Little Black Higgs Boson

Todays blog includes literature, racism, and physics.

In 1899 Helen Bannerman published Little Black Sambo. A book I had read to me, as did the siblings. It's frequently banned as 'sambo' is classed a racial slur.
For those of you interested in the full version, with pictures, it's available on Project Gutenberg here. (that links to the HTML version, there's epub etc available as well).

It turns out she's also the grandmother (or rather, was) of Prof. Tom Kibble who discovered the Higgs boson.

Which is just the bestest random link.

B

The Premier League

Yes, let's take a moment to reflect on this. I'm posting on football. This has been prompted by the season kicking off yesterday, and my general disinterest, verging on hatred, of it.

I'm not against football, indeed I follow the Bundesliga and try to watch as much of the World Cup as I can. Facts which seem to surprise work colleagues who are well aware of my dedicated passion for rugby, any rugby, well ok, any rugby that's not the dire English game.
So why the dislike for the Premier League? I used to watch it religiously on Sunday lunchtime, so what's changed? I think it's all tied to the money and the stupidity of the performers.

Unlike most sports who are desperate to get punters through the gates to fund the team, the Premier League doesn't need punters. Their money is made through TV sponsorship and related merchandising sales. Sure having a strong fan base is probably good for image, but with the astronomical sums paid for TV rights, whatever gate takings make they are still effectively loose change. Therefore the clubs don't need to care, and so can charge whatever they want knowing their prodcut will sell - and if it doesn't, meh, who cares. Still got the monies coming in.

Therefore the clubs can afford to buy in the best talent (I'd prefer the word, twats, but eh), to ensure success. This is an approach that i think causes the biggest problems for the English game. There's no shared experience for the game as they spend all their time playing with bought in players. This differs from the German, Dutch, Belgian etc experience who play with national team members more often. A situation very similar to rugby (especially NZ) selection policies where foreign based players are ineligible for national selection. That creates more value for the product (All Blacks) and ensures a strong local game. But with the greater money on offer for English football, that becomes irrelevant. Yeah ok, chicken and egg, TV or bought in players, but the end result is the same. The most marketed football league in the world.

Then the players themselves. It seems to me that the Premier league suffers from celebrity-itis. A bunch of overpaid people who kick a small ball around, held up as the pinnacle of sporting achievement in a culture which apparently values that.
Sure rugby players are recognised, idolised even, but they've grown up in the communities (or at least the same country) and so have some level of shared value system - and currently are not paid the astronomical amounts that footballers are, so appear to be more grounded. That might also be a reflection of having the crap kicked out of you in rucks/scrums makes it very hard to maintain a lofty position...

It seems that paying your players that much, takes the power from the team/manager and down to the individual. Which maybe socialist (except with the amount they're paid), but doesn't make much business sense as the bargaining position is too skewed.

I can't see it happening but the following could help:

• reduce pay to players
• focus on club, not individual
• reduce numbers of foreign players - cap? 

All seems quite similar to how southern hemisphere rugby works, whereas the English game seems to follow the football, without the astronomical pay. Meaning the players dictate to the national organisation, which is not in the national teams best interest.

Which leads me back to the Bundesliga, the game play appears quicker, there's more focus on the football - less on appearance and dives - and although there are international stars there, they don't have the name recognition (or at least don't to me), as the premier league eejits.

And, apparently tickets are much cheaper.

But back to rugby for me.

News of note

Today's national news section had two rather excellent articles, which deserve a wider audience:

Man who pretended to be a ghost fined £35.
Who-ever wrote the headline was obviously enjoying themselves, but it was topped by the subheading  of the online article (which wasn't in the paper version):
Police spokesman says witnesses complained about Anthony Stallard 'throwing his arms in the air and saying woooooo'
More here.

Man critically ill after three bites from snake
Which, on the face of it, isn't comedy. Except when you consider the facts:

• the UK has one native venomous snake, the adder
• the last death was a 5yo in 1975, previous to that there had been 14 deaths in 100 years

The gentleman in question was bitten "...by an adder that he had picked up." (italics mine). The Darwin Awards wait with baited breath...

More here.

B

Cooking with Bruce : Fennel and Blue Cheese Souffle Tart

This is fantastic. And even better cold. Just make it. It also allowed me to deliver the line "look, the kitchen is not your place".

Ingredients
large head of fennel (or 2), chopped into sixths
olive oil
cup of milk
1T of butter
1T (heaped) of flour
3 eggs, separated
1/2c greek yoghurt
1t Dijon mustard
zest of lemon
40gm of grated parmesan
200gm (ish) of blue cheese (or even better, gorgonzola)
50gm toasted walnuts (ie cooked gently in butter/olive oil for 3-4mins) and broken up
Pastry (puff)

Method

• Preheat oven to 180C/Gas5
• Blanch fennel heads in boiling water for 2mins then roast in oven with olive oil, salt, pepper until browning and caramelising
• Melt butter in small pan, stir in flour until thick, add the milk slowly - stop when reasonably thick roux (was around 3/4c for me)
• Mix egg yolks, yoghurt, mustard, zest and add to roux with salt and pepper
• Grease tin, and cover with pastry, sprinkle parmesan over the base, chopped fennel, and walnuts
• Beat egg whites until stuff, and fold into roux. Spoon over the base. 
• Bake until 30min until set.

It's 27 years of Sin

My Record Collector calendar (which came free with the Jan edition before you accuse me of being old and stuck in the past etc. -I prefer to phrase it as hipster chic), reveals that today (4th July) in 1987 the Pet Shop Boys hit number 1 with "It's a Sin". Ok, so the 27th anniversary isn't really that significant, but y'know ...

