Monthly Archives: August 2009

Gammon with egg or pineapple?

Posted by David Hurst on August 28, 2009 3 comments

When ordering a gammon steak and chips from your local eatery/pub of choice, you will inevitably be faced with the choice of having either a fried egg, or a slice of pineapple. Why should we be forced to choose? Any serious gammon eater will know that it is best with both egg and pineapple.

Today we ventured to the Manor Hotel in Yeovil for a staff leaving lunch and I did indeed order gammon and was promptly faced with the usual question: “would you like egg or pineapple with that?”. Obviously, I asked for “both”.

Somehow they managed to screw up my order, despite this discussion surrounding the gammon accompaniment, and rolled out a plate of ham, egg and chips. I eventually got my gammon just as the other 16 people in the party had finished their meals and of course it came with only an egg.

Is this an extraordinarily difficult concept to grasp? Am I expecting too much from my dining experience?

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi returns home to Libya to a heroes welcome

Posted by David Hurst on August 21, 2009 None comments

This is almost laughable. If you haven’t been keeping up with the news, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. He received a life sentence in 2001, but has been released from prison by the Scottish government and allowed to return home on compassionate grounds. Apparently, he has terminal prostate cancer.

Some people are arguing that this is ridiculous turn of events and that a mass murderer (270 people were killed) should not be shown any compassion. In particular, the Americans are really rather upset about it. Others however, are arguing that the case against al-Megrahi was flimsy at best and believe he wasn’t the perpetrator of the crime.

I don’t want to argue either of those points – there are arguments for and against each point of view. Instead, what I find amazing (and rather amusing) is that the Government actually believed Libya would discretely accept al-Megrahi back home and not make a scene. Come on! This guy, whether he did or not, is seen as a hero by lots of America-hating Libyans, so it was 100% predictable that they would roll out the red carpet for him. Frankly, a blind, brain damaged, comatose baboon could have predicted this one right.

Speaking of baboons… Gordon Brown apparently wrote to Gaddafi to request that he deal with the matter discretely. Erm, right. Now there’s talk of the royal visit to Libya being canceled. I imagine that should have them all shaking with fear and grief.

Why don’t I use the King James / Authorised bible?

Posted by David Hurst on August 21, 2009 None comments

I got asked this question the other day and there’s a simple answer, which I shall write in the form of a question:

Why would I read a bible written in a language nobody speaks anymore?

Would you read a bible in Esperanto? What about one translated into Egyptian Hieroglyphs? Even if you had a grasp on these languages, wouldn’t it just make a difficult task that much more difficult?

Actually, I do have a KJV bible at home, which I occasionally reference in my studies, and also an American Standard Version, which is written archaic English too. It’s good to have lots of translations, purely because ancient languages are very different to modern languages and no translation does a perfect job of rendering the ancient into modern on every single scripture. Still, it must surely be better to read a translation in your own language…

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Why? Because, those were the common languages in use by the people who were reading the scriptures around the time they were written.

The New Testament, despite being written by Jews under Roman rule, was written neither in Hebrew nor in Latin. Instead it was written in Koine Greek. Why? Because one of the lasting remnants of the Greek empire was the Greek language and therefore majority of people at that time would have understood Koine Greek.

So, the bible was always intended to be accessible for all people and written in a language that the reader could easily understand. Quite why the mainstream religions insist on sticking to the archaic is beyond me to explain. But then, so many of them completely disregard most of the bible anyway.

The KJV has numerous inaccuracies of translation and was tainted from the start. To quote Wikipedia: “The king gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy. The translation was by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England.” That doesn’t sound like am impartial basis upon which to commence an accurate translation to me.

Whatever your denomination, any study of the bible is incomplete without a reasonable background knowledge of the various ancient languages used in its writing. A good place to start is with an interlinear translation, which features the original Greek text, with a literal word-for-word translation, and then a modern language translation – all on the same page. It’s ideal for spotting the creative license taken by the KJV translators in support of their particular brand of religion. By thus distilling the various translations we use, we can be more sure that we won’t mis-read, mis-understand or mis-apply any scripture.

Rentokil Advanced Fly Trap Window Stickers – do they work?

Posted by David Hurst on August 14, 2009 7 comments

No. They don’t.

Here’s what the packaging claims: “The Rentokil Advanced Fly Trap is specially designed (without an incesticide) to attract and control fly activity in any room in the home and the greenhouse.”

Basically, these things are nothing more than window stickers with a load of glue on the other side that the flies get stuck in. Presumably, they contain something which is supposed to attract the flies, although judging by the performance of the stickers in our house, I’m not sure.

We live near two farms, and as a result we have lots of flies no matter how clean we keep our house. It gets hot, so you open a window and the little fornicators are actually queueing up outside to get in. To keep them under control, we need to kill around 15 – 20 per day. The method of choice is to spray the little swine with anti-bacterial cleaning spray at close range. They usually drop to the floor, and then you can squish them in a tissue or vacuum them up. As effective as this is, I’m fed up with running around the house with a squirty bottle in one hand and a bit of bog roll in the other.

I’ve ordered an insectocutor, which is coming next week. I have every intention of switching out the lights and firing that bad boy up whilst I sit back with a cup of tea and watch the little turds fry. In the meantime though, I needed something to control the fly population and I don’t want to spray insecticide around my house. Whilst in Tesco, I happened upon the Rentokil Advanced Fly Trap Window Stickers and thought I’d give them a go. My pocket a few pounds lighter, I rushed home to stick them on the windows and waited expectantly. I realised all was not well when the flies literally walked all around the sticker, seemingly unattracted in any way, shape or form. Basically, the things work on the principle that at some point a fly might wander over and get stuck. That does not reflect a product that has been “specially designed… to control fly activity”.

My stickers have caught a total of three flies in four days. Not much of a harvest, I think you’ll agree. The final insult to compound the injury was when I checked the stickers this morning and found that my fly trap had actually caught a spider. I imagine the irony was totally lost on the poor spid, whom I could not remove from the trap without leaving him 8 legs short of his arachnid classification.

Rentokil – you are selling a product that blatantly does not work and I will think twice before buying any of your products again.