee Dugard, kidnapped 18 years ago, the BBC links to a nasty, cowardly article on double X by someone called Torie Bosch. It seems to insinuate that Jaycee Lee Dugard will be criticised for not having escaped from the clutches of her kidnapper.

Despite putting a reference to Stockholm syndrome in her title, this autor doesn't seem to understand the implications of a captive's relationship with her captor, or why it might have ben necessary for Jaycee to sacrifice her autonomy in order to keep living. She doesn't, in short, seem to understand the reference in her title.

Whether the wider public or anyone else will see fit to criticise her, it should be remember that she was 11 years old when kidnapped, and that it seems likely that she was repeatedly raped by someone who shows every sign of insanity.

I think that it would be better to simply celebrate her release, and the release of her two children, and to hope that she will be able to put this experience behind her and her children and enjoy the rest of her life.

This terrible picture is a visual aid showing the bruises and injuries on a child who died after terrible abuse by her mother and stepfather, as reported in the Daily Mail today.

I have three children I love very much. I cannot imagine how damaged you have to be in your relationship to the world to feel that you have to take out your frustration and hate on a defenceless child in this way. I don't like to think about it, or about the life this child must have had in the weeks before her death with every limb in her body broken.

As the story reports, her aunt mentioned her concerns about the child at the looked after child service, but they didn't see her as their responsibility and advised her to take action herself.

This story comes just a couple of weeks after another story where a mother spent months on the run from Social Services after they took her son into care because they believed that the mother and the child's alcoholic stepfather might have shouted at each other in front of the child, who was otherwise well looked after. They did, in fact, take him into temporarily into care for this reason, but the mother managed to get the child back, and went on the run - not because she was damaging her child, but because she couldn't bear to be separated from him again.

These two stories are at either extreme of the social services system, but they indicate that something is going very wrong with the system. When the system should be intervening it does not; when it should not be intervening it does.

And what life lies ahead of a child who has been taken into care, assuming that a right decision has been taken and a child is in need of care from society, away from their family? A life of trailing from placement to placement, cared for by people who fear to hug them in case they claim sexual abuse. A child who is taken into care has dire prospects and a life which is more likely to lead them to prison, mental health problems, drugs, alcohol and a failure to achieve their academic potential.

Instead of wringing our hands and investigating case after case where the children have been failed in one desperate case after another, we need to look around the world for systems which work and protect not only children at risk of serious harm, but families at risk from social workers. And make a better system, because this one we have seems broken beyond repair.

My father is due to go into hospital this morning - in fact if my sister and aunt have done their jobs properly, he should be there already.

It was my aunt's birthday yesterday and so we went out for lunch together to celebrate, and for father's day. We went to the Royal Oak in Bovingdon Green, which was lovely. We had a wonderful meal.

My sister told us about her friend, who went to Portugal last year. She has a daughter about the same age as my Thomas, and they happened to be in Portugal when she celebrated her sixteenth birthday. They decided to go out for a meal to celebrate and chose a nice restaurant near to their holiday home.

While ordering their meal, they explained that the meal was to celebrate their daughter's birthday, and the waiter declaimed loudly, out of the blue. "Oh sir, it's so nice that your daughter is a virgin!"

The daughter in question flushed scarlet, and the whole family embarrassedly buried themselves in their menus and pretended not to have heard what the waiter said.

He took their orders, and made his way through the crowded restaurant to the kitchen, only to catapult out two minutes later and shout across the restaurant. "Oh sir, no, your daughter is NOT a virgin!"

Then reaching the table a few seconds later, in a MUCH lower voice. "Virgo, your daughter is a ...virgo."

They weren't sure whether it was more embarrassing to have their daughter declared a virgin or not a virgin, and were tempted to stand up and explain. But being English, they didn't.

Cross posting to all my blogs. I am trying to organise an alternative report to the Badman review. I am co-ordinating that effort through the new ning account for UK free unschoolers.

Report on Home Education

I can't comment yet, still feel too angry, but there are things filtering through in response to the Badman report.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/5508165/Parents-should-educate-children-as-they-wish.html

http://threedegreesoffreedom.blogspot.com/2009/06/you-werent-there.html

I will post later... still can't formulate my thoughts into a coherent reply.

Working on an art deco build, I search for free Deco fonts and find this web page, which includes a biography for the creator. Think... why can't I gather everything together on one page?