It is one of my favourite tracks. Perfect. And definitely on the playlist should I ever die :) Which raised the valid question of which 12" version (thanks Neil), and so has prompted the following Collection of Sin. A far more fun version of the Axis of Evil.

There's an Ian Levine mix released on 12" single which I haven't been able to track down, or rather I cna't find it on YouTube - pretty sure it's sitting at home. And Neil, can't find any record of the Shep Pettibone mix...

The Official Video

The Disco Mix

The Phil Harding PWL Miami Mix

But like all great tracks, there are covers. And that's really the point of this post.

First up, GammaRay, a German power metal band who Neil (yes, he does appear to be featuring far too much in this post) thought I'd like. In a gorgonzola way. He's right. But while googling, I found out they did a cover of It's a Sin, and it's genius. Starts of pretty much like the original, just more guitar, and then dissolves into power metal. Brilliant.

What's that? Bit safe? Why yes, I'd have to agree with you. Don't worry, those wacky Italian black metal kiddiwinks, Graveworm, have a real treat for you:

Like those two, but need some middle ground? By god sonny jim, you're in luck - more Italian metal, this time from the delightfully named Lord Vampyr. Useful Wiki fact, Lord Vampyr graduated with a degree in Psychology. His band, and album, names are good enough I sense myself spinning some shortly (I've got some theatres des vampires somewhere, no, I don't know why either). 

That's the metal kids happy then, what about the emo's? Always remember, emo's have feelings too. Why just yesterday I was listening to MCR, and it never occurred to me that a MCR or GreenDay type band covering It's a Sin could be brilliant.

Thankfully the Finnish band The Jade, have a full video for you. All floppy hair, disaffected glances, peeling wallpaper, and black jackets with fabulously shiny buttons.

I did scan through the rest of the covers, and decided to not inflict anything that started with 'My interpretation...', although I will note that anyone who decides they have to describe themselves as a transgender musician, rather than a musician, probably isn't good enough to be called a musician. It's not like I describe myself as a cynical-fuck-blogger is it?

There are a worrying number of hard rock covers of It's a Sin. None add anything more than those above. And so, to end this momentous day with something more civilised, the LSO version.

Happy Sin Day !!! 

abba. and yngwie.

yngwie malmsteen, does abba.

best spam this morning

my work email address is usually pretty spam free as i don't sign up for much with it.

however this gem came through this morning:

>>

Hope you won't feel repulsive towards a young lady who is now working for a professional printing company based in CHINA. 

Should you need to print something, like tags, stickers, invoice books, books, paper bags etc., maybe we can do for you. 

Write me back, and then you will get a Chinese printing quote, most likely to be half of your local printing cost. Hopefully you can give us a chance to test it. 

Best regards

Emma     Sales Specialist  

<<

Thank you Emma, you've quite overcome my natural repulsion to Chinese printers....

belgium

We wanted the Baltics, but then Eurostar came up with some nice deals, so Belgium it is - this time. Talinn, I'm watching you...

Conversations concerning this went something like:
-contemplating going to belgium
--for the beer?
-no, why would you say that?
--i know you.
-it's more my bucket list of seeing the european parliament
--uhuh
-and my passionate engagement with Herman van Rompuy's haiku's.
--well yes, ok, they are very moving.

I should be in sales.

Biking and my knee

My left knee and I have had a bad relationship for years. My expectations that it will do stuff when I want goes contrary to the knee's personality. It's hard to get angry with it, since I recognise that attitude...

Anyhoo, when biking I'd be fine for about 60-90 minutes then pain, and no power in the left knee. This made the return journey home slow, painful, and annoying. Three words I don't cope well with. So I sat down and thought about where the pain was, and what could be causing it. The pain was localised inside the knee, which meant it wasn't the position of the saddle (either too far back or too far forward), or height.  There's a good summary here.

Looking at a the knee joint, and assessing where the pain was, my thought was that my foot was turning out on the pedal. As the pain didn't show up during my shorter rides to work (upto 30mins with some large hills) I suspected it was cumulative, or kicked off after I'd been going for awhile.

Rather than rushing out and buying clip-on's which, in theory, shoudl force my feet to keep straight. I thought it would be worthwhile trying alternatives. So I grabbed some orthotics (as I said, my knee's and I have a long history...) and went cycling with those, while paying more attention to my foot position on the pedal. This helped a lot, but I still got some twinges which I put down to laziness and letting my foot turn. The next three longer rides I strapped the knee quite heavily, and aside from sweat and some rubbing, all was good.
(some of this was done on a stand for my bike, which proved useful to keep more of an eye on my cycling style)
So I'm quite confident it's postural. Next step is getting some SPDs and shoes...

It's fun when you get to experiment on yourself. Although if any of you want me to practise some surgery, I'm totally up for that too...

b

Solving the Genesis Question : Gabriel or Collins

In a fit of research I believe I've solved the Genesis Question.

Collins does not appear in Genesis
Gabriel does not appear in Genesis
Peter does not appear in Genesis
Phil does appear in Genesis, a total of 8 times. In relation to 'Philistines'.

Further research:
No Anthony / Ants / Tony
No Hackett
No Steve
No Rutherford
No Mike
1x banks [of river Nile]

Obviously, this prompted queries about how many Fish are in the Silmarillion:
1x Fish [as in fisher-folk that dwelt by the River.]

You can all thank me later.