the problem with hats

If you have read Chaos Theory, you may not have been aware that this piece was originally the introduction to an (unpublished) comic fantasy novel. More about Gelgins introduced the three principal characters in that novel, and the following story is a rather silly reworking of a well-known logic puzzle from the novel.

For those of you who have wondered how well I’ve been convalescing after my recent accident, the good news is that the plaster on my leg comes off in two days, and I should then be able to sit comfortably long enough to be able to get back to more serious writing. Meanwhile, I hope that you find the following piece of ‘daft crack’ amusing.

The regular morning debate as to who was going to cook the porridge was interrupted by a sharp knock on the door. There might easily have been another debate as to who should answer the door, but there was only the briefest of pauses before the door was opened by the previously unseen knocker, who marched confidently into the parlour and stood rigidly to attention before the trio with an air of supreme self-importance.

“A minor functionary,” thought Sneedl’bodja.

“Grandmaster’s orders! Report to the training halls in ten minutes! Do not be late!” announced their unexpected visitor in a loud staccato bark.

He turned on his heel and marched smartly out of the door.

Qumfl’quelunx was too hungry to even think of taking out his pocket watch. “His idea of timekeeping is to keep time waiting!” is Sneedl’bodja’s latest patronizing comment on the subject.

However, Shunshelstinx, as eager as ever to impress, calculated that they would have to leave immediately in order to ensure that they were on time, even though the venue was next door. It wasn’t an idea that found favour, even with Shunshelstinx himself, because they were all hungry, but viable alternatives were as scarce as lions in Antarctica.

And thus the three gelgins found themselves awaiting the arrival of Dweebl’gulja in the central hall of his famous pranking academy. They did not have long to wait. As each of the three looked around nervously, the Grandmaster appeared from a long tunnel at one end of the hall and walked slowly towards them.

“Ah! Qunzl’bowza’s challenge!” he said softly.

“Right! Remedial training, lesson one. Deductive reasoning!” he continued more loudly.

Shunshelstinx and his friends were directed to fetch three wooden stools from a corner of the hall, which they did.

“Now! Place them in a line here, like this, about two paces apart,” ordered Dweebl’gulja.

He left to the three gelgins’ collective ingenuity the insignificant matter of whose paces were to be employed, well knowing that this level of accuracy would not be needed for the lesson he had in mind. However, what he did not know was the degree of confusion that this apparently simple instruction would cause. Sneedl’bodja, because he is always first, placed his stool firmly on the ground. Shunshelstinx, because he is in charge, took two paces forward and did likewise, if a little less firmly. Qumfl’quelunx was in unknown territory as regards both counting and measuring, so he simply stood there, motionless, unaware that he was still holding the stool.

“Mmm!” mused the Grandmaster, his face betraying nothing of his dismay. “This could turn out to be even more difficult than I thought. Surely, it won’t be necessary to enrol these fools in a foundation course before they can be admitted to remedial training? Why, I’ve seen better teamwork between two boxers in the same ring. I’ll give them just one more chance.”

With the Grandmaster’s close supervision, Shunshelstinx and his friends were able to arrange the three stools precisely according to the original instruction, and as expected, whose paces were used to measure the intervening distances really was irrelevant.

“Now! Which of you is the cleverest?” enquired Dweebl’gulja softly.

Shunshelstinx thought that a rather obvious question but at the risk of having two thoughts in quick succession thought it better not to say so.

“I am!” he announced confidently, pointing with both index fingers towards his chest.

“Right! Sit on the stool at this end so that you are facing the other two stools,” instructed the Grandmaster, sensibly pointing to the stool in question to reinforce the point, not wishing to see a repeat of the earlier confusion. “Now! Who’s next?”

Sneedl’bodja was not sure how Shunshelstinx had beaten him to the previous question, but he was quite sure that he did not want it on his training record that he, Sneedl’bodja, was not as clever as Qumfl’quelunx. Surely, he thought, nobody is not as clever as Qumfl’quelunx.

“I am!” he spoke up.

As it happens, he had no need to worry. Qumfl’quelunx was still pondering the first question.

“Okay!” said Dweebl’gulja. “You sit on the middle stool with your back to your friend so that you can see only the empty stool.”

