nik newark

It couldn't happen today...

Sixty years ago, perhaps the single most hideous abuse of human rights was brought to an end. Today, we cannot understand how such atrocities came about. It was fairly simple. An extreme right wing party seized power of an apparently civilised western country, and decided to unify their countryfolk by persecuting innocent people based on their ethnicity and religious beliefs. They had committed no crime.

It is hard to believe, in this free and enlightened age. It would be difficult to imagine such an event happening today…

Yes, yes, I know, it is perhaps a little over the top to compare Guantanamo Bay with the Holocaust. But, the point is, we have allowed both to happen - I have a suspicion that in years to come, people will not understand why the good folks of the USA stood for this sort of thing.

But hey, if the past is anything to go by, GWB will be shooting himself in his bunker in a couple of years time. Slainte!

Calling James Timbermast

Attention James Timbermast! You are wanted by the FBI!
If you are James Timbermast, please turn yourself in.
If you know James Timbermast, or have seen James Timbermast, then please contact your nearest constabulary.
If you are not James Timbermast, and do not know of his whereabouts, then please ignore this message.
Similarly, if you are a different James Timbermast to the James Timbermast that I'm talking about, then you too can ignore this message, which only applies to the James Timbermast.
Note: If you were once James Timbermast, and have legally or surgically changed your name to something other than James Timbermast, then please change it back (to James Timbermast) and turn yourself in.
James Timbermast, you are a wanted man.
Do the right thing.
Today.

Tired? Listless? Depressed?

If so, then you're not alone. Today is officially the most depressing day of the year according to Dr Cliff Arnalls of Cardiff University. Through painstaking research, he has found the magic formula

which can calculate people's depression to three decimal places.

So how does this work? Let's see, er, W represents the weather (not sure how you get this into a single number, but I don't have the Proper Training). Divide this by eight, and add your total current debt (less the amount due to you at the end of the month). Note, this means that if you don't have any debt, then the more you will be paid at the end of the month, the more depressed you will be - you see, money doesn't buy happiness. By the looks of things, this all gets multiplied by the elapsed time since Christmas, and the elapsed time since you failed to keep your New Years resolution (all multiplied by the 3/8 (which I will call Arnall's constant). Multiply again by your general motivational level (in Joules), and the perceived need to take action (in Pascal seconds : this is the pressure of time). And there you have it! For 2005, it transpires that today is The Most Depressing Day Of The Year.

They seem to have missed out the Small Cute Cuddly Baby factor, which blows all of this out of the water. He's doing fine, BTW, and has put on 1lb over the past week.

Sahgi Kagoo

I was talking recently about a silly game to play with your partner whilst watching adverts. Well, there are plenty of other games which we habitually play, and I'd like to describe one to you here.

Sahgi Kagoo involves taking a short phrase (such as “Soggy Kagoule”) and saying it in the style of a character from a badly dubbed Japanese TV drama, such as Monkey or The Water Margin. The aim is to distort the sound of the words in such a way to make them completely incomprehensible (whilst still giving your partner a chance to guess). Here are some phrases to try:-
* Ham and Beetroot Sandwich
* I worship Portobello Road
* Tasty demon pastry

Or for advanced players
* Hooded Claw in Punjab

Try it, you might like it.

Things last forever on the web

They just don't go away. You may think it is funny to upload some slanderous comment about your girlfriend's dog, or an embarrassing picture of your mother on the toilet onto your web site, but once it is done, that's it. It will forever be in a million search engines, and held in one of those “how the web used to be” archives. It will never disappear. Ever.

So, you've got to be fairly careful. If I was to say that my 2.5 week old son, Indigo, farts like a trooper, wees up the wall, sucks booby, and projectile poos over mummy, and son turns out to become a famous rock star or prime minister one day, then this snippet of information will be hiding in some long forgotten recess of the public domain, awaiting rediscovery by Heat magazine. So, I think it is safest for me not to disclose any personal or revealing information at all.

By the way, the nice people at Movable Type have released a new plug in, which should stop comments pages from being indexed by webbots (which in turn, should stop automatic spam engines finding them). So, feel free to post any old defamatory / scandalous / embarrassing nonsense into comments, and you can be sure that they will only be preserved up to the point when my web server next crashes.

