The kiss heard around the world

I'm not a fan of PDAs (public displays of affection) especially kissing. In fact, when it comes to kissing, I'm a Hindu. To me, kissing is a very private and intimate thing. Kate's and William's kiss did not disgust me. It was sweet, dignified and respectful. The kiss of true friends who like each other - not a food-hole sucking vacuum-cleaner roto-rooter sexual display.

I'm also not a fan of "royalty." To me they're basically inbred hillbillies who happened to be born into a very rich and powerful family. But I love Kate. She's much more beautiful than Diana - but of course I've always preferred brunettes to blondes.

And it helps that she's a normal human being not a plastic pod person like the other inbred hillbilly royal kissin' cousins. Kate definitely brings out my heterosexual tendencies. What a stunner! William is a lucky man.

There are over 120,000 pics of Kate on Google. I liked this one because it shows that she's a not a silly neurotic child like Diana but a mature, smart and sensible woman - the same age as my mom when she married my dad.

"He was as dull and uninspired as, I don’t know what"

In Competition No. 2691 you were invited to submit toe-curlingly bad analogies:

The first five winners, printed below, pocket £18 each; the rest get £10.

The state of the bathroom could only bring to mind the surface of a remote planet in which dungheaps and memphitic swamps co-existed with the entire toiletries and fragrances range of Galeries Lafayette.

The accountant had the world-weary air of a ferret that had been up so many trouser legs that life held no more surprises.

How to describe this novel? Picture it as The Aeniad meets Othello meets Moby Dick meets Peter Rabbit meets Mein Kampf meets the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus meets The Highway Code. In that ballpark, anyway.

His morals were as twisted as an expensive Sicilian corkscrew that had been used as a way of extracting the pith from a bad apple before being driven over by an Eddie Stobart truck.

The rest are just as good bad - i.e. #6:

She spoke as throatily as if a frog and its family had got into her throat and smoked a few packets of Peter Stuyvesant before growing claws and scratching at the inside of her thorax.

And my favorite (after the ferret/accountant):

The sea was agitated, like an old man demanding directions in a library as his wife is telling him to put the batteries back in his hearing aid.

The book that created the hegemony of the English language and cultural Christianity

The King James Bible is 400 years old this year:

It has been printed in millions of copies and hundreds of editions. It gives us our most memorable phrases and arresting images – from ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ to a ‘sting in the tail’.

The title of the article, "The publishing sensation that made England conquer the world," made me think that the gist of the article was about how the King James Bible had conquered the known world linguistically, religiously and culturally. But really most of the essay is about William Tyndale and is worth reading if you enjoy history.

Maybe I should write an article about "the book that created the hegemony of the English language and cultural Christianity." It spread Christianity to all the British colonies and inspired not only the Glorious Revolution but the American Revolution.

Fifty-four scholars were nominated as translators, of whom 47 actually served. They were divided into six separate ‘companies’ or committees, two meeting at Oxford, two at Cambridge and two at Westminster, and the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha were parcelled out among them. Each committee then went through its alloted portion, line by line and word by word.

They began with the original texts in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic; they compared and contrasted later translations in Latin and many other languages; they scoured reference books and commentaries; they consulted with other scholars on specific issues. And, being academics, they debated and quarrelled endlessly and ferociously.

Contrary to popular belief, however, what the translators did not do was to start the work of translation from scratch. Their instructions, whose substance was dictated by James himself, were quite explicit on the point. Instead, they were to base themselves on the main English Bible translations of the 16th century: ‘Tindall’s (sic).
...
Though I spake with the tongues of men and angels, and yet had no love, I were even as sounding brass: and as a tinkling cymbal. And though I could prophesy, and understood all secrets, and all knowledge: yea, if I had all faith so that I could move mountains out of their places, and yet had no love, I were nothing. (I Corinthians 13. 1-2)

All the great phrases, which have become the very fabric of the language, are there, too: ‘the spirit is willing’; ‘fight the good fight’; ‘the powers that be’. Yet More denounced Tyndale’s great work as ‘a filthy foam of blasphemies’.

This was because Tyndale, basing himself on Erasmus, had dared to translate key words in their Greek meanings as ‘elder’, ‘congregation’, ‘love’ and ‘repent’, instead of the officially approved ‘priest’, ‘church’, ‘charity’ and ‘do penance’.

A hundred years of strife was in the difference, and Tyndale was one of the first victims.

