Three types of bacteria are used in the production of Emmental: Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus helveticus, and Propionibacterium freudenreichii. Historically, the holes
were a sign of imperfection, and until modern times, cheese makers would try to avoid them. Emmental cheese is used in a variety of dishes, particularly in gratins, and fondue, where
it is mixed with Gruyère.
To commemorate the second anniversary of the death of my father – a keen hiker and cyclist, who was
killed during a hiking accident while training for a trek to the North Pole – I
thought the best thing to do would be to strike out somewhere random. And where could be more random than a geohash? This was also my first ever geohashing expedition, although I’d been
meaning to do it for a long, long while. And so began the Peter Huntley Memorial Geohashing Expedition!
I cycled from Kidlington, near Oxford (in the next graticule over)
via National Cycle Network Route 51, through Bicester and towards Milton
Keynes. Early on, I had to ford a river which had broken its banks and flooded the cyclepath (and even saw a minnow swimming across the cycle lane – quite surreal!). Later, I had a
minor whoopsie when I stayed on the cycle route too long and ended up in Steeple Claydon, on the wrong side of the Padbury Brook valley, but soon corrected it. I’d anticipated having to
hop a fence to get to the hashpoint, but it turned out that the field – which had been left to fallow – didn’t have a fence, and I only needed to walk about thirty paces into it in
order to reach the hashpoint.
In memory of my dad, I pulled out a drawing of him and drank a bottle of Guinness (his preferred drink after a long day’s cycle), and began to head back. But disaster struck! Somehow,
raptors must have gotten to my bike tyre while I wasn’t paying attention, because it was completely slashed. Being that I was now at the furthest point from home in my planned journey,
I pushed it to the nearby village of Hillesden in the hope of finding a shop that might sell me sufficient supplies to repair the puncture, but was without luck. I was now faced with a
choice: I could continue pushing it home, and try to get to Bicester (a little over three hours walk away) before the bike shop there shut, or I could turn and walk
the wrong way (away from home) towards Buckingham (only about an hour’s walk away), and hope that I’d be able to find supplies there.
I headed for Buckingham, but the students I spoke to when I passed the University campus suggested that there wasn’t a bike shop in town, but suggested a hardware store that might sell
a bike pump (I’d since found a patch kit at a corner shop, although it was of course useless without a pump). But while looking for the hardware store, I discovered quite by
accident Solstice Cycles, a wonderful little bike shop right in the heart of Buckingham (at the
time, Google Maps on my phone had been completely unable to find me a bike shop at all). The man there switched out my inner tube in a jiffy (he agreed that it could well have been a
raptor attack that had damaged it), and set me on my way.
Unwilling to add further to my diversion, I took a more-direct route back to Bicester, straight down the A4421, and I’m sure I must have agitated the motorists who weren’t used to
seeing cyclists on such a major road. In Bicester, I ate the remains of my packed lunch before getting back onto the cyclepath home.
Total distance travelled: 57.75 miles; mostly cycled, but more than I’d have liked on foot. And a spectacular first geohash.
I’ve got a twist on a book test that I’m hoping to work into a performance in a couple of weeks time (cabaret-size), and I was wondering if anybody’s got any thoughts about it.
Specifically: does it sound compelling?
The effect: I’ll be following on from a couple of other mentalist effects and selling this as a “modern” twist on a traditional idea. I’ll ask for a volunteer who has
a familiarity with a certain (popular, contemporary, long-running) series of novels, and hand them a Kindle pre-loaded with the entire series, and ask them to inspect it/read any
parts of the books to ensure they’re genuine. Meanwhile, three other audience members will collectively supply single-digit numbers which are joined together in an order chosen by the
volunteer, to make a page number. The volunteer will then choose their favourite book in the series, turn to that page (you know – the hardest bit so far has been working out how to
make a Kindle show page numbers!), and the first sentence will match a prediction that’s been in an envelope on-show since the start. The ebooks can continue to be inspected (and I’ll
thoroughly be encouraging the volunteer to show pages to the audience, of course!).