“Now!” he continued, turning to Qumfl’quelunx. “Sit on the last empty stool, facing away from the other two.”

“I’m not sure I like this academy,” thought Qumfl’quelunx as he tried desperately to settle comfortably on to the stool and quickly decided that he wasn’t prepared to settle for the meagre level of comfort that it is possible to achieve on a hard wooden stool with only three legs and no padding (and not even a cushion). “This is a hard lesson.”

“Now, stay there until I return. I won’t be long. And on no account turn around to look at the gelgin or gelgins behind you,” said Dweebl’gulja.

Shunshelstinx was the only one to turn around, a waste of time in his position, although you can never be sure, as he might have said in justification.

The Grandmaster returned clutching five almost identical hats. He positioned himself in front of Qumfl’quelunx and a little to the side, so that Sneedl’bodja and Shunshelstinx could also see Dweebl’gulja and his hats. As hats, they were unremarkable. The only difference between them, it seemed to each of the three, was that three were black. The other two were white. That much was obvious.

“What horrible headgear!” thought Qumfl’quelunx, quietly outraged. “I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing such a boring bonnet, such a calamitous cap, such a hideous homburg, such a horrid hat, such a passé panama, such a terrible titfer, such a….”

“Shut up you fool!” hissed Sneedl’bodja. “You’re thinking aloud again!”

The Grandmaster walked along the line until he was standing behind Shunshelstinx. When he reappeared a moment later, he was holding only one hat, which he placed on Qumfl’quelunx’s head from behind, with the fat one’s not so silent disapproval. He produced a second hat, which he placed on Sneedl’bodja’s head, also from behind. A third hat was soon in place on the head of Shunshelstinx, who could see that both Qumfl’quelunx and Sneedl’bodja were also wearing hats. Sneedl’bodja could clearly see that Qumfl’quelunx was wearing a hat, but he couldn’t see Shunshelstinx, let alone his hat. Qumfl’quelunx could see nothing, including the point of the exercise. None of the three could see his own hat.

“Now think carefully,” said Dweebl’gulja.

He paused for a moment before addressing Shunshelstinx.

“Now! O cleverest one,” he said in a voice dripping with enough irony to keep a medium-sized foundry going for a week. “What is the colour of the hat you are wearing?”

“How could I possibly be expected to know that? I can’t see it,” thought Shunshelstinx. “Still, perhaps I should think about it for a while, to create a good impression, you know. And who knows? Perhaps an answer will turn up. You never know. They often do.”

He continued to deliberate in this preposterously optimistic fashion for what he deemed to be an appropriately polite interval, by which time he had forgotten the original question. That did it. He had only one answer to offer.

“I have no idea…,” he said.

“Excellent!” interrupted the Grandmaster, a smile beginning to break out over his face, no doubt in relief that some progress was being made. “That is the right answer.”

You may feel that the Grandmaster’s interruption was more than a little fortuitous. After all, what Shunshelstinx had intended to say was this: “I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Fool’s luck. It’s the only plausible explanation.

Still, Shunshelstinx was pleased to have made such a worthwhile contribution to the exercise, even if the value of judgement in the luck/judgement equation was zero, and everyone knows that you can’t divide by zero. Everyone but Shunshelstinx, that is. However, he had no time to shower himself with self-congratulations. Dweebl’gulja turned to Sneedl’bodja.

“What is the colour of the hat you are wearing?” he asked.

“Well, that’s easy,” thought Shunshelstinx. “I can see the answer from here.”

“That’s a stupid question!” thought Sneedl’bodja contemptuously. “How does he expect me to answer that? I’m not a clairvoyant. I’ve as much chance of finding the right answer as that fat fool in front of me will have when he’s asked the same question.”

He allowed barely enough time to elapse to avoid the impression that he was being too hasty before speaking up.

“I don’t know…,” he said.

“Excellent!” interrupted the Grandmaster, smiling broadly. “That is the right answer.”

You can be sure that the anonymous author of the proverb ‘lightning never strikes twice in the same place’ never had any contact with gelgins. What Sneedl’bodja had meant to say was this: “I don’t know why I bother to put up with this!” Double fool’s luck. And they do say that things always happen in threes. But therein lies the problem. That would require Qumfl’quelunx to be correct too, and you would get long odds at your local turf accountant against that happening in the remotely near future.