What would I put... and who would be interested? I was born in Watford, Hertfordshire 50 years ago (can't see why anyone lies about their age... it is what it is, and fudging it doesn't make it a year more or less).

I don't feel 50. I spend a lot of my time in Second Life in an avatar that looks around 25, and people just treat me the way I feel there... it comes as a surprise when my children object to me saying "sucks" or "cool" or someone treats me like an ollllld laydeeeeeeee.

Where was I? Hmm... how do you extract the relevant detail from your life? I have five siblings, most of whom hate me because I spent a large number of weekends and holidays as a child as the favourite grandchild of my grandparents. Well, they may hate me for other reasons too, not sure. I get on much better with my brothers than I do my sisters. I married in 1985, have three children. I play the piano, research family history, build in Second Life, compose music, write, home educate my children, have difficulty in specialising in anything in particular. I am really awfu at housework. Things have to be perfect or I don't care, and my not caring is evident in piles of books, drifts of dog hair and general mayhem.

Went to Quakers in 1995, joined Quakers in 1996. Go erratically to meeting but feel very committed to Quakers....

Harvey Gillman once wrote about how, at dinner parties, mentioning that you are a Quaker is a conversation killer, because people want to know what a Quaker is, how you become one, what it is all about - and it isn't easy to explain. I always think I am FAR worse off, because I have Quakers, home education and Second Life to explain, any of which can have someone cross questioning you aggressively until the small hours.

I worked for Lloyd's Register of shipping for ten years before I had children. I have done a variety of voluntary and part-time jobs, mostly involving writing or editing. I love Second Life, and have a lot of friends there, incuding an SL partner.

I enjoy thinking, I love the sea, I like decorative crafts, pottering about in the garden erratically, but not actually gardening. I like helping people in R and SL. Maybe I crave approval, no idea, but I enjoy solving problems. Hate people leaving soluable problems unsolved.

I want to leave things better than I found them... I try to leave things better than I found them. I love conversation, sharing things I like with people. Argh mt stop, can witter on for ages... will think on this some more.

“Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: / Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”

In these words from Matthew 7:1 are encapsulated the message of nearly everything that I believe...what you do to others you are doing to yourself... when you judge people you will be judged in that same way.

It's hard to breakout of the idea that we are separate and that we can act towards others and not be affected by it. Learning to acknowledge the oneness of all is tough, especially in the modern world in which people may appear to self-serving and grasping - and different from us. It's an illusion. We are all part of the same thing.

How is it people can't tell the difference between rubbish remakes and good ones?

I've seen quite a lot of criticism of the new Reggie Perrin remake with Martin Clunes. With the notable exception of a horrible laughter track, I think it's pretty good. I like the ways they have updated the series, and particularly the scenes in the train... I used to think Reggie was overreacting to his railway woes in the original series, but the concerns and worries of the new Reggie rang much truer to me.

I loved the old series and Leonard Rossiter, but unless it all goes wrong, I think I am going to like this one even more.

Worst best sex toys list in the world

I was seduced onto the Independent's website by their much better description of Heston Blumenthal's Victorian Feast, which aired on Channel Four last night, and which I missed. As I find that 4OD drains the life out of my laptop, I avoid watching stuff on it, and so will have to wait until the thing is repeated, complete with vibrators served with absinthe jelly.

Maybe because my mind had been taken down a certain line of thought, I clicked on a link on the same website to see the "Ten Best Sex Toys". There is no information about how the ten best is established, and so I must assume it is the ten items associated with sex which the person made to write the post (the celibate tea boy, one must assume) could dredge up out of the freebie box.

Ladies and gentleman, let me share with you:
Number one: an untitled contribution which appears to consist of satin ribbon for tying the wrists of your beloved. Great if you both like bondage, not so great if you don't. 5/10

Number two: a fancy honeymoon spanker prettied up with hearts. For those who want to try spanking, but only want to try it out as a joke. This is dangerous territory here. This is obviously BDSM for beginners who aren't sure that they'll like it. It's going to be tricky if both partners decide they want to be the Domme. Or maybe if one really, really, likes it and the other does not. Still, in principle it IS a sex toy, if a namby pamby ersatz imitation one. 3/10

Number three: the seven pearls Massage Ring - a whopping £433 knuckleduster which apparently doubles up as an intimate massager. No real instructions were appended and so one is left to imagine what one actually does with it. It may be unfair of me to judge without having tried the thing for myself, but it looks uncomfortable and it doesn't appear to have any endorsements to back up its claim to be one of the ten best sex toys. Ten most expensive...yeah probably. 4/10 for weirdness.

