Mat Bennion

No one really cares enough

2008-12-22T22:34:00.000-08:00

No one really cares enough to do anything about the environment. We know what we should do, but we just don't. The things we care about are (in the UK) schools, crime, money, flower competitions in little villages, and hospitals, with a sideline in charity (and charities that help little kittens abandonned by their nasty owners are just as important, if not more so, than those that help victims of genocide in Congo).

You could argue that actually people do care, but we need the politicians to pass laws that will make a difference. But we live in a democracy, and we're free to vote for the Green party, or write to our MP (what would happen if everyone in the country wrote a personal letter to the Prime Minister? Downing Street filled from end to end with 60 million letters? For the cost of a stamp, we could do something never before done ever, anywhere in the world, in the entire history of mankind. But 99% of the population just can't be bothered, so simple as it sounds, it could never, ever, happen).

So even though sorting out the environment is the biggest and most important challenge that humans have ever had to face, society has relegated it to just another special interest group, like campagning against a phone mast next to a school.

Luckily, it doesn't really make a lot of difference anyway. Whatever we do to the environment, however much the sea level rises, no matter how many species we destroy, the world will still be here. Even if we wipe out every animal on the planet including ourselves and life has to start again from the bacteria up (or not, if you don't believe in evolution), the world itself couldn't care less.

Whaling

2008-12-22T22:24:00.000-08:00

I'm loving the irony that whaling in Faroe has been abandoned, not because the greenies have won the argument, but because the oceans are now so full of pollution from mercury, PCBs and DDT that the whalemeat is too poisonous to eat!

People who are lovely

2008-12-06T13:44:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I meet people who are lovely. People with a wonderful heart, kind, generous, friendly, helpful. And sometimes I'm a little surprised that they're single. Sadly, there's usually some little thing, something that I can see would affect how a member of the opposite sex would see them at a first meeting. But you only have to dig a little deeper, or meet them under the right circumstances, to see their true personality shine through.

How do we get these wonderful people matched up with each other, so they all have someone to love? Answers, and flowers from San Francisco, on a postcard (or email)...

Creationism vs Evolution

2008-09-30T13:14:00.001-07:00

How do you include creationism and evolution in science lessons? Nothing could be simpler. Here's my step-by-step guide.

1. Start by explaining what a theory is. A theory is an idea that a) explains the observed facts, b) is testable and c) makes predictions. THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT! THIS WHAT A THEORY IS! IF A THEORY DOESN'T DO THESE THREE THINGS, IT'S NOT A THEORY!

2. Take a few facts, like these:

There a bones buried in the ground and when we date them, they appear to be 10 million years old. And they don't look like any living animal.
Humans share some chunks of DNA with other animals and use them for the same function. We even share a few chunks with slugs and bacteria.

3. Explain that evolution can explain these facts in incredible detail, right down to the atomic level (you can look this up yourself; I'm currently reading "Vital Dust" by Christian De Duve, which explains part of the story in a dull but fascinating way). Explain that evolution is testable (you can test it in a few days with bacteria and antibiotics). Explain that evolution makes predictions (how about "organisms must be able to pass on their characteristics to their offspring, nearly identically but with occasional mutations? This is what we now call DNA).

4. Explain that creationism does not explain the observed facts (it tells us the earth is 6000 years old, not 10 million); it is not testable (how would you test the "made in 6 days" bit?); it does not make predictions (the story ends on day 7 - there is no more to tell).

5. Conclude that evolution is a theory, whereas creationism is just, well, a "story", no more likely to be true than "the moon is made from cheese".

As an aside, you can point out a couple of bonus points:

a) You can NEVER prove a theory true and a theory is NEVER guaranteed to be right. THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT! Every theory ever is just waiting for the fact it can't explain. If a theory doesn't work, it gets ditched. This is absolutely fine and dandy. If someone found, for example, God's phone number, and phoned her up and got her just to confirm the creation story, that would be just fine. Good by evolution.

b) "evolution by natural selection" is actually just a few logical ideas that anyone can see is right if they stop and think for a few minutes. You can make it happen in a computer simulation. Cities evolve by natural selection (that's why they're usually build next to large rivers, for example). The controversy only comes when you use it to explain the origin of life. If you can't accept the principle of "evolution by natural selection" as being sound, irrespective of whether it explains life, then you cannot follow a logical argument and there is no hope for you!