“Now!” said the Grandmaster, turning to Qumfl’quelunx. “Tell me, what is the colour of the hat you are wearing?”

Dead silence, as you might have expected. What else were you expecting? Miracles? Try the shop down the road. And then, just as hope was fading, Qumfl’quelunx spoke up.

“That’s easy!” he announced confidently.

When Sneedl’bodja heard these two words, he was unable to restrain a loud, heartfelt groan. But if you thought that this sounds like dismay, then the only way to describe the feeling occasioned by Qumfl’quelunx’s next words is dismay multiplied by itself an absurd number of times. It was like being thwocked over the head with a large, wet and presumably dead fish (also an absurd number of times).

“I’m wearing a black hat,” he continued in a tone that you would swear was a vocal swagger.

Sneedl’bodja stared blankly at the black hat perched jauntily atop his friend’s head and was unable to contain his astonishment.

“How could you possibly know that?” he gasped.

“That’s easy,” thought Shunshelstinx, warmly congratulating himself for getting three questions right in a row. “I can see that his hat is black from here.”

“That’s easy!” said Qumfl’quelunx for the second time. “If me and Bodge both had white hats, Stinky would know that he must be wearing a black hat, because there are only two white hats….”

“Now why didn’t I think of that?” thought Shunshelstinx.

“…But he couldn’t say what colour of hat he was wearing,” continued Qumfl’quelunx, in the process ascribing a quality of reasoning to Shunshelstinx that was, well, unreasonable. “That means that Stinky can see at least one black hat. Now, I assume that Bodge also worked this out….”

Sneedl’bodja failed to notice the unjustified assumption on which Qumfl’quelunx was basing his argument and silently congratulated the latter for his astute insight.

“…So he would know that if the hat I’m wearing is white, his hat must be black,” concluded Qumfl’quelunx. “But he didn’t know, so it must be my hat that is black.”

“Excellent! Excellent!” said the Grandmaster, chuckling to himself as he spoke. “But perhaps Qunzl’bowza has underestimated your special talents. It would be just like him. By the book. Follow the rules. He never learns. That is all for now. Return here at the same time tomorrow for lesson two.”

There is a mystery to clear up here. Where did Qumfl’quelunx find the wherewithal to answer the Grandmaster’s question, let alone answer it correctly? And that reasoning. Surely he must have deducted when he should have deduced, but you can’t take anything away from him this time. One highly implausible explanation for this unexpected display of mental acuity that is currently doing the rounds is that his brain has been taken over by some awesome alien force, unknown to science or anyone else, that transforms dullards, dunces, dummies, dolts, dopes and dimwits, all of which terms adequately describe Qumfl’quelunx, into scholars, savants and sages, none of which describe, adequately or otherwise, our fat friend. But Qumfl’quelunx is unlikely to be able to offer any definitive guidance on the subject, so you must draw your own conclusions.

bbc english #4: making an impression

It’s official. The BBC is now employing kindergarten pupils to write up its ‘soft’ news stories. I am, of course, being facetious, although I do question how the author of the latest badly written article on the BBC website came to be employed by the corporation in the first place. The subject matter is interesting enough—the artist-in-residence for London’s Olympic Delivery Authority has produced a photograph that mirrors a well-known painting by the nineteenth-century French artist Georges Seurat, his Bathers at Asnières—but the quality of the writing is extremely poor. The following sentence is probably the worst:

Georges Seurat’s famous painting, which is housed in London’s National Gallery, is a famous 19th Century impressionist masterpiece.

Seurat, Bathers at Asnières [National Gallery, London].

There are six points that I would make about this sentence. The first, and most obvious, is the redundancy: we don’t need to be told twice that the painting is famous. In fact, we probably shouldn’t be told once, because it is highly questionable whether this painting is famous, if we define ‘famous’ as being recognizable by someone with no knowledge of art or art history. By this definition, there is only one painting that can unequivocally be described as ‘famous’: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
Of course, there are paintings that are well known, at least to a local audience, such as Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire or Constable’s The Hay Wain, both of which also hang in the National Gallery and which, as prints, are often found adorning English living room walls. In a poll of listeners to Radio 4’s Today programme in 2005 to find the ‘greatest’ painting hanging in a British gallery, these paintings came first and second, respectively, which perhaps reflects nationalistic values, or a sense of relief that England has produced the occasional world-class artist. Seurat’s Bathers came nowhere.

