So there was a slight fire in my kitchen. Is all ok - it was only small and nothing’s damaged - but that’s the first time I’ve had one that actually scared me for a few seconds. I think the sausages must have been too close to the grill, although they definitely weren’t touching. I heard the noise and pulled out the tray to find alarmingly high flames spreading across the fat beneath the sausages (which themselves were fine). My thought process was something like:

Oh, shit. Right. What to do. Is fat like oil? It seems like it might be like oil. Best not to dump it in sink. Might explode / set room on fire. Ok. That’s good. Kept my head under pressure. Yay. Not dead. So. If I can’t use water, what else? Smother it! With what? The teatowel? No, too small. What else? The duvet! No, that’s just stupid. Um…

At which point it burnt itself out, which I guess was inevitable given that it was confined to a small area of fat. I like to think I would have got as far as a wet towel had it continued, though. Things I have learnt:

1. Cook sausages further away from grill. Actually, cook sausages in the oven instead.
2. I should refresh my knowledge of what to do with various types of fire. I’m sure I knew at one point, but I’ve apparently forgotten.
3. I should possibly get a cheap extinguisher.

I’m trying to get better at cooking, and have putting more effort into the evening meals recently. Admittedly this wasn’t particularly adventurous - they weren’t llama sausages or anything - but I’m going to look at it as a rite of passage thing

Earlier this week I was working on a laptop with a dying hard drive. There was some minor data loss, but I copied as much as possible to a new drive, fitted it and, amazingly, XP booted without a problem. It spent half an hour chugging away with various hard-to-identify services, and eventually demanded a restart. Unfortunately it then crashed at the welcome screen with the classic ‘PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA’. This is generally a ram problem, but it coped cheerily with hours of memtest86+ so this seemed unlikely.

Given the possible data loss I’d normally run a repair install of XP at this point. The recovery cd was long gone, but it’s still possible to repair with the correct XP CD. Unfortunately ‘correct’ was problematic. XP has two different versions, Home and Professional, and each comes in three flavours: retail, upgrade and OEM. The CDs are, as far as I know, exactly the same apart from one file specifying which flavour the cd contains, and you can only run a repair install using the exact flavour of the original install. I suppose this is an extra security precaution, but given that you have to enter a valid (flavour-specific) product key it seems rather superfluous. This particular laptop had XP Home Upgrade installed, and I didn’t have one of those to hand. It’s possible to make one by extracting and changing the differing file on an alternative flavour (perfectly legal, as you still need the correct product key), but it’s a fuss. I figured I’d see whether there was an easier solution.

Safe mode worked, and showed the BSOD was at least leaving ‘minidump’ crash files. Unfortunately analysing one indicated the problem was with ‘ntoskrnl.exe’, which is way too general to be of use. The error logs didn’t help either. I uninstalled a few possible candidates without any luck, and was running out of ideas until I saw the ‘enable boot logging’ option in the F8 startup options. This records startup information to the ‘Ntbtlog.txt’ file in the Windows directory, and has never been all that much use in the past, but I enabled it anyway, let XP crash on a normal startup and checked out the file in safe mode. It listed all the running services, but anything related to Symantec was surrounded by question marks. I ditched the installed Symantec Client Security¹, and everything started working! I think this is the first time boot logging has solved a problem for me.

This is probably a bit specific to be of use to googlers, but I thought the boot logging thing was worth writing up.

1. actually I disabled the services as Windows Installer doesn’t work in safe mode - this is annoying [↩]

There’s currently an insane furore in Stratford over plans to build a bridge across the Avon. I don’t know the detailed arguments in favour of the bridge, but there’s been a bombardment of the arguments against, and they suck. It’ll get in the way of swan flightpaths, for example.

While it is of course the job of the proponent to justify the case, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to get a tentative sense of which side is in the right based on the strength of the opponents’ arguments. In this case there’s only one objection that seems to warrant a reply from the council, and I suspect that has an easy answer. I’m certainly not informed enough to start arguing about it properly (and that would possibly get me lynched, given the ferocity of letters to the local paper - maybe I missed the plans to pave the bridge with the crushed bones of small children) but I can suspect who I’d end up agreeing with if I actually put the effort in. It is, however, just a bridge, and I have better things to do.

