Iris at 100

Iris Murdoch was born 15 Aug 1919 in Phibsborough, Dublin 7 and lived briefly in Blessington Street before her Dad shipped the family off to London in search of work. Perhaps, as a Protestant from The North, he saw the writing on the wall in revolutionary post-war Ireland. In any case there was a massive diaspora of the Protestant middle classes between the Wars leaving a space to be filled by aspiring Catholics. My Grandfather bucked the trend, securing a peach job as harbour master in Dunmore East at the foundation of the Free State.  Like my father, who spent a much longer time growing up in Co. Waterford, Murdoch never lost her sense of feeling Irish. Although she was not without a sense of shame at the antics of Irish people in the political sphere. They both spent the rest of their lives working in and for the British establishment - both being awarded a CBE. Maybe someone who cares will edit the Iris Murdoch wikipedia page and put her in a green jersey: Dame Jean Iris Murdoch DBE (/ˈmɜːrdɒk/; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was a British Irish novelist and philosopher.

In England, she had a rather free-wheeling education but went up to Oxford U in 1938 where she read classics and philosophy and secured a First in Literae Humaniores, = Greats. After a spell working with /for refugees in Austria at the tail end of the war, she returned to Oxford, becoming a lecturer and fellow of St Anne's College. Philosophy is waaay over my head, so I won't attempt to explain what her conclusions amounted to.  As well as the day job in college, she churned out a couple of dozen novels between Under the Net in 1954 and Jackson's Dilemma in 1995. Here's Denis Healey, fellow-traveller and later Chancellor of the Exchequer remembering her contributions. Here she is comparing one's literature with one's philosophy: novels are a lot more fun! The Man has put up a commemorative bench [appropriately on The Left here] in Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. I like the idea that to sit here you have to look outwards.

She is twenty years dead now and the Dublin literary establishment is pushing out the commemorative boat; with a exhibition in Phibsborough branch Library and a showing of the biopic Iris tonight in the IFI at 1830. It stars Kate Winslett as I.M. Jnr and Judi Dench as I.M. Sr, so should be good. Clip Iris on Education and song. In the twilight of her years her great mind slipped its cables and drifted out to sea on SS Dementia. But that's okay, she made a contribution to our understanding of the human condition, which will probably be recognised as worthy in 100 years time. There aren't many 20thC novelists about whom that could be said. Hats Off!

Bastille Day 2019

Vive La France! "À la lanterne! la bourgeoisie" [Source]

• Rob Sell, search&rescue tracker, started Trace Labs to find folks on line. Crowdsource option available.
• VeloCity: Dublin exposed as a crap place for bicycles
• Foodie
• The future is garbanzos
• 1991, Russians meet greenhouse targets by eating less meat
• 1961, Winston Churchill hams it up for Orson Welles
• Missy Eby destroys the planet with coupon driven acquisitions.
• Hypnotic gold panning with a rotating spiralled wash-pan
• Plug & feathers - chap splits mighty slab of rock with hand tools

Garden Abundance

It's not like an On / Off switch but as you get older the balance of power & responsibility shifts down one generation. When Dau.II was born in 1995, she wasn't able to blow her own nose and it took a year before she was able to move about on her own two feet. Everything had to be done for her. Soon enough, I'll be in a similar state myself: leaky, demanding, incapable and I am reasonably confident that she'll either "take care of me or take care of me" [51st State reference]. At the beginning of May she came up to visit her parents, noted that Progress in the Garden = nil and insisted that we all go visit the wonderful, if slightly seedy, Wilton Garden Centre in Bree, Co. Wexford. We came away with some tomato plants about two fists tall and sundry packets of seeds: mainly swiss chard; french beans and courgettes. We had some saved seed about the house as well and lashed them all into little pots. "Right that's me tea sorted for when I visit in August", said Dau.II

As an experiment, I suggested that we plant half the beans directly into a little pot of damp compost; and leave the other half of them soaking over-night in water. We know the answer to that question now: do not soak beans in water for 12 hours if you want them to sprout and flourish. They will serve only as food for fungus. Soaking is for beans intended as food [human or fungal]; for seeding allow the water to come more slowly direct from the soil. The swiss chard was a total bust: about half sprouted, struggled upwards on feeble red stalks, and fell over when watered even by gentle rain. Some of these recumbent lazy-arses would struggle upright again but none seems interested in make progress beyond 4 teeny leaves. Saved poppy seeds of indeterminate age? Nope! Only one courgette seed sent out anything green. Eleven (!!) weeks later we can make a progress report.

