Suttee

The interests and obsessions of The Blob include a) end of life issues and b) women of STEM. Fiction, not so much; but I do recognise that Science is the A way of knowing and that the Arts Block can give insights into the human condition and living your best life which are both useful and beyond the scope of science. So I should have been delighted with As We Are Now by May Sarton, which I finished reading last weekend. May Sarton was the only child of George Sarton, who made a stab at writing the first comprehensive history of science. His Introduction to the History of Science started at the beginning and after 3 volumes and 4,000 pages had go as far as 1400. Chunks of this mammoth tome have been scanned in for digital access. Clearly he was a chap who needed a ruthless copy-editor.

May Sarton was better at the distillation process because As We Are Now is only 120 pages but offers a compelling insight into how the old are discarded when they are no longer useful, even before they start to get whiffy. Not all useless mouths you may be sure but enough of them across all classes and communities that it is a recognised trope. I won't get over-analytical but there is a hint that As We Are Now reprises the 1st sentence of LP Hartley's The Go Between: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” The tendency to park the old is rather weak in our immediate neighbourhood where I can think of three homes within about 5km where The Elder occupied a seat in the corner of the kitchen until the very end. In all those cases, the old person was included and continued to make diminishing contributions to family life even if it was reading stories to the kids or knitting another woolly hat [Jakers, enough with the hats, already].

The protagonist of May Sarton's book is Miss Spenser, a retired math teacher in Boondocks, USA who lived a life of culture and discernment; taught generations of teens; travelled to Europe before you could fly there; and continued to read and write after her official retirement. All was grand until she had a heart-attack and was moved to her brother's house in a different part of the State: torn from the familiar and having to learn where the light-switches were in her sister-in-law's home. The two women didn't get on and the brother was (like pretty much all the blokes I know, including self) useless at brokering a deal between the three of them so that they could adapt to the new regime. A little kindness goes a long way in such situations.

All too soon for Miss Spenser she is delivered to a rough and ready nursing home run by a snobbish, over-worked, casually cruel woman and her grown-up daughter. The book was published in 1973, but you may bet that similar places exist wherever regulation and inspection is imperfect. Even after the RTE exposé of bullying and elder-abuse in Aras Attracta in 2014, HIQA receives hundreds of complaints each year including 12 about an unexpected death.
Q. Who is doing the complaining?
A. The family. They are the only ones who have skin in the game . . . and lack the resources (emotional, physical, financial, logistical) to manage elder care in their own homes. It costs a lot to refit your home for wheelchair access: the bathroom rails, draining floor, spring-loaded toilet seat?

In this not so fresh hell, Miss Spenser makes the best fist of it that she can and begins to acknowledge that her contempt for her sister-in-law was a) largely unjustified and b) totally self-destructive. And begins to form new relationships that depend not on common culture and intellectual discourse but on other aspects of empathy and mutual respect. So far so good: quite edgy, insightful, with the ring of truth. But May Sarton was a poet and novelist: this is is a novel. As she puts down each vignette of trial and character development, she realises that there must be an ending as well as a beginning and and middle. There aren't too many options:

1. Miss Spenser dies
2. Her brother and sister-in-law die and she gets to live in their house
3. One of her several external visitors takes pity on her and finds the resources to bring her into the bosom of a different family.
4. Miss Spenser thinks "I'll make an end of this and take them all with me in blazing finale".

The title of the post will give you a clue that the wrap-up chosen by the author was abrupt, lazy and unlikely. The book is nevertheless not without value and won't take you as long to read as George Sarton's heavier contribution to the canon.

Pilipina OptiMax

If you think that Bangalore is the call centre capital of the world, you are sooo yesterday and I need to update your racial stereotypes. Because, the person at the other end of the line is most likely to have been speaking Tagalog with the kids at breakfast. That's business process outsourcing (BPO) and it employs more than a million call centre operatives in the Philippines. That's 1% of the total [105million!] population including pensioners and infants. Apparently, the speak better, accent-neutral, English than elsewhere in the poor world.
If you're working for buttons in a call centre in Luzon or Manila and you have ambition to do better for your family, you might decide to take your fully-trained telephone manner to your cousin's garage and start your own business. Call centres do two quite different things. Either a) waiting for the orders or complaints to come in or b) cold calling an endless list of numbers trying to sell something that the callee doesn't yet know they need.