I’m in a similar situation regarding pay-per-mile road taxing, except it actually matters. Intuitively it seems like a reasonable idea, and although I don’t know the exact justifications every argument against has seemed either paranoid or selfish. Thankfully B4L has actually researched the matter, and does a good job of demonstrating why it makes sense.

Our dance class normally consists of an hour’s teaching followed by an hour’s practice during which we can request whatever dances we like. Tonight somebody brought along a country cd and taught everybody a simple line dance. It was actually surprisingly good fun, but for the last two hours I have had ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ going around my head. And. It. Won’t. Stop.

We went to an Argentine Tango class on Monday, along with the rest of the country. I assume it’s a new year thing. Despite the lack of space we learnt a tiny routine to which we’ll add steps each week. To be honest I had it easy - so far the men’s steps have been very easy while the women spin cleverly. While it does get harder, the man’s job is more to look butch. I don’t think the word ‘butch’ has ever been used within an hour’s conversation of me, but I’ll give it a go. There was one surprise: in most ballroom dances it’s important to use heel leads - every step forward has to go from heel to toe - and this isn’t one of my strong points. Happily this isn’t a problem in the Argentine Tango as they’re not used; it’s all about sliding around smoothly.

Hmmm, I appear to have just bought ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ from iTunes, on the basis that Lynsey wasn’t there this evening but would probably like to hear it. And furthermore I have listened to it. There is no hope for me. Stop reading while you can.

I’m happy at the moment. Actually I’ve been noticing high levels of happiness for a few months now, but right now everything is particularly sparkly. This would possibly explain why I this afternoon photographed a leaf in a brick:

Is photogenic. Is. Also: nature and man and not-really-all-that-meaningful metaphors and that.

Comet McNaught should be visible for the next few days. It’s pretty close to the sun and so can only be spotted near the horizon at twilight and just before dawn, but has apparently brightened unexpectedly and is relatively easy to spot. I don’t know how easy it’ll be to find an unobstructed (not to mention cloudless) view of the western horizon but I might give it a go - naked-eye comets don’t come along very often. How to spot it: evening chart/morning chart (based on an observation point 15 degrees of latitude lower than the UK, which I think means it’ll be higher in the sky here), or a more general overview here.

I’ve never been much of an Apple junkie, but I have to admit that’s really quite the thing: a combined phone, widescreen iPod and web browser, with wifi, a 2MP camera and all controlled by a touch-screen interface (many more details here). It looks like they’ve gone all-out with the GUI, judging by the demonstrations - the texting one is particularly interesting. It doesn’t come out in the UK until the 4th quarter of this year. By which time, I can’t help but realise, my 4th generation iPod will be 2.5 years old. I can just get a second mortgage or something.

David Miliband recently said “there isn’t any evidence either way that’s conclusive” as to the health benefits of ‘organic’ foods, which was picked up on by much of the media. It seems to be something people feel very strongly about, and ‘organic’ foods are now pretty much synonymous with ‘healthy eating’ in day to day life. It’s all rather strange, though. The more I see about the ‘organic’ industry, the more it seems to mix reasonable arguments about sensible farming methods with scaremongering, plus more than a hint of anti-science sentiment and outright paranoia.

My friend Lil is the most knowledgeable person I know when it comes to environmental issues, and after I commented on her post on the organic industry she sent over a report detailing the many advantages of organic farming as regards wildlife conservation. From a lay-person’s perspective it seemed compelling, and I trust Lil and her environmental science degree when she tells me it makes sense I also know people who swear organic foods taste better, and it’s entirely possible they do, although there are plenty of variables and biases and it’s hard to find double-blind taste tests with evidence either way. That’s being incredibly picky, though, and if these positive points were all ‘organic’ meant I’d have no problem with it and would be happy to pay extra.

