Thank you cards

On Saturday morning 18th May a goodly company of wayfarers streamed along our lane on one of the downhill stretches of The Blackstairs Challenge an up-hill and down-dale walk of about 30km. I'm told that next year will be the 20th Anniversary of the first such event, for almost as long we have been making water available for the trekkers: initially with a 25 lt drum and since 2007 from the tap plumbed up in the yard near the front gate. One year, anticipating a phew wot a sorcher of a day, the organisers phoned me up to make sure of supply;  but usually I remember the date and often I make a slab or two of flapjacks. These seem to be appreciated - in any case they are all gone long before the last of the walkers has passed through. But the water, which costs nothing because it falls from the sky, is definitely valued. Unless it is raining in a serious fashion, I usually put out a few wooden benches, and plenty of people use them to change socks, doctor blisters or just take the weight off their abuséd knees.

This year I found a card in an envelope tucked under the empty box of flapjacks. Sincere Thanks, it said Whoever has a heartful of love always has something to give Pope John XXIII. The pedant in me noted the absence of . between give and Pope and suggest that His Holiness has quite enough already. But, heck, let's not carp, someone came prepared a) for flapjacks and b) for the wherewithal to say thanks for them. Puts a tiny bit of pressure on me to remember the date and the recipe next year.  When I picked up the empty box, it rattled and revealed inside €2.50, which is more or less what it takes to make a swiss-roll tinsworth of cookies, so that was appreciated also. I long ago stopped expected people to formally say thanks for services undertaken for the community: all my years editting newsletters and serving on committees and washing mountains of dishes. The revelation was realising that I did those things because I enjoyed doing it; not because I was taking one for the team.

Four years ago, my project students clubbed together and bought me a mug, a packet of biscuits and some tea-bags in acknowledgement that I had been present for/with them for 6 hours a week for 30 weeks. I still have the mug, although its handle and the tea and biks are long gone. Doesn't happen every year, but a couple of weeks ago I had a knock at the door of my office from one of this year's crop of about-to-graduates. S/he presented me with a bar of chocolate and a card by way of saying thanks for her 30 weeks of care&attention. I can do no better than to quote verbatim:
Thank you for the unending support that powered me through my proudest work from these stressful college years. Without your knowledge and help, I wouldn't have been able to find my way through the jungle of bioinformatics. I wouldn't have been able to annotate two previously unannotated genes from little brown bats. The witty e-mails and conversations in D426 are aspects of these years that will be missed. Thank you for re-igniting my passion to 'push the frontiers of science' as it had been dulled from the stress of previous years. I hope you look back on those synteny maps of fantastic design (if I do say it myself) with fondness and know how inspired I feel since rediscovering I have the ability to create something great.
That is exactly on the button. That's one student who had a self-affirming "hey, I can leap tall buildings" experience in room D426 this year: who was given space, and pushed a little, and teased a bit, and worked damned hard to achieve the very best. <Milton alert> That one talent, which is death to hide, is no longer lodged in me useless. It is not about me: the truth is a pathless land - occasionally for a few people (maybe one, occasionally two a year) I can be a finger-post.

What's definitely true is that we don't formally say Thanks half enough.

Acknowledgement

I was going to call this ramble 'Saying Thanks' but I see that I've used that before. In that story it was me being thanked by my students for giving them all my care and attention while they were doing their research project. Every year since I started at The Institute, I've made myself a page of names & thumbnails for all the 1st year classes which I teach, of which there are several. Admin & Registration captures a photograph of each incoming student and reduces it to a postage-stamp on their Student ID card. They also publish the pics under a links called "Student pictures by year and course". Annoyingly they are just slapped up there as they come off the digital camera: when you scrape the image off the web, it fills an A4 page - far too big for any purpose to which the photo might be put. I've gotten quite efficiently robotic in converting these bed-sheets into 10x15 mm snapshots that can print 18-to-the-page for each practical section: I use the wonderful Irfanview. [aside: I also use Irfanview to reduce The Blob's embedded pictures to a few kilobytes so that the pages load quicker in Botswana. The fact that these pics are fuzzy and pixellated is part of The Brand]. Having made a set of student ID sheets for my own bonding benefit, I send them out to the other lecturers on the course. Some of them say thank you.

Last year, it was a disaster, there was a new admin-person in charge of registration and they couldn't or didn't submit the photos for the IT Crowd to upload, classes had been running for nearly two weeks before I had the danged things sorted. This year, it's back to normal pacing. I was so grateful that I could have this teaching aid in the bag before classes started that I sent an appreciative e-mail to Admin Person. I've learned that it doesn't help to send intemperate e-mails when things don't go right. But it is better to notice when things which we take for granted go as normal. Imagine what it would be like if your car didn't start in the morning, or the toaster blew a fuse on your bagel. You'd be silly thanking your toaster but it's no bad thing to thank your bus-driver for delivering you safely.

I was reflecting on this gratitude craic because I watched a vid called The Importance of Reaching Out To Old Teachers [clip L]. It's by Winston Rowntree a Canadian webcomic dude who writes something called Subnormality.  If you've read and retained all 1.3 million words of The Blob, you'll appreciate the importance of a high school biology teacher called Mr Wilkinson in its backstory. When I returned to England with a PhD in biology, about ten years after I left school. I sent Mr Wilkinson a copy of my thesis with a note saying thanks for all the fish, trees, ducks, bluebells, dogfish, mushrooms and dinosaurs that filled your lessons and my mind with wonder. He was clearly bemused, found my thesis obscure to the point of unreadability, but was well mannered enough to acknowledge my contact. He also mentioned that, by a singular coincidence, one of his twin daughters was going to graduate next Summer from the same university in which I was working. I sort of assumed that he'd look me up when he came to her graduation; but it never happened. At the end of last week, I contacted the HoD Biology at the Old School and sent her a fillet-of-Blob all about Wilkinson and his inspirational teaching. He's probably dead now but his daughters are ten years younger than me, and may like to know that their Dad made a difference.

Saying thanks

We don't say Thanks half enough.  It costs so little to acknowledge that someone has done something for you.  In Ireland, the culture of tipping waitrons is nowhere near as highly developed as it is in America, so throwing a handful of change on the table as you leave the café is often seen as enough, if not exactly 'plenty' or 'abundance'.  With two daughters working in the catering trade, it's probably true that the waitron would rather you looked them in the eye when they took your order and brought the buns. Several years ago one Saturday, I went into t'office in TCD and was surprised to meet one of the graduate students from the lab next door shuffling a big stack of papers.  It was Der Tag: the day that her PhD thesis was finally printed and she was collating the copies into five piles for binding at the print-shop.  As you do, I picked up one copy and leafed through to the Acknowledgments, the only bit that anybody but the external examiner reads.  After tribbing her supervisor, her family and her lab mates, she wrote "special thanks are due to Bob "Brain-the-size-of-a-plant" Scientist".  I thought this was so neat and ironic that I laughed out loud, appreciating the deliberate mangling of a tired old phrase with something ambiguous [did she mean the mighty giant redwood Sequoiadendron giganteum or the diminutive genetic work-horse mouse-eared cress Arabidopsis thaliana?]. She was puzzled at my response and, when I explained, got uncharacteristically flustered as she set about reprinting that page 5x with the typo corrected.

In the final year of the biology course in the Institute, all students carry out a final year independent research project. Project students are assigned hours in a particular laboratory each week and peck away at the coal-face under the supervision of a faculty-member. By no means all faculty members opt to dream up and supervise such research projects and remarkably it is optional.  I signed up immediately I was given the opportunity to do so because a) you get some hours off your teaching load and b) it's much more interesting pushing frontiers with some young chap than grinding through a curriculum heavy with ideas and technologies that would not have been out of place in 1915. the project supervisors take turns at acting as the adult physically in the lab. Supervision hours are a bit of a doddle: you can let the students get on with their experiments while you mark lab-copies for another course.  Occasionally one of the students will ask a question on the level of "Where do they keep the pipettes?" but even then you can sit down for an hour and rest the old pins.