Empresa a) is subject to optimization: the company want to employ the fewest people [at the lowest wage] so that the customer is not made to wait an unacceptably long time. I'm sure that, in the instant gratification world, the time we are prepared to wait on hold listening to Greensleeves is diminishing. But you defo don't want to have your employees looking at the ceiling or chatting among themselves. Presumably the big places run on shifts because there are people awake 24/7 somewhere in the world. And I guess that more people come into work when the USA starts to wake up and finds their Amazon parcel hasn't arrived or they need a new smartphone. And there should be a hierarchy on the floor, beginners handling the routine calls; more experienced workers dealing with the rarer or more technical problems [thank you for your call, we value your custom, I am transferring you to technical support]; and I imagine that there are hard-nosed people who can take anger, contempt and abuse without losing sleep about it. I wrote before about choosing a nom-de-call, like Attracta Looney, so that you could leave the work at work

With Empresa b) you want, rather, to maximise the return on your investment in cold-caller salary. One way must be to set targets and identify an Earner-of-the-Week and let go those who consistently fail to deliver the fish. Two factors here 1) efficiency of the operatives = how many successful calls per billable hour 2) the cost per operative. The second factor is why there are fewer call centres are operating in Waterford - it's the minimum wage, silly.

I encountered the hierarchy on the cold call side this year, when I was set up by a 'junior employee' to talk to a 'penions expert'. That didn't turn out well for the Junior when his ambition sort of outstripped his ability.
Q. What's lowest form of life on the call centre payroll?
A. A robot!
Both His Blobbiness [self] and The Beloved have independently encountered one of these bottom feeders in the last week.
<Dring> <dring>
Hello
Your account with Eircom has been compromised, the sky is about to fall on your home, crushing your loved ones. Press 1 and we will protect you.
<drrrmmmmm>
That business model must work. Some people, a bit simple, or technophobic, or groggy with sleep, press 1 and tumble into a rabbit-hole down which we were both too afeared to venture. The responders must be fewer [the robovoice is the opposite of empathic] than for a personable and enthusiastic real person. But The Company isn't paying the robot; only the workers in the second circle of hell. I presume that the latter will be calmly asking for credit card details, PINs and passwords as the only way to stop the sky falling now.  There is no illegal or exploitative activity going on wherever you live: that happens abroad.

impersonation

Impersonation is a right regular pain in the arse of the internet: so many Nigerian Princes with spare cash and employees from the late-night bank security team. In Ireland it is a crime to impersonate a member of the Gardai.: you may be fined or spend 5 years in the slammer if convicted. In some circumstances pretending to be A.N. Other is harmless fun (Ms Veranda Porch) or positively protective (Ms Attracta Looney). That last link is also about the birth and naming of Gdau.II who, with her nucl.family, has been in Ireland for the month of August. They normally live in England but have been visiting the Crumblies and also travelling about seeing the sights, hanging out with peers and other scions of the family tree. 

It was arranged that The Parents have a two night quality time break together, while The Kids, now 8 and 12 y.o., go to Dublin with their Aunties. For such an adventure noms-de-plume were in order. Irish Rail has been getting better and better over the last 30 years. The provincial rail service is still absurdly light: there are only 7 trains a day between Dublin and Waterford. But you can book tickets on-line and change reservations ad lib until departure. The carriages are all wired up, not only with WiFi, but also little electronic seat IDs to match the booking number. Nobody remembers their booking number, so you may opt to have your name beside your assigned seat. GDPR requires that the naming of seats is opt-in rather than opt-out.

It would never occur to me to use another name in such circumstances but the Gdaus are more imaginative. Accordingly, yesterday Hérr Van De Guard and his diminutive and sassy assistant Murgle Turgle went to town in carriage B. This evening, after seeing the sights with "Auntie Perspirant" and "Auntie Climactic", they will be reunited with their freshly pampered parents. Lest State Security tries to follow the movements of the intrepid adventurers, they are returning as Bubble Tea and Plopper Suitcase . . . you'll never take them alive coppers!