Turner, The Fighting Temeraire [National Gallery, London].

Constable, The Hay Wain [National Gallery, London].

My next three points relate to the compound modifier ‘19th Century’: (1) while there is no sense in which it is incorrect, stylistically ‘19th’ is more appropriate to a text message than to a journalistic article (I would spell it out); (2) the hyphen seems almost to have disappeared from low-level English writing, which I attribute to ignorance of its value, given that in this case it would serve to distinguish the adjectival use in this example from the (unhyphenated) noun phrase; (3) although there are established rules for when to use an initial capital, such as to begin a sentence, for abbreviations, and for the initial letters of people’s and countries’ names, I discovered as a book editor that there was a huge grey area where people appeared to be making up their own rules based on what they considered important. However, there is no justification for capitalizing ‘century’, which is merely a designated period of one hundred years and is in no sense what used to be called a ‘proper’ noun.

Then there is the labelling of Bathers as ‘impressionist’. It is true that, like many of the impressionist works being produced around the same time, this painting was rejected by the jury for the Salon, the annual official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. And it is also the case that Seurat was a founder member of the avant-garde reaction to these rejections, the Société des Artistes Indépendants, but Seurat’s painting technique had nothing in common with the bold brushwork and apparently unfinished quality of a typical impressionist painting. On the contrary, he was influenced by quasi-scientific theories of colour perception that were popular at the time, which led him to develop a technique that became known as ‘pointillism’, the painting next to each other of small dots of complementary colours across an entire canvas. It is a technique that requires a considerable amount of meticulous work, and ‘meticulous’ is not an obvious adjective to use when describing impressionism. Perhaps the only quality that Seurat shared with quintessential impressionists such as Cezanne and Monet was that he didn’t paint like Poussin or Delacroix, which was probably the criterion on which rejection for the Salon was based.

Having raised the spectre of errant capitalization above, it is with some hesitation that I pose the following question: should the names of art movements be capitalized, which is done by many writers? I take a generally minimalist line on the subject of initial capitals, but the question is more awkward than it may appear. I have no problems with ‘cubism’ or ‘abstract expressionism’, because it is clear that art movements are being referred to, but what about ‘symbolism’? In addition to being an art movement, it is also an ordinary word. Reluctantly, I would therefore have to concede that initial capitals are required for art movements, which also covers the distinction between the Romantic movement in music and literature at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the altogether more mundane notion of romantic love.

Finally, I challenge the notion that Bathers is a ‘masterpiece’. The mediaeval craft guilds of Europe had apprentices, journeymen and masters, and in this context a masterpiece was the piece of work produced by a journeyman to demonstrate that he was ready to graduate to the rank of master. By definition, there was only one masterpiece. Of course, definitions change, but I think it is useful to retain the notion of singularity. And most art critics agree that Seurat’s masterpiece is not Bathers but A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte. However, I’m still not satisfied. After more than a century of modernism in art, no one believes that the human form need be portrayed realistically, but pointillism does not lend itself to a sympathetic rendition. Because the juxtaposition of complementary colours means that those colours are mixed in the eye of the observer rather than by the artist on a palette, the surface of such a painting has a luminosity that can be put to better use. The technique works more effectively in landscape painting. I contend, therefore, that Seurat’s masterpiece, painted in the last year of his life, is Port of Gravelines Channel.

Seurat, Port of Gravelines Channel [Indianpolis Museum of Art].

This painting captures perfectly the hazy light that is so typical of flat coastal regions in temperate latitudes, and what I think is striking is the exquisite rhythms and symmetry of the repeating motifs. And, before I forget, as an editor, this is how I would have altered the original sentence:

Georges Seurat’s painting, which hangs in London’s National Gallery, is a well-known example of nineteenth-century post-Impressionism.