He was betrayed to the Flemish authorities, condemned and, having been strangled first (out of respect to his scholarship), his body was burned at the stake.

It is hard to exaggerate the difference between the lonely, hunted Tyndale and the comfortable cohorts of the Jacobean translators, with their fellowships and deaneries. Nine-tenths of Tyndale’s New Testament are reproduced word for word in the King James version.
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In 1607, halfway through the work of the Jacobean translators, the first lasting English settlement was established in North America, fittingly enough at Jamestown.

With the Empire as the medium and the King James Bible as the message, English had begun its path to global dominance.

Happy Easter

Peter Hitchens (brother of atheist Christopher Hitchens) compares Jesus Christ and Che Guevara?

[W]hat we recall at Easter is the show trial and judicial murder of Jesus of Nazareth. A mob is manipulated into calling for his death. The judge, who knows he is innocent, feebly gives in. Such things are common in the real world, to this day.
...
Among other things, Easter enshrines the idea that what we do here matters somewhere else, that there is an absolute standard by which our actions are judged.

Down 20 centuries, this idea has restrained the powerful. They do not like it. Never have. Never will.

The worship of Christ, victim of a lynch mob and a crooked judge, is dangerously radical. What about the cult of Comrade Guevara...?

It claims to be radical too. But its devotees are the power-worshipping generation that now dominates our culture, using their slogan of ‘equality’ as a bludgeon to flatten opposition.

Guevara was an evil killer, the exact opposite of Jesus. There is no excuse at all for revering him.

He personally slaughtered alleged traitors to his nasty revolution.

One of these was Eutimio Guerra, a peasant and army guide. Guevara himself icily recounted: ‘I fired a .32 calibre bullet into the right hemisphere of his brain which came out through his left temple. He moaned for a few moments, then died.’

Later, when the rock-star rebel ‘Che’ was in power, he would lie on top of the wall at
La Cabana prison, jauntily smoking a cigar while he watched the firing squads below punching bloody holes in the victims of his kangaroo trials.

Guevara’s view of justice was typical of the smug Left, which knows it is right because it knows it is good. ‘Don’t drag out the process. This is a revolution. Don’t use bourgeois legal methods, the proof is secondary.’

There you have it, rather neatly expressed – the two rival forces that compete for supremacy in what was once a Christian country – the Gospel of Che, hot with hate and splattered with other people’s blood and brains in the pursuit of a utopia that never comes, and the Gospel of Christ, a life laid down willingly for others. Care to choose?

I'm not a religious Christian but I am a "cultural Christian" - in other words: I live my life according to Jesus' only two commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself."

(Maybe I should put the word God in quotes because I'm not sure if I use it the same way as other people. But it's impossible to define my "God" simply and honestly without sounding like a pretentious fool and a raving lunatic.)

I've been called a "moralist" by disapproving educated elites plenty of times. And I have to confess that I believe that Jesus' commandments are the "absolute standard by which our actions are judged" and I answer only to one Lord - and that will never be Caesar, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin or Che Guevara or anyone who thinks of government as God or bows to the power, might and coercion of an earthly Lord.

A gust of cool air eases breathlessness

A simple hand-held electric fan could provide rapid relief:

The device, held six inches from the face and aimed at the central area of the face and the sides of the nose, reduces breathlessness in less than five minutes, suggests new research.

Medics believe cool air activates nerves in the face that are stimulated when people dive into cold water, prompting the body to conserve oxygen.
...
It [breathlessness] is caused by a wide range of conditions, including asthma, heart failure (where fluid accumulates in the lungs) and lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which includes emphysema and bronchitis.

A wide range of treatments is used for the conditions, including steroids, morphine and inhalers, to help reduce inflammation and spasm in the airways of the lungs.

But many people are helped only partially by these therapies. The team of doctors and physiotherapists behind the research, at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, stumbled on the idea of using a hand-held fan.

They followed up reports from patients that their symptoms are reduced when they feel a cool draught from an open window or door.

Doctors at the Breathlessness Intervention Service at Addenbrooke’s studied 50 patients. They found the method so effective that they are providing all of their patients with a basic three-blade hand-held fan when they are referred to the clinic.
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Meanwhile, new research has revealed that broccoli sprouts — three to four-day-old broccoli plants — could help tackle bronchitis.