Every Monday and Friday morning for the last 30 weeks, I've spent three hours on each day supervising 4th Year Bioinformatic Research Projects. 6x 30 = 180hrs = nearly 1/3 of my teaching load. It's the first year that a whole section of the final year cohort have opted to do a computational biology project, rather than tricking about with eppendorfs, Petri dishes and spectrophotometers in the lab.  This is possibly because that door has never been offered for them to push open; but it's also probably because I caught them at the end of Third Year and gave them 3 hours of war-stories about my triumphs and failures while pushing the frontiers of molecular evolution.  I gave them 3 hours, above and beyond my 600 hour/year teaching quota, because I've only had three good ideas in a lifetime of science and a fourth hour would have been punctuated by very long silences.

In the end, 16 students got to carry out compu-projects in one of the computer suites of the business school. I was only officially supervising half of them, the others were pursuing ideas from one or other of my colleagues. But I was the adult in the room so they became the B team: B for Bob, B for Bioinformatics. This has not been a doddle: for each three hour session I've been gabbing on with someone from the start to the finish of the allocated time. One part of the B-team used to arrive at 10am, leave their kit and pop out for a coffee-and-chat break.  For the rest, some were religious in being there for every class while others seemed to have a lot of other engagements; there was no correlation between this variable and how far their part of the frontier was pushed. It was all the most tremendous fun, juggling all these different investigations in my head.  The kids soon learned that it was hopeless to start a sentence with "Remember what you said last week . . ." On the one hand, I found myself trying to rein back the enthusiasts as they went off the rails of the possible. On the other side of the room five minutes later I'd be pushing pushing pushing a student up what I thought was a gentle intellectual incline and he acted like I was asking him to scale Mt Impossible without iCrampons. And every project was unique: different organisms, different tools, different deliverables. It was mostly about getting each one to to fulfill their potential and a little bit more - not unlike home education with Dau.I and Dau.II all over again.

The deadline for submission of their project report and their literature review [3 copies] bound together as a single document was 1pm on Friday 17th April, which gave the supervisors a week in term time to read and mark the things. Because it was a physical copy, the students had to find me or find their supervisor rather than whack off an e-mail.  I dropped into the class at 10am and again about 12.50 in case anyone had turned up to class or didn't know where my office was.  Nobody there, but as I walked back across the concourse I was stopped by the coffee-and-chat ladies, still acting in concert.  They presented me with a little glossy-paper gift-bag containing a) a mug [R] b) a packet of tea-bags and c) some rich-tea biscuits d) a note "For all the tea-breaks you missed because of us . . . have a drink on us" e) a card signed by everyone in the B-team. They hopped from one foot to the other until I'd opened everything up.  It was >!gulp!< right on the button. They had read me so well - I would have been appalled if they'd spent a lot of money on something that was of no use.  They were really paying me back, touché, in my own kind after all my ironic comments about privileging tea-breaks over work.  Has that ever happened to me before? I reckon not. So thanks!  On the back of the binfo-mug in smaller letters it says "Thanks for everything Bob, love the B Team"  I do I do!

Paying forward, tidying up

At the start of Coronarama, An Post, the semi-state mail carrier, delivered post-free post-cards to every domestic address in the country. What's not to love about a freebie? As we have a good relationship with our postie, I scabbed a few more from him as he took my completed cards away to distant friends-and-relations. I heard that you could pick up extras in the Post Office and I sent about 30 in the end. It was like scattering seed corn in a gale; it's silly to expect any return. But I did get one postcard back! And maybe ~10 responses through other media. All those responses were ++ positive: what's not to like about getting a letter, with hand-written address, in among the bills and circulars? Then again <confirmation bias> who was going to reply objecting to my PC intrusion on their door mat? One positive outcome was an expression of delight from an old friend who stopped speaking to me 10 years ago.

In January An Post went to the well again, distributing another batch of free postcards to homes round the country. They must have printed a lot, because I was able to scrounge up a couple of dozen and commit them to Bank of Social Capital. Some of them went to the usual suspects [Dau.I, Dau.II, Rissoles, Russ etc.] but others required a bit of research effort to determine an address and Eircode. I kited one fluffy upbeat msg to another old friend who told me never to darken his door again in 2016; but it didn't elicit a response. Actually that's not true: I am sure it had some effect in melting the cold dead heart of his resentment - nobody likes to be told that they are wrong, especially if it's true. But I didn't get a sunny green postcard back! We so rarely acknowledge the work of those who render us good service or a smile. The Oil-man, the receptionist at the dentist, the vaccinators, the Aldo shelf-stackers. Going out on the street and clapping into the ether at the government's behest, is not at all the same as making eye-contact with someone in a dehumanising uniform and saying thanks. Actually sod the thanks; as Dau.II has discovered the eye-contact, the acknowledgment of existence is fine because exceptional.

In the 90s I put a lot of effort into the quarterly newsletter of the EuroQuango in which I represented Ireland. I was the most active member of the editorial board and wrote a lot of the copy as well as put it all in shape for publication. My book reviews there, thoughtful, occasionally funny comments on the current state of science, were a fore-runner of The Blob. In the 00s, I had a similar relationship with the quarterly newsletter for HEN the Home Education Network. Even when I wasn't editting the newsletter, for that decade I undertook to submit something for every number; having discovered how hard it is to secure contributions to such things. I've recycled some of those timeless jewels articles on The Blob. It was like the post-cards, everyone liked getting the newsletter in the post but never enough to acknowledge receipt, let alone give encouraging feedback. I know that's true because IF the newsletter went out <3 weeks before our annual gathering THEN people would chat to me in the lunch queue about something they'd read ELSE the newsletter just slipped off the radar and over the horizon of give-a-damn. My epiphany [2007?] was twigging that I loved writing and kiting those articles and reviews and the process itself was sufficient reward.

Those book reviews, those HENny ruminations, those past Blobs are mere ephemera: worth notice but often time limited. They are rarely as good with hindsight as they seemed at the time. I have, many times, scratched my thinning silver pate, reading old copy from The Blob: what does this even mean? what was I on? 

What brought that all one? Well, I was chatting to The Boy last Thursday [must make a habit of that] about clearing papers, having decided that nobody is going to write my biography, so stacks of birthday cards, dentist Bills, Aldi receipts for angle grinders, letters from dead people are just clutter for my heirs. In his day, The Boy was a champion letter writer, his friends keep them because they were a shot in the arm at the time. But to the nearest whole number in an average year, 0 zero nul no letters came back. Doing triage on my mother's papers after she went to her final nursing home took 3 or 4 solid weekends of work. Snap decisions had to be made about whether this letter from someone we'd never 'eard of was worth reading/keeping. It's a courtesy to those who come after to leave things orderly.

Putting your affairs in order

That above would be the eight still-with-itus who were selected in 2018 by the Royal Irish Academy RIA to represent 21stC Irish Women in Science because they had recently secured a European Research Council ERC Starter Grant. In all of Ireland, in all the world, the RIA couldn't discover a woman capable fo painting such a group portrait; so they gave the contract to Blaise Smith.  Aoife McLysaght is identified by the arrow and I was up in Dublin recently for her professorial Inaugural Lecture in our Alma Mater TCD. I've outlined McLysaght's career on The Blob. Getting your Professorial "Chair" is a big deal. As well as doing excellent research [attracting a boodle of cash to the University] and teaching, you will have had to win some prestigious external awards [like the ERC grant] and served time on the boring-but-necessary administrative tasks like Head of Department, Registrar or the Dean of Insomnia. 