There is a postscript to this story. When I first read the offending sentence, I copied it into a Notepad file for future reference. The following day, I was unable to find a link to the article anywhere on the BBC website, leading me to speculate that it had been pulled by someone who was as appalled as I was about its quality. However, I tracked it down by pasting the sentence into Google. What really surprised me when I ran the search was that this sentence, complete with errors, had also appeared on twenty-five other sites, all of which, presumably, have no system of quality control.

other posts in this series
1. BBC English.
2. Grand Slam.
3. More or Less.

bbc english #3: more or less

There are many ‘rules’ governing the ‘correct’ use of English that seem unnecessarily fussy and serve no useful purpose. The prohibition on splitting infinitives is a good example. In fact, this so-called ‘rule’ was the invention of nineteenth-century pedants, and there are no good grounds for its continued survival, especially now that it has been effectively torpedoed by the statement of the five-year mission of the U.S.S. Enterprise at the beginning of each episode of Star Trek:

…to boldly go where no man has gone before.

I always thought that this sounded rather contrived, but not on the grounds that the infinitive ‘to go’ was being wantonly split. I would have moved the adverb ‘boldly’ so that it preceded the adverbial clause that is the meat of the statement:

…to go boldly where no man has gone before.

Notice that there is no change in meaning, but there is a subtle change of emphasis, so which version you prefer is not a matter of correctness, merely a pointer to what you consider is important in the statement.

At first glance, the distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, that ‘less’ should be used for uncountable nouns and ‘fewer’ for countable nouns, would seem to fall into the same category. After all, you may offend a few pedants if you get it ‘wrong’, but the meaning is unaffected. If this is your assessment, then you may want to consider the following sentence, which I encountered on the BBC Sport website earlier this month:

Does the trend for less positive tests during competition reflect how sport is getting cleaner?

By using ‘less’ instead of ‘fewer’, the corporation’s sports editor, who committed this howler in a discussion on drug tests at the 2012 Olympic Games, ended up modifying ‘positive’ instead of ‘tests’. The problem is that ‘less’ can be used in other contexts, and the sentence is ambiguous because ‘less positive’ is automatically read as not quite as positive as previously thought. The ambiguity could have been avoided by following the rule:

Does the trend for fewer positive tests during competition reflect how sport is getting cleaner?

‘Fewer’ cannot modify an adjective, only the noun ‘tests’, so the intended meaning is clear. The moral, which BBC journalists seem to have forgotten, is that if you break a rule, you should be aware that you have done so and of the possible consequences for your message.

other posts in this series
1. BBC English.
2. Grand Slam.
3. Making an Impression.

enter the dragon

If you’ve been following the news, you will be aware that, according to the Chinese calendar, yesterday marked the start of the ‘year of the dragon’. If you’ve been following this blog, you will also be aware that I do not believe that the year you are born, however it is calculated, has any bearing on personality. At least the Chinese system is not easily falsifiable; it is merely irrational, unlike the Western zodiac, which is palpable nonsense (the constellations on which astrology is based are chance line-of-sight effects that will not exist in 10,000 years time). I was asked recently what I thought was the difference between astrology and astronomy. I replied that astronomy can predict the positions of stars and planets thousands of years into the future; astrology cannot.

It often surprises Westerners to learn that dragons, the embodiment of evil in their own cultures, are highly favoured in Chinese mythology. This explains the prediction that the Chinese birthrate is set to rise by 10 percent during this most propitious of years, which strikes me as a very poor reproductive strategy, because children born in such a boom year face stiffer competition within their age cohort. I’d be far more likely to aim to have children in a less favoured year, such as that of the rat, although I’d be even more likely to ignore this tosh altogether.

I’m still seriously incapacitated following my accident, but I couldn’t miss our village’s annual lion dance yesterday to welcome the new year. I know that the firecrackers are meant to scare away demons and other evil spirits, but I think the real reason for their use at this time of year is that the Chinese like making a noise. And we certainly had plenty of noise from the longest string of firecrackers I’ve ever seen. It took more than three minutes for the cacophony to end, which more than made up for the disappointing complete absence of firecrackers last year. Some photos follow, and A New Year provides more pictures and an explanation of some of the rituals associated with the lion dance.

Dotting the eyes with ink brings the lion to life.

