April 30, 2011
June 12, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
I saw a documentary recently about the conservation challenge of non-photogenic endangered species, such as the Dominican Chicken (a big frog with tasty legs) which are on the verge of being wiped out (in the case of the Chicken, by over-hunting and an infectious fungus that was probably brought in by a tourist). It's strange--amphibians have been around for millions and millions of years, and even this particular species has been around for ages, but they are so very specifically adapted to their habitats that they're two degrees from extinction at the best of times (well, at least since the industrial revolution). I guess when you have a fairly permeable skin layer protected by a rather pH specific mucus, the slightest environmental change can wreck your defences and cause catastrophe. Like the white perch in Baltimore Harbour--almost all of them have an intestinal infection (that starts at the anus) by midsummer because the bay's acidity changes during fertilizer season, burning through their protective layer right when the algal bloom is reaching its peak. This illness, plus depleted dissolved oxygen levels (courtesy of the opaque slurry of dead algae) prevents many of these little ugly fish from reaching sexual maturity, so spawn counts are lower, which means the animals that eat them are going hungry...but they're not big or fluffy, so no one really cares. Holistic ecology is lost on most people.
Friday, June 10, 2011
I Attended A Quiet, Nerdy Lecture
and this happened.
Yeah. Protesters. They were upset about AC Grayling's proposed new school, a frou-frou private humanities college that would cost £18,000 a year and offer intensive scholarship to a rather specific student body. Richard Dawkins has agreed to do a few lectures a year there in science, and has made it clear that all of the money he receives for doing them will go to charity. The students don't like the idea of a new private, expensive school in the UK and want Dawkins to refuse to be a part of it on ethical grounds (e.g. the school is too expensive and takes the "best teachers" away from the public schools because it will pay them more.)
The protest lasted about forty-five minutes (the entire duration of which was spent with the audience hurling abuse at them and telling them to sod off), until the back-up police officers arrived, filed in, and escorted them out quietly. The lecture hall was completely packed--about 1,000 asses in seats--and maybe up to four attendees had any sympathy for their concern. The proposed university certainly wasn't the point of the talk or the reason why any of us had shown up. We'd come to hear a bit of give-and-take, perhaps some dorky science jokes from two of our favourite atheists.
In all honesty I got the impression that the whole point of the talk was to give PZ Myers an opportunity to say hi to some of his London readers, and maybe even have a drink with some of us. As it was the police made a point of shunting us and the professors out of the building as quickly as possible so as to avoid any other ugly encounters that they'd then have to deal with. I can't say I blame them, but it was a shame that the asshat brigade prevented what might have been a nice reception.
See, I have absolutely zero sympathy for these kids. Righteous as their anger must undoubtedly feel to them, I grew up in the USA where higher education is considered neither right nor privilege, but investment. A degree represents an investment of time, effort, and money in your personal future. The state does help students pay for it--not with giveaways, typically, but with low-interest loans and scholarships for the best students. This scholarship system may be considered a sort of sliding scale: the degree itself may be achieved either through more effort or more payment, within certain constraints. If the student consistently earns Cs she can still graduate with money, but if she earns As she can pay for it with merit.
This system worked for me: I earned damn fine grades throughout my undergraduate career and left school with only the debt I accrued through housing costs. The state of South Carolina paid my tuition all four years, and USC gave me a pat on the head in the form of the three words Magna, Cum *hehe* and Laude after my qualification. I'm so clever they had to tell me in Latin.
A lot of students started on this, the LIFE scholarship. It's quite simple, really--in the state of South Carolina, if you graduate high school with at least a B average and at least 1100 on your SATs, if you go to a SC university the state will cover your tuition costs, no matter what you study. In order to keep receiving this every semester all you have to do is remain in full-time study and maintain a B (3.0) average. You can even get LIFE if you didn't meet these criteria at the end of high school, but do well in your first few terms of uni. Sadly, though, most students who start on a LIFE lose it for one reason or another. Either their grades slip, or they drop down to part-time, or they transfer out of state, or they get in too much trouble (I think there's something about not getting convicted of felonies) or a variety of other things happen that cause them to not get funded. The state sees them as a failed investment and withdraws, which gives them a choice: either invest in themselves, or do something else.
Beyond this, nearly 40% of all students who start university drop out after two years--a fact that course designers actually depend on, but a huge pain in the ass in every other respect. Yes, third and fourth year modules benefit from small class sizes and intimate, direct discussion and tuition with teachers, but at what cost? The system has to filter through and crush the dreams of thousands of hopefuls every semester.
But let's look at this from a financial standpoint--unless you quit before you start, if you quit after a term you're left with money spent for nothing. Now, if the "state" pays for most of it, then you're only accountable for at most £4,500 per term that you kept it up. As an individual, that's not so bad. But think for a second--40% of all students drop out. That means the big nebulous "state" is accountable for the remainder of the actual cost of failing to educate all of you--a far greater amount per student than what you pay. Now who is that state? Oh right, it's your friends and neighbours. Y'know, me. We have footed the bulk of the cost so you could fart around and do nothing for a couple of years before giving up and moving back in with your mummy. Thanks for nothing. Excuse me, thanks for less than nothing. Thanks for thieving. That's right. We've given universities millions of pounds so you can come out exactly as employable as if you hadn't gone at all.
Yeah, I actually do want you to get something out of your education--a job. I'm depending on you getting a job. We all are. That's what society is built on. We all chip in--for roads, for schools, for hospitals, for common defence--and we all need jobs in order to do our bit. It is in the best interest of the government And the people for me to have a decent-paying job, because it means I can pay my taxes. I can provide my share of the responsibility of keeping my country running.
(And yes, it's even better for the UK for me to have a job, despite the fact that I can't claim unemployment benefits. Even if I'm not mooching off the state, if I'm not earning money I'm not putting anything into it either.)
Say what you want about reasonable taxation, it's there for a reason. It's not going away. Unless you want to form your own militias and let private companies run the trains for maximum profit, you're going to need to ensure that you have a solid government that is trying to represent the interests of the majority of people in your nation.
So the UK accepts that 40% of all people who start uni aren't going to graduate. That's 40% of the money they have chosen to invest in your future that they're counting on going to waste. That's stupid.
A better system is one that recognizes an investment in the students who are most likely to succeed. A system that rewards high grade earners and diligent attenders by lifting the financial burden from them, and encourages people who don't actually want to work hard for an education to get into a more appropriate field quickly. A system wherein individuals earn investment in their potential by proving that they have it.
In South Carolina I made a number of my fellow students unhappy with this assertion--that is, that I supported the financial arrangements I had signed up for by going to a local school. "I lost my scholarship, so now I have to work to pay for school, which interferes in my ability to go to school and study, so my grades have suffered even more" is a big one. And a huge f'ing crock. No. You don't have to. If you actually gave a crap about the education itself, if you didn't have the grades to start with or lost the good ones you had, you could take out a student loan. If you'd rather work for money than study, that's your own concern, but don't make it out like the state ought to keep paying for you to not attend school. The state has a responsibility to promote the general welfare of the people as effectively as it can. Your empty chair in the Economics 201 room is not counted as "people".
What loans and merit-based scholarships do is create not a two-tiered finance-based system, but a multi-tiered interest-based system. For kids who want to learn and are willing to put in the effort, the state supports that education. For the huge numbers of people who don't want to spend more time in a classroom learning abstract ideas and debating philosophy, there are opportunities to learn skills for a lower cost (both in terms of money and time) that can help you find good employment. For people who seek neither education nor skills, there are jobs available sweeping floors and digging ditches. Some people like that. Who am I to argue?
My point is you do not have a right to higher education. Your state has given itself an obligation to ensure that the most capable individuals can get into careers that on some level benefit everyone--even if the only benefit it provides is a taxable salary. If you can pay tax and save lives, so much the better. Get off your damn high horse of middle class entitlement for a second and recognize that it's not all about you, and never was. Your state has been foolishly squandering money on you for years, and they've learned their mistake. The majority of people do not need higher education--they need stable jobs. Most jobs don't actually require a BA-level education to be performed well, but a BA has become the benchmark of competence thanks to you pushing higher education on everyone. Thanks to your "education is a right" bollocks, kiddos, your education has become valueless.
If you want someone to be upset at, don't wave your hands around at academics who want to set up their own private schools. They're not the problem--they're just a symptom. The real problem is that the MA has become the new BA, and the BA has become the new high school diploma, but people still give credence to the idea that the universe was built on purpose in a week by a bearded humanoid who loves them.
You show me nation full of university graduates and I'll show you a nation with a higher ceiling.
Yeah. Protesters. They were upset about AC Grayling's proposed new school, a frou-frou private humanities college that would cost £18,000 a year and offer intensive scholarship to a rather specific student body. Richard Dawkins has agreed to do a few lectures a year there in science, and has made it clear that all of the money he receives for doing them will go to charity. The students don't like the idea of a new private, expensive school in the UK and want Dawkins to refuse to be a part of it on ethical grounds (e.g. the school is too expensive and takes the "best teachers" away from the public schools because it will pay them more.)
The protest lasted about forty-five minutes (the entire duration of which was spent with the audience hurling abuse at them and telling them to sod off), until the back-up police officers arrived, filed in, and escorted them out quietly. The lecture hall was completely packed--about 1,000 asses in seats--and maybe up to four attendees had any sympathy for their concern. The proposed university certainly wasn't the point of the talk or the reason why any of us had shown up. We'd come to hear a bit of give-and-take, perhaps some dorky science jokes from two of our favourite atheists.
In all honesty I got the impression that the whole point of the talk was to give PZ Myers an opportunity to say hi to some of his London readers, and maybe even have a drink with some of us. As it was the police made a point of shunting us and the professors out of the building as quickly as possible so as to avoid any other ugly encounters that they'd then have to deal with. I can't say I blame them, but it was a shame that the asshat brigade prevented what might have been a nice reception.
See, I have absolutely zero sympathy for these kids. Righteous as their anger must undoubtedly feel to them, I grew up in the USA where higher education is considered neither right nor privilege, but investment. A degree represents an investment of time, effort, and money in your personal future. The state does help students pay for it--not with giveaways, typically, but with low-interest loans and scholarships for the best students. This scholarship system may be considered a sort of sliding scale: the degree itself may be achieved either through more effort or more payment, within certain constraints. If the student consistently earns Cs she can still graduate with money, but if she earns As she can pay for it with merit.