The Event turned out to be a  great networking event. I was able to introduce two young scientists of my acquaintance whose overlapping fields of interest could use a synergistic boost. I got to chat with Simone George my favorite autodidact of science and fight over the canapés with a bunch of people whom I hadn't seen in the present century but who were there when I was giving McLysaght her start in molecular evolution / bioinformatics 25 years ago. And of course it was nice to be acknowledged by name during the lecture for creating the opportunity. Saying thanks for those little nudges in your career path is important - it tidies up the loose ends.

So it was perhaps appropriate that on the bus up to town I was listening to The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson with Jane Magnusson read by Juliet Stevenson. It was on the NYT best-seller list for weeks in 2018. It's hard to see why because it's quite opinionated and weak on evidence and addresses a topic [end of life] which many people pretend isn't going to happen . . . to them. I may have missed something. I am aware that I missed a chunk in the middle of the book because I slumped into a drooling sleep some time after Arklow and didn't wake up until Kilmacanogue.  The diktats advice from Grandma Magnusson is that a) you can't take your stuff with you b) chances are none of your descendants will have the same, or any, associations with any of it c) as a courtesy to them, you should give, or dump almost all of it while you are still capable of making decisions and hauling a bag of papers to the shredder.

Of course, framed like that, I cannot but agree. But too often the author slips from advice and suggestions into prescriptive rules that can or should be universally implemented. I have for example been inconsistent about keeping birthday cards. Some Junes they have finished up in an envelope with the year written on the outside; other times they've got lost in the clutter of LIDL catalogues and electricity bills; after at least one birthday I was feeling salty enough to dump them all in the trash (when nobody was looking). As my cards & papers are as patchy and random as the Sibylline Books, an argument could be made that a clean sweep (into a bonfire) is the simplest solution.

But I'll tell ya one thing. In 2018, we again did triage on the books which, lacking shelf-space in the relative dry of our heated home, had been relegated to shelves in one of the sheds. Two years ago, these were again sorted and some went into Tesco-crates marked "Bob to keep, 2021".  I just checked on those and they are positively furry; so I can't love them that much, eh?

Reaching back

I haven't been super-proactive on this front but I do believe in saying thanks if someone has done you a good turn - even if it's just their job. One of those links cited an 8min vid about thanking your old high-school teacher. Mine was Mr Wilkinson. Just about 2 months after I wrote about it in 2018, I got an unsolicited message on LinkedIn:

Are you the Bob Scientist who taught Evolution in the Genetics Department in the 1980s?

When I answered in the affirmative, he confessed that he'd been on a real bumpy commercial plane ride in California and realised that he'd never thanked the few people who had made a difference . . . and that I was in that exclusive club. That's memory speaking to make it more dramatic; the actuality was more prosaic: "On a car ride, I realised that there were a few people like you, who had changed my trajectory positively, but I had never thanked for it! I am delighted that the Internet was so efficient at finding you." We to-fro'd about the old days and I shared a few Blobs. Partly because of my talking about evolution and how to think, Mike [let's call him Mike] was now CEO of a small enterprise SME in Pharma. 

Head Office was in Manchester, but there was an office in California and another somewhere in Europe. It sounded like a few people were making a living out of his enterprise. We were going great guns by e-mail and Mike suggested that I might like to fly to Manchester in the summer to act as The Disruptor at one of the company's monthly business and future meetings. I was flattered, of course, but I have a reasonably well-tuned crap-detector and reckoned I could earn a consultant's fee if I went to Manchester a couple of times a year to hang out and give an Outsider's view on their internal certainties. It might grow into a nice little earner, like my foray into pop sci writing for money. At the time, I was two years off  living on my state Old Age Pension of ~€1,000 pcm. One over-nighter in The Maldron Manchester would double my income for that month - and I could loot little jam-servings off the breakfast buffet!

Well friends, my dreams of becoming a roving intellectual on the SME Pharma nickel was still-born. Mike announced that he was flying to the California office the following day and we could firm up details when he returned the following week. It never happened. Some time later I gathered [or maybe fantasized: see above for over-active memory] that Mike had been refused entry by US customs & immigration and had been whooshed back to England without leaving the terminal at SFO! It can happen to the best of us [* like me - see next para] and doesn't have to involve anything nefarious. It surely wasn't my business to pry. The US Visa issues didn't clear up and it seems that Mike's company collapsed - if the CEO cannot visit the US Office (where most of the revenue derives) it could fashion an insurmountable barrier. There certainly wasn't sufficient fat in the company to entertain Disruptors. Mike is now operating as a sole-trader in more or less the same field: you can't bury a good entrepreneur.

[*] For many years you have been able to clear US immigration at Dublin [and Shannon]. In the 00s, I set off to visit BOS with my UK [special relationship] passport. On the previous post-9/11 visit my visaless passport had been okay for travel; but now that privilege only worked if it was a machine readable passport - security theatre kept moving the goal-posts. The INS was perfectly polite about it, but refused me entry and I was escorted out through a side-door to a featureless concrete corridor somewhere in the bowels of Dublin airport. Eventually I opened a one-way door, popped out into the short-stay car-park and went home to re-group and re-book. I'd bought a 3for2 deal of big box Lily O'Brien chocolates in duty free for my several US hosts. The kids were accordingly delighted to see Father Chocolate back home much earlier than expected.

Whacaccino go again

[You're getting this because of a weird blogspot glitch. I wrote an earlier version of this piece but when I pressed the [publish] button the thing disappeared from 'drafts' but failed to appear on the website. So I sat  down to recreate the post while it was still fresh in my 'memory'. An hour and a half later, I recd an e-mail from one of the handful of folks who get Blobs delivered, at their request, by e-mail a) saying thanks and b) attaching the whole text of the lost ms. Turns out that the recreated rewrite was pretty close [see alignment at bottom].  So apologies if you've seen something very similar to this before. Further investigation showed that the post, launched on 7th October was somehow published with a date of 28th September; probably because I messed up on 'scheduling']  
Mais revenons a nos breuvages!

What do you call a dentist who doesn't like tea?
Denis.
Why do Communists only drink infusions? 
Because proper tea is theft.
I've been having a fare amount of tea anxiety recently. Me, like George Orwell, I'm a simple chap, and because of the culture in which I was brought up, I like a nice cup of tea [R source] When I was young and full of vim, I made tea by spooning leaves into a mug and brewing the stuff hot and strong. When the restoring cuppa was finished, I'd often spoon out the soggy tea-leaves and eat them too - rrrrroughage!  Now, however . . .
The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound
. . . I make my tea weak. So weak indeed that it is more like making mystical passes with a tea-bag over the cup than actually brewing tea.

I have no time at all for 'infusions' of chamomile, rooibos, ginger&goatsblood, bedtime, woowah-lift, fennel. These are not tea. I am with Wikipedia for the definition: Tea is an aromatic beverage commonly prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub native to Asia. I'd even make a, not really strongly argued, case that these infusions are potentially hazardous because, while tea and coffee have been extensively investigated by biochemists and medical science, we know much less about the chemical contents of random herbs and bushes that you find behind the potting shed.  While I'm moaning about misnamed beverages, I'll have a swipe at almond, soya, oat milk. I'm sorry but these are not milk any more than chamomile is tea. What evolution has developed as a miracle elixir for raising mammal-pups, the food engineer has to imitate with chemistical emulsion. Compare:

• Soy milk
• Filtered Water, Whole Soybeans, Cane Sugar, Sea Salt, Carrageenan, Natural Flavor, Calcium Carbonate, Vitamin A Palmitate, Vitamin D2, Riboflavin (B2), Vitamin B12.
• Milk
• Milk

Quite apart from the semantic objections, here is a list of reasons why soymilk is dodgy. To ring the changes in an exciting life, on Saturday, at home, if it is going, I'll have medium-large cappuccino. I don't do Starbucks, so I don't know the difference between cappuccino and latte, and I may be getting the latter. This Saturday coffee ritual was a cause of huge amusement to our Polish pal Tadek who stayed with us for two winters 10 years ago: "Hej Bobek, saboda, kawa har har har" then he'd make me keep him company eating chunks of cold pork fat because we were men.

