Order of the Bath

I haven’t really noticed the NT reading for Advent Sunday before so don’t know if it is always the same but this seems very appropriate for the weeks leading up to Christmas.

Romans 13:13-14

let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

As you can see in this video, the experiment to switch off a notorious set of traffic lights in Portishead was an outstanding success. I missed this at the time but, although it clearly needs a bit of work, it was good enough for the experiment to be made permanent. Since then two zebra crossings have been introduced making it easier for disabled people, but in an unfortunate retrograde step, they have been put on raised “traffic calming” platforms. Now we just need the experiment to be repeated in Bristol itself—at sensible and appropriate locations.

I, N , take you, M ,
to be my wife/husband,
to have and to hold
from this day forward;
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death us do part;
according to God’s holy law.
In the presence of God I make this vow.

One or more tokens are exchanged, the text is spoken and an acknowledgement is signed in the presence of witnesses and an official with civil authority who all also sign.

This is a contract, anything else is irrelevant.

…of cash!

New use for copy paper. Nakabayashi Corp. of Tokyo, announced a new floor-standing machine that converts discarded copy paper into toilet paper rolls. It is able to produce two rolls per hour from around 1800 sheets. The machine weighs 600 kilograms, and will sell for $95,000 apiece.

print4pay Hotel’s “MFP Solutions Blog”

That must be the worst return on investment ever. I even checked that it wasn’t an April 1st post.

Why do they taste so good? This lunchtime, as I was reduced to using the works canteen restaurant, so I thought I would experiment. To make a chip butty you need good chips and a slice or two of bread. White is better as the flavour of wholemeal would interfere with the experiment. You can also do it the Derby way with big floury baps or, as I did, with plain pitta bread. You can spread the bread thinly with butter but it is not necessary if you want the healthy option (Ha! healthy chip butties!) then lay good plump chips tightly in a row before covering with more bread. With the pittas I split them and lined the chips up inside. Despite the wiki article, any sauce is sacrilege. The remaining chips in the bowl (you always get more than enough) form the control.

Now take a good bite and taste. After clearing the palate try an equivalent number of chips straight from the bowl and detect the difference. No bread—but there is more to it than that. What seems to happen is that with plain chips the initial experience is about the outer surface with the oil and salt; with the butty, that is moderated by the bread and the initial experience is with the soft interior of the chip. You still get the crunch on the teeth but you get a fuller flavour. So that is the reason I think.

Available for restaurant criticism on request.

This is a picture of a sinkhole that appeared in Guatemala City last week. It is about 18m across and up to 100m deep. It gives me vertigo just looking at the picture. Apparently there was a three story clothing factory on the far side which just vanished but there are no reports of any casualties as everyone had gone home due to the storm. It is not the first time; the second picture is of a smaller one that appeared in a shanty district of the same city in 2007 and killed three people.

This has been in the news a lot recently. Foxconn is a major manufacturing organisation in China which makes a lot of hi-tech consumer products for the west such as iPhones for Apple and stuff for Dell, Intel and HP. Sad though it is, let us get it into perspective. There have been 11 reported cases to date including two that were unsuccessful. Foxconn employs around 500,000 people, 300,000 at that plant. The suicide rate for China is around 14 per 100,000 population per year (although the figures are not very recent) and it is by no means the highest in the world. So on that basis there is no story.

So what is fuelling the stories; well there is nothing like a sensational headline to get readers and there is the Apple angle; and it may have been triggered by one case last year where the circumstances were a little suspicious, though never proven. Yes, western companies need to carefully monitor working conditions when off-shoring contracts but stories like this don’t help.

Who said “Don’t worry your pretty little head about…”? I have heard it a few times recently and can’t find a good source for it anywhere. The best I have come across is “The Little Colonel“, a 1935 film but I can’t believe that it is the root, I have never heard of the film before. There is a similar phrase “What could have put such an idea into your pretty little head?” in “The importance of being Ernest” (Oscar Wilde). Perhaps it all came from that but someone must have first uttered one of the most condescending phrases in the language.