Unfortunately, ‘organic’ comes with a load of baggage attached, the most prevalent of which is the assumed evil of fertilisers and their associated health risks. The industry regularly points out the levels of pesticides found in ‘conventional’ foods, and plenty of people have said to me things like ‘I don’t see how they can’t be bad for you’. Industry responses to David Miliband are the same:

Pete Glanville, secretary of the Shetland Organic Producers Group, which farms vegetables and sheep, said: “You only have to look at the list of things that goes into creating lots of things to realise just how much we are not putting into our bodies by eating organic.”

Liz Lawrence, from the website faceofflowers.com, which specialises in organic produce said: “Organic produce is the only legally guaranteed food that you know what you’re getting, you know there’s no chemicals in there.

“To sell organic produce you have to be registered and you’re inspected very thoroughly.”

They both want me to assume that ‘chemicals’ are bad for my health. But, why should I? It’s not like this hasn’t occurred to people before, and been studied appropriately. I’m going to trust the reports of the European Food Safety Authority and DEFRA far more than I am the vague gut instincts that admittedly arise when I hear that food has been sprayed with chemicals designed to keep away pests. Pesticides are heavily regulated and subject to continual testing and safety review, and I’ve seen nothing from the ‘organic’ industry giving me any reason to ignore the results of proper inquiry other than ’some pesticides might turn out to be bad for you’.

You could perhaps make a case that if ‘organic’ foods have no risk from pesticides, and ‘conventional’ has only a very small one, it’s still more reasonable to go with the former. However, ‘organic’ farming can still use pesticides, only they have to be ‘natural’. There’s no reason ‘natural’ pesticides should be any better for the environment than ’synthetic’ pesticides¹, and they are just as heavily regulated, yet we don’t hear how much ‘natural’ pesticide residue is left on organic foods. And then there’s this, from a report by a University of Edinburgh biochemist:

Plants synthesise an estimated 10,000 chemicals whose function is to kill or deter insect pests and occasionally larger herbivores. These natural pesticides are found in all fruit and vegetables; when tested at MTD they prove to be equally as damaging as synthetic pesticides (Ames and Gold, 1999, 2000). Furthermore the daily consumption of natural pesticides or carcinogens outweighs the traces of synthetic pesticides consumed by the public by many thousands to one. Mankind has always been exposed to ‘‘dangerous’’ chemicals and since many current crops have only recently been used as food and are also the result of extensive plant breeding, the kinds of natural chemical to which we are now exposed is too recent to allow for biological evolution to have ensured safe consumption (Ames and Gold, 1999).

The pesticide issue feels like scaremongering, and I don’t think it helps anyone to idly discard the extensive scientific knowledge of this area in favour of gut reactions. ‘Organic’ foods also trumpet the lack of genetic modification, which is equally dubious in my view, but that’s a whole other post. I’m loathe to give money to an industry that promotes and possibly thrives on these attitudes, which is to the detriment of the probably beneficial environmental aspects.

I’ve been trying to read up on the subject, and there are a crazy number of variables. Supporting local farms may be considered an advantage, but if you buy from a supermarket it’s estimated that 70% of food labelled ‘organic’ is flown in from abroad, which must have environmental consequences. It’s also claimed that ‘organic’ farms treat their animals better than ‘conventional’ farms, which sounds good, and that they aren’t given growth hormones which are also apparently bad for humans - I haven’t even tried to dig into this claim. There are so many pros, cons, claims and counter-claims that I don’t know how anybody could reasonably decide whether it’s worth the extra cost.

It’s all a little murky, and at times has an air of cash cow while throwing up red flags of pseudoscience. I’d much rather buy something with a specific advantage in the same way as free-range eggs than risk supporting goofy nonsense, but then I feel like the positive aspects are going unrewarded. Lil says that it’s the specific management criteria of the farms that’s important in terms of environmental impact, not ‘organic’ versus ‘conventional’, and that seems to be one of the few sensible conclusions it’s possible to draw.

