The James Webb pictures have started to be released.
If you know anything about William Blake you will know of his impressive imagination. When you see something like Gerrard Hoffnung’s the Symphony Orchestra you might wonder whether it was inspired by Blake’s last judgement, turned on its head of course. What is the point of this? Well it was Martin’s The Great Day of His Wrath that set me off. It is but a short ride in a fast machine, if you can bear with it.
Did you see the James Webb Telescope’s pictures that were released a week ago? Perhaps more to the point did you watch through the live broadcast covering the release on the NASA/ESA channel? I shall refrain from any comments on that lest impunity be found in them. The pictures are as they say ‘out of this world’, but unlike Blake’s visions not of things out of this universe. I do wonder how we can say that anything is ‘out of this world’ if it clearly is in this world, but that is a different blog. What was interesting was the process by which the images are made presentable to us with the limitations of our eyes, as the new telescope does not operate in the wavelengths that are visible to us. Whilst the use of the infrared produces a great deal of information for those who can interpret it – things like spectra which reveal the presence of elements in the star light and, by inference, in the stars which produce the light – the process is not unlike that of an artist colouring in his painting. He can see what he wants to paint, and has probably already drawn the cartoons underneath – think of paint by numbers – and now he is applying the oils.
Every brush stroke matters. The precise colour will convey what he wants to convey. This is a process through which the images from the Webb must go. The people at NASA and ESA must decide how to present the images in a way that we can see them. They even have to go down to the level of each pixel – is it the right colour? Perhaps it is a faulty pixel and must be washed out. That reminds me of the little red buoy of which Constable complained: ‘He [Turner] has been here and fired a gun’ (a somewhat different understanding of the incident is set out here). When human art is imposed on a picture the nature and meaning of the picture can change.
Looking recently at the requirements for identity photographs there is a requirement that the image should not have been altered electronically in any way. The workings of modern cameras probably mean that not anything they produce is suitable, but we know what they mean. We all know of the dangers of image manipulation. Turner did it. Constable took fifteen years doing it over his painting (also here) prior to the time that it stood next to the little red buoy. NASA and ESA must do it.
This process does not detract of course from the splendid images that they have produced. Take a look at the Cosmic Cliffs:
Whatever the reality is behind the photograph, the beauty of the universe in which we float in this significantly special sweet spot within the Milky Way it is more than our minds can comprehend. Men have striven long to understand the universe, and the longer we look, the more we see. The more we see, the better we understand how little we understand.
The Psalmist was right to declare: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their voice has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices like a strong man to run its race. Its rising is from one end of heaven, and its circuit to the other end; and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
Let us then, as we look at the sky at night, in the day, or these pictures so beautifully produced for us remember that they declare the glory of the God who created them, and worship him.
Happy new year to y’all. Well, at least in the UK it is for corporation tax. Income tax customers have to wait another five days for their new year.
We are presently in a period of grace granted by the EU, so I understand, for green and blue. My step-grandfather was a seaman and had tattoos, the outlines of which were still discernible though quite shadowy or blurred by the time I was old enough to even take any notice of them.
The EU are rightly concerned about the injection of hazardous substances into the skin (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59871779), even the topical application of some substances, such as polonium, is exceedingly dangerous though no one has suggested that that is in common use. The EU are more concerned about alcohols like isopropanol. I had a look at the list here: https://echa.europa.eu/substances-restricted-under-reach
I was interested to find creosote in the list. I can now either stop looking for it or expect it to reappear in the hardware stores; I am not sure which yet, it may become a totem of distinction from the EU or a sop at upholding their standards. I was rather surprised that polonium was not on the list, or perhaps I missed it.
You may have read, some years ago (I think it was late 20th century), of an alternative to tattoos which had been proposed by a number of French chemists who had worked with goldfish. They were looking into chemical substitution, a technique which was just becoming viable as we were discovering ways in which individual molecules could be manipulated. There were reports of some successful substitutions to produce blues, reds and whites but the techniques then were far too imprecise. It really was like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, except that the nut could not be seen when viewed in the same frame as the head of the hammer. [I really liked the idea of new simile, coined in January, of using a fighting elephant to crush a flea, used by a certain Eastern country of a Western one, but realised, having attempted to crush fleas myself, that the flea is likely to be not at all perturbed about being underneath an elephant’s foot. It will just wait for the foot to move and .. Ping! Back to work mate]. However, though the work was abandoned for a time better techniques, which were developed for the sequencing of biologic molecules, and the ability to model in 3D the structures of complex organic molecules, led to the ability to manipulate these. To be able to cut threads of complex polymers and insert alien modules was the step that was required, which led to genetic modification. I would like to enter into a discussion here about the differences between genetic modification and selective breeding for they are often conflated by some who have an axe to grind, but this is not the place to do so, so I shall refrain from following my desire to do so. The ability to modify living organic material revived the ideas of chemical substitution, but now not so much with the single atom in mind but rather a sequence of coding modules in DNA. Melanin production in the subcutaneous skin is controlled by the chemical responses of these biologic structures to sunlight. The question was asked whether this could be modified in some specific ways.