Whether you're a creationist or a evolutionist, you can still use the above steps, and everyone can live in harmony.

Single finger Twix

2008-09-11T14:26:00.001-07:00

Hang on a minute... you can't have a single-finger snack-size-pack Twix. The whole point in a Twix is that it has TWO fingers, hence the name: it sounds like "twin" because it traditionally has twin fingers.

The world has gone completely mad!

Hydrogen commons

2008-08-24T05:32:00.000-07:00

People get all worked up about what sort of energy to use. Current reserves are about 40 years of oil, 150 years of coal, 85 years of urnaium (that's what powers nuclear power stations) and 60 years of natural gas. These aren't anti-fossil-fuel scaremongering figures, they're just a random selection of sources from within the industry.

That's based on current usage levels. Global usage is going up, so we're going to run out faster. Also, long before we run out, demand will outstrip supply which will mean we won't be able to afford much fuel, even though there's "lots" left.

But opponents of renewables go on about how they don't generate as much energy as claimed, and point out fatal flaws, like solar doesn't work at night and wind farms don't work if it's not windy.

The answer is actually really simple - we need ALL these sources of energy, and more besides. We also need some common way of storing, transporting and using energy. Currently, that appears to be hydrogen.

Elecricity can be used to drive almost any machine or process, but it's very hard to store lots of it. That's why we don't (generally) have electric cars or aeroplanes. We can't take the spare electricity that wind farms produce on windy days and store it in barrels or gasometers, to use on still days.

But hydrogen can be stored and piped around (it's a bit tricky, because hydrogen is explosive and needs to be heavily compressed or super-cold, but we can do it). Hydrogen can easily be burnt, like petrol (gasoline), to turn engines and power aircraft. And it's really easy to make hydrogen. You just need to pass electricity through salty water, and hydrogen gas bubbles out. Try it at home - just run a couple of wires from a 9 Volt battery into a glass of salty water.

This leads to an interesting, renewable, ever-lasting source of carbon-neutral power: build off-shore windfarms that pass the electricity they generate straight through the sea water to generate electricity, then pump it to shore. Start building them just beyond sight of the shore, and keep going, year after year, until you've got enough. In the mean time, you can generate hydrogen from any form of electricity, e.g. nuclear or fossil-powered power stations.

Because you can store hydrogen, you no longer have to worry about how generate power when the sun goes behind a cloud at your solar farm. You can also power cars and aeroplanes directly from it.

So there's the idea: we need a common fuel that can be generated anywhere from any other source of energy, that we can transport and store, and use to power anything. As soon as we've got that, all our energy problems disappear. And hydrogen would be just ticket.

Cold-housing

2008-08-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

Hot-housing is when pushy parents give their kids all kinds of extra tuition and experiences in the hope of turning them into superhumans. As we all know, you don't have to be super-skilled or extra-talented to do well in life, so it's all a bit pointless. However it does create irritating, arrogant little brats who, like their parents have a shallow and meaningless set of moral values.

The opposite of hot-housing is cold-housing. This is where parents can't be even be bothered to do the basics, like reading their children bedtime stories or taking them to the park. Maybe the parents are just don't realise that it's important to do these things with their kids. Maybe their parents never read stories to them. The result is irritating, arrogant little brats who, like their parents have a shallow and meaningless set of moral values.

Outsourcing

2008-07-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

The whole point in outsourcing is for companies to save money. But companies seem to ignore the basic issue of whether or not there is actually scope to save money.

The basic logic behind outsourcing is:

"Our company makes twiddlits. We are experts in making twiddlits. We are not experts in cleaning toilets, running a canteen or changing lightbulbs. The best people to change our lightbulbs would be a lightbulb-changing company, skilled in changing lightbulbs. Their expertise, efficiency and economies of scale will save us money."

So off the company goes and outsources to the ACME Lightbulb Changing Corporation.

Now if there really were significant cost reductions to be had from the expertise, efficiency and economies of scale, this argument would be good. But all too often, it's just nonsense. Tasks like building maintenance, catering, travel management, cleaning and IT support just have to be done. It takes a certain number of people and it costs a certain amount of money. So the only way for the sub-contractor to save money is to lower the quality, pay less or use inferior materials. And this, as everyone who experiences outsourcing knows, is the reality.