(edit: tidied up a couple of dodgy constructions)

1. possibly less so, given that synthetic ones will be designed for a purpose, but admittedly I can’t back this up [↩]

The clearly charming Thomas Cordrey, member of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship, says:

Christians have no desire to discriminate unjustly on the grounds of sexual orientation, but they cannot and must not be forced to actively condone and promote sexual practices which the Bible teaches are wrong. It is a fundamental matter of freedom of conscience.

Here’s the thing: your right to ‘freedom of conscience’ is something you made up. Sorry about that. (For the sake of brevity I’m going to replace ‘not having to actively condone and promote sexual practices which the Bible teaches are wrong’ with ‘having all the compassion and moral development of a goat’) You’ll still be perfectly free to have all the compassion and moral development of a goat in theory - namely, inside your head - just not in practice, ok? You can still complain all you like. Your conscience will be clear, and I’m sure your deity will understand. So shush.

I can be fair about this: if you can give me one good reason why you should be allowed to discriminate against somebody on the basis of their sexual orientation that doesn’t involve quoting your invisible friend, I’ll join you. I don’t care about hypocrisy, I care that you can’t back up what you say. It’s perfectly reasonable to discriminate against something that makes no sense.

Incidentally, printers would be forced to produce leaflets promoting gay sex? Firstly, this is the best argument you can come up with? Secondly, people produce leaflets promoting gay sex?! Do you actually mean ‘advertising gay nightclubs’? Because that’s not really the same thing.

Polly Toynbee, The Labour Humanist and Harry’s Place kick ass and take names.

I have at least three posts drafted on brain-paper, but find myself oddly tired and unable to type anything without it galloping off into the land of many clauses on a horse named What, so in lieu of sense here are some nice things:

• Radio 2 have been playing ‘Grace Kelly’ by Mika for a few weeks now. Is quite different and most catchy, but isn’t yet available as a single. Happily it can be heard on his myspace page. He was named as the best new talent of 2007 in a BBC poll of UK ‘music critics and broadcasters’, a list that’s previously been topped by Keane and Corinne Bailey Rae.
• The Sky at Night has entered its 50th year. I sent Patrick Moore a letter when I was thirteen and he responded personally. This is one of many reasons he rocks.
• The largest single project in Hubble’s history has mapped the distribution of dark matter in greater detail than ever before, and it seems to conform to theory. Pretty impressive to have theories that predict what something does, while having no clue as to what it is. There are some anomalies, however, which if not shown to be noise throw up some very interesting questions - how can you have clumps of dark matter without associated ‘normal’ matter in the same place?
• omglasergunspewpewpew (I think this is an internet fad that completely passed me by)
• A very happy duck.

Right. Bed.

I’ve just upgraded to Wordpress 2.0.6 - please let me know if anything seems broken. FYI for other WP bloggers: it apparently introduces a bug that affects anybody using Feedburner, so it’s probably worth altering the code with the fix detailed here before uploading the files.

I have to hand it to this Comment is Free article for saying something new. Your average piece criticising secularists usually waffles on with some drivel about how they’re just as fundamentalist as the other side therefore blah, or logic isn’t enough to understand the universe and love is great and blah, or they fail to appreciate how happy religion makes some people therefore everything’s dandy and the rivers would run with chocolate if only people would stop arguing. And blah. The CiF piece, though, suggests it’s all a vast conspiracy. You might want to put any drinks down before reading.

In recent years these unpleasant people have had a strategy of exploiting Britain’s innate politeness. They realised that for a decade overly sensitive souls (normally called the PC brigade) had bent over backwards to avoid giving offence. Trying not to give offence was, despite the excesses, a noble courtesy.

But the fundamentalists saw an opening. Because we live in a multiconfessional society, they fostered the falsehood that wearing a crucifix or a veil or a turban was deeply offensive to other faiths. They pretended to be protecting religious sensibilities as a pretext to strip us of all religious expressions. In 2006 Jack Straw and BA fell into the fundamentalists’ trap.

But Britons are actually laissez-faire about such things. And so the fundamentalists deployed an opposite tactic. Instead of pretending to protect religious sensibilities, they went on the offensive and sought to give offence. The subsequent reactions to the play Behzti in Birmingham, to Jerry Springer the Opera and to the Danish cartoons were wheeled out as examples of why religious groups are unable to live with our cherished freedom and tolerance.