Inside the 16 x 9 m poly-tunnel is a raised bed 7 x 1 m which is filled with soil, horse-shit, kitchen compost and other nutritious material. The problem with poly-tunnels is two-fold: over-heating and under-watering. Over the years, I've evolved to be direct and thrifty with water.

• Take a 10-12 litre mineral-lick bucket which has seen through its second life as a water-bucket for sheep. 
• Cut out the bottom with a jig-saw, leaving 2-3cm where the bottom meets the upright side.
• Fix any side cracks with gaffer-tape.
• Half bury this receptacle in the soil.
• Fill the inside (with friable loam; potting soil; compost etc,) to within 4-5 cm of the top.
• Install plants (tomatoes and beans are bonzer).
• Water by filling to the brim and letting it soak in. That's equivalent to an inch of rain.

This works well because it delivers water to where it is needed and encourages the plants to dig deep and bring up some mineral goodness. The bucket handle also serves as anchor point for strings for climbers.

Wysiwwg - wot you see is wot we got . . . so far
Left column: Top: panorama of the veg bed: beans to left, toms to right just like an old country hop with the lads and lasses. Bot: the courgette with trowel in house colours for scale.
Centre: tomato flowers; green toms for frying at the Whistle Stop Café; two minute red tomatoes.
Rightside: the tallest bean stalk is 2.4 m above grade - about as tall as I can reach. The leaves are the size of my face. The flowers can be seen below in two different clusters.

Outsiders finish last

Ross Perot was smart, talky and ambitious. After a not notably exciting career in the US Navy during the Korean War, Perot joined IBM to sell office kit in 1957. It was a good time to start as the Suburban Corporate Paradise years started to feed the desire for Stuff: houses with lawns, cars, fridges and ice-cream. He sold A Lot of product for IBM but couldn't get his line-managers to change the corporate culture to match his ambition. So he left to found EDS Electronic Data Systems, recognising that there was a hole in the market between hardware and software. Part of his drive was disappointment that Corporate America had the money to buy computers but not the sense to know how to get value from them. EDS got data off paper and into digits and showed how the information could be induced to sing dollars. The US government, Medicare, insurance corporations, credit unions, travel agencies handed him millions to leverage billions in savings and expansions. Twenty years later in 1984, Perot played his exit strategy and sold EDS to GM for $2.5 billion. He was a rich man.

In 1979 as the Iranians replaced the Shah with Ayatollahs, two EDS employees were imprisoned in Tehran. Perot bankrolled their rescue from jail and abstraction from the country in a way that was elegant and efficient and used appropriate technology.  The following year Jimmy Carter authorised a large covert military plan to rescue the US diplomats held hostage by the revolutionary government of Iran. Operation Desert Claw was costly failure and led to the deaths of 8 US servicemen. Perot's positive experience in Iran positioned him to work later for the rights and rescue of the POW/MIA servicemen left behind in Vietnam. Perot was sure that US Government agencies were complicit in leaving The Boys behind in the interests of the cynical Realpolitik of geopolitical economics in SE Asia.

In 1992, Perot [shown R in 1986 with George Washington] ran an on-again off-again campaign for the Presidency as an independent. George Bush Snr was beaten by Democrat Bill Clinton but Perot obtained 19% of the popular vote. Just like in 2016, there was a wide-spread disillusion with the Red v Blue status quo. With the intrinsically conservative mechanisms of US Presidential elections, Perot secured no seats in the Electoral College. But his contributions to stirrin' it up were welcome. In the TV debates he was deemed to have 'won' with his different views: "Keep in mind our Constitution predates the Industrial Revolution. Our founders did not know about electricity, the train, telephones, radio, television, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, nuclear weapons, satellites, or space exploration. There's a lot they didn't know about. It would be interesting to see what kind of document they'd draft today." Four years later, Perot ran another spoiler campaign for the Presidency but his popular support halved . . . and his campaign secure no seats in the Electoral College.

