Tony Hatfield's Retired Ramblings

..and I thought The Sun couldn't get worse

thanx brenda

Lock Katrine

On our visit to Scotland, Loch Katrine became a favourite. It's the Lake in Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake. The weather wasn't great. This, believe it or not, is a  colour  photograph.

Thought for the Day- 15th November 2009

"For decades, pharmaceutical heroine was prescribed by doctors to patients who had become addicted after operations, particularly soldiers who had undergone battlefield surgery.They spent years on a legal supply: it did them no damage, and they led healthy, fruitful lives. Enid Bagnold, for example,who wrote National Velvet, was prescribed it after a hip operation and spent twelve years injecting up to 350 mg a day. Enid- as far as history records-never mugged a single person or sold her body on the streets, but died quietly in bed at the age of ninety-one. Until the American prohibitionists closed him down in the 1920s, Dr Willis Butler, ran a famous clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana, for some of these 'therapeutic addicts'. Amongst his patients, he included four doctors, two church ministers, two retired judges, an attorney, an architect, a newspaper editor, a musician from a symphony orchestra, a printer, two glass blowers and the mother of the commissioner of police. None of them showed any ill effect from the years they spent on Dr Butler's prescriptions. And, as Dr Butler later  recalled, ' I never found one which we could give an overdose to, even if we had  wanted to. I saw a man take twelve grains intravenously at one time. He stood up and said, " There, that's just fine", and went on about his business.' "

Nick Davies-Flat Earth News 2008   

Thought for the Day-13th November 2009

'Apart from  logical cogency, there is to me something a little odd about the ethical valuations of those who think that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent Deity, after preparing the ground by many millions of years of lifeless nebulae, would consider Himself adequately rewarded by the final emergence of Hitler and Stalin and the H-Bomb'

Bertrand Russell-Why I am not a Christian ed P Edwards 1957

Christianity and the Death Penalty-US Style.

As I write this, John Allen Muhammed is awaiting death in a Virgina jail. He will be killed by lethal injection. He will be given a series of  three injections. 

According to Wikipedia they are :

1  Sodium thiopental:  ultra-short action barbiturate, an anaesthetic agent capable of rendering the offender unconscious in a few seconds

2  Pancuronium:  non-depolarizing muscle relaxant, causes complete, fast and sustained paralysis of the skeletal striated muscles, including the diaphragm, and the rest of the respiratory muscles; this would eventually cause death by asphyxiation.

3  Potassium chloride:  stops the heart, and thus causes death by cardiac arrest .

 I've often wondered why the Unites States is one of the few countries to cling onto this brutal punishment.

Then I found this piece from one of their Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia. 

In January 2002, he gave a lecture to the University of Chicago Divinity School. His subject was the Death Penalty. You can read it in full here.

"This is not the Old Testament, I emphasize, but St. Paul.....[T]he core of his message is that government-however you want to limit that concept-derives its moral authority from the moral authority from God...Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral....I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life in exchange for the next?... for the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence. What a horrible act!...

The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy is to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible. We have done that in this country (and continental Europe has not) by preserving in our public life many visible reminders that -in words of a Supreme Court opinion from the 1940s-"we are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being"........All this, as I say,  is most un-European, and helps to explain why our people are more inclined to understand, as St Paul did, that government carries the sword as " the minister of God," to " execute wrath " on the evildoer".

If you read this, slightly edited by the removal of "Old Testament", "St Paul" and "Christian", then this lecture could easily have been given by an Iranian Ayatollah....But Iran is a theocracy?  And happily, it is  unthinkable the  speech given by Scalia would be given by a " continental European" Supreme Court judge.

Hooligans from plot #12

 Last of this year's crop of squash- hooligans

Fatter, Dumber and more apathetic than ever?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Two Brains- David Willetts and Dinosaurs

David Willetts is the Tory spokesman on Innovation, Universities and Skills. His nickname is "Two Brains" for his formidable intellect.

It's not often known that some species of dinosaur also had two brains. Apart from that in its skull,  a second, better described as ganglia, was located in its spine. 

The American poet, Bert Leston Taylor wrote this, wonderfully rhymed, 'Ode to a Dinosaur'.

    Behold the mighty Dinosaur,

    Famous in prehistoric lore,

    Not only for his weight and strength

    But for his intellectual length.

    You will observe by these remains

    The creature had two sets of brains--

    One in his head (the usual place),

    The other at his spinal base.

    Thus he could reason a priori

    As well as a posteriori.

    No problem bothered him a bit;

    He made both head and tail of it.

    So wise he was, so wise and solemn,

    Each thought filled just a spinal column.

    If one brain found the pressure strong

    It passed a few ideas along;

    If something slipped his forward mind

    'Twas rescued by the one behind;

    And if in error he was caught

    He had a saving afterthought.

    As he thought twice before he spoke

    He had no judgments to revoke;

    For he could think, without congestion,

    Upon both sides of every question.

    Oh, gaze upon this model beast,

    Defunct ten million years at least.

Creationists and Plate Tectonics

This morning  "In our Time"  Melvyn Bragg  and  his guests discussed the geological formation of Britain. You can download the podcast from this link. They inevitably touched on plate tectonics

As I was listening to it, I wondered just what the 40% of Americans who believe in the literal truth of the Bible-"young age creationists"- would make of this. They believe that the earth is about 6,000 years old.

We  have teachers in Britain who believe the same. Nick Cowan is a science teacher at the Bluecoat School in Liverpool.  Watch him in discussion with Richard Dawkins,

 and ask yourself- would you like  Mr Cowan teaching your kids science?

 Back to plate tectonics.

Just how do creationists of the young age variety, like Cowen, work out how the continents turned out as they did?

 They accept the continents have moved over time, but they think it happened during the 40 days and nights during which Noah, his family and all the animals, presumably including dinosaurs and monkeys, were aboard the Arc. Everything must have happened at high speed.

 Richard Dawkins  in his "Greatest Show on Earth" has done the sums for us. South America and Africa sped away from each other faster than a man can swim-for 40 days and nights.

Glasgow taxi signage

Only in Glasga from the Gibbzer