Lion and firecrackers.

The all-percussion accompaniment to the dance, which is invariably very loud….

…but the firecrackers are louder….

…especially the ‘big bang’ at the end.

bbc english #2: grand slam

In his landmark essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell argued that people who misuse metaphors rarely have a mental image of the thing they are attempting to describe, because if they did have such an image, they wouldn’t misuse the metaphor in the first place. Although the essay is concerned primarily with the use of worn-out metaphors and turns of phrase, he did point out that the purpose of using a metaphor in the first place is to provide an image that enables the reader or listener to grasp the point being made more easily.

One of the examples he used was the phrase ‘to toe the line’, meaning to conform, to avoid stepping beyond accepted norms and conventions. He pointed out that it was often written ‘to tow the line’, which is possible, given that ‘line’ is a synonym for ‘rope’, which can be towed, but the perverted version sows confusion rather than providing clarity.

The latest specimen of careless usage from BBC journalists is not quite so blatant, but it is clear that those who use it are not thinking about what they are saying. Sports fans will be aware that the Australian Open tennis championship started this week. It is being billed as the season’s ‘first grand slam’. In contract bridge, a grand slam is a commitment in advance to take all thirteen tricks, so I think that it is reasonable to assume that a grand slam in tennis would be winning this championship, plus the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open, preferably in the same year, these being the four major championships in tennis. This feat may be impossible in the modern era, given the small differences in skill between the top players; nevertheless, it is ludicrous to describe individual championships as ‘grand slams’. Each of the four should be described as ‘a grand slam event’, although perhaps tennis, and tennis commentators, would do better to copy golf and refer to the four national championships mentioned as ‘the four majors’ and thus avoid the hyperbole.

other posts in this series
1. BBC English.
2. More or Less.
3. Making an Impression.

bbc english

Do you shout at the television set? I certainly do. Almost the only programmes I watch nowadays are the news bulletins, so you might guess that I’m upset about the bias being shown. The BBC is frequently accused of bias, but this isn’t what annoys me. Bias, if it exists, is easily seen through. My gorge rises in response to sloppy, imprecise use of language, which is all but ubiquitous in the modern era.

‘BBC English’ used to be touted as an exemplar of how my native language should be spoken, but if it still is then something is seriously wrong. The BBC is as guilty of shoddy use of language as every other media outlet providing news coverage. The standard of its journalism has slipped alarmingly in the last two decades, which probably reflects the abandonment of the teaching of English grammar in the UK that began with the introduction of ‘comprehensive’ education in the 1960s (for non-British readers, ‘comprehensive’ here refers to the heterogeneity of a school’s student population, not to the breadth of the curriculum).

The item that caught my attention on the BBC World News last night was not an especially egregious example of this trend, but it is entirely typical of the state of play. According to the newsreader, a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist had been killed by a ‘car bomb’ in Tehran. This sounds reasonable enough, and you may be wondering why I took exception to it. However, a car bomb is a car used as a bomb, while the unfortunate nuclear scientist was actually killed by a bomb attached to his car. To compound the error, the newsreader continued by stating that the bomb had been attached to the underside of the car. This part of the report was voiced over footage of the scientist’s car, the top of which was covered by a blue tarpaulin. The underside of the car was clearly undamaged, but despite the tarpaulin it was possible to see that the passenger cabin had been severely damaged. The bomb was in fact a high-tech magnetic device attached to the side of the car.

The error was repeated this morning on the BBC News website:

The US condemns the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan in a car bomb attack in north Tehran.

Is this pedantry? I think not. It is merely my reasonable expectation that when someone speaks, or writes, they set out their thoughts in a clear, precise and unambiguous manner. Pedantry is insisting that a word like ‘agenda’ is plural (technically it is, but it would be pedantic to labour the point).

Because, as I outlined above, the BBC’s use of English is now so lamentably poor, I propose to highlight particularly egregious examples from time to time. In fact, I’ve just found myself guilty of what I accuse the BBC of doing: its use of English is not merely poor, as I’ve suggested; it’s a-bomb-inable.

other posts in this series
1. Grand Slam.
2. More or Less.
3. Making an Impression.

a momentary lapse of concentration

Whenever I make a mistake, I always try to work out why I made the mistake and how I can avoid making the same mistake in future. This is especially important with those activities that require a measure of physical and mental skill, such as driving. It’s the only road to improvement, because constant practice is pointless if you’re not aware of any errors being made (and most errors are trivial, most of the time).