Added value

Last year 2015 Irish farmers planted the lowest acreage - 8500 ha - of potatoes for at least 20 years, this was down 20% on the previous year because potato prices have been falling for several years.  Prices are down partly because demand is down: Murphy is no longer eating murphys because he's eating quinoa and pizza rather than the traditional bacon & cabbage and b'iled spuds. What to do? Farmer's are in general a) not stupid and b) adaptable and if potatoes are not profitable they'll hunt out a contract for malting barley or oats.  But if you're enterprising you can stay in the potato business, cut out the middle-man and turn a profit.  That's what the Keogh family of North County Dublin have done.  Aghast at getting only €300/tonne for their Golden Wonders, they have 'taken the bell through' and are now selling their own potato crisps [chips to yankee-dogs].

We had the whole family visiting for Easter The Boy + 3, Dau.I and Dau.II.  It's been a bit a squeeze for beds: people are stacked like cord-wood upstairs but the quality of the food has cranked up several notches.  One of the products that popped up on Sunday was a 6 x 40g multi-pack of Keogh's Crisps, which retails for €3.69 at Tesco that compares to a six-pack x 25g of the traditional Tayto Cheese&Onion at €1.97.  Keogh's thus give themselves a 17% mark-up as well as being more generous in the portion control. I'll assume that Tesco gets €1.69 for unloading a pallet of Keogh's crisps and having one of their miniwage drones load the packets onto the shelves. That leaves €2.00 wholesale for Keogh's Inc.  Maths says they have converted €300/tonne into €8300/tonne by putting a lot of labour, expertise and ingenuity into the base product.  Not to mention a lab for doing research and product development [which might be Mrs Keogh's kitchen, for all we know]; potato scrubbers, peelers and slicers; banks of deep friers and a lot of hired hands to make it all happen.

"for all we know?" some might think we know rather too much about the Keogh's operation. The back of each packet tells us the variety of potato we're eating [Lady Claire] the field in which it grew [Springhill] and who cooked the crisps [Zintra & Sebastin]. That's homely and a lot better than some opaque product/batch code which just makes me think about product recall because broken glass or a dead mouse has been discovered in a packet of crisps. I dunno about Zintra and Sebastin: they look like typos or maybe noms de plume like my pal working in a tele-sales centre under the handle Attracta Looney.

What's so good about Keogh's? Let's look at the Table of Contents of, say, their Cheese and Onion crisps: Keogh's Potatoes (60%), Sunflower Oil, Onion (3%), Dried Dubliner Cheese (Milk), Lactose (Milk), Dried Vegetarian Cheese (Milk), Rice Flour, Salt, Yeast Extract, Parlsey, Garlic, Rapeseed Oil, Acidity Regulator: Lactic Acid & Calcium Lactate (Milk), Paprika Extract. Dunno about you, but I find that a surprising amount of Sunflower Oil: it can hardly be less than 30%. But at least there is no water added, like you find in Benecol or other margarines.  They warn the worried well that there are traces of (Milk). But you can't escape from the stuff; even the Salt & Vinegar crisps have added lactose Keogh's Potatoes (60%), Sunflower Oil, Sea Salt (3%), Lactose (Milk), Sugar, Dried Llewllyn's Cider Vinegar (contains maltodextrin), Dried Malt Vinegar (contains maltodextrin), Dried Balsamic Vinegar (contains maltodextrin), Yeast extract, Citric acid, Malic Acid, Natural Flavouring, Vegetable Oil. Here's a thought: how bad would the crisps be without adding lactose? In case you are utterly clueless about food and diet, the Keogh's tell you on the front of the packet that their crisps are "GLUTEN FREE".  Yup, they are also haemoglobin free, keratin free, patchouli free and kitchen-sink free.