A typical example of the truth about outsourcing was when the UK National Health Service started outsourcing domestic jobs like cleaning. All the cleaning staff were sacked, then re-employed by the sub-contractor, but on lower pay and worse conditions. But at least they still tried their best to do a good job because of an emotional attachment to the job and a good work ethic. Then, gradually, they are replaced by other workers who don't care about the job and the hospital, and managers who work to the letter of the contract and not a drop more. Eventually, people start dying from superbugs brought on by dirty hospitals.

The bottom line is you don't get something for nothing. You can't save money where there is no money to be saved. And if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Contents: 80 (approx)

2008-06-21T15:48:00.000-07:00

Just noticed that a packet of baby wipes that says it contains approx 80 wipes.

The thing is, the machine that makes this pack is probably sold on the basis that every pack will contain exactly 80 wipes. Picture a huge factory, full of twisty conveyor belts, with robot arms, little suction cups to pick things up, rollers, ovens, the sort of thing you used to see on those educational films of glass bottle factories.

I've no idea how you create a machine that will take some giant rolls of paper, each the size of a small car, cut them into millions of squares, soak them evenly in soothing gel of aloe and 2-Bromo-2-Nitropropane-1, fold them in an overlapping pattern so that when you pull one out, it feeds the next one through the opening, which is a polypropylene moulding glued to a LDPE flow-wrap, itself folding to a 3-dimensional pattern and heat-welded shut.

But I'm pretty certain that if this multi-million dollar monster says there'll be 80 wipes in a pack, then 80 there will be.

Tranquility

2008-06-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get this picture in my mind of my wife and I sitting on a swinging sofa on a verandah late one evening, overlooking miles and miles of open country. There's a zephyr (that's a warm, gentle breeze to those who didn't do Latin at school) blowing around, and we can see the stars. We've got a citronella candle smoking away to keep the midges off, but most of the light comes from a little bulkhead lamp over the house door. And we're just sitting there, reading our books.

A little later, it gets a little cooler, so we pull out an old, hand-knitted blanket and snuggle up.

Bloody estate agents again...

2008-06-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the average estate agency has only sold 17 properties in the past month and many are struggling to survive.

But it's ok, because presumably they've been putting some of their vast profits from the past ten years, when house prices (and hence their percentage commissions) have trebled as if by magic, away for a rainy day.

What? They spent it on a Merc and a £1,000,000 mansion (now only worth £800,000 and falling...)? Well, there you go.

Fat cat bonuses

2008-06-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

People are always complaining about the multi-millon bonuses paid to fat cat bosses.

But hang on a minute, haven't we created this situation ourselves with our capitalist, market-driven society?

A main aim of a business is to make profit. An important part of this is paying each employee as little as possible (this sounds cynical, and at odds with nice friendly corporations and their transparent pay scales and career structures, but think about it for a minute and you'll see it's true; for example, do you know of any company that pays its employees twice the going rate? Course not!). So when the profits roll in, they have nowhere to go except out to the shareholders and up to the bosses.

So don't blame the bosses or the board, blame yourself for not voting communist in the last election. And if anyone is prepared to fund me, I'll stand in the next election as the "Maximum wage £100,000" candidate.

Free range gas guzzlers

2008-05-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

Just listened to an interesting programme on Radio 4. Eating free range is like driving a gas guzzler, because raising a free range animal uses far more energy and other resources than a battery-farmed animal.

So there's no right answer to the question of what constitutes ethical food:

organic food pushes up the food miles,
locally produced food puts third world farmers out of business, leaving them starving, unable to afford medicine and education,
free range food is a very inefficient use of resources compared with battery farms,
lacto-vegetarians (that is, veggies who get their protein from dairy) have no use for male cattle, so they have to be shot at birth,
fairtrade... well, I can't think of anything bad about that, so you'll have to google it yourself.

Oil prices going up, house prices coming down.

2008-05-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

People (or at least the media) seem surprised at a) the price of fuel going up and b) the price of houses coming down.

Look, it's simple:

a) We're running out of oil. There's only so much of it, we can't keep using it forever. Some time in the next few decades, it'll all be gone (or at least the bits of it you and I can afford to buy). All the OPEC stuff and taxes is by-the-by. The crunch point - when demand outstrips supply - is less than a decade away.