With this in mind, and with nothing else to do for five days but lie on my back in the local hospital following the unfortunately premature end to our last Saturday morning adventure of 2011, I spent quite some time trying to work out why I fell off my bike while negotiating a bend that I’ve negotiated hundreds of times in the past without mishap.

Admittedly, the bend in question is quite sharp, but I certainly wasn’t going too fast, even though the bend is at the bottom of a long downslope on the cycle track from road level. One likely clue is that the crash was precipitated by scraping my right-hand pedal on the ground. I was sprawled in a heap on the ground within a small fraction of a second of this happening, with no chance of regaining control.

But why would I allow my pedal to scrape the ground? I learned long ago that it is prudent to freewheel around tight bends to avoid precisely this fate, although on the odd occasion when it had happened in the past there had been no dangerous repercussions. Still, freewheeling is the safe option.

However, the bend leads into a short subway, beyond which the track continues back up to road level. And the upslope begins at the bend. It was at this point that I remembered I’d found myself in too high a gear and foolishly decided to change down as I rounded the bend. But in order to change gear, it is necessary to pedal. Ooops! You can be sure I’ll be checking which gear I’m in the next time I have to tackle this bend.

Unfortunately, that next time will not be before March. Although I was banged a bit about the head, that’s what helmets are for, and mine performed according to its job specification. However, my left knee took the full force of my downward momentum, and I ended up with a fractured patella and a plaster cast from ankle to groin, which I shall have to put up with for the next six weeks.

This also means that I probably won’t be posting much for a few weeks, because sitting at a computer for any length of time is rather uncomfortable. On the other hand, I do have at least a dozen posts at various stages of completion, so once the discomfort has eased, you can expect quite a lot from me within a short period, including the real reason for the 2008 financial crisis, a complete overview of black music in the 1960s, the psychology of law-breaking, and why the Saturday morning adventure is so much fun, as long as concentration is never allowed to become anything less than total. The consequences of any lapse can be painful.

wounded knee

a special piece of thought from paula

Cycling has become a part of life in the past seven or eight years for my husband and me as we have found so much joy and challenges, despite how many times we do the same route. As Dennis described our favourite route, going to Sham Chung in previous blog post, we enjoyed every trip to the place as we enjoyed both the food and the chat with Tom. This Saturday, the last day of 2011, we repeated the same route and had a very special treat by Tom, who served us a fantastic combination of seafood, including scallops, shrimps and clams, with broccoli and crispy pan-fried noodles. As we had finished the noodle of the town, we headed back with a full stomach thinking that it was another wonderful experience before the end of 2011.

Pan-fried noodles with seafood combination

On the 22-mile homeward journey, we passed many cycling groups and did not encounter any hazards, which can happen on weekend afternoons in the cycling lanes. After one and half hours of cycling heading back to Fanling, Dennis fell off his bike as he approached the end of a downward slope while making a sharp right-hand turn into a subway. He felt a heavy impact on his knee. I was right behind him and saw the accident but could not help to stop it. My immediate response was to call 999. As I was waiting for the ambulance, I immediately moved his bike aside in case there were cyclists passing the corner. When the ambulance staff arrived, they made a speedy examination. Dennis could not straighten his left leg, and it was taped to his right leg. Meanwhile, I had our bikes locked up first, knowing that I would be accompanying Dennis to the nearby hospital, and I noticed that the chain of Dennis’s bike had come off when I tried to push it.

As we were in the ambulance, Dennis’s blood pressure and pulse were being monitored. The ambulance staff were quite surprised how fit Dennis was as a result of the regular cycling, with a pulse of 56 and blood pressure readings of 110 and 68. It did not take too long to reach the hospital. After taking an X-ray, the pain was caused by the direct impact and the patella was cracked. So, Dennis had to be hospitalized; there was no other choice.