This system worked for me: I earned damn fine grades throughout my undergraduate career and left school with only the debt I accrued through housing costs. The state of South Carolina paid my tuition all four years, and USC gave me a pat on the head in the form of the three words Magna, Cum *hehe* and Laude after my qualification. I'm so clever they had to tell me in Latin.
A lot of students started on this, the LIFE scholarship. It's quite simple, really--in the state of South Carolina, if you graduate high school with at least a B average and at least 1100 on your SATs, if you go to a SC university the state will cover your tuition costs, no matter what you study. In order to keep receiving this every semester all you have to do is remain in full-time study and maintain a B (3.0) average. You can even get LIFE if you didn't meet these criteria at the end of high school, but do well in your first few terms of uni. Sadly, though, most students who start on a LIFE lose it for one reason or another. Either their grades slip, or they drop down to part-time, or they transfer out of state, or they get in too much trouble (I think there's something about not getting convicted of felonies) or a variety of other things happen that cause them to not get funded. The state sees them as a failed investment and withdraws, which gives them a choice: either invest in themselves, or do something else.
Beyond this, nearly 40% of all students who start university drop out after two years--a fact that course designers actually depend on, but a huge pain in the ass in every other respect. Yes, third and fourth year modules benefit from small class sizes and intimate, direct discussion and tuition with teachers, but at what cost? The system has to filter through and crush the dreams of thousands of hopefuls every semester.
But let's look at this from a financial standpoint--unless you quit before you start, if you quit after a term you're left with money spent for nothing. Now, if the "state" pays for most of it, then you're only accountable for at most £4,500 per term that you kept it up. As an individual, that's not so bad. But think for a second--40% of all students drop out. That means the big nebulous "state" is accountable for the remainder of the actual cost of failing to educate all of you--a far greater amount per student than what you pay. Now who is that state? Oh right, it's your friends and neighbours. Y'know, me. We have footed the bulk of the cost so you could fart around and do nothing for a couple of years before giving up and moving back in with your mummy. Thanks for nothing. Excuse me, thanks for less than nothing. Thanks for thieving. That's right. We've given universities millions of pounds so you can come out exactly as employable as if you hadn't gone at all.
Yeah, I actually do want you to get something out of your education--a job. I'm depending on you getting a job. We all are. That's what society is built on. We all chip in--for roads, for schools, for hospitals, for common defence--and we all need jobs in order to do our bit. It is in the best interest of the government And the people for me to have a decent-paying job, because it means I can pay my taxes. I can provide my share of the responsibility of keeping my country running.
(And yes, it's even better for the UK for me to have a job, despite the fact that I can't claim unemployment benefits. Even if I'm not mooching off the state, if I'm not earning money I'm not putting anything into it either.)
Say what you want about reasonable taxation, it's there for a reason. It's not going away. Unless you want to form your own militias and let private companies run the trains for maximum profit, you're going to need to ensure that you have a solid government that is trying to represent the interests of the majority of people in your nation.
So the UK accepts that 40% of all people who start uni aren't going to graduate. That's 40% of the money they have chosen to invest in your future that they're counting on going to waste. That's stupid.
A better system is one that recognizes an investment in the students who are most likely to succeed. A system that rewards high grade earners and diligent attenders by lifting the financial burden from them, and encourages people who don't actually want to work hard for an education to get into a more appropriate field quickly. A system wherein individuals earn investment in their potential by proving that they have it.
In South Carolina I made a number of my fellow students unhappy with this assertion--that is, that I supported the financial arrangements I had signed up for by going to a local school. "I lost my scholarship, so now I have to work to pay for school, which interferes in my ability to go to school and study, so my grades have suffered even more" is a big one. And a huge f'ing crock. No. You don't have to. If you actually gave a crap about the education itself, if you didn't have the grades to start with or lost the good ones you had, you could take out a student loan. If you'd rather work for money than study, that's your own concern, but don't make it out like the state ought to keep paying for you to not attend school. The state has a responsibility to promote the general welfare of the people as effectively as it can. Your empty chair in the Economics 201 room is not counted as "people".
What loans and merit-based scholarships do is create not a two-tiered finance-based system, but a multi-tiered interest-based system. For kids who want to learn and are willing to put in the effort, the state supports that education. For the huge numbers of people who don't want to spend more time in a classroom learning abstract ideas and debating philosophy, there are opportunities to learn skills for a lower cost (both in terms of money and time) that can help you find good employment. For people who seek neither education nor skills, there are jobs available sweeping floors and digging ditches. Some people like that. Who am I to argue?
My point is you do not have a right to higher education. Your state has given itself an obligation to ensure that the most capable individuals can get into careers that on some level benefit everyone--even if the only benefit it provides is a taxable salary. If you can pay tax and save lives, so much the better. Get off your damn high horse of middle class entitlement for a second and recognize that it's not all about you, and never was. Your state has been foolishly squandering money on you for years, and they've learned their mistake. The majority of people do not need higher education--they need stable jobs. Most jobs don't actually require a BA-level education to be performed well, but a BA has become the benchmark of competence thanks to you pushing higher education on everyone. Thanks to your "education is a right" bollocks, kiddos, your education has become valueless.
If you want someone to be upset at, don't wave your hands around at academics who want to set up their own private schools. They're not the problem--they're just a symptom. The real problem is that the MA has become the new BA, and the BA has become the new high school diploma, but people still give credence to the idea that the universe was built on purpose in a week by a bearded humanoid who loves them.
You show me nation full of university graduates and I'll show you a nation with a higher ceiling.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Second-Year Growth
I discovered at the pub last night that a pleasant but hardly close acquaintance of mine has been following the progress of my garden on the ol' Book of Face. Flattered and a bit taken aback at this knowledge, I nevertheless happily engaged in a good twenty minutes or so of Plant Talk with her and had a lovely time. It seems that since this is my second growing season, my amateur gardening peers assume I must have learnt something by now. And I have! I've learned, for the most part, how I've done things wrong.
Take for instance my tomato plants last year. It didn't bother me that they were three metres tall and had more foliage than my forsythia and my holly combined. They were big and happy and gave me a lot of fruit, much of which never made it into the house (well, I mean it did, but it was already in a belly at that point.) The fruits were delicate and delicious, and I enjoyed them thoroughly. But I did a lot of things wrong.
I forgot to water them, okay? Summer rainfall is unpredictable here, so you never can be sure just how much rain is getting to the plants' roots. I'd see it rain and think "I don't need to water them today--thanks, sky!" and go about my business. But unfortunately, due to the angle the rain came in at, the semi-protective cove I carved out of the hedge for them, and (as the plants got bigger) the canopy of leaves the tomatoes themselves grew, most rainwater missed the roots entirely. So when I'd come out the next day and the stems would be sagging before my eyes I'd rush around to give them a drink.
This causes problems, I discovered--if you let them get dry, then suddenly dump a bucket of water on them, they slorp it up too fast. While this isn't really a bad thing when the plant is young, once fruits begin to grow, a period of dryness makes the tomato skins less elastic--meaning that when the plant suddenly injects water into them, they split. For un-broken fruit you must sustain your water supply. That didn't really dawn on me. They still tasted great, but they didn't last as long.
Another thing I didn't really realize until later in the season is if you stop fertilizing the soil on a regular basis, the fruit becomes tasteless and the colour is less vibrant. (see also "plant leaves make their own canopy which keeps water off roots"--water which contains liquid fertilizer). They do like my tasty high-potash tomato food from Tesco.
A third thing, this time involving growth. The plant doesn't really exist to make as many fruits as possible. That's not its overall priority. The plants want to be big and lush and eat all the sunshine they can find. Last year I didn't mind this, but I did something quite strange for no particular reason that taught me a lesson. I planted 3 tomatoes in 9" pots and the other 7 in the ground. The 3 in the pots stayed little (they maxed out at about 3') and were more prone to nutrient-retention problems, but they flowered first, fruited first, and sustained regular, if smaller crops of tomatoes throughout the entire season. The 7 in the ground (in the hedge, that became the hedge) got much taller (12' or more) and much, Much leafier, and produced more tomatoes, but did so later, and by the end of the warm season they all had at least one cluster that had not ripened. It seemed like they put far more effort into overall growth than fruit growth, more than likely because they had bigger, stronger root structures that could support unchecked growth of that kind.
It's worth noting that I didn't mind them getting huge and taking over the hedge at all--mostly because I had completely scalped the hedge to make room for them, and without the vines I would have probably caused several awkward "er, nice jammies" encounters with my neighbours.
But yes, at least someone out there has been enjoying my failures and occasional bright spots of success in the yard. Check out the slime trail left by one of my many tomato seedling murderers. I caught this one and gave him a fling at the fence.
My courgettes are flowering and have tiny immature squashes deep inside.
Two of my rosemary shrubs have been eaten by something or other but the third is happy and healthy.
The peony has finished its all-too-brief show but the azalea is still going and my miniature rose is just getting started. (teeny tiny rose! It would fit in a salad bowl)
The sage went all powdery and died, which is something my landlord says happens frequently. I have some sort of wall-climber that has tiny flowers that the bumblebees absolutely adore.
The apple tree is full of tiny orbs.
I hacked the fuchsia back almost to the ground in March and it's full of leaves again, ready to go. The lemon balm is taking over, but I don't mind. Apparently it is a useful mosquito repellent. (It does smell like citronella so I'm not surprised. I wonder what would happen if you mashed it into a small bowl of water and heated it?) I have two types of mint (one brightly-flavoured, one more subdued) that are both doing well, but I'm having to pull their little sprigs out of the path. They're growing in pots but that is apparently not a restriction. The Big Pink Plant finished blooming and has settled down for the summer.
The Japanese Maple is so richly red it's almost purple and the lettuces are covered in aphids.
The Hosta is happy and no longer looks like a city of the future. My garden has far more aphids and whiteflies than last year. I don't really know why but I have a few hunches--I grew tulips this year and by the end of March they had aphids all over them. I wonder if they like laying eggs on tulips. They certainly like laying eggs on lettuces, but then again everything likes to eat lettuce. Snails, aphids, flies, cats...I've decided to just leave the lettuces as a herbaceous sacrifice to the neighbourhood.
Take for instance my tomato plants last year. It didn't bother me that they were three metres tall and had more foliage than my forsythia and my holly combined. They were big and happy and gave me a lot of fruit, much of which never made it into the house (well, I mean it did, but it was already in a belly at that point.) The fruits were delicate and delicious, and I enjoyed them thoroughly. But I did a lot of things wrong.