Number four: an afterglow massage candle. It was at this point that I realised we were in "desperately filling editorial pages" territory and not any serious attempt to sort out the actual ten best sex toys. A candle, and not even a usefully phallic one either. This one "releases an aromatic massage oil with hydrates and softens the skin on impact". Really. 1/10.

Number five: the hot and cold ceramic dildo. This is not a joke. With dozens of vibrating, wiggling, buzzing, lifelike, day-glo, bunny-eared vibrators to choose from, they chose a ceramic one. I got a chill looking at it. Ceramicists may make things that you can display to the general public on a stand with a chintzy bravado, but they do not make good sex toys. Believe me, I know without trying it that this in no way competes with the Omax vibrator "could get an orgasm out of a stone". This is as cold as a stone.... 1/10.

Number six: Colore Moi body paint. Edible body paint. What can I say? So much less enjoyable than chocolate sauce/honey/squirty cream. And sooo 90s. 3/10.

Number seven: Lust by Marc Lagrange. Wha? A book of posed pictures... by the cover, not even women who look like they breathe either. Oh yeah. That's sexy. NOT. 1/10. And how is that a toy? I mean... even partly.

Number eight: Bow diamante and silk lace pasties. Did they choose someone who was too afraid to visit the sex toy websites? The work experience minor who couldn't get in? They HAVE to be joking. This is dress up, not a sex toy. Not even close. 1/10

Number nine: Oh please. Wildly expensive and uncomfortable G strings. Unless you have a figure like a stick insect, forget it - you'll never see those pearls again. More dress-up. not toys. And tacky, horrible, unflattering unless you are skinny. 2/10

Number ten: The liberator. Described as a tarted up stack of cushions, there is no explanation why someone might want to pay £109.99 for these rather than use...cushions. Less a sex toy and more of a sex facilitator. 2/10.

Really the Independent needs a good spanking with a whopping great leather whip for misrepresenting this as a ten best sex toys list, rather than ten random things we can link to sex. I can do better.

Worth doing badly
Years ago, a Friend at my meeting ministered on the subject of a job worth doing. Unlike my grandmother who repeated "if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well" just about a thousand times in the course of my childhood, the ending was different. Trevor said: "if a job's worth doing it is worth doing badly".

Thinking about it was very liberating for me. I am by no means a perfectionist of the sort that can't bear to do a job sloppily, but I would often avoid doing a job at all if I knew I wasn't able to make a good job of it. Failing by not doing it at all seemed better than failing by doing the job badly.

His ministry allowed me to look at what he had said and know the truth in it: jobs that are worth doing, that need doing, are better done badly than not at all. It's true on all sorts of levels.

I was reminded of Trevor's ministry because today I had a bit of a shock. I was building in Second Life while listening to the incomparable Anton Lesser in the Falco mystery the Silvery Pigs. I would listen to Anton Lesser reading nonsense, I adore his voice, and I love his portrayal of Falco particularly. The episode I listened to was the final episode. As usual I loved the sound of Anton Lesser, but I realised that I liked the woman's voice too. In the drama she is a bit of an individual, a strong character who falls in love with Anton Lesser's character, and I thought she was very well cast, and had a lovely voice, but I had never bothered to find out her name.


Seen above, her name was Fritha Goodey, and this being the age of the internet I was able to look her up immediately, found a wikipedia entry and learned to my immense shock that she had stabbed herself to death in 2004. People always say nice things about someone after they have died, particularly when they die in tragic circumstances, but it seems that people were saying nice things about this actress when she was alive. She had a loving and supportive family, friends and colleagues who liked and respected her. It seems she was beautiful, kind, talented.

And yet she killed herself. Something about her life was so unbearable that killing herself seemed preferable. People said in the news reports about her death that she had been anorexic, and was such a perfectionist that she put herself through agonies wondering if she would let productions down... and even success and bigger and better parts hadn't made that go away. Often it seems it isn't the student destined to get none of their GCSEs who kill themselves through fear of failure - they don't expect to pass and it comes to no one as a surprise when they don't. It is the ones who are predicted to do very well that often can't cope with the pressure to perform, the pressure to live up to this perfect view that the world has of them.