Prices are going up and they're staying up.

b) House prices have doubled or tripled in the past few years, for no good reason! This is called an economic bubble, and it's now begun to burst. Did homeowners really think that they'd gained £200,000 for doing absolutely nothing? Life just doesn't work like that!

Prices are coming down, and they're staying down (at least, until the next bubble).

Low fat mayonnaise

2008-05-04T14:48:00.000-07:00

Just seen an advert for low fat Hellman's Mayonnaise. It said "3% fat". Now, mayonnaise is traditionally made with 80% fat. It's pretty much just oil, eggs and vineger.

So in this low-fat "mayonnaise", they've removed the 77% of the ingredients, and replaced it with... what?

How about...

"a continuous aqueous phase containing a semi-gelled system comprising a non-amidated or amidated galacturonic acid methyl ester with a degree of esterification below 55% (LM pectin) to replace part or all of the fat in order to make a mayonnaise that has organoleptic characteristics that imitates real mayonnaise."

(this doesn't actually relate to Hellman's Mayonnaise, but you get the idea.)

Look, if you want to lose weight, you just need to use more calories than you consume. Low-fat mayonnaise will kill you.

Nuts and bolts

2008-03-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

I just bought a pair of trainers, of the "Element" brand. For no reason I can fathom, there was a little paper envelope attached to the trainers with a little metal chain, and inside the envelope was a little nut (painted white) and bolt (painted blue).

Neither me, my wife nor my sister-in-law can figure out why.

Maybe it's just that I'm not down there with the kids anymore.

TV Competitions

2007-07-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

There's been some kind of controversy about dodgy TV competitions in the past few weeks. I don't know what the controversy actually is, but I find it hard to believe anyone took them seriously anyway.

TV is just entertainment. If a TV show lets the audience vote, that's just entertainment too. It's not an election, it's just a bit of fun (plus, on commercial channels, a valuable revenue stream). I've always assumed that the actual decision is made by the production team, who are professionals focused on maximising viewing figures. The last thing they're going to do is let the public get involved with there silly opinions.

People who take TV too seriously deserve all they get.

Crap Competitions

2007-07-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

Competitions these days are crap.

When I was a lad, competitions were simple, honest affairs. There'd be competitions on children's TV, where the person who sent in the best picture would win a drawing set or get to meet Rolf Harris. Then there'd be competitions on crisp packets where you could win the latest toy.

They were organised either just for the sheer fun of it (e.g. competitions on TV on in newspapers), or for a bit of publicity or as an honest ploy to make people buy more chocolate.

All it cost you to enter was a stamp, and the prize came from the goodness of someone's heart (or the marketing department).

These days, competitions are cynical, engineered affairs that are just treated as another revenue stream. There are even business who do nothing but organise evil, profiteering "competitions" for evil corporate clients.

The thinking goes something like this:

"If we offer a prize worth £1000 and have to pay £500 promotional costs, and earn 50p profit per entry, then if we get 5000 entries, that's £1000 clear profit."

The organisers do extensive research into the target demographic to select a suitably enticing prize and decide how much to charge for entry.

The key difference is that there's no generosity or sense of fun. The cost of the prize must be covered by all the entry fees, and allow them to make a decent profit.

Because the organisers are relying on entry fees to pay for the prize and make a profit, they discourage free entries. They'll get you to enter by SMS (text message), often costing 50p or £1. As you know, normal text messages cost 10p, so the rest is just fat profit. Or there'll be a premium rate phone number costing between 60p and £2 a minute.

Sometimes you can enter for free on the Internet. Sometimes you can't - the organiser will have teamed up with a "microcharging" partner who'll take 50p from your credit card.

Anyway, you get the point: competitions aren't fun anymore, they're just a cynical way of for nasty corporations to make easy money.

Oh, and the worst competitions of all are ones that, in the small print, say that the prize is shared across multiple competitions. Although these aren't as bad as the competitions that cost £5 to enter and the prize is just an overpriced phone contract.

Directory websites

2007-06-04T04:11:00.000-07:00

It's stupid how many directory websites there are.