Occasionally, coffee will be off-menu and the current replacement is Macaccino which is a combination of three completely different plant-products:

• Carob is the bean from the carob tree Ceratonia siliqua which in Order Fabales included with peas, beans and the locust tree.
• Maca from the root of  Lepidium meyenii a member of the Order Brassica / Crucifer which includes mustard, kale, radish and cabbage.
• Lucuma is from the fruit of an Andean tree Pouteria lucuma, Order Ericales, the heathers, but  also including tea, persimmon, azalea and blueberry.

As you see these ingredients are not a million miles from recognisable food-plants but each will have its own pharmacopoeia and who knows what will happen if the raw ingredients are dried, powdered and mixed with hot water?  Part of the effort to push this beverage out on the market so that some entrepreneur can build a ranch-house with a hot-tub overlooking the Pacific coast, is to present a lot of dubious claims and hype on a web-site. I've been to macaccino.com and been snowed under with data, which I love because data-is-analysis but also presented with dubious claims and assertions Dense superfood nutrition  - boosts immunity - adaptogen energy - healthy fatty acids etc. But there's also a sort of patronizing gloss to the snow-job. Here's Aaron telling how to make a cup of his product. How difficult can it be to spoon powder into a cup and add white emulsion and hot water, that it requires an instructional video?

But we haven't time to be drinking hot beverages all morning when there are data to analyse. Aaron has employed some real biochemists to digest the proteins in his cocktail to their component amino acids and reports their concentration in mg/10g powder. This is has the ring of truth because two of the twenty protein-constituent amino acids are missing. The amides Asparagine Asn N and Glutamine Gln Q aren't in the list because when you do a proteolytic digestion you destroy the amide bonds as well as the peptide bonds and convert these amides to their equivalent acid: Aspartic acid Asp D and Glutamic acid Glu E. I give the three-letter and 1-letter abbreviations [prev] in all cases. What's troubling is that Cysteine Cys C is nowhere to be found in Macaccino. That cannot to be true and must be a piece of slack-bob editting. Elsewhere on the site, an infographic of the benefits of particular amino acids appears. Cysteine appears there <whoop whoop internal inconsistency alert>; but Serine Ser S is missing and they've invented a 21st amino acid called maganese. Thinking from those errors and inconsistencies that the whole list of ingredients might be a bill-of-goods,, I compared the relative concentrations to the proportions found in UniProt the database of protein sequences. The graph of that analysis [R], show that the proportions are 'within the normal range' and that Arginine and Glutamic acid are higher in Macaccino than you might expect. As well as being an essential component of all proteins, Glutamic acid, serves us as a neurotransmitter. If the marketeers at Macaccino were scientifically literate <harrumph!> they might seize this information and add it to the miracle-grow benefits of their product.

Exit strategy

eeeee when I were a nipper we had a TV (but not before 1960 - I guess the price came down and general adoption of The Box went up, so my folks caved to the new normal). It was pretty rough stuff: tiny screen, two channels, black-and-white; but it made a change from sniffing glue assembling Airfix models. One of the early game shows was Take Your Pick compered by Kiwi Talent Michael Miles. The deal involved contestants picking one from a number of unopened boxes each of which contained a prize [cash or stuff] - including 3/10  Booby Prizes. Having made the choice Mr Miles offered, as an alternative, increasing amounts of folding money.  The amusement was in the jeopardy of taking the [known quantity] of cash and so losing the chance at {picnic set | a cup of tea | mousetrap | washing-machine | Ford Anglia}. Nobody in the studio knew [so double-blind ✓✓] what was in any of the boxes but that didn't stop the studio audience roaring out "Take the Money" and/or "Open the Box".

I was reminded of this when I tried to wind up our existing wireless broadband with Three.ie, having sold my soul to the Vodafone comp'ny store at the end of July. There are 29 separate companies all jockeying to get their snouts in this government pork-barrel and we only went with Vodafone because our abutting neighbour had. The fibre connexion was duly installed and it seemed to work at least as well as our wireless; so all we needed to do was terminate our agreement with Three . . .The easiest way seemed to be engaging with the Three Support Bot

• Hi, we're having difficulties logging into our three account to manage the bill. Can you advise me on how to set up the online account? My account number is 30XXXXX70
• Three Support at 17:53, Aug 8 Please choose one of the following . . .
  

Eventually The Support Bot opened the gate to Agent Suraj D who got us part of the way. We marshalled the necessary data and logged in again. This time, after submitting all the data a second time. Agent Rakesh allowed us to establish our identity . . . until Conversation closed by you  at 18:27, Aug 8.

With our ducks in a row we dived in for the third time to meet Agent Priyanka

• You at 18:44, Aug 8: We've done our 18 months since 5th July and wish to cancel the account
• Priyanka at 18:57, Aug 8: May I know the reason you like to cancel the account?
• You at 18:58, Aug 8: We got rural fibre-optic broadband installed last week and sold out to Vodafone
• Priyanka at 18:59, Aug 8: Thanks for confirming
• Priyanka at 19:00, Aug 8: I see that you are on 3 Unlimited Broadband-18 Month plan and I have something for you
• Priyanka at 19:01, Aug 8: I can offer you the brand new broadband for Free on the 3 Broadband Unlimited plan with unlimited data
• Priyanka at 19:01, Aug 8: This is completely Free.
• Priyanka at 19:01, Aug 8: You can take it and can sell the current modem at a good price. Would you like to get it?
• You at 19:02, Aug 8: No thank you, my life is too complicated already.
• Priyanka at 19:06, Aug 8: I can offer you 2 months line rental for Free if you go on a 12 months contract for the same plan. Would you like to take it?
• You at 19:07, Aug 8: No thanks, Priyanka
• Priyanka at 19:08, Aug 8: I can offer you 1 months line rental for Free if you go on a 6 months contract for the same plan.
• You at 19:08, Aug 8: Nope, thanks for trying.
• Priyanka at 19:09, Aug 8: I can offer you €10 discount for 12 months if you take the plan for 12 months
• You at 19:10, Aug 8: Nope.
• Priyanka at 19:13, Aug 8: I can offer you SIMO deal which will be a rolling plan No contract
• You at 19:14, Aug 8: Nope, It's not health insurance. It's got to be simpler than this
• Priyanka at 19:15, Aug 8: I am checking cancellation details
• Priyanka at 19:15, Aug 8: The contract end date is 05/07/2023 00:00 If you wish to cancel the account then you will need to serve 30 days notice and the account will be cancel on 7th Sept, 2023 And you will get the final bill 14 days after the disconnection date
• Priyanka at 19:16, Aug 8: Shall I take the notice?
• You at 19:17, Aug 8: yes
• Priyanka at 19:18, Aug 8: We are very sorry to lose you as a customer right now, but we would love the opportunity to be able to welcome you back again sometime. Would you be happy for us to contact you in future with our latest deals, and fantastic offers? Rest assured any contact will be relevant to your account.
• Priyanka at 19:18, Aug 8: Would you be happy for us to contact you in future with our latest deals, and fantastic offers?
• You at 19:19, Aug 8: Please don't contact. But thank you personally for your help
• Priyanka at 19:19, Aug 8: Sure
• Priyanka at 19:19, Aug 8: Would you like to unlock your current modem?
• You at 19:20, Aug 8: What would that do?
• Priyanka at 19:20, Aug 8: You can use any SIM in the modem. Or can sell it
• Priyanka at 19:21, Aug 8: I've taken the 30 days notice on the account and the account will be cancel on 7th Sept, 2023
• You at 19:21, Aug 8: okay, then yes please
• Priyanka at 19:21, Aug 8: Would you like to unlock your current modem?
• Priyanka at 19:22, Aug 8: I've placed the unlocking for you and within next 2 working days you will get an update on the unlocking via email
• Priyanka at 19:22, Aug 8: I appreciate your understanding and patience in this matter, Bob.😊
• Priyanka at 19:22, Aug 8: Is that all for today?
• You at 19:23, Aug 8: yes, thank you and good night . . . morning!
• Priyanka at 19:23, Aug 8: You're most welcome. Bob. Have a great day ahead. 😊
• Conversation closed by the agent  at 19:23, Aug 8: 

