I Love the BBC

Does anyone really doubt that the BBC is great? Apparently only those who think they could profit from its demise. The BBC is one of the things that makes this country great, seriously, it and the NHS are the two most important institutions in the country, two of the greatest British achievements of the last century. Without them, frankly we may as well live anywhere, like America, or the sea. If I ever get a chance to ask I would love to know what would happen to public owned broadcasting in Scotland. Like the NHS it has flaws, but like the NHS those flaws just show that it needs defending, and protecting, and perhaps reforming, never that it needs reducing, or replacing, or destroying.

Murdochs claim, and even the Guardian has reported semi-positively that the BBC is holding back the print media. Too fight gross over simplification with gross over simplification: the print media in America is in just as much, if not more, trouble than in the UK. Without a BBC. The BBC is a challenge to print media, and over news sources, because in a world with the BBC there is only so shit British news can be. Sky News is pretty poor, but it is a paragon of prophesy compared to its siblings across the pond. Partly this is because of regulation designed to keep bias off the airways. Not that this works, as even the briefest sample viewing will show. The Telegraph was even handed in its slating of MPs over expenses and yet Sky managed to be incredibly partial. Sky will show entire Tory press conferences, and quote every press release, but ignore the Government. Partly Sky is forced to be better than it might, because if it ever stooped to the mendacity of Fox it would be a laughing stock in a country where we are used to news having at least some proximity to reality. (Although even in that low ambition one is sometimes confounded)

The BBC is never going to replace print news. It has none of the opinion that newspaper readers want. Nor is Sky news ever going to suffer, it has an approach that the BBC is never going to be able to compete on. (Partial coverage and a policy of being "never wrong for long" e.g. reporting unsubstantiated rumour as soon as it emerges. The BBC is painfully slow to report current events as it must first go through the tedious process of fact checking.) Print News salvation is not in a diminution of the overall quality of public discourse, but in finding ways to effectively monetise its online presence. To give them their due News International is trying to do this, but with a model which is never going to be successful in the long term. We need an easy and safe way to spend very small amounts of money across online outlets so we can pay 2p for an article on the Times, 3p for an opinion piece from the Guardian etc. Something like iTunes for papers. Furthermore more effective advertising models are required, and papers need to better market their side lines e.g. pay to access archives, crosswords etc.

Of course I can think of lots of ways in which the BBC should change.

It should stop trying to hard to chase the populist market. Jonathon Ross and Chris Moyles fans aren't in danger of being undercatered for. Dump them and their kin.

It should stop producing filler material, if it is still making Two Pints of Larger... then it clearly has too much airtime. Before a programme gets made a decision should be made as to whether, in the great reckoning of human achievements, it would be weighed on the good or evil side of the balance. Does this contribute positively to the human condition, or is it a symptom of the slow heat death of the universe. Two Pints, I think all will agree, is clearly in the latter camp. Being almost watchable if you are drunk should not be sufficient commendation for a programme to run for ten years.

As there will be less TV material, cut the channels to three. Popular, High Brow, and Quirky. Similarly trim the radio output, and put more money into radios 4 and 3.

When the micropayment system needed to save print media is up and running stick as much as possible into a great big online store, all the stuff that gets put onto radio 7, and much of what goes on radio 3 should be available for cheap, but not free, download.

Thai Curry

A good object lesson in making two meals. On Friday, for dinner, with company (we were five) we had a thai curry on rice. Today the two of us had a thai stir fry with noodles.

The thai curry was a green paste mixed in with two cans of coconut milk (half fat) with a little stock, (c. 200 ml). When heated I added potato, cauliflower, broccoli and mange tout, not all at once, but so that they would all be cooked at roughly the right time. This was served a couple of ladles on nice hot fragrant rice. The recipe was that in the Newlyweds Cookbook a very kind wedding gift from our priest and his wife. The timings in it were nonsense, (two minutes to cook inch cubes of potatoes!) but obviously so, so I was prepared. The result was lovely, creamy and fragrant. It was quite mild (good for the company, not all of whom like spicy foods), and a change from the subcontinental style curries I usually prefer. It had a moderate sauce to veg ratio, more than a coating (see below) but it was not swimming in the stuff. I caused a moderate amount of amusement when I had to transfer from my medium casserole to my BIG casserole dish. It served five people, with seconds for some. There was a large extra portion which formed the beginning of the next meal.