Creative Gastronomy

If you are a foody type, you've probably heard of Heston Blumenthal, and his restaurant The Fat Duck. They have a very interesting Degustation Menu (no, I haven't sampled it - it is £90 a head, so we are waiting for a Really Special Occasion) which includes Snail Porridge, Salmon poached in liquorice, Sweetbread cooked in a salt crust with hay, Mango & Douglas Fir puree, Black Olive & Leather Puree and other such innovative combinations.

Heston has an interesting approach to food, and from what I've seen, his kitchens have a lot in combination with a science lab. He will frequently cook food in a vacuum, or somehow incorporate dry ice into his preparations. He is also interested in food psychology, noting that eating food is the only activity which actively engages all of our senses (though now I come to think about it, I suspect that oral sex may also fall into this category), and how our different senses change the way we experience flavour (for example, an apple tastes fresher and more juicy if the sound of you eating it is amplified - similarly, if you remove the sound, it tends to appear old and leathery). He often performs experiments, such as making some beetroot jelly cubes, coating them in sugar, and feeding them to the unsuspecting public, telling them to expect either beetroot, or blackcurrant - they tend to experience exactly what they've been told to expect! (Actually, you can try something similar with fruit pastilles or similar - eat one without looking at the colour - can you identify what flavour it is meant to be?).

Anyway, this reminded me of a culinary experiment I conducted back in the mid nineties, inspired by Nigel Lawson of all people. Mr Lawson was explaining how he had stopped using butter in his cooking, and had started to use lemon juice instead. With this in mind, I made a pasta dish, incorporating parmesan and lemon juice. I can report that the combination of cheese and lemon juice creates the taste sensation of mature vomit. You can try this (or any of Mr Blumenthal's food experiments) at home, but I'd suggest you keep a sturdy vessel to hand, such as a stout bucket.

Power Of Nightmares

Sorry to harp on about TV, but I've just heard that the BBC are repeating last year's must-see TV event “The Power Of Nightmares”, which was an eye opening documentary about the politics of fear, as wielded by the GWB (and our own Cuddly Tony). The series charts how the end of the cold war poised a problem for the NeoCons and the fundamental Islamists alike - both believing that they'd defeated the USSR, and in need of a new enemy, they turned their attentions to each other (despite having had a long and fruitful history of mutual economic and military support). The repeat showings begin at 23.20 on Tuesday 18th January, but also appear to be available (along with the transcript of the programmes) online at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1037.htm.

More information on this series (along with viewer's comments, and the programme maker's responses) available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

Bored with Commercials?

One of the unfortunate side effects of being at home on parental leave, is that you inevitably start watching more TV than you ordinarily would. Or at least, you don't actually watch it, but the TV is invariably on to provide entertainment whilst breast feeding for example. Not only is the average quality of daytime TV far lower than TV the rest of the time*, but also the quality of the adverts suffers even more (dreadful witless budget adverts about stairlifts, and no-win-no-claim insurance schemes). So, Tosha and I have started playing a game, whereby we rate each advert according to its ability to amuse. Not only does this provide some sort of discussion on the merits of the adverts**, but we also get our revenge on appalling adverts by issuing them with a really scathing review. This keeps us sane until the next part of Celebrity Makeover Food Challenge . . . In The Jungle (or whatever).

*two points of note : (1) I have a soft spot for “car booty”, and (2), whilst it is bad, the average quality is still a couple of notches above US TV ;-)

**latest controversial advert was for McDonalds (“you can borrow Alan tonight; Alan likes you!”) - Tosha rated the advert quite highly as it amused her. I gave it a zero on principle (in fact, I didn't even see it, as I was on biological duty).

Living with Indigo

We've been living with Indigo J for over a week now, and like any proud parents, we've been taking a number of photos. If you are the type who likes to ooh and aah over baby photographs, then check out indigo.niknewark.co.uk which will build up week by week into a photo album of his first year. Free binder with part 1!

Indigo J

Indigo J was born at 5.09pm GMT on New Year's Day 2005. He weighs 7lb 9oz and smells of baby. He has dark hair, which we believe will get lighter. He has large blue eyes, which we believe will get less blue. He has a neck which is fairly useless at the moment, but we suspect that it will develop a purpose later on (actually, now that I write that, he does seem to be quite proficient in moving it about). He has a beautiful Kittenhead Hat knitted by the legendary Tazja Lovecraft (though he doesn't know this yet).

Both mother and baby are doing well (though just wait until the cats find out…)