My, haven’t we been the busy bunch. And so devious! It’s a fun read, and ends by claiming that secularists want to tell everybody what to wear and what to say. I like the part where it says religious believers are great because they can differentiate sin from crime. At no point is any evidence presented, obviously, and it’s a bit like getting stopped on the street by somebody who wants to give you a leaflet explaining how the US government is responsible for 9/11. You nod, smile, back off as quickly as possible and aren’t really happy until you’ve washed your hands.

The article was apparently printed in today’s Guardian. Yuck. B4L says everything that’s necessary.

Earlier tonight I was watching a BBC4 documentary which explored some of the effects science fiction has had on modern society. One interviewee described what he saw as the impressive moral values of Star Trek: tolerance of other races and kindness towards all are important aspects of the show. I knew that this wasn’t surprising as Gene Roddenberry was both an atheist and humanist, and the Star Trek universe is very much based around humanist philosophy. The interviewee who mentioned this turned out to be a vicar. Obviously there’s not necessarily any conflict here, and I’m sure I would have much in common with somebody who seemed to be a nice guy. Nevertheless, I can only assume that he would, if questioned, claim something like:

The science fiction universe of Star Trek has explorers traversing the galaxy, using their extensive experience of the universe to reason out peaceful solutions to problems while demonstrating a tolerance and kindness towards all people of all races. Of course, here in the real world I get my moral guidance from a magical being in the sky whose son came back from the dead.

I suppose this is why I find the psychology of religious belief so interesting, as I’d find such a statement very difficult to comprehend.

A friend sent me the link to this video of a spectacular ‘meteor shower’ over Colorado yesterday. It’s thought to actually be a Russian booster burning up in the atmosphere, but is nevertheless quite the sight. The news anchors, however, describe it as “meteors from an extinct constellation”. Meteors from an extinct constellation!? Meteor showers are caused by the Earth passing through clouds of tiny particles left behind by passing comets, and certainly have nothing to do with constellations. I can’t even imagine what they’re trying to say, and it seemed completely bizarre until a commenter at Bad Astronomy found this page. The actual meteor shower happening that night was the Quadrantids, and according to that Spaceweather site:

Quadrantid meteors take their name from an obsolete constellation, Quadrans Muralis, found in early 19th-century star atlases between Draco, Hercules, and Bootes. It was removed, along with a few other constellations, from crowded sky maps in 1922 when the International Astronomical Union adopted the modern list of 88 officially-recognized constellations. The Quadrantids, which were “re-zoned” to Bootes after Quadrans Muralis disappeared, kept their name–possibly because another January shower was already widely-known to meteor watchers as the “Bootids.”

The title of the page is ‘Meteors from an Extinct Constellation”, and it’s currently 6th in Google results for ‘Quadrantids’, which seems to explain everything. Still, you’d think somebody would have realised that out of context the phrase makes no sense at all. Wait, it’s a Fox News affiliate, you say?

The writer/director of Severance (which I haven’t seen, but will now look out for) lists the seven deadly sins of horror, which worked fine back in 1952 but are now forbidden:

5 - Magic, psychic killers: Oh thank goodness, the large breasted girl has managed to put some distance between herself and the killer. Oh look, she’s found a car - and it’s unlocked! And the keys are in the ignition! And the engine has started, first time! Hooray! She’s going to escape! I hope that the killer hasn’t somehow magically teleported into the back seat, where he will suddenly pop up to stab or garrotte her. I’m sure that won’t happen though, because he’d need the aforementioned teleporting skills, plus the ability to psychically predict which car she would choose. And it would make no sense to hide in the back seat, wait until she starts driving, and *then* attack her. So he probably won’t do that. Oh. He did.

Fair point. I think this kind of thing is fine in tongue-in-cheek horror a la Scream, but it always grates when a film’s making a serious attempt to be scary. Not that I’ve seen all that much proper horror, to be honest.