I forgot to water them, okay? Summer rainfall is unpredictable here, so you never can be sure just how much rain is getting to the plants' roots. I'd see it rain and think "I don't need to water them today--thanks, sky!" and go about my business. But unfortunately, due to the angle the rain came in at, the semi-protective cove I carved out of the hedge for them, and (as the plants got bigger) the canopy of leaves the tomatoes themselves grew, most rainwater missed the roots entirely. So when I'd come out the next day and the stems would be sagging before my eyes I'd rush around to give them a drink.
This causes problems, I discovered--if you let them get dry, then suddenly dump a bucket of water on them, they slorp it up too fast. While this isn't really a bad thing when the plant is young, once fruits begin to grow, a period of dryness makes the tomato skins less elastic--meaning that when the plant suddenly injects water into them, they split. For un-broken fruit you must sustain your water supply. That didn't really dawn on me. They still tasted great, but they didn't last as long.
Another thing I didn't really realize until later in the season is if you stop fertilizing the soil on a regular basis, the fruit becomes tasteless and the colour is less vibrant. (see also "plant leaves make their own canopy which keeps water off roots"--water which contains liquid fertilizer). They do like my tasty high-potash tomato food from Tesco.
A third thing, this time involving growth. The plant doesn't really exist to make as many fruits as possible. That's not its overall priority. The plants want to be big and lush and eat all the sunshine they can find. Last year I didn't mind this, but I did something quite strange for no particular reason that taught me a lesson. I planted 3 tomatoes in 9" pots and the other 7 in the ground. The 3 in the pots stayed little (they maxed out at about 3') and were more prone to nutrient-retention problems, but they flowered first, fruited first, and sustained regular, if smaller crops of tomatoes throughout the entire season. The 7 in the ground (in the hedge, that became the hedge) got much taller (12' or more) and much, Much leafier, and produced more tomatoes, but did so later, and by the end of the warm season they all had at least one cluster that had not ripened. It seemed like they put far more effort into overall growth than fruit growth, more than likely because they had bigger, stronger root structures that could support unchecked growth of that kind.
It's worth noting that I didn't mind them getting huge and taking over the hedge at all--mostly because I had completely scalped the hedge to make room for them, and without the vines I would have probably caused several awkward "er, nice jammies" encounters with my neighbours.
But yes, at least someone out there has been enjoying my failures and occasional bright spots of success in the yard. Check out the slime trail left by one of my many tomato seedling murderers. I caught this one and gave him a fling at the fence.
My courgettes are flowering and have tiny immature squashes deep inside.
Two of my rosemary shrubs have been eaten by something or other but the third is happy and healthy.
The peony has finished its all-too-brief show but the azalea is still going and my miniature rose is just getting started. (teeny tiny rose! It would fit in a salad bowl)
The sage went all powdery and died, which is something my landlord says happens frequently. I have some sort of wall-climber that has tiny flowers that the bumblebees absolutely adore.
The apple tree is full of tiny orbs.
I hacked the fuchsia back almost to the ground in March and it's full of leaves again, ready to go. The lemon balm is taking over, but I don't mind. Apparently it is a useful mosquito repellent. (It does smell like citronella so I'm not surprised. I wonder what would happen if you mashed it into a small bowl of water and heated it?) I have two types of mint (one brightly-flavoured, one more subdued) that are both doing well, but I'm having to pull their little sprigs out of the path. They're growing in pots but that is apparently not a restriction. The Big Pink Plant finished blooming and has settled down for the summer.
The Japanese Maple is so richly red it's almost purple and the lettuces are covered in aphids.
The Hosta is happy and no longer looks like a city of the future. My garden has far more aphids and whiteflies than last year. I don't really know why but I have a few hunches--I grew tulips this year and by the end of March they had aphids all over them. I wonder if they like laying eggs on tulips. They certainly like laying eggs on lettuces, but then again everything likes to eat lettuce. Snails, aphids, flies, cats...I've decided to just leave the lettuces as a herbaceous sacrifice to the neighbourhood.
Friday, May 06, 2011
A note I just sent to my MP
Dear Ms. Ruddock,
This letter is intended to share with you my views regarding the Shoreditch High Street Overground "toll booth" and its impact on Lewisham residents. I don't know if you're aware that Shoreditch High Street Station was moved into Zone 1 in 2009 thanks to pressure from National Rail over concerns that the Overground would hurt their ticket sales. Because of this, your constituents must pay £11 extra every week just to pass through this station to get to our offices--a charge which commuters from other areas of zones 2 and 3 are not subjected to.
As the Shoreditch Toll Booth only affects commuters coming into town from our neck of the woods, I believe this is a regional equality issue that warrants your concern. We've been monopolized by National Rail for too long--and now rather than force it to compete with the less-convenient but lower-priced Overground as intended, TfL has caved to financial pressure from this for-profit enterprise, prevented the people from having a money-saving option, and undermined their own initiative to reduce traffic.
For every other region, the Overground costs £21 a week, but for us it's £32. If we didn't pay London taxes maybe a surcharge to get into town would make sense, but since we do, pricing us out of the Overground network is clearly unfair.
When the Overground was being built we were told that it was intended to help reduce congestion in the Tube and the central stations by providing an orbital service for the outer zones. But because of National Rail's shady dealing it's the same price for me to get to my office in Angel via London Bridge as Highbury & Islington, so I squeeze onto the Northern line every morning. We have no option but to pay for Zone 1, so we might as well use the faster routes straight through it. The few occasions when I've had cause to catch the Overground it's been practically empty--and rightly so.
Once construction begins in earnest on London Bridge Station rail travel in our region is going to be a nightmare. Surely TfL can see wisdom in keeping as many people as possible out of that! And with the Olympics coming up it seems contradictory to our city's best interests to Not offer a real incentive for locals to stay out of the city centre. We're all used to overcrowding--avoiding the tourists is not an effective incentive!
A solution that has been proposed to mediate the conflicting interests of National Rail and southeasterners is Shoreditch could behave like Zone 1 if you enter or exit there (the City is technically within walking distance, so fair enough) but if you only pass through without getting off your train, it remains Zone 2 as originally intended. This would not be difficult to programme, and it would encourage Zone 2 workers like my partner and I to go out of our way to lighten the load on London Bridge.
Moreover, Ben and I don't earn much, so the £1,000 per year this small change could save our household is significant. And as I'm well aware of National Rail's pay and neglect scandals, regular price hikes and service cuts, and the fact that they get our tax money regardless of the quality of their service, you'll have a hard time convincing me they deserve that grand more than we do.
Please help your constituents make ends meet and unclog the Tube by making the Overground serve its purpose. The Shoreditch High Street Toll Booth extorts the South East and should be eliminated.
Thank you for your time.
This letter is intended to share with you my views regarding the Shoreditch High Street Overground "toll booth" and its impact on Lewisham residents. I don't know if you're aware that Shoreditch High Street Station was moved into Zone 1 in 2009 thanks to pressure from National Rail over concerns that the Overground would hurt their ticket sales. Because of this, your constituents must pay £11 extra every week just to pass through this station to get to our offices--a charge which commuters from other areas of zones 2 and 3 are not subjected to.
As the Shoreditch Toll Booth only affects commuters coming into town from our neck of the woods, I believe this is a regional equality issue that warrants your concern. We've been monopolized by National Rail for too long--and now rather than force it to compete with the less-convenient but lower-priced Overground as intended, TfL has caved to financial pressure from this for-profit enterprise, prevented the people from having a money-saving option, and undermined their own initiative to reduce traffic.
For every other region, the Overground costs £21 a week, but for us it's £32. If we didn't pay London taxes maybe a surcharge to get into town would make sense, but since we do, pricing us out of the Overground network is clearly unfair.
When the Overground was being built we were told that it was intended to help reduce congestion in the Tube and the central stations by providing an orbital service for the outer zones. But because of National Rail's shady dealing it's the same price for me to get to my office in Angel via London Bridge as Highbury & Islington, so I squeeze onto the Northern line every morning. We have no option but to pay for Zone 1, so we might as well use the faster routes straight through it. The few occasions when I've had cause to catch the Overground it's been practically empty--and rightly so.
Once construction begins in earnest on London Bridge Station rail travel in our region is going to be a nightmare. Surely TfL can see wisdom in keeping as many people as possible out of that! And with the Olympics coming up it seems contradictory to our city's best interests to Not offer a real incentive for locals to stay out of the city centre. We're all used to overcrowding--avoiding the tourists is not an effective incentive!
A solution that has been proposed to mediate the conflicting interests of National Rail and southeasterners is Shoreditch could behave like Zone 1 if you enter or exit there (the City is technically within walking distance, so fair enough) but if you only pass through without getting off your train, it remains Zone 2 as originally intended. This would not be difficult to programme, and it would encourage Zone 2 workers like my partner and I to go out of our way to lighten the load on London Bridge.
Moreover, Ben and I don't earn much, so the £1,000 per year this small change could save our household is significant. And as I'm well aware of National Rail's pay and neglect scandals, regular price hikes and service cuts, and the fact that they get our tax money regardless of the quality of their service, you'll have a hard time convincing me they deserve that grand more than we do.
Please help your constituents make ends meet and unclog the Tube by making the Overground serve its purpose. The Shoreditch High Street Toll Booth extorts the South East and should be eliminated.
Thank you for your time.
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
It's About Balance
Public. Private. Who decides? Who pays? What is appropriate? I'd like to touch on a few big industries that have a lot of leeway in modern Britain: the publicly funded, publicly run Arts Council, the publicly funded, privately-run Rail Union, and the privately-funded, privately-run pain in the ass that is Big Telecom.
I am a theatre professional. Well, I would be if I was employed. I am a highly educated theatre-y person. (An MA in theatre and a sockful of nickels might get you a loaf of bread.) Maybe my opinion on this matter has the potential to be modified by employment, but for now, I have a thing or two to say about state-funded art.
It's a bad idea.
The UK government established the Arts Council in 1940 to try and give artists an income--to keep the vagrants off the streets, essentially. The arts council was founded on the notion that artists are otherwise useless to society and it would less unsanitary to fund them to do something than to have them begging. (Okay, I'm making some of that up. The arts council was developed to preserve and promote British culture, which is a valid enough enterprise, 'cos let's face it, the British don't have a whole lot else going for them now that all their primary industries have moved to countries that don't get their panties in a wad about workplace safety and living wages. And unlike Hawaii, British tourism can't just sustain itself on sunshine and pretty women.)
Back to the point. Many theatres in the UK would collapse if state funding was pulled from them. Tourism would be threatened. Culture would be compromised. An entire generation of artists would fade into obscurity. It would be a catastrophe.