The format has advantages e.g. (a) there’s no way I can see which book was chosen, unlike many similar illusions, (b) I can use a larger “library” than most, and (c) it fits into a
patter I have about modernising traditional magic. But I have a few concerns, too.
My concerns: will people assume the Kindle is gimmicked (because it’s hard to see it’s not: people already don’t trust technology!)? What can I do to help
the volunteer/audience see that it’s not?
Thanks for any thoughts!
tl;dr: book test but using a whole series of books on a Kindle, inspected by a fan familiar with the series, book chosen by volunteer, page number chosen by audience, first
sentence matches on-show prediction. Is it compelling?
A week ago, Ruth pushed a baby out of her body, completely upstaging my birthday and, incidentally,
throwing all of our lives pretty much into chaos. Having gotten to the point at which she’d resigned herself to “being pregnant forever“, Ruth would have certainly been glad to have that stage over and done with, were it not for a long and painful labour followed by a torturous and
exhausting birth.
If Ruth looks like she’s about to die of exhaustion in this photo, that’s because that’s how she’s feeling.
There’s a lot that can be said about the labour: a 38-hour crescendo of Ruth gradually and repeatedly finding levels of pain and tiredness that each seemed impossible, until she reached
them. But Ruth has suggested that she might like to write a little about it herself, so I shan’t steal her limelight. What I can say is that I didn’t – and I don’t think that JTA, either – appreciate quite how emotionally draining the experience would be for the two of us, as well. There was a
strange sensation for me about twelve hours in: a sensation perhaps most-comprehensible by our friends who’ve done emotional support work. That was: after watching somebody I love so
much suffer so greatly for so long, I felt as if I’d somehow begun to exhaust whatever part of my brain feels empathy. As if the experience of supporting Ruth had served to drain me in
a way I’d never fully experienced before, like when you discover a muscle you didn’t know you had when it aches after an unusual new exercise.
Forcep-marks still visible, the newborn takes an extended nap in a crib alongside Ruth’s recovery-bed.
Of course, after the ordeal we got to take home a little bundle of joy, who continues – despite now having a perfectly fabulous name of her own – to be referred to as “tiny”, even
though her birth weight of 8lbs 12oz (that’s about 4kg, for those who – like me – prefer to think in metric) doesn’t really make that a very fitting nickname! Nor the amount of damage
she did to Ruth on the way out, which also might be ill-described as “tiny”! She’s also often referred to as “the poopmachine”, for reasons that ought not need spelling out.
I’m smiling, because I don’t yet know that, within seconds of this photo being taken, she’s about to fill her nappy.
My employer was kind enough to give me paternity leave, even though I’m not the biological father (JTA is; and he’s very-much still in the picture!). I’d looked at my contract and
discovered that the wording seemed to imply that I was eligible, stating that I’d be permitted to take paternity leave if I was about to become a father, or if my partner was about to
give birth, the latter of which seemed perfectly clear. To be certain, I’d wandered along to Personnel and explained our living arrangement, and they just had looks on their faces that
said “we’re not touching that with a barge pole; let’s just err on the side of giving him leave!” As a result, we’ve had all hands on deck to help out with the
multitudinous tasks that have suddenly been added to our lives, which has been incredibly useful, especially given that Ruth has been spending several days mostly lying-down, as she’s
been recovering from injuries sustained during the delivery.
If only we had some kind of way to set up a web-based rota of feeding, changing and comforting the little one…
Despite everything, we and the rest of the Three Rings team still managed to push the latest version into testing on schedule, though
fitting in time for bug-fixing is even harder than it would be were we at our “day jobs” during the daytimes! It’s not that our little poopmachine takes up all of our time, though she
does seem to take a lot of it, it’s simply that we’re all so tired! For the last few nights she’s been fussy about sleeping, and we’ve all lost a lot of rest time over keeping her fed,
clean, and feeling loved.
Who loves boob? Baby does! Also, everybody else in the house.