Working on the assumption that my time is worth €51.40/hr [as it was when I was doing off-contract teaching]. It cost me €76.60 [=~ two months internet] just to close the account. With all the options and offers that become available if you just keep saying "No Thanks You Mr Miles, I'll open the box", it might be worth it to negotiate each contract. But to engage in a fully comprehensive research plan to get the Best Deal, you need a working week - 29 potential suppliers each with their Sales Bots x 1½ hours - to obtain all the Best Offer details.
 

GeordieGate

My first PhD-accredited job was to teach a six week Summer course in Genetics for Boston University just after I graduated from the same place. That teaching experience was instrumental in getting me a sub-assistant-lectureship at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, my first of many short term contracts. After 3 x 2 years, I retired from that position in 1989, half a lifetime ago. As a retired full-time member of the academic staff, I'm on their mailing list, mainly it seems to get invited to memorials for other retirees. It was weird getting those calls in my 30s, and more appropriate now.

In December last year, I was cold-called at work by a bloke with a more-or-less Geordie accent (so we'll call him Geordie). He worked for a Fund & Asset Management company, claimed to be a graduate of U.NuponT, and wondered if I could use some help in planning and providing for my pension . . . which he knew was imminent. It was timely and I agreed to talk to one of their finance chappies (who was too important to do his own cold-calling) the following week. That telecon was useful because I found out that I _could_ transfer my pension entitlements from University Superannuation Scheme USS and consolidate them elsewhere. With F&AM, or in Ireland, for example, with the pitiful fragments of pension that I have since accumulated here. It was also useful because our discussion revealed what 6 years of contributions, at the very bottom of the pay-scale, 30+ years ago might be worth now. It was a bit more than "a Mars-bar a week" which I'd ruefully been telling everyone about; nearer to 2 lattes a day. We agreed that I wasn't the biggest fish that the Company had hooked that week, and they definitely weren't hunting me up to transfer my loot to their vaults.

Last week, I got an unsolicited e-mail from young Geordie inviting me to read something he'd posted about Brexit on LinkedIn. By the time I'd read that e-mail, it had accumulated a handful of cc:replies: some polite, some incandescent with rage; most of them asking for a cease-and-desist on any more such mails. Unfortunately, Georgie had cc:ed his nondescript message to 490 people, who were a) important enough to network through LinkedIn [a low bar I admit] b) currently working outside of UK and so more likely to care about Brexit. A couple of hours later we all got a pathetic mail just saying hopefully "Recall: Brexit message". That was followed by more angry and schoolmarmy messages; another begging people to stop replying and one saying "please keep me on the list Geordie, this traffic is the best fun I've had all week".

Four Five things come not back -- the spoken word, the sped arrow, the sent email, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.  Ancient Arabic proverb. Rumi? Ibn Battuta? Omar Khayyam? Omar Sharif?

The next day, we happy 490, we band of brothers, received, separately [cc: has probably been disabled by their IT Crowd] a very formal apology from Fund & Asset's Data Protection Officer assuring us that

• they take their GDPR responsibilities very seriously. 
• they had disciplined Geordie "a junior employee"; 
• deleted his list; 
• they had grassed themselves up to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO); 
• and taken action to protect our privacy and security.

all fair enough. But it smelled of white-wash, so I replied:
Dear F&A DPO,
I'm sorry for Geordie who seemed a pro-active, personable and ambitious person; useful to have about in a business that needs to grow to survive. The outraged response from some of the Geordiegate participants was mildly amusing on a slow-news day. I feel I have friends all over the world now! As well as hanging Geordie out to dry, your company might pause to reflect on whether corporate culture, targets and incentives - and poor training and management - could shoulder some of the blame for why it happened. But that's for HR, not you and me.
Best,
Bob
Which could sound pompous and tsk tsk finger-wagging but was taken up as I intended:
Dear Bob,
Thanks for your reply. It was an amusing response that provided a smile on an otherwise difficult day.
Geordiegate shall be remembered.
Kind regards,
Which caused me a tiny tinge of red face for not considering how the DPO and the rest of the company's management had been feeling about the matter. You may be sure that Geordie wasn't the only person disciplined in the aftermath and nobody likes being shouted at. Let's try to remember that we all make mistakes; that the person on the other end of the line has feelings; and that it's not All About ME. Here's some more advice: if you're hoping to succeed in the professional world get a professional sounding e-handle: bigbadmomma; dean_is_masterchief; weescotsman; xvxbobbyxvxv; xojimmy85xo; estateagentgeyser; bakebean; crewegossipgirl; wasmachien are fine for Instagram, less so for The Office. [powergenitalia and other names to be careful with]

Gratitude

The Blob has had rather a lot to say about gratitude and the art of saying thank you [most recently]; like when I realized that editing newsletters was it's own reward and that expecting any readers to send cakes for my efforts was all frosting. I've ignored Mark Twain "Write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for."

I resolved to take a break from the ould social media because I was starting to care what other people thought about my comments. It's not a good place to be, because pleasing a bunch of para-social randos is a recipe for regression to the mean until we all sound like each other. It makes the world a very boring place if there is no grit of dissent.

There is only so much entertainment to be got from staring at the ceiling - especially in winter when there are no flies drowsily circulating up there. Accordingly, casting about for something to read, I pulled from the shelf East & West, a collection short stories by W. Somerset Maugham [bloboprevs], and opened it at random. Maugham was a story-teller and to achieve that he needed to be a story getter: travelling outside his echo-chamber; conscientiously listening to other people; probing and poking and goading a bit . . . et voilá! more copy. The Back of Beyond [full text; cw: adultery, domestic abuse] is one of many set in the East: in particular colonial Malaya where the rubber [supervising, tapping, patriarching R] came from. It concerns a bit of adultery between two consenting adults married to others who should have stuck to being good neighbours but had inclination and opportunity to try something more interesting than watching geckos on the ceiling. For reasons, they agree to give up the ould nookie and return to their wedded spouses. He then dies [off-stage] and Her extravagant grief allows her husband to rumble his own cuckold's horns.

Husband is severely pissed off because his dignity is affronted and he goes to an older chap for advice about how to handle the divorce. Old Chap, calling up his own younger-self experience, says he'd be mad to divorce his wife just because she had a fling with another bloke. Husband rails on about how he's always giving and few seem to appreciate his generosity. To which Old Chap, with characteristic Maugham cynicism retorts:

"One mustn’t expect gratitude. It’s a thing that no one has a right to. After all, you do good because it gives you pleasure. It’s the purest form of happiness there is. To expect thanks for it is really asking too much. If you get it, well, it’s like a bonus on shares on which you’ve already received a dividend; it’s grand, but you mustn’t look upon it as you due . . ."
 "You'll have to walk warily. She'll have a lot to forgive too . . .you're behaving very generously, old boy, and, you know, one needs a devil of a lot of tact to get people to forgive one one's generosity." 