On contrast to more recent Haves of the Patriarchy, Perot was in favour of taxing the wealthy and supporting entrepreneurs and potential wealth makers. But he was generally liberal in his leanings: pro-choice, gay rights and, peculiar for a Texican, keen to limit the sale and distribution of guns to the general public. He's gone now, but not forgotten as a might-have-been game-changer.

Contraception? your thoughts on

Remember the Alamo Eighth! Just over a year ago Ireland experienced a dramatic volte face on the rights of women (and the rights of the unborn) when We The People voted to 2:1 to repeal the 8th Amendment to the contraception [Freudian slip there] constitution. The referendum was just the first small step opening the door to a long legal journey that will allow the termination of some unwanted pregnancies. I gather that it is still difficult to obtain a termination across large swathes [geographic, social and economic swathes] of the country. Shipping off to the UK is still an option, unsatisfactory as it might be. Who knows about the consequences of Brexit on this dimension, though?

400 hundred years ago, when WmShagsper wrote Much Ado About Nothing, infant mortality was running at about 1-in-7, and yet more children died between their 1st bday and puberty. In 1600, there were 'only' 0.5 billion people upright and walking. There was accordingly a certain imperative in Benedick's statement "The World must be peopled". Even when Kenneth Branagh uttered the anti-mortal phrase in the filum 25 years ago, a case could be made for the sentiment. In 1993, World population was 5.5 billion; since it's seen a runaway 40% increase to 7.7 bn. Surely now there are just too many people on the planet, each generating unconscionable quantities of carbon footprint while consuming far too much Stuff [not to mention the pizza and ice-cream].

Now that The People have spoken, their decision has to be implemented in legislation, regulation and effective bureaucratic systems. But let's step back a few weeks before that unwanted pregnancy became apparent. Nobody wants an abortion, so could We The State do more to preventing that pregnancy? There are two issues: education and availability.

Education for sexual health and healthy sex. I'm an old hand at this. The first honest dollar (1980) I ever earned was teaching a discussion section on BI105: Human sex, reproduction and development. At The Institute I teach Human Physiology to Pharmacy Technicians, 95% of whom are women. I tell them about the menstrual cycle and the hormonal control of ovulation, with diagrams of estrogen and progesterone swooping up and down every ~28 [95-percentile range 23-32] days. Reduced to the cartoon level at which I cover such a fascinating topic, you'd think it would be easy marks to answer a question about it [Q5b) Describe, with a diagram, the effect of changes in the levels of different hormones through one menstrual cycle] on the exams. Key to the answer:

But Nobody attempts that question, so I assume that I know more about that academic aspect of the process that anybody in the exam hall. I'll shoulder some of the blame as a crap teacher but they must have seen that picture in school. If you really have no clue about when your partner is ovulating [most blokes, surely] then you really need some help with contraception. A vasectomy works really well, I recommend it.

Availability. The Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution has recommended: “The introduction of a scheme for the provision of the most effective method of contraception, free of charge and having regard to personal circumstances, to all people who wish to avail of them within the State.” The implementation of that recommendation is going to be a long time a-coming because The Man is kicking the can down to road a piece by soliciting opinions from thee and me. You can access their questionnaire: Public consultation on access to contraception – have your say! There is no mention of vasectomy in the welter of contraceptive options which is really letting the lads off [again!].

I've had my patriarchal say. If The Blob has any sexually active, pre-menopause, Irish-domiciled readers, they have more skin in the game and should contribute their 2c to counteract mine. An unlimited supply of free government condoms will sort us all out for children's birthday-party balloons.