That leftover portion would have served, as it was, as a light lunch for two. Or tea for two if those two didn't mind a stingy curry to rice ratio. Instead I bulked it out slightly. In a wok I heated the remaining paste with half a thai chilli, some mushrooms and about 500 ml of stock. I reduced this a little and added some mushrooms, after the mushrooms stir fried a little I poured in the tuppaware of curry. Alongside I cooked some noodles. I put the noodles in the wok with plenty of spinach. The combination of stir frying and the noodles made this much drier - the sauce really was just a coating. It had more of a kick, from the chilli, but was still fairly fragrant. Noodles are nice and filling, so the end result was a very satisfactory meal.

On friday we had it with beer, beer beer, rather than a more appropriate lager. Maybe Tiger would have worked. Tonight we had Lime and Soda, I like Lime with spicy dishes.

Yummy.

A Wedding is Announced

Owen David Griffiths is delighted to announce his marriage to Natasha Katherine, neé Wood.
Celebrated in the company of friends and family on the 13th of June 2009, at St Peter's Church Edinburgh.

We have returned from a lovely honeymoon, our rings are still shiny, and I haven't quite gotten used to saying "my wife."



We would both like to thank everyone who got us this far, for everything. Including for the cards, a small number of which are pictured below.



Many pictures are available on facebook, but Chris Scott's are to be found on Flickr and the official photographers blog.

We can highly recommend:

The Royal Scots Club
A beautiful venue, with very friendly staff, and a fab four poster room. Leila was always wonderfully enthusiastic, and incredibly helpful, the day would not have been so good without her input.

St Peter's Church
Well, it is our church, so we would, but the ceremony was everything we had hoped for, and it was great to show of the redecoration.

Andy Craig
Andy managed to put us both very much at ease. An unfriendly photographer could really have put a dampener on things, but Andy was incredibly friendly, which really helped us to relax, what we have seen of his photos are great, and we are looking forward to seeing more.

The Nectary
Everyone said that the flowers were wonderful, Kay provided exactly what we wanted, which was impressive, because when we met with her we didn't know what we wanted. She was terribly friendly, and the bouquets were an especial testament, I was only sorry we couldn't keep some of the flowers.

Ecosse Classic Cars
I didn't spend long in it, but it was a gorgeous Daimler, with a very cheerful driver.

Helen and Mike
Matched only by each other, we couldn't have had anyone better by our sides on the day.

Entertaining: St David's Day Lunch

1 March 2009, Sunday. Feast of St. David.
Stockbridge.

Guests
We were five, gathered around the kitchen table

Menu

Sherry

***

Cheese Bread
Cennin Cawl (Leek and Potato Soup)

***

Cheese and Crackers

***

Welsh Cakes
Tea


Notes
Overall this is a menu worth wheeling out again, we now own a stone, which makes the welsh cakes much easier. It was nice to have a few daffs, and pretend to be welsh for a while. We played a combination of Catatonia, Tome Jones, and Bryn Terfel, who sings a good Land of My Fathers.

The cheese would have been better if Peckhams hadn't run out of Y Fenni. The Cheese bread went a bit wrong, probably because I mis programmed the bread machine, but it tasted fine, it was just ready too early (and thus not lovely and warm.) If I tried it again I might b e tempted to drop some mustard in with the cheese, or maybe a drop of ale. (Brains or similar for St Ds day ideally.)