I want to find out more about Cromwell Catering, phone number (01543) 258014, so I put it into Google and got 64 results, ALL from directory websites and NONE telling me anything about Cromwell Catering.

What a waste of time.

There must be loads of people out there who think they're going to be the next Yahoo or Yell.com and make millions. So they set up a directory website, fill it up with the names and phone numbers of all registered companies, and wait for the money to roll in.

Then they try to convince businesses that by paying for a premium listing they'll drive thousands of new customers to their website.

The practical upshot is that businesses aren't going to pay good money to advertise with every Mickey Mouse directory website that sends them a mailshot, so the vast majority of directories contain only free listings of just the business name and location, nothing useful like a link to the business's website or an informative advert.

So when I search the web for business information, I've learned never to click on directory listings. They're just wasting my time. Actually, here's a way of hitting back at companies who've annoyed you: repeatedly click on their "pay per click" ads on Google. This costs them money each time you click!

Anyway, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and register www.LondonOlympicsHelp.com, which is going to be a directory of useful resources for the forthcoming games.

This whole situation is a bit like when they opened up the telephone directory enquiries service in the UK. Suddenly there were dozens of companies vying for my custom. Since they all offer an identical service with no differentiation, most of them went bust. The survivors where the ones with the best advertising. As a consumer, my response is not to use any of them and get my numbers from the Internet instead.

Oven Bottom Muffins

2007-05-04T04:46:00.000-07:00

To most people in the world, "muffins" are little cakes filled with chocolate or blueberries. There's also what Americans call "English muffins", which are little round bits of bread, rarely seen in England itself.

However, real muffins are actually Lancashire Oven Bottom muffins. These are bread rolls with a blackened ring on top. The most common type is 1" to 2" thick with a light consistency (lighter than bagels but not as light as sliced bread) and a smooth finish. In recent years, these have become available in supermarkets throughout the UK.

The rarer, and much tastier type is less than 1" thick and has a floury finish. As far as I know, these are still only available from market stalls in Lancashire. In my family, this sort are known as "Declerks" after the bakers shop (long since closed) we used to buy them from.

These days, they make wholemeal ones as a gesture towards healthly eating, but really there's no place for health awareness in the traditional Lancashire diet of lard, stodge and lard.

The blackened ring, and the name, apparently relate to the baking process. Traditionally, the muffins would be turned over part way through baking onto the bottom of the oven.

You can find out more about commercial oven bottoms here: http://www.ghsheldon.co.uk and here: http://www.sunfreshbakers.co.uk.

I've just decided that the world needs to know more about muffins, so take a look at http://www.ovenbottommuffins.co.uk.

Things that you're the only person in the world to have noticed

2007-04-23T04:51:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, I notice something and think, "wow, I bet nobody in the world has ever noticed that!".

Here's an example. When bright sunlight shines in your eyes, it hurts, and you close your eyes. "Hang on!" I hear you say, "I've noticed that too!". Ah, but what you haven't noticed is that, if you close one eye, it doesn't hurt anymore (unless the light is really bright).

So the brain seems to add up the light intensity signals from both eyes before deciding whether it's painful or not. Close one eye, and the total signal is halved. This isn't enough to trigger the pain response, even though there's just as much light entering the open eye.

The reason our eyes close in bright light is to stop them being damaged, but it looks like God / Mother Nature / evolution left a loophole for people who really want to stare at the sun.

(I accept no responsibly for any blindness caused by testing this out.)

Salt

2007-03-23T05:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the salt industry and processed food industry are criticised for putting too much salt in food. These industries then complain that they're being unfairly blamed for modern health issues, such as high blood pressure. They claim that they're only responding to consumer demand (when was the last time you demanded more salt in your frozen lasagne?), and they even attempt to sue people who say salt is bad for your health (http://www.thecre.com/quality/2006/20060309.html).

This always amazes me, because the main reason I don't buy processed food is it contains too much salt! If the processed food industry used less salt, they'd sell more!

Then again, all this salt makes up for the general lack of flavour in processed foods. Without it, the products might taste even worse.

2007-03-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

Ever noticed the weird food comparisons companies make when they want to surprise you into buying something?

For example, "this carrot actually contains more fat than a Big Mac", or... actually, I can't think of any others, so let me do a Google search for some more examples.