This is unfortunate, because honestly the last thing art needs is tax money, and the best thing for the industry is for the state to turn away from it.
(You traitor! Arrrrg! No wonder no one will hire you!) What tax funding has done to theatre is allow the general population to have a voice in what types of arts programming get funding. And guess what. 90% of the general population does not think that "art for art's sake" is a worthwhile use of their money. I for one don't. You want to take my hard-earned (non-existent) cash and give it to some idiot so he can poop on the floor? Film herself scraping off her fingernails and soaking her bleeding fingers in milk? Tie herself into an awkward position and paint the walls with her teeth? No. That's a waste of money. Tax revenue must be used for the public good.
So the opposite has happened. The only theatres, music groups, and art programmes that get money are ones that have some sort of outreach motive. At-risk youth theatre. Music therapy for the mentally ill. Art in hospitals. History museums.
This is fine. No, really. Well, sorta. I have no particular beef with nice people providing art-based social services. I would never do it myself, as I've only ever seen it backfire, but surely some good has come from bringing a joyful noise into classrooms and shelters. Sure, half the time the troubled teens are just shouting "fuck off, little miss do-gooder" and it's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of cello music on coma patients, but I'm sure that on some level it's all making life a little bit more liveable for someone (and not just the bleeding-heart practitioners themselves).
But the availability of free money for the right kind of art has crippled arts development in every other sector, because every organization that could be doing something cool is instead flopping around like sun-baked fish, desperately modifying their programming and mission statement in the hopes of getting picked up for funding. People and groups that have no business influencing children and prisoners are out there, compromising their vision (and distressing toddlers) because there's no other money available to support creative expression.
The private sector may call for a commission occasionally--a new sculpture for the lobby, a cubist portrait of the founder--but because of the pervasive influence of the Democratised Aesthetic, unless a submission can demonstrate its Community Outreach potential, very few corporate managers will risk investing in art. It's just bad PR.
Back in the day--long before my day--artists sought patrons. Wealthy individuals and companies paid artists to be their entertainment-on-demand. Yes, the artist had to produce work that the patron appreciated, but these sorts of relationships were varied and could lead to quite interesting, diverse outcomes. The upshot of all this was that exceptional artists could create art that pleased the aesthetic and interests of their particular niche, and if nobody else liked it, it didn't matter. Consider the Shakespeare histories that made sure to portray ancestral competing claimants to the throne as evil, or the architects who told George IV that the onion-domed And crenellated Royal Pavilion he wanted for Brighton would be just beautiful (and very accurately Chinese).
But time has moved on, expectations have been raised, and theatre has gotten more expensive to produce. Meanwhile companies have merged and streamlined, grown and expanded until entire industries have come to exist under one corporate umbrella. The only companies that can afford to sponsor arts organizations are such high-profile institutions that they can't risk being too controversial. Even innocuous, good-idea helpful patronage, when it reaches the ears of the wrong community, leads to boycotts and protests in the streets (or did no one else notice the Teabaggers flapping their arms around outside Home Depot for supporting GLAAD?) Big corporations that decide to support the arts have to be very, very careful that they are investing in programmes that make them look good across the board.
Theatres that already are big corporations have to make shows that will please everyone, or at least not offend anyone.
Which results in porridge. Bland, colourless, gloppy, saccharin sweet porridge.
Germany does something different. In German culture banks, investors, and huge monolithic corporations have adopted a fashion where it's hip to fund a theatre. They still have something resembling that patronage system, and in a lot of cases, the money that it takes to run an arts organization is hardly a blip on the corporation's ledger--at least, it's not a big enough concern that the funding body takes any great care to monitor the theatre's output. This occasionally leads to them paying performers to masturbate onstage to a house of empty seats, but it allows for funded creative experiment--artists getting paid a living wage to try new things, develop new ideas, and push the envelope without worrying if their actions promote awareness of Sidcup's recycling programme.
It's like that terrible waste of beautiful puppetry that's gone from nauseating the West End to annoying Spielberg's viewers: when you burden a show-horse with a plough, you wind up with both a broken horse and a poorly turned field. Art has been crippled by its failed attempt to Do Good. Art is not good. It is not bad. It is art, and if you try and give it a social purpose, you wind up with the abomination that is War Horse.
----
But let's look at the flip side for a second. What happens when publicly-funded organizations get to do whatever they want with no accountability to anyone but themselves, despite the fact that they affect everyone? When they don't have to do good, even though they should? I am referring, naturally, to the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union.
The Tube. It is London's life force--an arterial system that provides almost every neighbourhood with workers, taxpayers, and the occasional vagrant. Like theatre it is also paid for with a combination of tax revenue and ticket sales. But unlike theatre, in the past year transit prices have gone up twice, services have been reduced, and the union has gone on strike at least four times, effectively shutting the system down and putting an undue burden on the separate unions of the buses, suburban rail, the Overground, the river, taxis, and the highway. Theatres tried that--nobody showed up and eventually the theatres closed.
RMT are striking for what at first sounds like reasonable causes--safety, hours, wages, job security. Fair enough, right?
Except. Except they don't really have a leg to stand on. Tube employees' base salary is £15,000 higher than any other transit workers'. More money is sluiced by the state into the Tube than into any other system--into maintenance, employee benefits, maintaining jobs, and line development. Particularly now that the Olympics are rapidly coming closer, ensuring that the city has a safe, reliable, attractive public transit system has been declared utterly vital. They are getting as much money as anyone can afford.
And we live in the Future. The city also has a lovely train service called the Docklands Light Railway, which is every four year old boy's favourite thing on earth for one very important reason: he can sit up front and pretend to drive. The DLR is essentially a large network of robots that functions quite well almost entirely without human involvement. It's on time, it's safe, and it runs itself.
Sure, in the evenings it's a good idea to have transit employees on board to ensure that when drunks fall onto the tracks, the machine doesn't carry on without heeding their plight. But under daily circumstances, drivers, door operators, and signalmen are more trouble than they're worth. Unfortunate to employment rates? Sure. But what is better for commuters--employing train employees to do an okay job, or having machines do a very efficient job?
This kind of gimmick of course makes transit employees very, very angry. And to an extent I understand them--why should people lose their jobs to machines, just because machines do them better and without needing to buy food or nappies or pay mortgages or take sick days? We've had to face the crushing truth that computers and machines work better than we do since the industrial revolution. As we innovate ourselves out of usefulness, we must take a moment to ask--why do we cling to the notion that a task that is better and more cheaply performed by a computer programme should still be a career? No one seems to mourn the obsolescence of the scullery maid or the lamplighter. And while home-made cakes do taste better, I have a hard time believing that the DLR is somehow inferior without that human touch. If a machine has been made to streamline the inefficiencies of human performance at any task, surely this is an indicator that the best human operation leaves room for improvement.
So far, the rail unions have kept the machines from completely eliminating their jobs, but this success has empowered them to take more bold moves, which may get them into trouble. Their regular, crippling strikes over ticket office layoffs (the computerized system works better, faster, more fairly, speaks 17 languages, doesn't yell at you for waking it up, and doesn't pull the shade at 4:45pm) and their planned strikes over the legitimate firing of two employees have endeared the soulless DLR to Londoners more and more over the past year.
----
But what about private companies who have never done good, have never had to do good, but keep getting in the way regardless? I'm referring, of course, to phone companies and net neutrality.
Why does the phone company think it is owed something in this digital age? We have always paid for phone service--it's not like the entire history of telephone operation has been some sort of philanthropy on their part--but now that a video phone call can be handled for free and with minimal bandwidth occupation on the Internet companies like BT are determined to get their just deserves. Courts are filled every day with phone lawyers and lobbyists doing whatever they can to prevent companies like Skype from letting people circumvent their communication toll. Just because it Can be done for free doesn't mean it Should, surely.
The problem is the people who would add a surcharge to free services so as to hold onto their profit margin are convinced that the Internet is a closed system with a speed limit that can and should be enforced. Despite the truth that the interwebs just expand as new information enters them, and so long as people keep buying servers there's no reason the net won't just grow indefinitely, they are trapped in a 1980's version of the world where a town's long-distance jacks were limited and had to be handled by an operator. The extents they're going to now to impose their analogue fees on the digital world are akin to priests raving that, despite all evidence that a skilled surgeon removed your infected appendix safely, prayer actually saved your life. Get with the program. Manual telephone operation and religion have been dead for years, but for some stupid reason they won't stop kicking or demanding our money. You've had your day! Just let go already! Better, faster, smarter and cheaper systems have replaced you--namely computers and soap. The reason we're not paying you is because you shouldn't be paid anymore. You want a job? Invent a new service we can't live without. Don't demand that we keep paying you for a service nobody needs that you don't even provide.
----
So. I think it comes down to: art should not be public, transit should not be private, and anyone who tries to force consumers to pay twice for internet and internet services should be shot. I already pay my monthly net subscription to BE AND a trumped-up "line rental" fee to the privately-owned BT--don't try and charge me for using Skype because I'm not paying your free-money long-distance fee for a piece of software to automatically connect me to my mom. I'm paying you for internet access. What I do with it is my business.
I am a theatre professional. Well, I would be if I was employed. I am a highly educated theatre-y person. (An MA in theatre and a sockful of nickels might get you a loaf of bread.) Maybe my opinion on this matter has the potential to be modified by employment, but for now, I have a thing or two to say about state-funded art.
It's a bad idea.
The UK government established the Arts Council in 1940 to try and give artists an income--to keep the vagrants off the streets, essentially. The arts council was founded on the notion that artists are otherwise useless to society and it would less unsanitary to fund them to do something than to have them begging. (Okay, I'm making some of that up. The arts council was developed to preserve and promote British culture, which is a valid enough enterprise, 'cos let's face it, the British don't have a whole lot else going for them now that all their primary industries have moved to countries that don't get their panties in a wad about workplace safety and living wages. And unlike Hawaii, British tourism can't just sustain itself on sunshine and pretty women.)
Back to the point. Many theatres in the UK would collapse if state funding was pulled from them. Tourism would be threatened. Culture would be compromised. An entire generation of artists would fade into obscurity. It would be a catastrophe.
This is unfortunate, because honestly the last thing art needs is tax money, and the best thing for the industry is for the state to turn away from it.