I posted the whole of The Verger, another story by Maugham a while back. I like Maugham's writing: his insights into the human condition seem to hold value in our different world.

Thank you letter

Continuing my vicarious insights into the pattern and process of doctoring, courtesy of Borrowbox, I've just finished 👂reading The Secret GP: What Really Goes On Inside Your Doctor's Surgery by Max Skittle [micro-taster]. There's a lot of these memoirs around at the moment; possibly riding on a wave of clapping workers in the health service . . . rather than, like, paying enough to stop these Effectives emigrating to Oz.

Max Skittle is the pseudonym of a thirty-something GP working in a 14,000 patient, multi-doctor, inner-city practice . . . somewhere in England. The Secret GP is written as the diary of a year's work at the coal-face of sick Britain. The patients who appear in this roll of anecdotes are all anonymized, as is his loving and supportive wife and their child who joins the fray three months into the saga. An infant mewling and puking in his father's arms adds new-parent anxiety and sleep-deficit to the handicaps under which Dr Max struggles.

One diagnostic triumph concerns Keith - a 13 y.o. chap who is mad for the rugger but seems embarrassingly weedy for someone aspiring to be a flanker in a full-contact sport. On top of this he has presented, with his mum, because he is unaccountably tired all the time. Turns out that he also reports peeing more than usual and, on being questioned, thirsty. At least the first symptom makes it easy to produce a urine sample . . . which provides the confirmatory red stripe on the pee-stick: diabetes mellitus, type I. Diagnosis of an incurable metabolic disease may not seem like the best news for a teenager. But it's much better than some of the other illnesses which are flagged by chronic fatigue: leukaemia, rheumatoid arthritis, Epstein-Barr Virus.

Although Dr Max is, on one level, playing it for larfs - often laughing at his own gaffes and pretensions - there is a message which will be familiar to anyone who's been kept waiting for a GP appointment. The Man runs The National Health Service and can't just let primary care physicians get on with what they have been trained to do. No: The Man needs metrics so that value can be measured. Metrics soon become targets and relentlessly there is more paperwork to be done as well as helping sick people. There are no extra doctors, let alone extra money, so doctors work a lot of unpaid overtime, because they care; because they can do none other. Relaxation, lunch, sleep, family-time all all get on short time and doctors get crabbier, less empathic, less able to cure by placebo and more prone to make mistakes. We trust doctors with the lives of our mossst precioussss but don't trust them to optimise their time or make correct decisions.

Several months after his diagnosis Keith writes Dr Max a thank-you card, saying how the diagnosis led to appropriate treatment and the boy no longer feels shagged out all the time. Indeed he is back on track to become England's next fly-half but three replacing Henry "Type-I" Slade [shown R with tat and patch on his six-pack]. To the nearest whole number, in any week, any month, zero people send a card to their GP expressing gratitude for getting sorted, or listened to, or referred to experts. It's just not done. But that applies to pretty much all the people-facing employees we encounter on our daily rounds. B'god we'll light into The Help if we don't get the service to which we feel entitled. But how often do we stop and just say thanks you've made my life better than it was before we spoke.

Do something useful

A tuthree months ago I wrote about my RTA NDE.  Although whacked off my bike by a (small) car, I was in a fitter state to do useful things than the poor woman who had done the whacking.  When that sort of thing happens there is a tremendous racket: hastily applied brakes, the sound of crushing metal, maybe a cry of warning or alarm or pain.  But as the noise subsides, people who have stuck their heads out of windows for a better view or paused to gawp at the novelty, they carry on with whatever they were doing before. 

As the poor perp and myself sat on the stoop opposite her slightly dinged car, my friend and colleague Dan came out of the office, crossed the street and asked if he could do anything for us.  The woman, who was clearly stressed, said she’d like something to drink and as Dan turned to the shop to buy some first-aid she called after him “Diet coke, please”. When he returned, I noticed that my sock was all wet and investigation revealed that a chip that the bumper had taken out of my shin was now bleeding a frshet down my leg.  After the exchange of addresses, Dan took me off to the TCD infirmary and, after a short triage there, up to St James’s Hospital Accident & Emergency in his car. 

When we arrived, I got out of Dan’s car, said thanks (this had already taken a big chunk out of his day), hirpled inside and reported myself.   I had barely sat down when Dan returned with an Irish Times and a Mars bar, saying that I might be some time a’waiting.  People go to A&E injured or in pain and certainly distressed, but they hope, and naively expect, that their emergency will receive prompt attention.  Dan knew that was unlikely in my case and provided the bare-poles essentials to make an indefinite wait tolerable.  It takes someone who is street-savvy, intelligent and kind to put that all together and do the right thing.  In the Venn diagram of life, that is close to the null set.  Hats off.

Over the next nearly five hours, I fell in with a group of “bad boys and girls at the back” who were not critical. One chap, for example, had a neat C etched in his forehead from where he’d walked into the end of a scaffolding pole.  As the backlog got processed, we felt we were getting to closer to treatment.  But then another coronary would (bee-bah bee-bah) come in by ambulance and we knew we had slithered back a couple of notches.  Eventually my name was called, and I sprang to my feet with a little cry of triumph – and promptly stretched out on the floor.  My left ankle which had sustained some torque through having the opposite knee moved rapidly backwards in contact with half a ton of metal, but which had carried me into hospital, was now seized entirely.  So the ever-solicitous and really efficient nurses removed my trousers, put me in a wheel-chair and propelled me to see the doctor, off to X-ray, back to the doctor and round the houses until they’d finished with me[1].  Hat’s off to them all. 

The homily:  when we see an indigent drunk fall over in front of us or a small child being biffed, most of us will walk on by assuming that somebody else will sort it out. Dan didn’t, don’t you. Random act of Canadian kindness  50,000 views in August, 720,000 now - going viral.

[1] The ankle was only sprained. As well as the chip out my shin, there was (how did that happen?) a chip out of my elbow; four of the bones in my wrist were broken from trying to punch out a wind-screen.  Reasons to be cheerful!

Cooking by the handful

. . . and not by the book. When Dau.II and Dau.I were still living at home and spending a helluva lotta time in the kitchen, I put a huge sign above the stove asking

"Are we going to measure or are we going to cook?"

I ripped the idea from a cook-book that had no recipes when we were given it but rather blank pages and an occasional inspiring Foodie quote. But it was also a homage to my grandmother's apple pie which was done entirely by feel and experience. I'm not even sure if Grannie had a weighing-scales in her kitchen. I was consciously trying to encourage experimentation: what will happen if the recipe calls for 8oz of flour and you only got 7? Is there a substitute? Will it make any difference? How can you compensate?

I'm not saying recipes are without value, no cook should have to reinvent the wheel of getting the proportions correct for Madeira cake: if you double the butter, most of the excess will end up  in a puddle on the oven-floor. That happened to my first 2019 Christmas cake, perhaps because I had no ground almonds but kept the same amount of butter as my standard recipe. But it's also really important to reflect on allowable variation. We spent a part of last weekend doing a final wrap on the green-beans and tomatoes in the polytunnel. We were a little slow off the mark this year, so the plants didn't really have a full season to grow big, come to flower, get jumped by the bees and set fruit. Accordingly there were a good few green tomatoes which were never going to get red enough to offer to the vicar in a sandwich. Obviously the thing to do is make Green Tomato Chutney.

Obviously the thing to do next is get on Google to get a handle on the proportions. The first three recipes came from BBC ▲, RTE ● and GIY ■[Grow-It-Yourself] only the last of which has an obvious credibility in the business of growing and preparing food. All of these options bulked out the ingredients with apple, onion, sultana, sugar, vinegar . . . and tomato; and then got fussy with the spices - cinnamon? clove? chili? which add punch for flavour but are small potatoes in weight. What struck me was the wild variation in the amounts included in each recipe. And the fact that some give weights in kg and some in old money lb. The only thing was to enter the data into Excel and have it compute percentages for these six bulk ingredients. When thus normalised it is clear that the wild card is the start opf the show. In the ■ recipe, apples and tomatoes get parity of esteem; on the other hand, recipes ▲ and ● had about 5x more tomatoes than apples. As I'm trying to use up toms and have refused bushels of apples all this Fall, I won't be using ■ this year, thanks. I'll have to buy some vinegar, everything else I have, except maybe time.

Dinner in the forensic canteen

I had a most peculiar dream the other morning. Actually, of course, all dreams are damned peculiar but I never remember them because I am primed to spring from bed at first light or 0600 hrs whichever is earlier. Dozing in the morning is the way to bump up your dream quotient and maybe, with no 9 o'clock classes, I may do that more often. And why not - dreams are thought provoking and may be the source of new ideas. Kekulé famously had the structure of benzene delivered to him in a dream. Some really smart people, before and after Carl "Memories dreams & Reflections" Jung have pondered on wtf is going in in our heads at night. But it's not necessary to know why or how something works; to know that it works and thereby get some benefit may be good enough.

The dream, Bob, the dream, let's get this over. Relax, mate, it's going to be an anti-climax for you as it is for everyone involved. The monumental and frankly weird tumble of images and irrational rationalistions which leaves us breathless upon waking, looks slight and inconsequential on the page. Soooo . . .

I'm about to sit down at a table where two of my pals are finishing their lunch: one is my roomie Θ and the other is a blend of my pal Tim, now in Gaillimh, and Hugh "House" Laurie. The setting is clearly informed by my credit where salad is due experience in March as is the story as it develops. As I look at my scoff, Tim/House is waxing erudite about his slab of peach cobbler and saying that the chef (probably Margaret) almost forgot to put the sugar in with the peaches because he can tell it was added later. I'm about to call cobbler's awls to this, but zip my lip because I realise that Tim/House is not me but pays attention to his chop. Even if it's a slab cut from a catering tray of generic institutional food.

I put this out there for three reasons

• As a reminder (which we're all much better about since Coronarama) to give tribs, or better formal thanks, to the guys n gals in infrastructure, whom we tend to take for granted until they make a minor cock-up and we rip strips off them because our latté is the wrong shade of beige.
• Tim's deep knowledge about how the order in which ingredients are added will affect the final product tells us
• Something we all know: you cannot make a white sauce from milk and flour and adding a dobbit of butter at the end
• Expertise is built from deliberate practice and paying attention to details [like twitchers]
• Jakers the day after I clocked a bullfinch eating dandelion seeds; I saw a goldfinch Carduelis carduelis doing the same thing: so handsome!
• But whoa! your admiration. Some experts, like wine-tasters, are ignorant blaggarts who are no better than random
• Because someone creative might want to riff on the theme to create next year's Hit TV series as a cross between Great British Bake-Off and CSI.

Universal Children's Day

<ahem!> that would be today . . . in Ireland; although I doubt if I could find 3 people in 100 at The Institute today who are aware of the fact. For the countries where the majority of my readers come from this week, Ireland is the only place which is obeying the United Nations' diktat about when we should celebrate the existence, and vindicate the rights, of children: United States (various); Ireland (today); China (01 Jun); United Kingdom (15 May); France (Epiphany 06 Jan); Germany (Der Westen: Weltkinderdag 20 Sep; Der Osten 01 Jun); Ukraine (День захисту дітей 01 Jun); Malaysia (07 Nov); Russia (01 Jun); Netherlands (Sinterklaas? 05 Dec).  You'll note that the communists and former communists go for 1st of June, so we definitely can't pick that for Universal Children's Day: all our kids will insist on wearing red neckerchiefs and singing the Internationale. [Billy Bragg background].  20 November celebrates the adoption by the UN of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959. The declaration built on an earlier World Child Welfare Charter (1924) and was extended and updated in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child CROC. The full text in English.

That's great, who could object to the rights of children? The 1924 document had a handful of aspirational assertions, CROC is a mammoth charter with 41 Articles for the children and another 13 full of legalistic weasel-words to allow any signatory country to do whatever it feels like. Why, it's longer than the agreement you sign to sign up to Friendface or PayPal. It is useful therefore to put on your critical thinking hat before saying you agree.  For example, we in the home education movement were concerned when the Irish government started to cite CROC in the run up to the 'Children's Referendum' in 2012.  If CROC Article 28.1 States Parties recognize the right of the child to education . . . was to be adopted, who was to vindicate the rights of our children to an education?  Probably a Minister of Education, advised by the apparatchiks аппара́тчики of his department - none of whom had experienced home education or knew how to spell it.

If a camel looks like a horse designed by a committee [quote] then CROC looks like a document that has accreted all sorts of superfluous detail because the drafting committee were worn down by the insistence of special interest groups. " . . . the advantages of breastfeeding, hygiene and environmental sanitation and the prevention of accidents."  Breastfeeding? that's a good thing, but to specify it in the convention without also specifying the maintenance of a healthy intestinal flora ???
Article 28.1.(c) is the only place where water is mentioned: To combat disease and malnutrition, including within the framework of primary health care, through, inter alia, the application of readily available technology and through the provision of adequate nutritious foods and clean drinking-water, taking into consideration the dangers and risks of environmental pollution; that's good, it deals with, say, Arsenic in the ground-water of Bangladesh but doesn't mention de-mineralisation by reverse-osmosis in Jordan.

Today, make sure you vindicate the rights of your children to help with the washing-up, cleaning the bathroom and making their own lunch.  And while they're at it they can make Dad's lunch as well. Thanks.

Hearts and minds

Gorra vaccine! Indeed we have a clatter of different vaccines to choose from. Mine's a Pfizer spritzer, thanks. Some people naively believe that, with vaccines, we have knocked Covid19 on the head. Or at least that vaccines provide a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Without vaccines, the prognosis for global Covid19 is kinda crappy. Except in those places, mostly on the other side of the World, which went at the pandemic firstest with the mostest and isolated cases, traced contacts, and later started testing their citizens left and right. Test Track Isolate works. But b'god it's hard work, especially the tracking which is really labour-intensive and, I guess, emotionally draining. And for whatever reason, the Irish Government dropped that ball.

Now We The World have the vaccine and the population has been triaged into 15 categories: starting with 1) any elderly residents of care-homes that survived the holocaust of The First Wave 2) front-line workers . . . and so on to . . . 14) healthy "non-essential"18-54 y.o.s . . . 15) children and pregnant women. Some people optimistically believe that having given everyone a draft number, they will all rock up to the appropriate vax-centrum at their appointed time. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, it's all about the presentation, innit? hmmm, in 2015, the Irish Government, under pressure from the EU Troika [remember that?], created a new utility Irish Water to deliver "safe, clean and affordable water and waste water services". What's not to like about that? Very few people drink water from their own wells and keeping the nation's kitchen tap water reliably free of Cryptosporidium and Coliforms cannot be done for nothing. The creation of Irish Water was a political disaster because charging people direct for their consumption seemed a no-brainer to Phil Hogan, the Local Government minister, so he just told his Department "make it so". It was a no-brainer for [institutionalised] me also: it consolidated far too numerous, thus overmanned, thus inefficient, water authorities and provided a dedicated income stream to up-grade the leady, leaky, Victorian infrastructure of clean water delivery. Nobody likes to pay taxes, especially a chilling recession, but I stumped up; for the community, like.