I fear that I am a one tune guitar, but I think schools and our system of education can take the blame for much of that attitude, where exams are emphasised as though lives will be ruined on the stroke of a pen. It doesn't work like that in the real world... people fail exams, they move on and retake, or do something else entirely.

Everyone is different, everyone responds to pressure to perform differently. That's why I believe a one-size-fits-all education system that doesn't respond to the needs of the indiviual children with it is wrong wrong WRONG. And why I am going to be telling my grandchildren, that a job worth doing is worth doing badly.

Yeurgh. Ali was crashing around the house at 4.30, and so despite the fact that I had only got to bed at 1am, I was wide awake at 4.30. I was thinking about the meeting yesterday, tried to get back to sleep but couldn't, and so I have been awake for over an hour and have no prospect of getting back to sleep. And so to blog....

I was busy, busy, busy before meeting yesterday. Outreach committee were meeting and I was needing to print out the agenda and a copy of the email from Beth Allen, for the meeting and I was out of black ink. I managed to print in a reddish purple colour that was legible, and gathered together the other things I wanted for the meeting... a copy of Quaker Quest that I bought at Friends House, a copy of the framework for action.

I left the house in good time and arrived at meeting by about 10.20am, shook hands with David who was greeting yesterday and sat down in meeting by 10.25 am, where there were already about four people sitting.

I usually find it quite easy to centre down in meeting. It's a hard process to explain to someone else, but it is a combination of relaxing, quietening your inner voice, and falling into the waiting which happens in meeting. Sometimes it is hard, and all the things you ought to be doing, are behind with, should be thinking about start to clamour for attention, and sometimes it is easy and you fall into a calm state of opening to the moment.

I was aware of people coming in settling down and the odd sighing outbreath that a lot of people make when they relax into the meeting. What usually happens is that the meeting gradually settles after the last person comes in. The greeter usually stays in the outer room until about 15 minutes into the meeting and then comes and sits down.

Usually it is quiet unless someone gets up to speak. What I loved about Quakers when I first came to it and love about it still is how many of the people who get up tell a story about what they are thinking or have been doing, not in a preaching way, but in a matter of fact, explanatory way. It is easy to listen in an open way.

However, yesterday there were bangs and thumps... a lot of noises generally, including a thump on the piano. That wouldn't have been such a shock except that the piano is in the meeting room, and no one was near it or touching it. If it had been a harmonic sound of the wind through the strings, that wouldn't have been such a shock either - it was a windy day yesterday. But this was a thump as though someone had pressed down on a bunch of keys with their hand.

I'm not clear when exactly the first thump on the piano was. The greeter came in, and there were noises in the rest of the meeting house as though there was a child out there - I thought there *was* a child out there. There were creakings like footsteps, doors creaking, and sound of the toys in the small meeting house being touched... a small piano played, a whistling noise, sounds like things being picked up and put down. I started to feel quite cross - maybe there was someone doing something like cleaning or reorganising, but surely that could wait until after meeting? Then when I heard the toy piano go, I thought it must be a child out there.

I tried to ignore it, but eventually David went out of the room, I assumed to remonstrate with the person concerned. He came back and things were quiet for a while, and then the noise started up again - I thought I heard someone in the corridor, more thumps and bangs, and when I heard the toys again, I decided that whoever it was wanted attention, and went out myself to see if they needed to talk, because they sure were drawing atention to themselves!

I went to the small meeting house, but there was no one there. Looking into the kitchen, no one. The committee room, loos, corridors, garden, no one. The side door had been pulled to, and the inner door blocked so that it couldn't move. I later learned that this was what David had done when he came out. I went back into meeting, and it was quiet for about five minutes and then the piano played again.

After meeting I discovered that David had found no one in the meeting house, and had pulled the doors to and blocked the inner one, in case it was the wind causing the sounds. Of course, it must have been the wind causing the sound effects, although I thought it was very strange that the piano should sound a chord like that - a discordant chord, but definitely the hammers striking the strings. My daughter suggested maybe a lorry passing by might have caused a vibration, but I've lived with pianos for most of my life, and I have never known one to do what that one did.

It isn't the first time either. People often talk of the piano sounding during the meeting. Oddly, we had our outreach committee after meeting, and there weren't any of the bumps and bangs. The piano was silent. Which is just as it should be.