Small but perfectly formed

We've just returned from a voyage across the sea to England to visit with the rellies. The star attraction was the new grand-daughter, hereinafter called GD2, who was launched into the world a very few days before her great-grandmother slipped out of it.  I'm sorry they never got to smell each other, but at least, through the wonders of Skype, the younger one could be seen from afar. She was given her first name, in the normal Western way, by her parents. In 1800, a dozen given names accounted for almost all people in England.  Mary (24%) and John (22%) were the most common names for boys and girls, but the top ten names were used by 82% and 85% of girls and boys respectively. No child is called Mary or John anymore, and the distribution is much flatter: at The Institute, it's rare to have two people in a lab-section [N=18] with the same name. The fashion now is for names that were unknown 200 years ago: Brett and Chesney; Dylan and Errigal.  At least those sound like the name you could give to a person (or a horse, indeed); celebrities and others seem to give damn-fool names to their children simply to shock their parents: Frou-frou, Tinkerbelle, Plum-duff. They should rather look to the future and imagine how much unwonted attention a really bizarre name is going to bring down on the head of their offspring, as it gets flushed down the toilet at primary school.  For the last 40 years I've been awed by a woman I heard on the wireless years ago, who changed her name to "Veranda Porch" pour épater la bourgeoisie.  And The Beloved's oldest sister did cold-call telephone-selling for a while a few years ago and was advised to pick a pseudonym, so that she could be clearly identified but could walk away from the job at the end of the day.  She chose "Attracta Looney".

ANNyway, back to GD2, who was given a second name a week ago by a couple of Buddhist monks, originally from Sri Lanka. The child's mother was brought up in Northern England in the Buddhist tradition and they have a naming ceremony which has less water than a Christian baptism but an equivalent focus on inducting the newest member into the community. I like the idea that two bhikkhus [those who live attentively, are present, dignified and irreproachable, containing mere desires and emotions, and restfully  patient in all circumstances] unrelated to the child get to choose a 'spiritual' name as an timeless counter-balance to what the parents pick. Sumedhā as you ask: meaning Great Wisdom. No pressure, kidder!

I am become Mark

Interesting repost from Tywkiwdbi about charity-scamming.  Using the sprat of a $check$ you become caught as the mackerel that will keep being solicited`by the whores of the charity sector.  I've commented before about overhead in the fund-raising sector. You are exhorted to do some research before you Give: to ascertain how much of your donation goes to front-line services and how much filling the waist-bands of the CEO, the Board of Trustees, the Fund-raising Liaison Officer. We were naive enough to get some of our work published in what some have flagged as being a predatory journal - an academic journal which lives off the page-charges rather than for scientific credibility.

This has had the unfortunate effect of flagging my mail-box for "we'll have some of that money, stupid " campaigns. Targetting your mail-campaigns is less crucial now that you no longer have to pay to put a stamp on an envelope but being efficient must have some benefits. These solicitations have been quaintly illiterate and wonky on apostrophes and I will not be responding to them directly.  I enclose an editted list, so as to help you-the-reader get "your vast expertise and eminent contribution" Out There.

The breadth of subjects which some of these publications embrace is almost as butterfly-like as The Blob: aging, badgers, calendars, drugs, engineering, flags, genetics, haematology, islands, jokes, karyotypes; languages, maps . . .