Research began, as always by giving PhD students the dirty work without telling them what the real end game is, otherwise they might get the academic credit instead of you. It was quite difficult, but slowly a picture began to emerge of the processes involved, the active regions of the genome and how the differences between racial skin types affected discolouration. The real work then began, can modifications be made to change the responses of the skin? This was all hidden under the guise of finding better protections for skin from UV damage, which then attracted significant funding, though not widely publicised for fear of damaging the value of their own products, from cosmetic manufacturers. There were some small successes; limited areas little more than spots could be changed, but any increase in melanin production may have beneficial effects, and if the changes were enduring may afford better protection from UV damage.
The work continued, with the cosmetic industry involved in this clandestine work it was rather harder to do what they really wanted to do, to see if patterns could be created firstly with melanin, but also could different coloured responses be produced – greens and reds perhaps? This required work not only into the production of melanin but other colourful organics like hæmoglobin and the non active elements of chlorophyll. Some of this was quite risky as it was well known that the really vibrant colours of arsenic green, cobalt blue, cæsium orange and lead red were quite toxic in the human body, but it was also understood that if these were firmly locked into structures that the body itself produced it was unlikely that they would be broken down thus releasing the toxic components into the body where they could do damage.
This was likened to the way that a tattoo remains in situ. The tissues that contain the tattoo are renewed and worked continually, but the tattoo itself essentially retains its structure undisturbed over many years. Would this sort of thing be possible with the modified tissues? It would take years to find out of course in real human subjects, and would they get permission to try it? So they had then to find an animal with a sufficiently high metabolic rate that what would take several years in a human body may only take months. Hummingbirds were an obvious candidate, but the plumage was a problem (not to mention a certain amount of a good dose of sentimentality over using such a pretty bird in this way), so a separate programme was set up to understand the elements of the genome that controlled metabolic rates, and consider whether the appropriate factors could be introduced into the rat genome to enhance it. This was a fascinating work, and they soon discovered much more about the interrelatedness of the body’s functions though not really understanding what was actually going on. The work was being done however not with a view to understanding, that could come later, but simply to engineer the genome in the required way. Eventually, they made sufficient progress and upon seeing one of the first successfully enhanced rats, that one of the team remarked that it was as well they had not been working on bats else the simile ‘like a bat out of..’ would take on quite a different meaning.
It was the likeness to the tattoo that solved their second problem, though that could not be revealed at this stage. The result of the tattoo artist’s work produces an analogue design, but the tool is a needle inserted at discrete points. This pixelated approach could be used for the genetic modifications of the skin. They also realised that this greatly enhanced the variety of colouration that was possible. It was thought that they then needed to find three modifications that produced the tricolour of ‘primary’ colours (like RGB or CMY). A larger palette of colours would be more useful, but much more difficult to handle. The reduced palette however allowed them to, at least initially, remove the more potentially dangerous modifications for the really vibrant colours aforementioned.
The results on the rats were promising. The modifications did remain in situ over the rats, admittedly short and rather shortened lifetimes, and did not seem to have any adverse effects. Would the modifications endure in much longer living organisms? The programme would take five to ten years, and the subjects would be pigs. In the meantime work continued on the rats into production of different colours and patterns, mostly using simply blue, white and red stripes to check alignments and later some quite simple images where colours were mixed producing some remarkable results.
The researchers started to draw up business plans, but they new they would have to wait before going public for the work on the pigs to conclude, and for no epidemic of swine flu to break out in their subjects.
Leaving the laboratory, April, one of the team working with the rats, noticed that there was a new prominent notice on the tattoo parlour on the other side of the road. The notice declared in quite clear terms (as you might expect) their sentiments concerning the EU ink ban, and the devastating impact upon the ‘industry’ and artists who work in it, and then went on to announce a new service. They acknowledged that the vibrancy of tattoos would be damaged by the new rules, and that this may have a significant impact upon the self-esteem of those who wished to be painted. They also acknowledged that some of the substitute inks that they would be permitted to use had the blurring and shadowing issues seen in many older people who had been painted many years earlier. April thought that it was good to read such an honest admission of what is generally known but rarely acknowledged. The notice then went on to describe the new service. The parlour was going to specialise, and would become a post-mortem tattoo parlour for those who want a tattoo to look its best at the end, not just at the beginning. They knew how disappointed many people felt years after their tattoo that it was not what it was. The notice encouraged those who wished to be painted to wait. They could still book their slot and pay a deposit now, with the balance to be paid just before the work was done. They would be assured that the tattoo would be of the highest quality, and would not be subject to the EU rules limiting the inks that could be used. They were promised that cobalt blue, arsenic green, cæsium orange and red lead would be used if required with some even more exotic options of radium blue, promethium and tritium greens for those who wished to be seen in dimmer lighting. They would be provided with digitally produced images of the finished work to show to friends before the work had been done, and would have the guarantee that it would not fade, nor blur nor shadow. Provision would be made, in conjunction with the undertakers for the tattoo to be displayed in a most sensitive and respectful way possible, prior to cremation or burial as appropriate. A footnote informed readers that the use of radium blue would not be permitted where a cremation was to follow.
April was about to go into the shop to find out what they meant when she realised that that was some kind of joke and stormed off, annoyed that it was not the first time she had been fooled into wasting her time reading such things.
Apparently water refuses to obey the rules. It is one minute and three seconds in here: BBC teaching video:Why water is one of the weirdest things in the universe Does this not mean that there is something wrong somewhere? Apparently water is made up of two very light chemicals, hydrogen and oxygen and the rules say that…Coco shall not repeat the obvious mistake.
In many way perhaps Coco should not be surprised at the attitude shown here. You may have heard, or read, elsewhere about two exceedingly dangerous chemicals chlorine, a gas, and sodium, a metal. You would not want to find yourself in an atmosphere of chlorine otherwise known as mustard gas. It was used with terrible effect in WWI. Nor would you want to be near neat sodium, especially if there were any water (so we come back to water) in the vicinity. Water and sodium do not get on very well. Sodium will rip the water apart releasing hydrogen whilst hydrolising itself. The heat generated will melt the sodium and ignite the hydrogen in the atmospheric oxygen, thus producing water again. You may get hurt.
But we are told that if you burn sodium in an atmosphere of chlorine then you will obtain nothing more potent than table salt.
Is that not wonderful, two dangerous chemicals produce, in combination, a substance that is essential to, at least some forms of, life? But wait a moment, please, is not the combination also a dangerous substance? A lethal dose may be as low as 25g. Please do not mistake salt for sugar. Even dissolved in water brine can cause a prophylactic shock when ingested.
The headline, Sodium and chlorine made safe (in table salt) is a much better strap line than Sodium and Chlorine when combined produce sodium chloride, with a discussion of the uses and dangers of the novel compound.
And so, Water does not obey the normal rules is a strap line that grabs the attention. It is thought better to say this than to say that Water demonstrates the inadequacy of our understanding of chemistry. That is a turn off, is it not? Even worse to say, In order to understand the behaviour of water, we must understand something of the nature of the hydrogen bonds within it.
How arrogant we are! Surely the rules are not set by us. We may be able to formulate them, but the rules are set in the world around us, and all of creation obeys those rules. Water certainly does obey the rules in every way. By the oxidisation of hydrogen, hydrogen and oxygen become water, with all of the properties that belong to water. If this substance water does not follow the rules of our chemistry, then that can only mean one thing: the rules of our chemistry are inaccurate, inadequate or simply wrong. They are out of line with the rules of the chemistry of this world. And if our rules are wrong for water, for what other compounds are they wrong? In what ways are other compounds going to surprise us when they behave in unexpected ways because they do not obey the rules that we have defined?
Surely, we should not be so arrogant, but humbly bow before the Maker of all things, who alone knows fully, and accurately, all of the rules that he has set for the operation of every element and every possible combination of those elements in this vast universe.
If the phenomenon does not accord with our understanding, we do not dismiss the phenomenon, but rather our understanding. As James Clerk Maxwell said to the one Bishop ‘..in accordance with the science of 1876 (which may not agree with that of 1896) it would be very tempting to say that … but I should be very sorry if an interpretation founded on a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get fastened to a text .. the rate of change of scientific hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretation, so that if an interpretation is founded upon such an hypothesis, it may help to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten.’ How truly did he speak.
Apologies to my chemical friends for any exaggeration, inaccurate or otherwise erroneous descriptions contained in this article. Coco sees that it is not just the BBC that has this false view.
Coco was not sure what was the most astonishing the Carpenters, Cleese or Cambridge and Christmas.