Researchers have discovered that a key compound in young broccoli plants seems to lower inflammation in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

A clinical trial is about to start where patients with the disease will be given concentrated extracts of the broccoli compound, an antioxidant called sulphoraphane, daily for four weeks.

The 90 patients on the trial will get one of three options: a low dose of the antioxidant; a high dose; or a placebo.

The aim of the trial, at the American Lung Association Asthma Clinical Research Centres, is to test the idea that sulphoraphane may reduce the harm that leads to lung damage in COPD.

Previous research has shown the lungs of patients with COPD have significantly lower levels of anti-inflammatory antioxidants.

The researchers add that there is not enough evidence yet to show that eating broccoli would have similarly beneficial effects.

A history of American cooking

From Classic American recipes come to life:

Anthony Bourdain would have eaten well in the 1870s, which presented some extreme foods, including horse steak, brain fritters, starfish, roasted cat (Rôti de chat) and braised lion with olives and oranges.

This last dish was served as a special dinner at Restaurant Magny in New York. 'When Mr Lion was placed upon the table,' a participant wrote, 'there was a religious silence, which, however, lasted only for a few seconds, for at the first mouthful a murmur of approbation ran round the table, and the guests with one accord drank to the health of Mr Cheret' – the hunter – 'and M Magny, coupling in their admiration the valiant lion–slayer and the clever artiste who had proved himself able to prepare such a delicious dish out of the flesh of this ferocious game, which is more frequently in the habit of eating others than of being eaten itself.'
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My cooking axioms
Use fresh spices, good oil and flaky non–iodised salt
Low–fat dairy is not a dependable substitute
Add enough salt to your pasta water that it tastes like seawater
If a recipe calls for yogurt, use a whole–milk Greek yogurt. The recipe and your life will be better for it
Good ingredients are expensive. But if more people buy them, the prices will drop (at last, my economics degree proves useful) Use more salt and higher heat than you think is prudent when searing meats
Take biscuits off the baking sheet within two minutes, no matter what the recipe says Undermixing is better than overmixing
I know this sounds batty, but no toasters and no kettles–they take up valuable worktop and oven space. (Use your grill for toasting and a pan to boil water)
Refrigerate your best oils and definitely don't store them near your stove
Use a meat pounder to crush garlic and spices
When it comes to pastry and bread doughs, remember you're the boss

* This is an extract from 'The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century' by Amanda Hesser.

The rest of the essay is just as fascinating for those of us who cook and love food.

Why the middle-aged are grumpy

Happiness in U-shaped:

Satisfaction with life starts to drop as early as a person's late 20s and does not begin to recover until well past 50, says Bert van Landeghem, an economist at Maastricht University in Belgium.

While young adults are carefree and full of hope for the future and the over-50s have come to terms with the trials of life, the research indicates that those in the middle feel weighed down by the demands on them.

This should be a daily duh! Your first childhood ends in your late 20s when your kids start arriving and you have to take responsibility for others. Your second childhood starts when the kids are grown up.

Could olive leaves help beat heart disease?

As effective as some prescription medicines at reducing high blood pressure:

[I]t also appears to lower levels of harmful blood fats, called triglycerides, known to raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

In a study, patients who took the olive leaf pill for eight weeks saw a significant decline in blood pressure readings and triglyceride levels.

If further studies confirm the powerful effects of olive leaf tablets, they could be used to help patients who struggle to take blood pressure drugs because of their side-effects.
...
Researchers at the University of Indonesia, in Jakarta, investigated olive leaf extract by recruiting 180 patients with high blood pressure – and splitting them into two groups.

One received olive leaf pills for eight weeks. The rest were given an anti-hypertension drug called captopril, which can cause dizziness.
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According to the research published in the journal Phytomedicine, systolic blood pressure – the higher reading – dropped an average of 11.5 points in the olive leaf group and 13.7 in the captopril patients. Diastolic blood pressure – the lower reading – fell 4.8 points in the olive leaf volunteers and 6.4 points in those on the prescription medicine.

Those on the olive treatment also saw ‘a significant reduction’ in levels of triglycerides. In a report on the study, sponsored by a Swiss manufacturer of olive leaf extract and PT Dexa Medica, which makes captopril, researcher Professor Endang Susalit said: ‘The leaves of the olive tree have been used since ancient times to combat high blood pressure, atherosclerosis [blocked arteries] and diabetes.