• Dear Dr. Bob Scientist, Greetings for the day!! I am glad to reach you on behalf of World Geochemistry 2017 Organizing Committee, after having a view at your vast expertise and eminent contribution in the research relevant to Geochemistry. We urge you to speak . . . wide range of subjects, to foster learning, inspiration and wonder . . .Warm Regards,, James Michael, Program Manager 
• Dear Dr. Bob Scientist, Greetings of the day! In view of your past publications & research areas, we would like to invite you to the special edition on Community Medicine: Population Health. We are also receiving articles for our Special issues on Entertainment-Education, Community Mental Health Services, Cortisol, Upper respiratory tract infections, Undernutrition, Anaemias. Grace Christy. Jacobs Journal of Community Medicine
• Respected Bob Scientist, Hope this mail finds you in jovial mood! Dentistry [Journal Impact Factor: 1.08] Journal editorial team is in quest of clinical and research articles in subjects such as Prosthodontics, Operative dentistry, Implantology, Endodontics, Periodontics and Dental materials. Kindly let us know your interest towards our invitation. We are waiting for your response. Suruchi Ahuja, Journal Coordinator, Dentistry.
• Dear Colleague,  Greetings from Pollution Control 2017. We have attempted to contact you earlier regarding the Conference and as we are aware of your busy schedule and your engagement in many other activities, we would like to take the pleasure of contacting you again regarding registration towards Pollution Control 2017. It is to inform you that we are providing huge discount on registration packages. Katherine McKnight, Conference Manager.
• Dear Dr.Bob Scientist, I hope you are doing fine. I am pleased to introduce you to the Journal of “Archives in Chemical Research” .The journal is inviting eminent personnel’s for the contribution towards the upcoming Issue. Best Regards, S.Shreena, Journal coordinator, Archives in Chemical Research.
• Dear Author/Researcher, International Journal of Medical Research and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Invites you to submit your research paper for publishing . . . Editor in Chief:
• At least that's blunt and impersonal rather than faux-chummy.
• Attn: Bob. How are you today ?. I have an urgent transaction i want to disclose to you and which will be of great interest to both of us. Thanks. Mr. patel Hassu. READ BELOW CONTENT AND GET BACK TO ME. You may have heard about huge sums of money being stached away and some hidden in private houses,water tamks,warehouses and some shops in shopping malls in Nigeria, Recently Nigeria Government placed certain percentage etc etc.
• Dear Bob Scientist B, Greetings from the Journal of Climatology & Weather Forecasting. Please consider this friendly reminder! It’s a great privilege to write an expert like you about our journal ‘Journal of Climatology & Weather Forecasting’ comprehends focused and broad areas of research . . . Oceanography, Sea surface temperature anomalies, Flood, Thunderstorm, Radar reflectivity, Vertical wind shear . . .in Climate and Weather. With regards, Jerry Pinto, Journal Manager
• Dear Dr.Bob Scientist, Greetings from Advanced Materials 2017! We are happy to bring to your notice that Conference Series is hosting the “13th International Conference and Exhibition on Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology”. Regards, Karthik Daniel | Program Coordinator | Advanced Materials 2017.
• Dear Dr. , Hope you are doing great! We are pleased to inform you that we are launching “Special Issues” for the journal of Virology & Retrovirology Journal. We respectfully invite eminent expert like you to handle (as Editor) a special issue of your interest mentioned below. Looking for your response on publication and your recent project you are working on. Many thanks, Hinemoa Grace.
• Dear Hope this email finds you well! We are pleased to announce a Regular Edition on "Pollution". At the onset, we cordially invite you to submit a manuscript to the upcoming edition on “Pollution.” Jenny Meyer, Editorial Office- SM JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGY (SMJET)
• Dear Colleague, We are currently accepting submissions for Original Articles, Reviews, Short Communications, and Case Reports. We also have a Special Section that includes Letters, Experiences, Interviews and other type of publications from all fields of International Journal of Nursing Didactics (IJND), Journal of Medical Biomedical and Applied Sciences (JMBAS). Best regards, Dr Vivek Daniel Editor.
• Dear Bob Scientist, On behalf of Editorial Board of the British Biomedical Bulletin, I invite you to submit a manuscript to be considered for upcoming issue. The journal aims to publish articles in all aspects of research on Women’s Health, Issues and Care that include topics such as Cell Biology, Developmental Biology, Genetics, Computational Studies, Biophysics, Immunology, Translational Medicine Biomedical Research, Physiology, Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Personalized Medicine, Surgical Instrument etc.
• Dear Dr.Bob Scientist, The Committee welcomes papers on Journal of Aging Research And Healthcare. Manuscripts submitted before July 23, 2017 will be published within in 14 days. Each invited author should make every effort to present his/her paper in this journal by presenting the best innovative article.With warm regards, John Abraham, Editorial Office, OAP 616 Corporate Way, 

This extra traffic is not enough traffic to annoy me and it would be easier to delete this nonsense quietly. But there is a research project here trying to identify, by house style "Greetings of the day!!!!" etc., the journals which come from the same stable. You may imagine that the corporate overheads are less than the "National Cancer Research Institute": probably no more than a hard-working entrepreneur in Bangalore with a cousin in the US who is prepared to check the PO Box in Austin TX which at rare intervals receives a manuscript. You should no more believe that Mr Enterprise O'Bangalore (BA Bombay, failed) is called Grace or Katherine than my call-centred pal who identified herself as Attracta Looney. I guess on the face of it, I'd rather become a Mark for these wannabee Maxwells than like J. Robert Oppenheimer "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds"