Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Mollie the cat
When we had Rosie, ‘the best black labrador anyone could have’, Mollie used to come into the garden walking along the top of the drystone wall hunting for mice. She usually kept to the wall so as to avoid being chased off by Rosie. What we did not realise then was that she was hunting for food because she was being bullied by her sister. Her home then was with another family who were out all day. When Rosie died Mollie came into the garden more and we realised that she was undernourished so we put her food out occasionally. She was so pretty; tabby with a white chest and paws; that I tried to befriend her. At first she seemed terrified of any approach but very slowly she would allow me to stand nearer and nearer to her food saucer. Eventually she allowed me to stroke her and we started to become friends. I realised that she was adopting us rather than the converse so I went to see her ‘owners’ to tell them what was happening, Fortunately they were very understanding, they knew we had lost Rosie and they felt they would be better off with one cat rather than two who were not friends. Mollie took to her new home overnight and soon her bones started to mature and she was much healthier, the only thing that terrified her was the sight of her own sister in our garden, fortunately this does not seem to happen very often now. Mollie has qualities of non-verbal communication beyond most cats, or other pets of any sort, she has a very high level of social intelligence with the ability to make you turn from states of anxiety and pointless obsessions to lying on the sofa next to Mollie with a benign smile and a sense of pleasant calm and mutual affection. She possesses the quality of watchful meditation which is infectious. There is no need for self-help books or DVD’s, just sit with Mollie for a while and absorb a sense of magic!
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Grandad's quote of the week
"If you are all happy, then I am happy. And if I am happy then everybody is happy!"
Grandad's quote of the week
"Ignorance is no bar to self importance"
- BBC Northanger Abbey (not in the original book)
- BBC Northanger Abbey (not in the original book)
Monday, November 21, 2011
Grandad's advice for being dumped
When I was a GP and a lady came to see me, red eyed and weeping, worn out with worry, loss of self confidence and a sense of rejection after her husband had departed leaving her with the kids; one of the pieces of advice I would give would be, "Buy yourself a new dress, go to the hairdresser and get a new style and go and see you beautician." It was amazing how quickly they would see that this was a good plan and would return in a week or two more confident, more positive and looking smart.
My next bit of advice would be; look for a better quality chap next time and don’t hurry, there are at least ten ‘duds’ to every high quality chap! You need time to find out if they are any good or not.
My next bit of advice would be; look for a better quality chap next time and don’t hurry, there are at least ten ‘duds’ to every high quality chap! You need time to find out if they are any good or not.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Grandad's crepe suzette
One of my favourite pancake/pudding recipes is crepe suzette;
Ingredients:
Crepes
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
Sauce
- 1 orange
- 75g butter
- 4 or 5 heaped dessert spoons of sugar
- A small amount of brandy (good, but not expensive will do)
1. Make some light pancake batter
2. Peel some zest from the outer surface of the orange with a zester, put it in a frying pan (a small heavy crepe pan is best)
3. Add the butter (How much depends on how many you want to make)
4. Add about 4 or 5 heaped dessert spoonfuls of white sugar
5. Heat gently, stirring the butter and sugar together with the zest. Watch for the gradual caramelisation of the sugar, it will at first start to turn pink then light brown, don’t take it past very light brown
6. Now, whilst stirring constantly, slowly squeeze in the juice of half the orange followed by a slow steady drizzle of brandy
The skill here is slowly change from a hot fat mixture to a hot water (orange+brandy) mixture without bringing the sugar out of solution and forming toffee. It is necessary to slowly increase the heat as you drizzle in the liquids to keep the sugar in a hot dissolved state,
you need just enough brandy/orange juice mix so that when the mixture cools it does not separate out.
If you only want only a small number of crepes then you can fry small pancakes in the mixture itself and serve onto a warm plate or if you want to eke out the mixture for a lot of crepes the fry them separately serve and spoon on the mix.
I do a ‘Caribbean banana dish which is very similar but use brown sugar and rum and a lot more range juice the cook batons of peeled banana into the mix and slowly cook until soft, this dish is very popular at bbq’s
Love grannie and grandad
Ingredients:
Crepes
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
Sauce
- 1 orange
- 75g butter
- 4 or 5 heaped dessert spoons of sugar
- A small amount of brandy (good, but not expensive will do)
1. Make some light pancake batter
2. Peel some zest from the outer surface of the orange with a zester, put it in a frying pan (a small heavy crepe pan is best)
3. Add the butter (How much depends on how many you want to make)
4. Add about 4 or 5 heaped dessert spoonfuls of white sugar
5. Heat gently, stirring the butter and sugar together with the zest. Watch for the gradual caramelisation of the sugar, it will at first start to turn pink then light brown, don’t take it past very light brown
6. Now, whilst stirring constantly, slowly squeeze in the juice of half the orange followed by a slow steady drizzle of brandy
The skill here is slowly change from a hot fat mixture to a hot water (orange+brandy) mixture without bringing the sugar out of solution and forming toffee. It is necessary to slowly increase the heat as you drizzle in the liquids to keep the sugar in a hot dissolved state,
you need just enough brandy/orange juice mix so that when the mixture cools it does not separate out.
If you only want only a small number of crepes then you can fry small pancakes in the mixture itself and serve onto a warm plate or if you want to eke out the mixture for a lot of crepes the fry them separately serve and spoon on the mix.
I do a ‘Caribbean banana dish which is very similar but use brown sugar and rum and a lot more range juice the cook batons of peeled banana into the mix and slowly cook until soft, this dish is very popular at bbq’s
Love grannie and grandad
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Understanding the universe with Grandad
Just as professional theoretical and practical physicists try to understand the nature and origin of the universe so do ordinary folk gleaning what they can from New Scientist, Scientific American, the ordinary press, TV etc. Dissatisfaction with some of the theories as explained by the professionals leads us to make our own hypotheses. There also seems to be some sort of minor ‘turf war’ between the string theorists and others, string theory opponents say that the theory is unprovable and that the string theorists get too much publicity and university funding. What is going on?
We are told that space can be distorted or warped; that space is involved in the force of gravity, perhaps space is altered by the presence of a large mass such that smaller masses are attracted to, or fall towards the larger mass.
Elementary observation tells us that space, throughout the universe, is perfused with all sorts of electromagnetic radiation including light, radio, and other waves of various wavelengths, they criss-cross the universe in every possible direction, presumably at times causing interference patterns. Also atomic and sub-atomic particles, either in isolation or in small or larger groups are in constant swirls of motion around and across the universe, gravitational forces seem to pervade all space.
It is plain that if space can become warped, let alone all other issues, then it must follow that space is ‘something’ and not ‘nothing’. It would appear that in order to understand the universe then we need to not only understand matter and energy but also their relationships with space. The constant velocity of light also indicates, to a naive observer, that perhaps it is not merely propagated through space but propagated by space, the nature of space determining the velocity .
Perhaps a better understanding of space would lead to a better understanding of matter, energy, ‘dark matter’, gravity and the birth of the universe. Perhaps matter [or energy] is a subset of space, ie it is space in busy whirl?
Students are taught in subjects like, ‘The History of Science’, of the old, comprehensively discredited, theory of the ‘ether’ as the pervasive structure of the universe. Whilst the particularities of this theory are now untenable, may it be possible that it needs a partial resurrection? Perhaps it is fear of the possibility of mockery which prevents physicists from studying the ‘ether’ of space more vigorously?
It appears that all matter is in fact forms of energy as photons or various particles, the particles in turn being packets of waves, in complex bundles of compressed energy. Is it not reasonable to conclude that they have no identity without the space in which they exist, in other words they may be forms of space in confined and energetic motion? Just as we have had to learn that matter, mass and energy are the same thing, the different words being used for convenience and by custom only, so we may need to learn that ‘space’ and ‘matter’, are different forms of the same thing or, if they are truly separate they must be mutually dependent, neither can have existence without the other.
If these ideas have only a partial truth then we need to look again at theories as to the origin of the universe. I doubt if I am the only one who believes that there is a lack of beauty in the idea that all of the mass/energy of the universe was at one time confined in a primordial ball which for some reason exploded to fill our present known universe. Almost all other leaps forward in our understanding of the true nature of things have possessed great beauty.
If it is accepted that universes achieve senescence and death as well as birth then it is possible to imagine our universe becoming completely amorphous where nothing changes and nothing moves and thus time does not exist [Time being taken to mean the rate of change of an observed set of changes compared to a reference set] Amorphous states are notoriously unstable; accepting the universality of the conservation of energy means that a truly amorphous state is a condition waiting to explode. Comparison might be made with the formation of powerful weather systems from large masses of air whereby these quiet masses of air gradually become swirling storms,[ the ‘butterfly’s wing’ theory; a very minor semi- random movement sets of a massive weather system into violent action]. There may also be analogy with thin plates of splat cooled pure iron [manufactured for large transformers to reduce eddy currents] if these have been cooled so quickly that the iron has not formed a crystalline structure, it is virtually amorphous, if it is struck a light blow with a pointed instrument a wave of crystallisation passes through the material releasing heat.
The analogy intended to show here is that perhaps the ‘singularity’ which fired off the universe may not have been very powerful at all, the quiet mass of the ‘dead’ universe just needed a jolt, a ‘seed’ to set it off. How about a squirt of energy from some distant giant black hole belonging to quite another universe? The matter thus would not have to be ‘created’ simply changed from one form to another by a wave of Crystallisation. If anyone, in possession of the data, cares to comment on these thoughts it might be interesting to others.
We are told that space can be distorted or warped; that space is involved in the force of gravity, perhaps space is altered by the presence of a large mass such that smaller masses are attracted to, or fall towards the larger mass.
Elementary observation tells us that space, throughout the universe, is perfused with all sorts of electromagnetic radiation including light, radio, and other waves of various wavelengths, they criss-cross the universe in every possible direction, presumably at times causing interference patterns. Also atomic and sub-atomic particles, either in isolation or in small or larger groups are in constant swirls of motion around and across the universe, gravitational forces seem to pervade all space.
It is plain that if space can become warped, let alone all other issues, then it must follow that space is ‘something’ and not ‘nothing’. It would appear that in order to understand the universe then we need to not only understand matter and energy but also their relationships with space. The constant velocity of light also indicates, to a naive observer, that perhaps it is not merely propagated through space but propagated by space, the nature of space determining the velocity .
Perhaps a better understanding of space would lead to a better understanding of matter, energy, ‘dark matter’, gravity and the birth of the universe. Perhaps matter [or energy] is a subset of space, ie it is space in busy whirl?
Students are taught in subjects like, ‘The History of Science’, of the old, comprehensively discredited, theory of the ‘ether’ as the pervasive structure of the universe. Whilst the particularities of this theory are now untenable, may it be possible that it needs a partial resurrection? Perhaps it is fear of the possibility of mockery which prevents physicists from studying the ‘ether’ of space more vigorously?
It appears that all matter is in fact forms of energy as photons or various particles, the particles in turn being packets of waves, in complex bundles of compressed energy. Is it not reasonable to conclude that they have no identity without the space in which they exist, in other words they may be forms of space in confined and energetic motion? Just as we have had to learn that matter, mass and energy are the same thing, the different words being used for convenience and by custom only, so we may need to learn that ‘space’ and ‘matter’, are different forms of the same thing or, if they are truly separate they must be mutually dependent, neither can have existence without the other.
If these ideas have only a partial truth then we need to look again at theories as to the origin of the universe. I doubt if I am the only one who believes that there is a lack of beauty in the idea that all of the mass/energy of the universe was at one time confined in a primordial ball which for some reason exploded to fill our present known universe. Almost all other leaps forward in our understanding of the true nature of things have possessed great beauty.
If it is accepted that universes achieve senescence and death as well as birth then it is possible to imagine our universe becoming completely amorphous where nothing changes and nothing moves and thus time does not exist [Time being taken to mean the rate of change of an observed set of changes compared to a reference set] Amorphous states are notoriously unstable; accepting the universality of the conservation of energy means that a truly amorphous state is a condition waiting to explode. Comparison might be made with the formation of powerful weather systems from large masses of air whereby these quiet masses of air gradually become swirling storms,[ the ‘butterfly’s wing’ theory; a very minor semi- random movement sets of a massive weather system into violent action]. There may also be analogy with thin plates of splat cooled pure iron [manufactured for large transformers to reduce eddy currents] if these have been cooled so quickly that the iron has not formed a crystalline structure, it is virtually amorphous, if it is struck a light blow with a pointed instrument a wave of crystallisation passes through the material releasing heat.
The analogy intended to show here is that perhaps the ‘singularity’ which fired off the universe may not have been very powerful at all, the quiet mass of the ‘dead’ universe just needed a jolt, a ‘seed’ to set it off. How about a squirt of energy from some distant giant black hole belonging to quite another universe? The matter thus would not have to be ‘created’ simply changed from one form to another by a wave of Crystallisation. If anyone, in possession of the data, cares to comment on these thoughts it might be interesting to others.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
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