(You traitor! Arrrrg! No wonder no one will hire you!) What tax funding has done to theatre is allow the general population to have a voice in what types of arts programming get funding. And guess what. 90% of the general population does not think that "art for art's sake" is a worthwhile use of their money. I for one don't. You want to take my hard-earned (non-existent) cash and give it to some idiot so he can poop on the floor? Film herself scraping off her fingernails and soaking her bleeding fingers in milk? Tie herself into an awkward position and paint the walls with her teeth? No. That's a waste of money. Tax revenue must be used for the public good.
So the opposite has happened. The only theatres, music groups, and art programmes that get money are ones that have some sort of outreach motive. At-risk youth theatre. Music therapy for the mentally ill. Art in hospitals. History museums.
This is fine. No, really. Well, sorta. I have no particular beef with nice people providing art-based social services. I would never do it myself, as I've only ever seen it backfire, but surely some good has come from bringing a joyful noise into classrooms and shelters. Sure, half the time the troubled teens are just shouting "fuck off, little miss do-gooder" and it's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of cello music on coma patients, but I'm sure that on some level it's all making life a little bit more liveable for someone (and not just the bleeding-heart practitioners themselves).
But the availability of free money for the right kind of art has crippled arts development in every other sector, because every organization that could be doing something cool is instead flopping around like sun-baked fish, desperately modifying their programming and mission statement in the hopes of getting picked up for funding. People and groups that have no business influencing children and prisoners are out there, compromising their vision (and distressing toddlers) because there's no other money available to support creative expression.
The private sector may call for a commission occasionally--a new sculpture for the lobby, a cubist portrait of the founder--but because of the pervasive influence of the Democratised Aesthetic, unless a submission can demonstrate its Community Outreach potential, very few corporate managers will risk investing in art. It's just bad PR.
Back in the day--long before my day--artists sought patrons. Wealthy individuals and companies paid artists to be their entertainment-on-demand. Yes, the artist had to produce work that the patron appreciated, but these sorts of relationships were varied and could lead to quite interesting, diverse outcomes. The upshot of all this was that exceptional artists could create art that pleased the aesthetic and interests of their particular niche, and if nobody else liked it, it didn't matter. Consider the Shakespeare histories that made sure to portray ancestral competing claimants to the throne as evil, or the architects who told George IV that the onion-domed And crenellated Royal Pavilion he wanted for Brighton would be just beautiful (and very accurately Chinese).
But time has moved on, expectations have been raised, and theatre has gotten more expensive to produce. Meanwhile companies have merged and streamlined, grown and expanded until entire industries have come to exist under one corporate umbrella. The only companies that can afford to sponsor arts organizations are such high-profile institutions that they can't risk being too controversial. Even innocuous, good-idea helpful patronage, when it reaches the ears of the wrong community, leads to boycotts and protests in the streets (or did no one else notice the Teabaggers flapping their arms around outside Home Depot for supporting GLAAD?) Big corporations that decide to support the arts have to be very, very careful that they are investing in programmes that make them look good across the board.
Theatres that already are big corporations have to make shows that will please everyone, or at least not offend anyone.
Which results in porridge. Bland, colourless, gloppy, saccharin sweet porridge.
Germany does something different. In German culture banks, investors, and huge monolithic corporations have adopted a fashion where it's hip to fund a theatre. They still have something resembling that patronage system, and in a lot of cases, the money that it takes to run an arts organization is hardly a blip on the corporation's ledger--at least, it's not a big enough concern that the funding body takes any great care to monitor the theatre's output. This occasionally leads to them paying performers to masturbate onstage to a house of empty seats, but it allows for funded creative experiment--artists getting paid a living wage to try new things, develop new ideas, and push the envelope without worrying if their actions promote awareness of Sidcup's recycling programme.
It's like that terrible waste of beautiful puppetry that's gone from nauseating the West End to annoying Spielberg's viewers: when you burden a show-horse with a plough, you wind up with both a broken horse and a poorly turned field. Art has been crippled by its failed attempt to Do Good. Art is not good. It is not bad. It is art, and if you try and give it a social purpose, you wind up with the abomination that is War Horse.
----
But let's look at the flip side for a second. What happens when publicly-funded organizations get to do whatever they want with no accountability to anyone but themselves, despite the fact that they affect everyone? When they don't have to do good, even though they should? I am referring, naturally, to the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union.
The Tube. It is London's life force--an arterial system that provides almost every neighbourhood with workers, taxpayers, and the occasional vagrant. Like theatre it is also paid for with a combination of tax revenue and ticket sales. But unlike theatre, in the past year transit prices have gone up twice, services have been reduced, and the union has gone on strike at least four times, effectively shutting the system down and putting an undue burden on the separate unions of the buses, suburban rail, the Overground, the river, taxis, and the highway. Theatres tried that--nobody showed up and eventually the theatres closed.
RMT are striking for what at first sounds like reasonable causes--safety, hours, wages, job security. Fair enough, right?
Except. Except they don't really have a leg to stand on. Tube employees' base salary is £15,000 higher than any other transit workers'. More money is sluiced by the state into the Tube than into any other system--into maintenance, employee benefits, maintaining jobs, and line development. Particularly now that the Olympics are rapidly coming closer, ensuring that the city has a safe, reliable, attractive public transit system has been declared utterly vital. They are getting as much money as anyone can afford.
And we live in the Future. The city also has a lovely train service called the Docklands Light Railway, which is every four year old boy's favourite thing on earth for one very important reason: he can sit up front and pretend to drive. The DLR is essentially a large network of robots that functions quite well almost entirely without human involvement. It's on time, it's safe, and it runs itself.
Sure, in the evenings it's a good idea to have transit employees on board to ensure that when drunks fall onto the tracks, the machine doesn't carry on without heeding their plight. But under daily circumstances, drivers, door operators, and signalmen are more trouble than they're worth. Unfortunate to employment rates? Sure. But what is better for commuters--employing train employees to do an okay job, or having machines do a very efficient job?
This kind of gimmick of course makes transit employees very, very angry. And to an extent I understand them--why should people lose their jobs to machines, just because machines do them better and without needing to buy food or nappies or pay mortgages or take sick days? We've had to face the crushing truth that computers and machines work better than we do since the industrial revolution. As we innovate ourselves out of usefulness, we must take a moment to ask--why do we cling to the notion that a task that is better and more cheaply performed by a computer programme should still be a career? No one seems to mourn the obsolescence of the scullery maid or the lamplighter. And while home-made cakes do taste better, I have a hard time believing that the DLR is somehow inferior without that human touch. If a machine has been made to streamline the inefficiencies of human performance at any task, surely this is an indicator that the best human operation leaves room for improvement.
So far, the rail unions have kept the machines from completely eliminating their jobs, but this success has empowered them to take more bold moves, which may get them into trouble. Their regular, crippling strikes over ticket office layoffs (the computerized system works better, faster, more fairly, speaks 17 languages, doesn't yell at you for waking it up, and doesn't pull the shade at 4:45pm) and their planned strikes over the legitimate firing of two employees have endeared the soulless DLR to Londoners more and more over the past year.
----
But what about private companies who have never done good, have never had to do good, but keep getting in the way regardless? I'm referring, of course, to phone companies and net neutrality.
Why does the phone company think it is owed something in this digital age? We have always paid for phone service--it's not like the entire history of telephone operation has been some sort of philanthropy on their part--but now that a video phone call can be handled for free and with minimal bandwidth occupation on the Internet companies like BT are determined to get their just deserves. Courts are filled every day with phone lawyers and lobbyists doing whatever they can to prevent companies like Skype from letting people circumvent their communication toll. Just because it Can be done for free doesn't mean it Should, surely.
The problem is the people who would add a surcharge to free services so as to hold onto their profit margin are convinced that the Internet is a closed system with a speed limit that can and should be enforced. Despite the truth that the interwebs just expand as new information enters them, and so long as people keep buying servers there's no reason the net won't just grow indefinitely, they are trapped in a 1980's version of the world where a town's long-distance jacks were limited and had to be handled by an operator. The extents they're going to now to impose their analogue fees on the digital world are akin to priests raving that, despite all evidence that a skilled surgeon removed your infected appendix safely, prayer actually saved your life. Get with the program. Manual telephone operation and religion have been dead for years, but for some stupid reason they won't stop kicking or demanding our money. You've had your day! Just let go already! Better, faster, smarter and cheaper systems have replaced you--namely computers and soap. The reason we're not paying you is because you shouldn't be paid anymore. You want a job? Invent a new service we can't live without. Don't demand that we keep paying you for a service nobody needs that you don't even provide.
----
So. I think it comes down to: art should not be public, transit should not be private, and anyone who tries to force consumers to pay twice for internet and internet services should be shot. I already pay my monthly net subscription to BE AND a trumped-up "line rental" fee to the privately-owned BT--don't try and charge me for using Skype because I'm not paying your free-money long-distance fee for a piece of software to automatically connect me to my mom. I'm paying you for internet access. What I do with it is my business.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
A Heartfelt, if Unwarranted, Open Thank-You Note
Dear HR Department Representatives of the Six or So Companies who have Sent Me Rejection Letters,
Thank you for your note. I very much appreciate knowing that you received my application and reviewed it to some degree before deciding against it. Over the past two months I have sent out upwards of 50 job applications but have only received about ten confirmations that I even did so. While I am of course a little disappointed that I was not selected for an interview with your company, I am absolutely elated that you took the time to tell me. I am seriously not joking. It makes me feel so much better to hear a solid no than to just sit and wait, confident my application probably was discarded without so much as a glance but still nagged by the niggling hope that maybe your office is just really, really inefficient. It took the BBC 4 months to send me a rejection letter--who's to say you're not all like that? And then where would I be if I accepted a job? Weeks after I accepted a job on a sailboat, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I received four calls from other companies--boats, offices, and even the circus--offering me interviews and expressing interest. Not fair! I have no patience for false hope. I have more respect for companies who tell me no in a timely manner than for those who string me along or simply say nothing. It's one thing if they cover their tracks from the outset with a quick "due to the high volume of applications we receive we are unable to reply individually to every letter, so if you haven't heard from us in a week please assume you were not selected for interview." blurb on the job description itself. That's a reasonable stance, particularly if you have over 50 applications for each position. That quick line of text gives an unsuccessful applicant closure. But the ones that just say nothing, particularly in the arts--that can mean anything. Seriously, with flaky artsy types at the helm, no response could mean no, maybe, yes, or even where are you, we've been paying you for six weeks. So seriously, the clear concise and timely rejection letter is a courtesy I appreciate.
warm regards,
One of the Thousands of Applicants You'll Never Meet
Thank you for your note. I very much appreciate knowing that you received my application and reviewed it to some degree before deciding against it. Over the past two months I have sent out upwards of 50 job applications but have only received about ten confirmations that I even did so. While I am of course a little disappointed that I was not selected for an interview with your company, I am absolutely elated that you took the time to tell me. I am seriously not joking. It makes me feel so much better to hear a solid no than to just sit and wait, confident my application probably was discarded without so much as a glance but still nagged by the niggling hope that maybe your office is just really, really inefficient. It took the BBC 4 months to send me a rejection letter--who's to say you're not all like that? And then where would I be if I accepted a job? Weeks after I accepted a job on a sailboat, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I received four calls from other companies--boats, offices, and even the circus--offering me interviews and expressing interest. Not fair! I have no patience for false hope. I have more respect for companies who tell me no in a timely manner than for those who string me along or simply say nothing. It's one thing if they cover their tracks from the outset with a quick "due to the high volume of applications we receive we are unable to reply individually to every letter, so if you haven't heard from us in a week please assume you were not selected for interview." blurb on the job description itself. That's a reasonable stance, particularly if you have over 50 applications for each position. That quick line of text gives an unsuccessful applicant closure. But the ones that just say nothing, particularly in the arts--that can mean anything. Seriously, with flaky artsy types at the helm, no response could mean no, maybe, yes, or even where are you, we've been paying you for six weeks. So seriously, the clear concise and timely rejection letter is a courtesy I appreciate.
warm regards,
One of the Thousands of Applicants You'll Never Meet
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Cool Events I've Come Across
What's that? I do believe that's a Thames clipper coming about after having just passed through the drawn Tower Bridge.
Oh, and what's that? I believe I witnessed London Henge.
And that is a very mean swan.
Jardin Entr'Acte, avec les photos
Well, my tulips are pretty much done for the year. The dark purple tulips are still clinging onto solvency, but they'll dry out by Wednesday I'm sure. I've cut the stems back but left the foliage so hopefully they'll be strong for next spring. Thanks, Tulips! You really brightened my winter. See you back soon.
The tomatoes are getting bigger but they're not big or strong enough yet for me to stop worrying about them. I probably shouldn't have put them outside when I did but I was tired of hauling watering cans up to the attic, which is now hot and stifling without the skylights open. A fox dug one of the Gardeners Delights up in what appeared to be an aborted burial for a six-inch piece of a mouldy baguette. Bizarre. The plant was uprooted but not damaged and seems to be springing back.
I've had to move my growing operations up the garden somewhat as the huge ugly sycamore in my neighbours' garden now has enormous limbs overshadowing the end of the yard. Irksome, as I already have a big ugly holly doing that on the opposite side. I'm sure my neighbours wouldn't give a flying hoot if I lopped the branch off, but as I have no car and the city does not provide garden waste removal, I have no idea what I'd do with it. The idea of "chop it up and burn it" has a certain appeal, and there's no law preventing me doing just that, but I'd like to get a chiminea or sturdy metal trash can before I tried that. The idea of chopping both of those trees down and burning them is even more appealing, figuring I swept the garden yesterday and it is already again covered in nasty sticky tree pollen sacs and pointy painful stupid ugly holly leaves.
The Big Pink Plant has pink flowers now but it's not as showy as it was last year, probably because I pruned it quite severely after it dropped its blossoms last May. It was scraggly and lopsided and kinda sad-looking without the flowers, but I guess that's the trade-off. It also appears to have two cousins in the garden that are also blooming, but with white flowers of the same shape. Pleasing. I dug up some photos from 2010 to demonstrate just how much less floofy it is now.
Big Pink Plant Whole 2010
Big Pink Plant Detail 2010
Big Pink Plant Whole, 2011
Big Pink Plant Detail 2011
Just this morning the Azalea has begun to bloom, and the peony is about to. Yay! Also as of this morning I have visible seedlings for my bell peppers and beefsteak tomatoes. Go little plants!
Peony bud! Eeek!
Azalea! White flowers are hard to photograph.
----
I have an interview with another temp agency on Tuesday, so hopefully I'll start getting somewhere soon.
The couple that bought Malcolm and Simon's house sounds like they're installing shelving. They smoke some stinky brand of cigarettes, which is disappointing--the Polish woman on the other side smokes something that smells nice after it has diffused a bit in the night air. Yesterday we happened to see the new dude bring in a set of golf clubs. There goes the neighbourhood.
The tomatoes are getting bigger but they're not big or strong enough yet for me to stop worrying about them. I probably shouldn't have put them outside when I did but I was tired of hauling watering cans up to the attic, which is now hot and stifling without the skylights open. A fox dug one of the Gardeners Delights up in what appeared to be an aborted burial for a six-inch piece of a mouldy baguette. Bizarre. The plant was uprooted but not damaged and seems to be springing back.
I've had to move my growing operations up the garden somewhat as the huge ugly sycamore in my neighbours' garden now has enormous limbs overshadowing the end of the yard. Irksome, as I already have a big ugly holly doing that on the opposite side. I'm sure my neighbours wouldn't give a flying hoot if I lopped the branch off, but as I have no car and the city does not provide garden waste removal, I have no idea what I'd do with it. The idea of "chop it up and burn it" has a certain appeal, and there's no law preventing me doing just that, but I'd like to get a chiminea or sturdy metal trash can before I tried that. The idea of chopping both of those trees down and burning them is even more appealing, figuring I swept the garden yesterday and it is already again covered in nasty sticky tree pollen sacs and pointy painful stupid ugly holly leaves.
The Big Pink Plant has pink flowers now but it's not as showy as it was last year, probably because I pruned it quite severely after it dropped its blossoms last May. It was scraggly and lopsided and kinda sad-looking without the flowers, but I guess that's the trade-off. It also appears to have two cousins in the garden that are also blooming, but with white flowers of the same shape. Pleasing. I dug up some photos from 2010 to demonstrate just how much less floofy it is now.
Big Pink Plant Whole 2010
Big Pink Plant Detail 2010
Big Pink Plant Whole, 2011
Big Pink Plant Detail 2011Just this morning the Azalea has begun to bloom, and the peony is about to. Yay! Also as of this morning I have visible seedlings for my bell peppers and beefsteak tomatoes. Go little plants!
Peony bud! Eeek!
Azalea! White flowers are hard to photograph.----
I have an interview with another temp agency on Tuesday, so hopefully I'll start getting somewhere soon.
The couple that bought Malcolm and Simon's house sounds like they're installing shelving. They smoke some stinky brand of cigarettes, which is disappointing--the Polish woman on the other side smokes something that smells nice after it has diffused a bit in the night air. Yesterday we happened to see the new dude bring in a set of golf clubs. There goes the neighbourhood.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Ancient Wisdom, or Fear of Change?
Why do people feel the need to justify the actions and attitudes of the present against documents from the past? The Bible, the Qu'ran, the Constitution, the company mission statement...all referred to constantly by people to prove that they're right, that they're good, that they're striving to attain some well-established ideal. I don't understand.
The Constitution is a big one for me. I don't understand the reverence afforded the Founding Fathers, a bunch of frustrated men whose primary goal was to set up a country that would be Not England after years of colonial oppression. I don't get why people hold up the Bill of Rights as though it's some sort of scripture, perfect and unthinkable to modify, despite the fact that it is comprised of the first ten corrections to a distinctly flawed original document. Why do we hold old writings and rules in a better light than contemporary? Why do we convince ourselves that the values of the ancients are somehow superior, nobler, despite the fact that society has been constantly progressing since the time of writing?
I think the Constitution should be reviewed every year by a randomly selected body of poli sci professors. Once a year they sit down and read the rules and say "okay, does this one still make sense? Is this still a good idea? Could we rephrase it to be more clear? Could we replace it with something more applicable? Should we change this to something that more accurately reflects the best interests of everyone in the nation, not just the white christian ones?" The good ones, keep. The ones that have already been amended, or the ones that are discriminatory or perpetuate inequity get struck. Like the 18th Amendment--it was repealed. Surely that means the 18th should be kicked out and women's suffrage should move up a space. Indeed, why can't women's suffrage just be added to the 15th? What's wrong with modifying the document itself, instead of eternally adding to it? If you're amending it, clearly the document is not sacrosanct. Why do you wish only to fill in the white space at the end? You can keep the first one on file, but don't use it if it's no longer useful.
As for laws that may suck, why should people have the right to wave guns around or not have to give evidence against themselves? Why should the government reserve the right to quarter soldiers in people's homes in wartime? Is it really a good idea to not re-try acquitted cases if new evidence comes to light?
(I'd like to take a moment to consider the right to bear arms. Regardless that its original phrasing intended to state that the people have the right to form militias and defend themselves from tyranny, the right to have a weapon doesn't actually give you the right to use it. If you use your gun on someone in a non-defensive act, it's a crime. Likewise, if you use your gun on someone in an act that you believe to be defensive but turns out to be unnecessary, it's a crime. The only time it's okay to use your gun for its designed purpose is if someone else is using their gun for its designed purpose on you and you'd prefer they didn't. That's just weird and pointless. Kinda like the christian "god is three distinct people at once while at the same time just one dude" argument. Weird, bullshit, and pointless.)
But why do we constantly re-interpret the presumed-noble intent of the written edict, when we could just write something better? We give new meanings to the Constitution and scripture all the time to reflect current thinking, despite what it actually says. Like the current dispute between godbotherers and halfway intelligent people over the first amendment. The godbotherers like to construe it to mean that the government won't dictate religion, but may still behave in a religious manner. Whereas sane people figure it means that the government is a secular body that must not have anything at all to do with religion. If the law as written can be misconstrued, and in particular if it may be misconstrued to repress people or impose discriminatory values on them, it must be re-written. More specifically, if circumstances progress and the world grows up and we realize that a particular law is outdated or represents a view that is no longer universally viewed as just, laws must be updated to reflect--not just the views of the vocal, but the logical, objective truth.
As logic stands now, so long as adults of sound mind consent to an action, provided that action does not affect non-consenting parties, it is no business of anyone else to intervene or even regulate it. But back-assward busybodies nevertheless believe it is their right and obligation to impose their narrow world views behind everyone's doors, so laws remain on the books--some of them utterly unenforceable because federal laws contradict them--that ban perfectly reasonable behaviours because religiosos are holding out for the day the federal ban will go away.