The Leek and Potato soup was a sort of success, taste wise I was happy. I boiled potato and then added the potato, to gently fried leek and onion, with some stock. I had liberally seasoned the leek and onion, and put some sherry in with it. I served it far too gloopy, subsequent lunches saw it refined with more sherry, a little milk, and lots more water. We served this with creme fraiche and plenty of pepper.

The sherry was mainly an excuse to use our decanter and glasses, I was the only one who was mad keen on it, of those others who would drink sherry, I think most would drink something more on the lines of bristol cream. I suppose it would have been better to have some beer on hand also.

We made the welsh cakes while everyone was there, so folk could eat them warm off the stone. Everyone loves welsh cakes, and I hope to make them more often. Next year perhaps we should round of with a trip to the pub, or a wander round our back garden.

Time II, New Babylonian Time

Tempora igitur a temperando nomen accipiunt, sive quod unumquodque illorum spatium separatim temperatum sit: seu quod momentis, horis, diebus, mensibus, annis, saeculisque et aetatibus omnia mortalis vitae curricula temperentur

Times take their name from "measure", either because every unit of time is separetely measured in moments, hours, days, months, years, ages, and epochs.¹

As you can see I was recently reading about time. In that last time related post I mentioned some of the fun to be had from alternative ways of reckoning time. Towards the end I said the following:

On the internet one can find advocates for pretty much anything, including temporal reform. The last time anyone seriously attempted to change the way we measure time was the french revolution. The French indulged their fetish for the metric by giving us a ten day 'week', and a metric system of hours (etc). Whilst for scientific, and many technical purposes the metric system is admirable, for many practical purposes it is useless, although not as useless as a system when every day of the year has its own name. Nonetheless metric time has some enthusiastic proponents. There are other people who suggest time to be told in binary or hexadecimal format.

Most of these systems are pretty hopeless, for practical purposes. Metric time has some advantages from a mathematic point of view, fitting in with the rest of the base-10 world. binary or hexadecimal time have other advantages - especially in terms of co-ordinating with computers etc. "Binary" clocks already exist, but they just use systems of on/off lights to denote duodec/sexages-imal time. Binary degrees are used by some programs for 3D graphics, under this system the circle is cut into 256 degrees. 256 being the largest number that can be represented by 8 bits, or 1 byte. Most people don't really get the binary systems, most people readily admit to being mystified as to the units used in computing, why 256 colours, why is a gigabyte not actually a thousand bytes etc. The system does have a beauty though, and it would be pretty impressive if one could learn to count binary on ones fingers, but alternative ways of counting on your fingers is for another day, maybe for never. Anyway, lots of people have proposed several different time counting systems, mainly provoked by the flimsy reasoning that the current system is antiquated (as if antiquity alone were a bad thing - I will have to blog about tradition some time as well), and that the metric/decimal system has a shiny modernist newness to it. (not that it is any newer than, say the sexagesimal, or octal or any counting system used by humans over the last 12,000 years.)

Anyway, I continue with the following:

I must admit to being fascinated by alternative ways of measuring time, partly because they destabilise cosy notions of regularity and order, but mainly because they seem so damn sci-fi. If we take man into space, it doesn't matter how long his day is, never mind how it is divided. Kim Stanley Robinson's otherwise excellent Mars books, deal with martian time by sticking 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds, onto the end of a day, which seems an unimaginative way of doing things. Surely there could be better solutions? I like the idea of returning to our Sumerian heritage and dividing the day into 360 equal portions (of four minutes), and (orbit of the earth be damned), cutting the year into 360 days.

Having said that, I suppose I felt like fleshing the idea out, for the sci-fi epic I will never write.

New Babylonian Time

So here, I present New Babylonian Time. A system based on 360.