"The Royal pasty that's unhealthier than a Big Mac"

"Frappucinos pack more fat than a Big Mac and Coke COMBINED"

It said researchers found one brand of muesli bar had "as much saturated fat as a good fry-up of two bacon rashers, two fried eggs and a fried tomato". Another contained more kilojoules than a Mars Bar chocolate snack

"There is 0.7% salt in this Golden Syrup sponge pudding, providing 0.9 grams salt in a single serving – more than a typical bag of crisps."

"A baked potato with cheese, butter and sour cream has more calories than a portion of chips."

"A pudding made with hydrogenated vegetable fat is less healthy than a portion of chips fried in mazola"

Wow, this is fun! Just go to google and type in "than a xyz" - remember to type that in with the quotation marks around it. Oh, and put the junk food of your choice instead of xyz. I wonder if it's possible to come up with a circular better-than list proving that Big Macs are healthier than Big Macs?

Muffins and cookies

2007-03-12T05:27:00.000-07:00

This is an occasional and random review of cookies and muffins available in the UK. I'm only interested in the chocolate ones; anyone who buys a blueberry muffin or an oat and raisin cookie deserves all they get.

Muffins:
MacDonald's are currently my favourite. They're packed full of chocolate chips, they actually taste of chocolate, they're moist and MacDonald's also do the best value coffee on the high street (if not the best quality).

Morrison muffins taste of salt and are too dry. Avoid! Mind you, I've only ever bought them on special offer - perhaps they replace the cocoa with salt to reduce costs.

Marks and Spencer's muffins are interesting. They've gone to great lengths to give them a luxurious feel, including filling them with a chocolate cream centre. But a) they just don't taste chocolaty enough and b) the cake mixture contains swirls of non-chocolate sponge. What's the point in that? I want nothing but chocolate in my chocolate muffin!

Just tried an Asda double chocolate muffin (23-March-07). Pretty good, but more salty and not as chocolately as Maccy D's.

Cookies:
The best by far are Marks & Spencer's white chocolate. They claim that 30% of the cookie is Belgian chocolate, and who am I to argue? And usually they're still hot and gooey in the middle from the oven. Don't bother with the brown chocolate ones - they're OK, but given the cost, you'd be better off with Sainsbury's.

Sainsbury's are the next best. They taste of chocolate and the consistency is spot on.

Tesco Finest: bizarrely, the "finest" ones are rubbish. They're dry and salty. Stick with the ordinary ones.

Greggs: these are particularly poor. There's so little cocoa in the biscuit that it's beige rather than brown. Tastes a bit like the home made ones I used to overcook as a kid.

Waitrose: they've really let the side down here. Waitrose, being a shop for posh people, has the most wonderful selection of cakes in the chiller. The rich folk can buy them whole, but they're also happy to sell them by the slice to the rest of us. (That's the nice thing about Waitrose - they're nice to you even if you're not posh.) But the cookies appear to be baked off-site in some rough industrial unit, possibly in a former Soviet state in Eastern Europe, and left out the back of the store to mature for a week.

Costco: they do big trays of muffins, but although you might think you're getting big savings by buying at a cash and carry, they don't actually have the economies of scale or competition that Tescos or Walmart have. As a result, they're just not as high-quality or as nice as supermarket cookies, and not really any cheaper.

On a slightly different note, ever tried Sara Lea chocolate gateau? They're fab, apart from the odd way in which one of the chemicals from the mousse sticks to the roof of your mouth.

UPDATE: Just discovered the most delicious thing in the world, ever: "Farmhouse Fare" Luxury Sticky Toffee Pudding, available at Tescos in the UK and probably other places too. Unbelievable! You can easily make your own as follows:

Ingredients:
50g (2 oz) dates, pureed (which is difficult)
100g (4 oz) demerera (dark brown) sugar
100g (4 oz) self raising flour (that's ordinary cake flour, i.e. ground-up wheat plus raising agents)
100g (4 oz) salted butter
2 eggs
Beat the sugar, butter and date puree until fluffy. Add the eggs and flour (sifted) a bit at a time, mixing well. Put into a loaf tin. Bake at 150 C (that's fairly slow, medium heat) until cooked through (about 30 minutes) - check by sticking a knife in - it should come out clean.
Then make some toffee sauce by heating up roughly equal amounts of demerera sugar, butter and double cream (that's about 40% fat cream) to boiling, stirring continuously. Let it boil for maybe a minute, then pour over the cake and serve.