Naming of parts

There I am on the side of a hillock somewhere in the 3500 ha. wilderness of bush, boulder, bog and breck and I find an injured sheep. It is not one of ours. What to do?  Since the end of last month, I can take a picture of the ear tag, attach GPS coordinates and send it as a calling-all-cars email to the ~200 farmers who have grazing rights in the Northern Blackstairs. 10 or 100 years ago, it would have needed a named feature nearby and a data-sharing trip to the pub to reunite owner and ovine. And the hills are were , indeed, alive with the names of places; "are were" because the average age of owners on our commonage is about 65 and the ould lads who really knew all the Ould Names are dead. There are now so few users of the mountain, that an elaborate system of geographic names becomes largely redundant because who would need to know? It's like the death of another language in New Guinea: flattened out of existence by emigration, aging and English. The Blackstairs Farming Futures scheme and other Dept Aggie plans to make better use of commons, may see a revival of the old landscape names. Related:

• Tim Robinson's deep maps of Aran and Connemara; 
• PrairyErth, William Least Heat Moon's deep map of Chase County, Kansas
• Translations, by Brian Friel. Ordnance Survey names the landscape.
• Nüshu - once vibrant, now dead

In another blobbothread, I made reference to duplication in Irish placenames, which must lead to some confusion even in these Googlemaps, GPS, Tomtom days. If I go "Knockroe, Co Carlow" on maps.google.com I land close to Home at:
Knockroe (An Cnoc Rua) , Kiltennell Civil Parish, Barony of Idrone East
because Google knows where they live, people who live 40km away N at the other Knockroe :
Knockroe (An Cnoc Rua) , Rathvilly Civil Parish, Barony of Rathvilly
will likewise be delivered to the familiar neighbourhood. But if Cousin Bubba comes to visit from Tennessee, it's evens that he'll go to the wrong place. Shows a certain want of imagination to have two Knockroes in Co Carlow and 72 (!!) across the country.  There are only 5 Woodstowns, 4 of them in Waterford. The most confusingly close pair of townlands which I can easily bring to your attention are a brace of Kilkenny Knockroes [shown R] down near Windgap and not a long way from Tipperary [from the Southerly K'roe you can gob across the Lingaun River and have your spittle land in Co Tipp - the 1km scale bar R is in Co Tipp].  By a curious coincidence, that same Kilkenny Knockroe has one of the finest examples of a neolthic passage tomb in Leinster. The site includes cup & ring marks similar to the designs we found on our own neolithic artwork, in one of the Carlow Knockroes. Actually not such an amazing coincidence because the landscape of Ireland is as rich in neolithic artifacts as a brack is full of currants.

Moby Duck

'Tis an ill wind that blows no good. Much as we all deplore filling the oceans of the world with plastic crud, at least its existence keeps me off the street and on the beach in the hope of finding more and bigger toys buoys for my collection. One man's trash is another man's treasure and Paddy the Shears was delighted when I presented him with two hanks of nylon rope which I had salvaged from the tide line. A farmer, like a sailor, can never have enough quality rope.
I'm not the only one who scans the seaweed for a glint of orange.The picture above by/of Tracey Williams of Newquay, Cornwall captures the solitary joy of a coup de mer. It's from a BBC story about the Maersk Shanghai which shed 70+ of its containers in a storm off North Carolina 15 months ago. Later in the year, hundreds of trainers started to wash up on beaches on the other side of the Atlantic. Ireland, Cornwall, the Azores. By no stretch could this be considered 'News' although it was published as such on 19 Jun 19. But the gloss which the Beeb put on the story was that these running shoes were data for oceanographers. A pair of trainers in a box 11 x 21 x 31 cm fills 0.007 cu.m; which means that a 40ft shipping container holds about 10,000 of them. If they are all spilled into the sea at the same place and time, their distribution over the succeeding months can tell scientists a lot about the speed and direction of ocean currents like the North Atlantic Drift.

If this is ringing a faint bell of recognition, as it did me, then it's likely because of a similar story dating from 27 years ago when a container full of rubber ducks fell off a ship into the Pacific and were found all over the littoral surrounding that mighty ocean.  It made the name of Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who was an early adopter of statistical analysis of gyring detritus. We now know how long it takes to make a single turn round the block in the Pacific - always contingent on whether the markers are floating high (and so having windage) or are barely awash. Dr Ebbesmeyer runs a site Beachcombers Delight and will take subscriptions for his newsletter.