For all my complaining, though, what we’ve got here is an adorable and mostly well-behaved little bundle of joy. And when she’s not covered in poop, shouting for
attention, or spitting milk all over you, she’s a little angel. And I’m sure you’ll all be sick of hearing about her very soon.
A couple of recent posts in /r/bestof (one, two) drew my attention to /r/TheRedPill, which I’d
not come across before. I looked at that subreddit… and I still don’t get it.
It’s… something like The Game, right? All that stuff about “easy, foolproof” ways to get laid? But the entire subreddit just talks about red pills and blue pills and other mysterious
terms that make it sound more like The Matrix than anything that’ll help you pick up women.
Science, philosophy and technology run on the model of American Idol – as embodied by TED talks – is a recipe for civilisational disaster.
In our culture, talking about the future is sometimes a polite way of saying things about the present that would otherwise be rude or risky.
But have you ever wondered why so little of the future promised in TED talks actually happens? So
much potential and enthusiasm, and so little actual change. Are the ideas wrong? Or is the idea about what ideas can do all by themselves wrong?
I write about entanglements of technology and culture, how technologies enable the making of certain worlds, and at the same time how culture structures how those technologies will
evolve, this way or that. It’s where philosophy and design intersect.
While you’re tucking in to your turkey tomorrow and the jokes and puzzles in your crackers are failing to impress, here’s a little riddle to share with your dinner guests:
Which is the odd-one out: gypsies, turkeys, french fries, or the Kings of Leon?
If you answer “turkey, because it’s the only one that’s a bird,” then you’re somewhat missing the point.
In order to save you from “accidentally” reading too far and spoling the answer for yourself, here’s a picture of a kitten to act as filler:
Aww.
Want a hint? This is a question about geography. Specifically, it’s a question about assumptionsabout geography. Have
another think: the kittens will wait.
Interestingly, this Persian cat could easily be another candidate for the odd-one-out.
Okay. Let’s have a look at each of the candidates, shall we? And learn a little history as we go along:
Gypsies
The Romami are an ethnic group of traditionally-nomadic people, originating
from Northern India and dispersing across Europe (and further) over the last millenium and a half. They brought with them some interesting anthropological artefacts of their culture,
such as aspects of the Indian caste system and languages (it’s through linguistic similarities that we’ve been best-able to trace their multi-generational travels, as written records of
their movements are scarce and incomplete), coupled with traditions related to a nomadic life. These traditions include strict rules about hygiene, designed to keep a travelling
population free of disease, which helped to keep them safe during the European plagues of the 13th and 14th centuries.
The migration of the Romanies. The arrows show that they stopped in France for some French Fries before continuing to Britain.
Unfortunately for them, when the native populations of Western European countries saw that these travellers – who already had a reputation as outsiders – seemed to be immune to the
diseases that were afflicting the rest of the population, their status in society rapidly degraded, and they were considered to be witches or devil-worshippers. This animosity made
people unwilling to trade with them, which forced many of them into criminal activity, which only served to isolate them further. Eventually, here in the UK, laws were passed to attempt
to deport them, and these laws help us to see the origins of the term gypsy, which by then had become commonplace.
Consider, for example, the Egyptians Act 1530, which uses the word
“Egyptian” to describe these people. The Middle English word for Egypian was gypcian, from which the word gypsy or gipsy was a
contraction. The word “gypsy” comes from a mistaken belief by 16th Century Western Europeans that the Romani who were entering their countries had emigrated from Egypt. We’ll get back
to that.
Turkeys
When Europeans began to colonise the Americas, from the 15th Century onwards, they discovered an array of new plants and animals previously unseen by European eyes, and this ultimately
lead to a dramatic diversification of the diets of Europeans back home. Green beans, cocoa beans, maize (sweetcorn), chillis, marrows, pumpkins, potatoes, tomatoes, buffalo, jaguars,
and vanilla pods: things that are so well-understood in Britain now that it’s hard to imagine that there was a time that they were completely alien here.
Gobblegobblegobblegobble.
Still thinking that the Americas could be a part of East Asia, the explorers and colonists didn’t recognise turkeys as being a distinct species, and categorised them as being a kind of
guineafowl. They soon realised that they made for pretty good eating, and started sending them back to their home countries. Many of the turkeys sent back to Central Europe arrived via
Turkey, and so English-speaking countries started calling them Turkey fowl, eventually just shortened to turkey. In actual fact, most of the turkeys reaching
Britain probably came directly to Britain, or possibly via France, Portugal, or Spain, and so the name “turkey” is completely ridiculous.
Fun fact: in Turkey, turkeys are called hindi, which means Indian, because many of the traders importing turkeys were Indians (the French, Polish, Russians, and Ukranians
also use words that imply an Indian origin). In Hindi, they’re called peru, after the region and later country of Peru, which also isn’t where they’re from (they’re native
only to North America), but the Portugese – who helped to colonise Peru also call them that. And in Scottish Gaelic, they’re called cearc frangach – “French chicken”!
The turkey is a seriously georgraphically-confused bird.
French Fries
As I’m sure that everybody knows by now, “French” fries probably originated in either Belgium or in the Spanish Netherlands (now part of Belgium), although some French sources claim an
earlier heritage. We don’t know how they were first invented, but the popularly-told tale of Meuse Valley fishing communities making up for not having enough fish by deep-frying pieces of potato, cut into the shape of fish, is
almost certainly false: a peasant region would be extremely unlikely to have access to the large quantities of fat required to fry potatoes in this way.
They may find it hard to prove that they invented fries, but the Belgians certainly hold the claim to the world’s only museum dedicated to the food.
So why do we – with the exception of some confusingly patriotic Americans – call them French fries. It’s hard to say for certain, but based
on when the food became widely-known in the anglophonic world, the most-likely explanation comes from the First World War. When British and, later, American soldier landed in Belgium,
they’ll have had the opportunity to taste these (now culturally-universal) treats for the first time. At that time, though, the official language of the Belgian army (and the
most-popularly spoken language amongst Belgian citizens) was French. The British and American soldiers thus came to call them “French fries”.
The Kings of Leon
For a thousand years the Kingdom of Leon represented a significant part of what would not be considered Spain and/or Portugal, founded by Christian kings who’d recaptured the Northern
half of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors during the Reconquista (short
version for those whose history lessons didn’t go in this direction: what the crusades were against the Ottomans, the Reconquista was against the Moors). The Kingdom of Leon
remained until its power was gradually completely absorbed into that of the Kingdom of Spain. Leon still exists as a historic administrative region in Spain, similar to the counties of
the British Isles, and even has its own minority language (the majority language, Spanish, would historically have been known as Castilian – the traditional language of the neighbouring
Castillian Kingdom).
Leon, sandwiched between the other kingdoms of the 13th century Iberian Peninsula.
The band, however, isn’t from Leon but is from Nashville, Tennessee. They’ve got nothing linking them to actual Leon, or Spain at all, as far as I can tell, except for their name – not
unlike gypsies and Egypt, turkeys and Turkey, and French fries and France. The Kings of Leon, a band of brothers, took the inspiration for their name from the first name of their father
and their grandfather: Leon.
The Odd One Out
The Kings of Leon are the odd one out, because while all four have names which imply that they’re from somewhere that they’re not, the inventors of
the name “The Kings of Leon” were the only ones who knew that the implication was correct.
The people who first started calling gypsies “gypsies” genuinely believed that they came from Egypt. The first person to call a turkey a “Turkey fowl” really was under the impression
that it was a bird that had come from, or via, Turkey. And whoever first started spreading the word about the tasty Belgian food they’d discovered while serving overseas really thought
that they were a French invention. But the Kings of Leon always knew that they weren’t from Leon (and, presumably, that they weren’t kings).
And as for you? Your sex is on fire. Well, either that or it’s your turkey. You oughta go get it out of the oven if it’s the latter, or – if it’s the former – see if you can get some
cream for that. And have a Merry Christmas.