The day will last for 360 degrees NBT, for a period lasting 24 hours Old Time (OT). A degree will therefore be four old minutes long. I think four minutes is a neat length of time for most of our purposes. The degree will be the main unit used for both duration, e.g. "Just popping in the shower, be out in a degree", and also for scheduling, e.g. "Meet me for lunch at one-eighty". In terms of duration it may be printed normally, e.g. "The exam will last for twelve degrees", but in scheduling the zeros will always be used, e.g. "I didn't go to bed till naught-thirty", where ones alarm clock would read "030". I propose the time, for scheduling purposes, be told in the form "naught-ninety", "one-eighty", "two-seventy two", rather than the cumbersome "Two hundred and seventy two". The symbol for a degree is, obviously, °. Midnight will be 000, not 360.

The day will be divided, as now, into morning and afternoon, colloquially, but we will have an exact definition of early, mid and late morning/afternoon. This is because the day will be cut into six "watches" which make more sense than morning/afternoon in a sunless/dayless environment. The watches will each last for sixty degrees, they will either be referred to as early morning, mid morning etc, or (more formally) first, second and third watch etc. The new watches will begin at 000°, 060°, 120°, 180°, 220°, and 300°. So 120 will be the first degree of the third watch. Occasionally a unit called the Span will be used. One span lasts 6°, and whilst much scheduling will occur in six and its multiples they will not be used as much as hours are. The span will remain largely in colloquial use, and to describe approximate or metaphorical duration. "She went on for spans!"

The degree does not need to be subdivided for most every day use, the only time I can think of when I use seconds is when I am programming a microwave, then I do it in units of thirty seconds. For such purposes one can either use NBT "Minutes" - based on the arc minute, and lasting 4 old seconds, e.g. 60' = 1°, or fractions of a degree, usually sixths. One could further propose that rather than using 1/6, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 5/6. one use 1/6, 2/6, 3/6. One could refer to these as degree-watches, as opposed to day-watches. An NBT second, for rare scientific purposes, would be sixtieth of an NBT minute - based on the arc second. It would last for 0.0666... of a second.


Why 360?

I will admit to lifting the system wholesale from the compass, the advantage being that we can already instinctively divide 360 into fractional chunks. Half is 180, a third 120, a quarter is 90 a sixth is 60, easy. NBT minutes and seconds are based on arc minutes and seconds. It is also a pleasing nod to our sumerian forebears. It has a high number of divisors. (The same advantage that sixty and 12 have). It is s a fairly manageable number, avoids having to use two different units for most purposes. (Nearly everything is in degrees instead of hours and minutes). Most of all it sounds pleasingly sci-fi. I can imagine my space explorers with their big 360 clocks on the bridge.

Variations

Of course I initially suggested that this is a unit for people not tied to earth, so one variation would be to abandon the 24 hour OT day. Martians could adopt a 360 degree day for their 1475 minute (and 35.244 second) OT day. In which case every degree would be fractionally longer than four minutes. One could adopt a horribly long day of approximately 36 hours. (Although there are people out there who have tried to adopt bizarre cicadian patterns, based around, amongst other things, 36 hour days.) in a 36 hour OT day a degree would be 6 minutes OT long.

A more advanced step would be, however long ones day was, to also redivide the year. Firstly one could jettison any attempt to key the year to the orbit of the earth, something that is increasingly irrelevant to us, and would be even more irrelevant to people not dwelling on earth at all. A 360 day year could be divided into six months of sixty days, and sixty weeks of six days. Each month would be exactly ten weeks long, alternatively one could have 12 months of five weeks/30 days. - But I would advise keeping the symmetry with the division of the year. A six day week is kind of cosy as well, but demonstrates the biggest problem with any such a reckoning, which is that it entirely messes up the religious year, as I have moved up the candle I have become increasingly more interested in sacred time, and that includes the significance of the seven day week. It would be sad, from a selfish point of view, to lose the connection between sacred and profane time completely, although our brethren the Orthodox, as well as those of other faiths, demonstrate that one can keep to separate calendars for religious reasons perfectly well.

Conclusions

All I have really done is have a bit of a play with numbers, make a system which would work for sci-fi, even though I know that focusing on daft novelties is a hallmark of bad sci-fi, it is a thing most famously done by the first Battlestar Gallactica. Really I know that the whole thing is a fond thing vainly invented. But the process of inventing it was fun, and I hope I poked fun at some of those who are (I think) more seriously proposing temporal reform.