Just as it is unacceptable for religion to control private behaviour and thought by scaring children into believing they are always being watched and their minds are always being read, it is not acceptable for the state to pass laws against doing as one pleases provided it doesn't harm anyone else or break or take their stuff. This is reasonable and just and appropriate. But it would require a complete re-write of everything. I'm okay with that. I don't hold the law as sacred. I believe history is recorded to be learnt from, not to be repeated or maintained. Yes, we know how things were 200 years ago in this country. That doesn't indicate that that's how we need to stay. The People at large don't give a whoop what we used to be. Standing up in front of Congress and saying "well for 200 years the US was ruled by and for christianity so we better keep it that way" is akin to a representative in Israel standing up and saying "well for the past thousand years we didn't have a country here so we better give it back." History is not a mandate. What things were is not necessarily what things oughtta be.
The decline of the prevalence of religion in the developed world (i.e. Europe) crossfades clearly with the advent of useful medical science. Religion has been steadily losing its grip on government, education, nursing, and daily life ever since the discovery of penicillin. As soon as it was discovered that antibiotics and sanitation were far more reliable than prayer people became disillusioned, and rightly so. (Every time someone's life is saved by a complicated surgical procedure and it's called a 'miracle' a skilled surgeon sheds a tear.) It's downright rude to attribute to your imaginary friend what was clearly the work of human beings--human beings who, incidentally, only became able to develop surgical techniques and medicines by disobeying the directives of the church. Indeed, George Eliot mentioned in Middlemarch that even at her time in small country towns the populace was disinclined to trust a religious doctor.
But it goes beyond that. Now that we have video and audio recording technology, quick and easy transport connections around the globe, and instantaneous news coverage of all planetary events which affect people, it's become incredibly difficult for anyone to insulate themselves from the fact that bad shit happens everywhere. How can a sensible person thank Jeebus for curing them of a nasty stomach bug while simultaneously aware that 28,000 people were wiped out by a tsunami--some instantly, but many slowly and in pain, while others are now left to deal with the loss and the battered survivors? Who besides a narcissist can honestly thank god for curing them of anorexia while millions starve due to farm subsidies and trade agreements on top of changing weather patterns? What arrogant freak still thinks there's something out there, in control of the universe, who loves them and gives a flying shitball where their puppy is? How Dare you be religious?
Every catastrophe, every plague, every public outcry is not a time to question the motives of your imaginary friend of choice, but an opportunity to fix something--namely, the structures, traditions, and protocols that were in place that allowed this to happen. Religion exists to restrict the functionality of the state, education, love, science, and medicine and its finally dawned on people that it's costing lives, jobs, equality and happiness. Government is likewise hobbled when its base laws, which may have appeared clear, fair, and appropriate in the religion-crippled culture of 200 years ago, were written for a different, larger world--a world where you could pretend that your way of life was the best and didn't need to change the rules just because they were wrong.
"Because that's what the ancients did" is not a justification for any action. "Because we've always sold Walkmen" does not keep your electronics shop open, even if it was founded in 1987. "Because they thought it was a good idea in 1787" does not justify the US's continued use of the inherently-undemocratic electoral college voting system. Times Change, and old documents and old ways of doing things must be respectfully put aside. Filed, stored, not lost, not forgotten, but not perpetuated. That which we do must be tailored to the world we live in Now, and when what we're doing now is no longer relevant, it too must be archived.
If it's old enough to be sacred, it's clearly out of date.
The Constitution is a big one for me. I don't understand the reverence afforded the Founding Fathers, a bunch of frustrated men whose primary goal was to set up a country that would be Not England after years of colonial oppression. I don't get why people hold up the Bill of Rights as though it's some sort of scripture, perfect and unthinkable to modify, despite the fact that it is comprised of the first ten corrections to a distinctly flawed original document. Why do we hold old writings and rules in a better light than contemporary? Why do we convince ourselves that the values of the ancients are somehow superior, nobler, despite the fact that society has been constantly progressing since the time of writing?
I think the Constitution should be reviewed every year by a randomly selected body of poli sci professors. Once a year they sit down and read the rules and say "okay, does this one still make sense? Is this still a good idea? Could we rephrase it to be more clear? Could we replace it with something more applicable? Should we change this to something that more accurately reflects the best interests of everyone in the nation, not just the white christian ones?" The good ones, keep. The ones that have already been amended, or the ones that are discriminatory or perpetuate inequity get struck. Like the 18th Amendment--it was repealed. Surely that means the 18th should be kicked out and women's suffrage should move up a space. Indeed, why can't women's suffrage just be added to the 15th? What's wrong with modifying the document itself, instead of eternally adding to it? If you're amending it, clearly the document is not sacrosanct. Why do you wish only to fill in the white space at the end? You can keep the first one on file, but don't use it if it's no longer useful.
As for laws that may suck, why should people have the right to wave guns around or not have to give evidence against themselves? Why should the government reserve the right to quarter soldiers in people's homes in wartime? Is it really a good idea to not re-try acquitted cases if new evidence comes to light?
(I'd like to take a moment to consider the right to bear arms. Regardless that its original phrasing intended to state that the people have the right to form militias and defend themselves from tyranny, the right to have a weapon doesn't actually give you the right to use it. If you use your gun on someone in a non-defensive act, it's a crime. Likewise, if you use your gun on someone in an act that you believe to be defensive but turns out to be unnecessary, it's a crime. The only time it's okay to use your gun for its designed purpose is if someone else is using their gun for its designed purpose on you and you'd prefer they didn't. That's just weird and pointless. Kinda like the christian "god is three distinct people at once while at the same time just one dude" argument. Weird, bullshit, and pointless.)
But why do we constantly re-interpret the presumed-noble intent of the written edict, when we could just write something better? We give new meanings to the Constitution and scripture all the time to reflect current thinking, despite what it actually says. Like the current dispute between godbotherers and halfway intelligent people over the first amendment. The godbotherers like to construe it to mean that the government won't dictate religion, but may still behave in a religious manner. Whereas sane people figure it means that the government is a secular body that must not have anything at all to do with religion. If the law as written can be misconstrued, and in particular if it may be misconstrued to repress people or impose discriminatory values on them, it must be re-written. More specifically, if circumstances progress and the world grows up and we realize that a particular law is outdated or represents a view that is no longer universally viewed as just, laws must be updated to reflect--not just the views of the vocal, but the logical, objective truth.
As logic stands now, so long as adults of sound mind consent to an action, provided that action does not affect non-consenting parties, it is no business of anyone else to intervene or even regulate it. But back-assward busybodies nevertheless believe it is their right and obligation to impose their narrow world views behind everyone's doors, so laws remain on the books--some of them utterly unenforceable because federal laws contradict them--that ban perfectly reasonable behaviours because religiosos are holding out for the day the federal ban will go away.
Just as it is unacceptable for religion to control private behaviour and thought by scaring children into believing they are always being watched and their minds are always being read, it is not acceptable for the state to pass laws against doing as one pleases provided it doesn't harm anyone else or break or take their stuff. This is reasonable and just and appropriate. But it would require a complete re-write of everything. I'm okay with that. I don't hold the law as sacred. I believe history is recorded to be learnt from, not to be repeated or maintained. Yes, we know how things were 200 years ago in this country. That doesn't indicate that that's how we need to stay. The People at large don't give a whoop what we used to be. Standing up in front of Congress and saying "well for 200 years the US was ruled by and for christianity so we better keep it that way" is akin to a representative in Israel standing up and saying "well for the past thousand years we didn't have a country here so we better give it back." History is not a mandate. What things were is not necessarily what things oughtta be.
The decline of the prevalence of religion in the developed world (i.e. Europe) crossfades clearly with the advent of useful medical science. Religion has been steadily losing its grip on government, education, nursing, and daily life ever since the discovery of penicillin. As soon as it was discovered that antibiotics and sanitation were far more reliable than prayer people became disillusioned, and rightly so. (Every time someone's life is saved by a complicated surgical procedure and it's called a 'miracle' a skilled surgeon sheds a tear.) It's downright rude to attribute to your imaginary friend what was clearly the work of human beings--human beings who, incidentally, only became able to develop surgical techniques and medicines by disobeying the directives of the church. Indeed, George Eliot mentioned in Middlemarch that even at her time in small country towns the populace was disinclined to trust a religious doctor.
But it goes beyond that. Now that we have video and audio recording technology, quick and easy transport connections around the globe, and instantaneous news coverage of all planetary events which affect people, it's become incredibly difficult for anyone to insulate themselves from the fact that bad shit happens everywhere. How can a sensible person thank Jeebus for curing them of a nasty stomach bug while simultaneously aware that 28,000 people were wiped out by a tsunami--some instantly, but many slowly and in pain, while others are now left to deal with the loss and the battered survivors? Who besides a narcissist can honestly thank god for curing them of anorexia while millions starve due to farm subsidies and trade agreements on top of changing weather patterns? What arrogant freak still thinks there's something out there, in control of the universe, who loves them and gives a flying shitball where their puppy is? How Dare you be religious?
Every catastrophe, every plague, every public outcry is not a time to question the motives of your imaginary friend of choice, but an opportunity to fix something--namely, the structures, traditions, and protocols that were in place that allowed this to happen. Religion exists to restrict the functionality of the state, education, love, science, and medicine and its finally dawned on people that it's costing lives, jobs, equality and happiness. Government is likewise hobbled when its base laws, which may have appeared clear, fair, and appropriate in the religion-crippled culture of 200 years ago, were written for a different, larger world--a world where you could pretend that your way of life was the best and didn't need to change the rules just because they were wrong.
"Because that's what the ancients did" is not a justification for any action. "Because we've always sold Walkmen" does not keep your electronics shop open, even if it was founded in 1987. "Because they thought it was a good idea in 1787" does not justify the US's continued use of the inherently-undemocratic electoral college voting system. Times Change, and old documents and old ways of doing things must be respectfully put aside. Filed, stored, not lost, not forgotten, but not perpetuated. That which we do must be tailored to the world we live in Now, and when what we're doing now is no longer relevant, it too must be archived.
If it's old enough to be sacred, it's clearly out of date.
Southeast London Buttermilk Biscuits
My adapted recipe. Doing dry measures with a scale just makes so much more sense than with cups.
Start with a cup of milk. Add a tablespoon or so of chardonnay vinegar and let it sit for about five minutes. If you don't have chardonnay vinegar, use regular vinegar or a slightly larger amount of lemon juice, but chardonnay vinegar is best. Steer clear of balsamic or apple cider vinegar, and whatever you do, don't waste your time looking for buttermilk in London. It's not there. Then give it a quick stir—it should be thick.
Then:
Single recipe. Doubling may or may not require exactly the same amount of buttermilk, depending on whether or not Mars is in retrograde.