If he'd been more in tune with ordinary people's sensitivities, hurting after the Bank Crash, Hogan might have sold the plan to them rather than imposing it. This is the same Phil Hogan who, on foot of the debacle, landed the lucrative fish of EU Commissioner for Agriculture and the same fellow who resigned this summer because of further blindness to the optics of his actions. It was a lesson that the plain people of Ireland [I guess like any other demographic; even a convention of particle physicists] are not much impressed by data & evidence but can be played swayed by appealing to their emotions. The water protest changed the political landscape by giving traction to the rise of numerous demogogues independents across the country: there are now 19 of them across 39 constituencies.

What to do about the Vax Rollout? Even if it works as the best possible strategy for a return to normal economic and social life, the plain people of Ireland may baulk and refuse the jump. Vaccination strategy only works if there is significant take-up: the exact number varying according to the infectivity and spreadability of whatever scourge is being controlled. It's no good saying that this or that group of scientists are all for it. That's evidence based, and of course it helps, but it may not be enough. We had a Wexford Science Café Zoom last Tuesday where these issues were discussed. We're all scientists there, but there are also some folks smarter, and more people-sensitive,  than me. They appreciated that there's no point preaching to the evidence choir out in the streets of the Sunny South East. And whatever happens it's got to be done right, right from the off. The various government departments [Health, Finance, Welfare, Justice], the too-many quangos and semi-states [HSE, NPHET, NVRL], all the talking heads of reason [Scally, de Gascun, O'Neill, Mills, Staines, Holohan] need to get together and Get The Rollout Right. We won't get a second chance; there is enough skepticism, truculence, and pissed-offery out there waiting to be called forth by The Media seeking to be bala-^-nced. The Vaxxers need to sweep almost everyone onto their side before the a wedge of polarisation entrenches positions beyond the reach of reason.

Best idea so far is to put on the County Jersey: most Irish people are [absurdly, irrationally] attached to their local GAA sports team and by extension to their county . . . even those who can't reliably spell sliotar [clue R, nó fada]. On roll-out day, in each county, get the media out in force to witness the first vaccineers:

• a reasonably lucid and presentable [but frail-looking] elder from a nursing home
• if this person has an All Ireland medal from the '50s, so much the better
• the Captain of the county footie team
• ditto Camogie
• the local TD [promise them 100 rational votes next election]
• the best connected local chap / youngwan who escaped from Ballybeg and made good in science [preferably in immunology or epidemiology] . . . might even be an ex-GAA player . . . could, with advantage, participate by video-link from Harvard [looking at you Aideen and Lydia!] or the Mayo Clinic.
• Slogan: "We're Taking one for The Team"

Heard across the count[r]y that evening "Be the holy, Jimmy, I'll have some of that, where do I sign up?"

PS. And for a different demographic: an Insta-influencer, preferably with wild-coloured hair, preferably local-born

Palace of Plag

I written several times about plagiarism before. My definition is Ripping off somebody's ideas and presenting them as your own.  It's not so clear when you get down to details. Every year around this time we have a class on plagiarism which requires everyone to think a little harder than the glib answer I trotted out. Actually thinking (and discussing) about the edge cases makes it more likely that people will do the right thing later. This year, for a change, I asked the kids to define plagiarism in student’s own words:

1. Plagiarism is using someone else’s work (text, pictures etc.) as your own. 
2. Plagiarism is a quote from a source that you can use in internet and that should written in your own words. 
3. Plagiarism is rewriting someone else’s text. Not giving the sources of the text. 
4. When you don’t acknowledge someone for their work looks like they’re your own words. 
5. The copying of information and claiming it to be your own without referencing or giving any sources as to where the information originates. 
6. Plagiarism is when a person submits the work of other man/people as their own without permission or referencing. 
7. Plagiarism is taking someone else’s work and saying its your own work and without giving any credit to the writer. 
8. To copy someone else’s work without them knowing and claiming it as your own.

Professor Naive might think that the students now understand what plagiarism is and would never commit the sin. But s/he'd be wrong, or at least couldn't be right in all cases because no two students have precisely the same answers to a questionnaire asking them to judge a number of scenarios as plagiarism or not-plagiarism. There is a certain formality in the way academics, and by extension their students, cite and reference other people's work. It provides an audit trail in case any reader wants to follow up the ideas.

Credit where credit is due: these plagiarism exercises were designed by The University of Leeds; for which much thanks.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity

In a few minutes I'm off on a trek to Dublino for celebrate the retirement of one of my old teachers. This is the chap who engaged a whole class of second-year students as willing robots-of-science back in the 1970s. I suspect that, because it is hosted by the Genetics Department, the nature of the tributes on Saturday will be about the key role McConnell played in the development of Irish genetics. There is a wider context for this (not that much wider: it’s still within the secure palisade of Trinity): the commitment to college life which is much more than the set pieces of the curriculum in any one department.  In about 1974, McConnell and Robert Blackith [from a different Department!] organised an evening symposium series on aspects of teaching and learning. Anyone could turn up, even junior ticks like myself and my future Gaffer. It started off in FRED [First Right Entering another different Department - this was getting really ecumenical] and after the formal session, we spilled out into the FLED biochemistry laboratory across the hallway for tea, biscuits and carcinogens - there were no health and safety officers back then. One of the casual references to sources of pedagogical inspiration in that symposium was Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. The next day I went out and bought it (I still bought new books in 1974). More than any one book, this encouraged me to look hard at the unconsidered certainties in which we were, and are, awash. I was too young and ignorant then to articulate it thus but I began to understand that university chaps have duty and responsibility to think subversively. Unless you take what you think you know on a damned good run into the wide unknown you have not earned your salt as a foot-soldier of thought. Although the process was 20 years in the gestation, it came to a head in our two decade experiment with home education I, II, III.  Letting our girls follow their own path in acquiring an education (we did our best to just get out of the way) allowed them to polish their crap-detectors, starting with when their father was clearly saying something that hadn’t been fully thought out or was manifestly insincere.  Those girls both left home before they turned 18, standing tall, striding into their own future, financially independent and enrolled in the university of life. Now is the time to say thanks to David McConnell and Robert Blackith for being the flap of a butterfly’s wing 40 years ago.

I'm really looking forward to a day kibbitzing with other McConnellists and hearing how each was changing in their course by this man.

Father's Day

Always round about my birthday, which helpfully increases the likelihood of getting Cake from my childer. Let us celebrate the relentless rise of The Dad Joke, a thing that didn't exist when my father was alive: so he developed his own style.
One
Pa: Apparently an actress just killed herself.
Ma: Oh my! Who!?
Pa: Dunno . . . I think her name was Reese something?
Ma: WITHERSPOON!!!!!???????
Pa: No, it was with a knife...
Two
Today, my son asked "Can I have a book mark?"
I burst into tears. 11 years old and he still doesn't know my name is Bob.
Thr
I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. It's impossible to put down!
For
I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon. I’ll let you know.
Fiv
A slice of apple pie is $2.50 in Jamaica and $3.00 in the Bahamas. 
These are the pie rates of the Caribbean.
Six
My friend keeps saying "cheer up man it could be worse, 
you could be stuck underground in a hole full of water." 
I know he means well.
Sev
Man at a funeral: "Can I say a word?"
Widow: "Surely"
Man: "Plethora"
Widow: "Thanks, that means a lot"
Ate
Why can't you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom? 
Because the pee is silent.
Nin
What did the pirate say on his 80th birthday? 
AYE MATEY!
Ten
What's the best part about living in Switzerland? 
I don't know, but the flag is a big plus.