Arriving at the orthopaedic ward, Dennis was set to a bed next to a window. A doctor on duty came and assessed the condition of Dennis’s knee. As he did some twist and turn to the knee, I saw a growing mushroom as some internal tissues were ruptured, causing swelling above the knee. I could hear Dennis making excruciating noises and see him expressing pain on his face when the doctor asked him to keep the left leg extended in an elevated position. Not long afterwards, two staff members came with a trolley with stuff to prepare a temporary cast for Dennis. It did not take too long to have the left leg wrapped with bandages and the cast. This was how Dennis experienced the last day of 2011 and he misses the live contact with the world. However, he has been told that he will need an operation to repair the damage and will be out of action for at least six weeks.

Dennis in hospital

                                                           

a riddle

If Ricky Nelson was the man, and Creedence Clearwater Revival was the band, who was the light, and what were they all doing?

Please note that only comments with the wrong answer will be published. However, the name of each reader who posts the correct answer will be published. This is to allow everyone who wants to try this puzzle the opportunity to do so.

eclipse

Going, going....

I’ve seen quite a few eclipses of the Moon over the years, but last night the sky was completely clear, and for the first I was able to watch one from the comfort of my own home with a bottle of red wine for company. Mind you, ‘comfort’ may not be the most appropriate word to use, because as Paula and I sat on our balcony watching the Earth’s shadow creep slowly across the lunar disc, a strong and very cold wind was blowing from the north.

I couldn’t help but recall the two coldest nights I’ve had to endure during my lifetime. The first was in 1968: I’d just arrived in Libya, and I’d heard that it got very cold during the night in the desert, so I’d brought a thick sweater with me.

“You’ll need a jacket,” said my colleague.

So I bought a suitable jacket at the local oilfield supplies store. On my first night in the desert, I made sure to wear both the sweater and my newly acquired jacket as I worked through the hours of darkness. I’ve no idea of the actual temperature, but I couldn’t wait for that ‘busy old foole’ to rise the next morning and thaw me out.

My second cold night experience was in Glen Affric, in the Western Highlands of Scotland, in 1973. Because of the snow conditions, I’d been unable to reach my intended destination, so I decided to spend the night in a bothy, a makeshift shelter of a kind that is found all over the Scottish Highlands. I had with me a high-quality down sleeping bag and a polar-quality down jacket, which I decided to wear to be on the safe side. I shivered all night.

I also recalled a lunar eclipse that I’d witnessed, off and on, in 1978. Actually, it was more off than on, because I was driving a taxi at the time, so I did have to pay attention to where I was going. However, during the eclipse I amused myself by asking each passenger I picked up whether they’d noticed anything unusual.

“You do realize that we’re in the middle of an eclipse of the Moon,” I said, as each passenger answered in the negative.

I assume that the night sky does not hold the same mystery for modern humans as it did for our remote ancestors. Even my wife, who is usually quite inquisitive, tends not to look up.

“Notice anything unusual?” I asked her a couple of years ago on the first night of a trip down under to stay with an Australian friend.

No, she hadn’t. Of course, I had the advantage of spending almost the whole of 1970 in the Australian outback, so I already knew about the extreme blackness of the night sky. And there is more to see in the southern hemisphere too, notably the Magellanic clouds, seen by Ferdinand Magellan, as the name implies, during his circumnavigation of the world in 1519–21 but known to earlier astronomers in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula.

These are nearby galaxies, although ‘nearby’ is a relative term here. The smaller of the two is 160,000 light years away and the larger 200,000 light years. They are also much smaller than our own Milky Way, which is unmistakeable against such a vividly black background.

But back to last night: it took 81 minutes from the time the Moon entered the Earth’s shadow until it was completely obscured; the total eclipse lasted 52 minutes, and a further 82 minutes elapsed before the Moon emerged from the shadow. Oddly, when the eclipse started, the Moon seemed so bright that it was impossible to focus on it (see first image above), and with the naked eye the boundary between the still-lit and the darkened parts of the Moon was anything but clear-cut. During the total phase, the Moon didn’t disappear completely but appeared a dull, reddish brown disc, illuminated by the small amount of light that was being diffracted by the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Hong Kong Observatory’s website tells me that there will be an annular eclipse of the Sun on 21st May next year. Now that’s something I have never seen.

...gone (almost).