Ready Reckoner

The Year
360 Days
6 Months of 60 days
60 Weeks of 6 days

The Day
360 Degrees
6 Watches of 60 degrees
60 Spans of 6 degrees (rare)

NBT - OT
Day - 1 day/24 hours
(Day-)Watch - 4 hours
Span - 24 minutes
Degree - 4 minutes
Degree-watch - 40 Seconds
Minute - 4 seconds
Second = 0.0666... seconds.

Converting duration.

(Hours * 60) + (Minutes) + (Seconds/60) = Time in OT minutes.
OT minutes/4 = NBT minutes

e.g. 4 Hours 14 minutes and 40 seconds.
= 240 + 4 + 0.666... = 244.666 Seconds
= 244.666.../4 = 61.1666...° OR 61°4/6 Or 61°40'

---

1 Bede, On the Reckoning of Time. Latin, Liverpool Texts Translation.

Dairy Milk: A Glass and a Half of Fair.

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
I've been waiting for this moment for all my life

A little over a year ago, I mentioned that Tate and Lyle had been Fair Trade certified for their range of sugars. At the time I said:

that the victories for fairtrade will not come with niche companies, but with normal suppliers of coffee, tea, chocolate, or ... sugar, going over to fairtrade.

This is not to deny the important contribution played by niche companies such as Cafe Direct or Divine Chocolate. Divine provides a valuable illustration, because its pioneering work supported the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative of Ghanian cocoa farmers. Kuapa Kokoo provides cocoa, via Divine, to the Co-Op and now to Cadburys for its Dairy Milk range.

The Dairy Milk announcement, which I discovered here is why I am blogging today. Last year I expressed praise for Tate and Lyle, and I do so again here. It demonstrates that the big faceless corporation can be persuaded towards more ethical behaviour with a bit of consumer pressure. For this to work we need an informed consumer society - and the work of the fairtrade foundation has been to raise awareness of ethical purchasing, the fairtrade mark allows consumers to make easy yet informed decisions.


Cynics might suggest that this move is no better than the Partner's Blend initiative from Nestle. However I believe there are several differences. Whilst both are applied to a single product - or range, within companies with substantial portfolios, Cadburys is changing an existing brand, rather than creating a new one. What is more the brand is a major one, Partner's Blend can barely be found, whereas the Costcutter next door sells Dairy Milk, and will presumably continue to do so. Dairy Milk is surely the brand of milk chocolate. What is more Cadbury claim that they intend to roll out the certification to more of their products, if in the next few years they have no done so, then the cynics will have had the day, but if encouraged by success in Dairy Milk Cadbury continue to improve their ethical standards then a true blow has been struck against injustice. For more, and hopefully more on the devlopment of fairtrade in the Cadburys range, see their blog.

---

I have never posted praising the Co-Op, so this seems like an apposite moment to mention that they have played a very important role in supporting ethical produce, both through retail and funding for various groups. They combine this work with ethical practices in other areas, such as ethical banking, positive employment policies and of course their co-operative structure. A further diversion would be to mention some reading I did today, being the Church of Scotland's response to Agricultural and Food policy. This made clear that there are people in economically marginalised communities who do not receive a living compensation for their work. These people however live in Scotland, and their plight may be less dramatic than that of those in less economically developed countries, but they are still squeezed by the same villains, the half dozen major retailers and distributors who often do not pay farmers enough to cover production costs.

Time

Time - he flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor

I wish I could remember when, and how old I was, but at some stage, many moons ago, my uncle, aunt and cousins bought me the book Time, by Alexander Waugh.¹ The 24 hour day, 60 second minute, 12 month year and 7 day week all betray a cornucopia of influences. Our reckoning of time was forged in the cradle of civilization, the Sumerians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans and Jews all played a role. Bede was capable of discussing the second, a period of time he can have had no way of measuring.


The chapters are arranged largely by forms of measurement, e.g. Second, Minute, Decade etc. Each chapter discusses the origins of the form, and usually includes some interesting diversions, and into this rather elegant scheme discussions of e.g. the calendar, the technology of time telling, creation etc are inserted. The book makes no claim to academic rigour (which is a good job as we shall see), and does not contain any academic apparatus, as with all such books it would be nice if there was at the very least an annotated bibliography/further reading section at the end. Some reviews on Amazon suggest that the structure is a little too chaotic, but in the main I think that meandering nature is quite pleasant. - Like a long conversation with a learned friend.

The book is not without its flaws, a fine line divides the interesting diversion and the irrelevant digression. A slightly broader gap separates these from the rant, of which there are a few. Despite the occasional admonishments against it, Waugh does indulge in a little chauvinism, especially were God is involved, and the credulity of the medieval man, and the control of the medieval church. This is coupled with a few editing and factual issues. A good editor should surely make sure that when an author says "As I have said", that he has, and that the information does not, in fact, come later. A good editor should also check in which year Caesar invaded Britain, which way round Einstein's theories go, the difference between an arc minute and a degree etc. Anyone who is researching such things should be able to correctly discuss a 'spherical' universe. Most of all he should not get the Venerable Bede (Saint, Doctor of the Church, medieval monk of Wearmouth-Jarrow etc) and Adam Bede (Carpenter, eighteenth century, fictional character from the pen of George Eliot).

Perhaps his chauvinism blinded him to an interesting area of discussion, and that is of Church time. The way the church, along with many other religions, keeps its own calendar, of seasons, (Lent, Epiphany etc), and festivals. The way in which to the catholic mind, not only the seasons, but also the days of the year, the days of the week and the hours of the day are imbued with a sacred significance. Observant adherents of several religions count both secular and sacred time.

The most interesting thing about time, at least as revealed in this book, is the arbitrary nature in which we cut it up. In fact I find that we do cut it up pretty interesting in itself. The human urge to measure, divide and identify is fascinating, and yet so primal that it is almost impossible to think about. On one level the division of time is a practical thing, we need to know when to get up, when to go to bed, when to work etc. Alfred the Great wanted to make sure he spent as much time praying as ruling, and as we have seen, time is cut up for sacred purposes. In many ways the way we count time seems both arbitrary and archaic. The second is a pointless unit of time, the minute is a bit better, but most of the time I divide time in chunks of five minutes. For planning purposes I use chunks of ten minimum, usually chunks of half an hour. Half an hour traveling time, half an hour to make tea etc.

On the internet one can find advocates for pretty much anything, including temporal reform. The last time anyone seriously attempted to change the way we measure time was the french revolution. The French indulged their fetish for the metric by giving us a ten day 'week', and a metric system of hours (etc). Whilst for scientific, and many technical purposes the metric system is admirable, for many practical purposes it is useless, although not as useless as a system when every day of the year has its own name. Nonetheless metric time has some enthusiastic proponents. There are other people who suggest time to be told in binary or hexadecimal format.

I must admit to being fascinated by alternative ways of measuring time, partly because they destabilise cosy notions of regularity and order, but mainly because they seem so damn sci-fi. If we take man into space, it doesn't matter how long his day is, never mind how it is divided. Kim Stanley Robinson's otherwise excellent Mars books, deal with martian time by sticking 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds, onto the end of a day, which seems an unimaginative way of doing things. Surely there could be better solutions? I like the idea of returning to our Sumerian heritage and dividing the day into 360 equal portions (of four minutes), and (orbit of the earth be damned), cutting the year into 360 days.

---

1 Who is indeed related, being grandson, to a Much More Famous Waugh. Whose Brideshead I found most enjoyable. The rest of the less famous Waugh's output is an interesting mix. Classical Music, Wittgenstein, his family, and God.