‘The anti-hypertensive activity of the extract was comparable to captopril, and its beneficial effects in reducing triglyceride levels were strongly indicated.’

Captopril is one of the ACE inhibitors:

Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors are a group of drugs used primarily for the treatment of hypertension (high blood pressure) and congestive heart failure. Originally synthesized from compounds found in pit viper venom, they inhibit angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), a component of the blood pressure-regulating renin-angiotensin system. Frequently prescribed ACE inhibitors include captopril, enalapril, lisinopril, and ramipril.

After years of taking lisinopril I have suddenly developed an allergy to it - hives - so I'm game to give olive leaves a go because all the other anti-hypertension drugs (beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers) also give me hives.

Goat-powered weed-whacking

Replace pesticides and gas-guzzling garden tools with hungry goats:

The patch of weeds behind Steve Holdaway's Chapel Hill, N.C., home grew so unkempt that he hired outside help. For six hours, the crew's members tackled tall grass and thorny blackberry plants and toiled without a break — other than to chew their cud, that is.

His workers: seven hungry — and carbon-emission-free — goats.
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Internet rivals Google and Yahoo hired herds to clear around their Northern California headquarters in 2010. So did the Vanderbilt Mansion, a national historic site in Hyde Park, N.Y. And in April 2010, nannies and billies were deployed at the U.S. Naval Base Kitsap Bangor in Silverdale, Wash., to annihilate pesky scotch broom plants.

While predators, poisonous plants and peeved neighbors can test goats on the job, the small livestock are well-suited for such labors.

Easy to manage, they relish prickly brush and weeds, and their agility makes them "popular employees" for navigating steep slopes that can thwart humans and machines, says Brian Faris, president of the American Boer Goat Association in San Angelo, Texas.

It cost 55-year-old Holdaway $200 to clear a 1,700-square-foot swath on his land with goats, pricier than the weed-whacking he's been doing himself for a decade with a gas-powered trimmer.
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At Vanderbilt Mansion, where a small herd has grazed on seven hilly acres, the job's $9,000 annual price tag is about two-thirds what hired manpower would run, says Dave Hayes, the estate's natural-resource program manager. "And the goats are a lot more popular."
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In Vernonia, Ore., Lewis Cochran started Vegetation Management Services Inc. with his dad in March 2010 after he lost his truck-driving job. He studied goat management online and is now the boss of nearly 50 critters, charging between $6 and $10 a head per day.

Time to build that goat-shed, buy some goats and rent them out as weed-whackers? Free food for the goats and free milk for us.

Why are these barbarians even considered members of civilized society?

France’s Burqa Ban:

The notion of “Islamophobia” emerged from the Islamic Republic of Iran following the revolution in 1979. According to Caroline Fourest and Fiammetta Venner, two French journalists who have written extensively on the subject, the Iranian mullahs created the idea as a response to international criticism of such practices as the forcing of women to wear headscarves and persecution of homosexuals and other violators of “Islamic morality.”
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Honor killings, arranged marriages, compelling adolescent girls and women to drape themselves in full body and face coverings, torching embassies and murdering humans because of cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad, female genital mutilation, terror attacks animated by political Islam — these are part and parcel of a larger political and social superstructure. Sadly, the West, particularly Europe, is simply tweaking the edges of the problem.

Actually "persecution of homosexuals and other violators of 'Islamic morality'" should really be "execution of homosexuals and other violators of 'Islamic morality'".

Why I hardly ever blog anymore

I'm too old. I've been there, done that and seen it all. Politics is predictable. Human nature is natural and the sky has been falling since Adam took the apple from Eve.

I prefer watching the paint peel off the side of my barn while I sit in my rocking-chair and observe the flow of the seasons and enjoy the simple but magical world that man has not created.

Malcolm X was a fag

Or maybe just on the "down low" like many black men:

Malcolm X himself contributed to many of the fictions, Mr. Marable argues, by exaggerating, glossing over or omitting important incidents in his life. These episodes include a criminal career far more modest than he claimed, an early homosexual relationship with a white businessman, his mother’s confinement in a mental hospital for nearly 25 years and secret meetings with leaders of groups as divergent as the Ku Klux Klan and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Elizabeth Taylor nude

A private collector has released the only known picture of the star – then aged 24 – posing nude.

It is understood to be the first time the photo has been shown publicly. It was an engagement gift from Miss Taylor to producer Michael Todd, who was her third husband.