This is the best dessert you will ever taste!

How to stop spam

2007-03-08T04:30:00.000-08:00

Someone's probably already thought of this, but anyway...

All you do is charge people to send email. When someone sends an email, their ISP charges them a small fee, which is used to buy a digital signature from someone like Verisign or Thawte. Then all servers involved in delivering email will reject emails that aren't digitally signed.

And that's all there is to it. Spam email gets stopped in its tracks as soon as it reaches a "legitimate" server, i.e. one run by a company that doesn't want to waste its time and money delivering spam.

The only tricky bit is that every legitimate ISP would have to co-ordinate the scheme and start it on the same day, since any legitimate email that wasn't digitally signed would be thrown away.

There's a few other interesting points:

- The charge per email must be small, e.g. one penny. For home users, ISPs could offer a free allowance that covers typical volumes of domestic email. However, a spammer wanting to send 10 million emails would have to pay $100,000, and the payment would be traceable. This would completely deter many spammers.

- The system could generate revenue for many companies involved, quite apart from the resources saved by not having to process the spam. In particular, ISPs could charge companies who are prepared to pay to advertise by email (as long as users could opt out of this authorised spam).

- Some spam these days is sent from home PCs infected with naughty software (malware). This scheme would prevent such spam by alerting users when they exceeded their daily allowance of emails, which would be set to "very few" to begin with. It's then easy for a user to see how much email they've sent by looking in their "sent items" folder in Outlook or Thunderbird. If their ISP has been asked to process more emails than what's in the "sent items" folder, the user's PC has been infected, and they can then go and get some anti-malware software to fix the problem.

Obviously I'll want a fat royalty cheque if anyone uses this system!

2007-03-06T04:40:00.000-08:00

I've kind of given up worrying about carbon emissions because in 20 or 30 years time we'll have burnt all the oil reserves and that will be that, we'll be able to sit back and watch what happens. Any measures taken to reduce carbon emissions will simply mean it takes a little bit longer to release the remaining CO2 into the atmosphere.

When thinking about plans to reduce CO2 emissions, just ask yourself how much of a difference it will make to the date when we'll have emptied the oil fields. If everyone in the UK stopped driving to work, maybe the oil would last a few days longer. If every American switched from petrol to diesel, maybe it would last a few weeks longer. If everyone in the world moved house to within walking distance of their place of work, it might last a few months longer. But in reality, that's not physically possible.

And it doesn't really matter how much oil you think we've got left, if you disagree with my figures, because the crunch will start on the day that demand outstrips supply. This is much easier to predict (because it's based on historical facts rather than estimates) and is only about 10 years away, long before the oil actually runs out. When that happens, people will start to find they can't afford to drive to work, or fly abroad on holidays, or throw plastic stuff away.

So plant all the "carbon neutral" trees you like, it doesn't really make a scrap of difference. If you think you can help by cycling to work, you're very much mistaken. Instead, why not think about solutions for after the oil crunch?

The strangest thing about all this is how airport planners are busy working how much flying we'll be doing in 30 years time. They seem completely unaware that the answer is "none".

Things that bother me about religion #274

2007-02-28T04:47:00.000-08:00

Click here for a list of nearly 1000 recognised religions. They're all different and they all disagree about something. Some think we shouldn't eat pigs, some think we shouldn't eat cows. Some think we shouldn't eat any animals, some don't care either way.

Some think it's okay to eat any animal except on a Friday, when you can only eat fish. It's not clear whether this includes whales (which are mammals) or extends to seafood in general, e.g. crabs. Perhaps whoever invented the religion didn't think it was that important.

Anyway, clearly these religions can't all be right and can't all agree and can't all be reconciled (either God is happy for people to eat anchovies on a Tuesday, or he isn't). At most, only one religion can be correct, so the other 999 must be wrong. Actually, it's more likely that they're all wrong. So I may as well stick to my own personal religion, which I'll refer to as "foo".

So next time some Jehovah's Witnesses come round, I'm going to give them a copy of this list (with "Jehovah's Witnesses" highlighted in yellow), explain all this to them and tell them to come back when they've figured out what day's best for eating whales.