250 g plain flour
85 g butter—frozen, grated like cheese.
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Tools:
cheese grater
big bowl
sieve for flour. Sifters are dumb.
scale and other measuring devices
whatever baking pans your landlady left you
clean wooden counter-top. If you have Formica counter-tops, have your kitchen re-appointed before continuing.
See what I didn't include there? A spoon. Yeaaaah.
Preheat your crappy-ass oven to gas mark 8, otherwise known as the “who needs eyebrows?” setting. Due to the nature of your crappy-ass oven, you'll have to rotate your ungreased cookie sheets at least once to ensure the ones in the back don't burn and the ones in the front actually get cooked, so you'll let all the heat out and they won't rise properly. If your oven has a window, watch the ones in the back rise beautifully for the first five minutes, then start to fall when the temperature drops. How like life.
If you'd rather have biscuits that rise nicely, buy an electric oven, install it, and set it to 450 F, 230 C, or self-cleaning mode. Or try to jerry-rig some sort of lazy Susan type device on the top rack. Might work. Refrain from using duct tape or plastic components, particularly if you're baking at night, so as to avoid waking up the whole damn neighbourhood when you burn your kitchen down.
Working with your hands, mix the dry ingredients. Add the butter last, in small handfuls, breaking up any clumps that form as you go. Make sure the butter is nice and incorporated throughout the flour mixture before you add the faux buttermilk but pull your hands out while it's still cold. Add only as much buttermilk as necessary—this amount will change based on the humidity and the movements of Saturn—to make the dough stick together without becoming gloppy. Incorporate only as much as you have to. Do not knead. Scrape the biscuit-worth of dough off your fingers. Dump out on a hella well-floured countertop—use your sieve to snow out a nice even layer—and pat into something resembling a circle, a little over half an inch thick. Do not roll out or pat to less than a half inch in thickness, as the biscuits will come out flat and lame. Pressing straight down, use a 2 inch-diameter biscuit cutter to hack the dough into rough circles, or whatever shape they wind up as. Instead of re-forming the offcuts into another cut-able disc, just throw them on the pan. You're not gonna serve them to the f'ing queen and everybody loves offcuts. Bake for 10-20 minutes, depending on the lunar phase, and remove when most of them are golden brown on top.
Yields about 8 good-sized biscuits, plus another biscuit or two worth of offcuts. I promise this is preferable to 10 biscuits, 2 of which are puck-esque.
Serve with apricot jam, orange marmalade, mozzarella and sliced tomatoes, eggs, baked beans, black pudding, or whatever you have laying around. They'll probably go well.
If you get a chance, serve them alongside a basket of scones and thumb your nose at your friends and family by proving that no, they are not the same. There's nothing particularly wrong with scones, but biscuits they ain't.
Start with a cup of milk. Add a tablespoon or so of chardonnay vinegar and let it sit for about five minutes. If you don't have chardonnay vinegar, use regular vinegar or a slightly larger amount of lemon juice, but chardonnay vinegar is best. Steer clear of balsamic or apple cider vinegar, and whatever you do, don't waste your time looking for buttermilk in London. It's not there. Then give it a quick stir—it should be thick.
Then:
Single recipe. Doubling may or may not require exactly the same amount of buttermilk, depending on whether or not Mars is in retrograde.
250 g plain flour
85 g butter—frozen, grated like cheese.
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Tools:
cheese grater
big bowl
sieve for flour. Sifters are dumb.
scale and other measuring devices
whatever baking pans your landlady left you
clean wooden counter-top. If you have Formica counter-tops, have your kitchen re-appointed before continuing.
See what I didn't include there? A spoon. Yeaaaah.
Preheat your crappy-ass oven to gas mark 8, otherwise known as the “who needs eyebrows?” setting. Due to the nature of your crappy-ass oven, you'll have to rotate your ungreased cookie sheets at least once to ensure the ones in the back don't burn and the ones in the front actually get cooked, so you'll let all the heat out and they won't rise properly. If your oven has a window, watch the ones in the back rise beautifully for the first five minutes, then start to fall when the temperature drops. How like life.
If you'd rather have biscuits that rise nicely, buy an electric oven, install it, and set it to 450 F, 230 C, or self-cleaning mode. Or try to jerry-rig some sort of lazy Susan type device on the top rack. Might work. Refrain from using duct tape or plastic components, particularly if you're baking at night, so as to avoid waking up the whole damn neighbourhood when you burn your kitchen down.
Working with your hands, mix the dry ingredients. Add the butter last, in small handfuls, breaking up any clumps that form as you go. Make sure the butter is nice and incorporated throughout the flour mixture before you add the faux buttermilk but pull your hands out while it's still cold. Add only as much buttermilk as necessary—this amount will change based on the humidity and the movements of Saturn—to make the dough stick together without becoming gloppy. Incorporate only as much as you have to. Do not knead. Scrape the biscuit-worth of dough off your fingers. Dump out on a hella well-floured countertop—use your sieve to snow out a nice even layer—and pat into something resembling a circle, a little over half an inch thick. Do not roll out or pat to less than a half inch in thickness, as the biscuits will come out flat and lame. Pressing straight down, use a 2 inch-diameter biscuit cutter to hack the dough into rough circles, or whatever shape they wind up as. Instead of re-forming the offcuts into another cut-able disc, just throw them on the pan. You're not gonna serve them to the f'ing queen and everybody loves offcuts. Bake for 10-20 minutes, depending on the lunar phase, and remove when most of them are golden brown on top.
Yields about 8 good-sized biscuits, plus another biscuit or two worth of offcuts. I promise this is preferable to 10 biscuits, 2 of which are puck-esque.
Serve with apricot jam, orange marmalade, mozzarella and sliced tomatoes, eggs, baked beans, black pudding, or whatever you have laying around. They'll probably go well.
If you get a chance, serve them alongside a basket of scones and thumb your nose at your friends and family by proving that no, they are not the same. There's nothing particularly wrong with scones, but biscuits they ain't.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Thoughts, Tulips, and new desktop background
Since I began painting my house back in October (or was it longer ago? Did I paint my dining room so I wouldn't have to write my dissertation? Oh memory, you fail me so speedily these days.) I've been addicted to audiobooks. While I'm still just as literate as ever, and my eyesight has not failed, I have found a joy in taking in a story with my ears that I never before knew I could. I started with the light and silly Sookie Stackhouse novels, perfectly narrated by a delightfully southern professional voice actress, but I ran out of those before the painting bug left me so I sought quickly for something else.
Relief from the silence (and constant shrick-shrick of the roller) came in the form of LibriVox.org, which provided me with classics read by such an interesting variety of volunteers that I felt I might never grow bored with even the dullest of prose. I started to seek out texts read by my favourites, regardless of what they were, and discovered that I actually could tolerate Jane Eyre, and Finished it this time. I've completed more of Jane Austen's canon than I ever knew existed--I started with Sense & Sensibility, revisited Pride & Prejudice, and clomped through Persuasion before enjoying some of her short stories and hilarious essays. (Give The History of England a go--it's just a short thing and I think she wrote it while still a teenager. It's great.)
I'm currently halfway through Middlemarch, though I nearly gave up after a series of unfortunately-voiced readers left me bored and annoyed. (thick Italian accent with confusing phrasing, followed by thick Indian accent with guesswork inflection, followed by thick Ohio accent with inexcusably poor pronunciation. urgh.) So I'm taking a quick break from that and enjoying a professionally-read version of Brideshead Revisited from the library. As Brideshead was not published until 1945 it's got another 22 years before the LibriVox team can get their claws on it. I hope the internet hasn't gotten mouldy before then.
Anyway, some pictures. I think the hosta would make for a good default desktop background.
Two peppermint-flavoured double tulips. The pink stripes turned purple before they passed.
Bluebell with evergreen flowering shrub.
dark tulips with sunshine. mmm.
peppermint-coloured tulip beginning to curl up.
Chive flower beginning to emerge from bud. Yes, I take pictures of my onions.
Hosta, leaf almost entirely unfurled now.
More of the same.
Invasive tulip peeking, with aphid. They just seemed to hang out in them without actually hurting anything. Odd. I still smushed them when I saw them, as they were a nuisance to my tomatoes all last year.
I thought this looked like a supernova against the night sky.
The last flower-leaf of this plant to open, surrounded by older leaves that have faded to yellow. As of now they're all green, save this one, which is yellow.
Relief from the silence (and constant shrick-shrick of the roller) came in the form of LibriVox.org, which provided me with classics read by such an interesting variety of volunteers that I felt I might never grow bored with even the dullest of prose. I started to seek out texts read by my favourites, regardless of what they were, and discovered that I actually could tolerate Jane Eyre, and Finished it this time. I've completed more of Jane Austen's canon than I ever knew existed--I started with Sense & Sensibility, revisited Pride & Prejudice, and clomped through Persuasion before enjoying some of her short stories and hilarious essays. (Give The History of England a go--it's just a short thing and I think she wrote it while still a teenager. It's great.)
I'm currently halfway through Middlemarch, though I nearly gave up after a series of unfortunately-voiced readers left me bored and annoyed. (thick Italian accent with confusing phrasing, followed by thick Indian accent with guesswork inflection, followed by thick Ohio accent with inexcusably poor pronunciation. urgh.) So I'm taking a quick break from that and enjoying a professionally-read version of Brideshead Revisited from the library. As Brideshead was not published until 1945 it's got another 22 years before the LibriVox team can get their claws on it. I hope the internet hasn't gotten mouldy before then.
Anyway, some pictures. I think the hosta would make for a good default desktop background.
Two peppermint-flavoured double tulips. The pink stripes turned purple before they passed.
Bluebell with evergreen flowering shrub.
dark tulips with sunshine. mmm.
peppermint-coloured tulip beginning to curl up.
Chive flower beginning to emerge from bud. Yes, I take pictures of my onions.
Hosta, leaf almost entirely unfurled now.
More of the same. 
Invasive tulip peeking, with aphid. They just seemed to hang out in them without actually hurting anything. Odd. I still smushed them when I saw them, as they were a nuisance to my tomatoes all last year.
I thought this looked like a supernova against the night sky.
The last flower-leaf of this plant to open, surrounded by older leaves that have faded to yellow. As of now they're all green, save this one, which is yellow.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Tulip Time!
So today is the warmest, sunniest day yet of the spring, and my tulips sure realized it fast. I came out this morning and the soil was parched and everything was drooping, which was surprising as it rained on Monday and even some yesterday. But whatever. Onto the flower show.
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