The carpenter stretches out his rule, he marks one out with chalk; he fashions it with a plane, he marks it out with the compass, and makes it like the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man, that it may remain in the house.
He cuts down cedars for himself, and takes the cypress and the oak; he secures it for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a pine, and the rain nourishes it. Then it shall be for a man to burn, for he will take some of it and warm himself; yes, he kindles it and bakes bread; indeed he makes a god and worships it; he makes it a carved image, and falls down to it. He burns half of it in the fire; with this half he eats meat; he roasts a roast, and is satisfied. He even warms himself and says, ‘Ah! I am warm, I have seen the fire.’ And the rest of it he makes into a god, his carved image.
He falls down before it and worships it, prays to it and says, ‘Deliver me, for you are my god!’
They do not know nor understand; for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. And no one considers in his heart, nor is there knowledge nor understanding to say, ‘I have burned half of it in the fire, yes, I have also baked bread on its coals; I have roasted meat and eaten it; and shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?’ He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside; and he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?’
It is good to see that Monty Python is as effective as it ever was in challenging the assumptions of society. I would have liked to see what sort of sketch the team would have made of the words of Isaiah about the carpenter, but I think they did not address that particular topic, though they did tread on many a sensitive toe. It seems that Blacklisting himself was a very effective weapon, subverting all expectations in true Monty Python style ‘Oh no! Please, not the comfy chair!’. It precipitated a very rapid climb down from Cambridge, which perhaps indicates that they too could not see the lie in their right hand. In the face of the loss of an opportunity to meet with the great man, they decided that to play with trifles, to turn Rommel’s words on their head, they would have to over turn their own principles.
So Cambridge does not have a black list. Well that is encouraging, but Coco suspects that that is simply another form of whitewashing. To call the list black after all might impugn a certain section of the population who may take [unnecessary] offence just as Cambridge did at a certain art historian, doing what all historians do, quoting the words of the past. So in ungood 1985 style, they do not have a blacklist, nor indeed a list of any sort, it is simply a list. or one might say a Platonian (rather than Platonic, which might incorrectly in these days of gross word abuse suggest harmless) list, but Coco wished to avoid any form of adjectival qualification of the meaning of the word. On the other hand, just as an aside, as a Platonian list is the idea of a list without any qualification as to purpose, style, or any other quality which may be possessed by a list, it is the ideal list, it serves to show that those who indulge in philosophical, semantic or logical discussion to justify themselves will find themselves contradicting the very thing that they sought to prove. Leave such arguments to the mathematicians, who will quickly find that they fall into the trap of infinity or zero if they make such a mistake. We should note however that to say ‘An ideal list is an unqualified list’ is in Plato’s world both true and untrue apparently at the same time. Schrödinger may have been able explain that. For the ideal list is, in modern expression, the null list from which all other lists are constructed, but the ideal list, in original expression, is the idea of a list as it exists in the mind. Now Coco contends that the idea of a list without any content can exist in the mind of an infinite being but in the mind of a finite being a list only exists when it has content, hence when the modern world speaks about the ideal list it means the list drawn up for the Germanic (not Germanian for that would be silly) World Cup squad. Notwithstanding these discussion about the Ideal World then Coco now wishes to return our ideas and thoughts back to Cambridge.
It seems to Coco that for Cambridge to say ‘I misspoke’ is simply a euphemism for ‘I have a lie in my right hand’.
Isaiah is not being negative by the way, he continued:
Remember these, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I have formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me! I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions, and like a cloud, your sins. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it! Shout, you lower parts of the earth; break forth into singing, you mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and glorified Himself in Israel.
These are the words of the Lord, who has blotted out our transgression. Our lies, our offences have all been covered by the blood of the Lamb of God, whose birth shall be remembered in a mere six weeks.
It was mentioned one day that a geography teacher had come across some quite interesting statistics. Well, if you are a geography teacher I suppose you would find this sort of statistic to be quite interesting. The question had been asked: How far away from where you are now living were you born? He had noticed that of people living in the UK 60% had been born within 30 miles of where they now live. In France that rose to 70% (presumably the French figure was in kilometres so the extra 1.7km would skew the answer slightly, in fact by about 6%, so even making this allowance and adjusting the 60% by 6% still shows that the French are 6% more indolent (not used pejoratively in case you are wondering) than the British).
Now the question may of course have been asked the other way around: How far away from where you were born are you now living? This produces some quite interesting and different results. The graph below shows the results in percentage terms of birth population movements for a number of different countries and other groupings. Not all nations and grouping are shown. In order to make it easier to read we have only three of the countries of the UK, France, Germany and the world as a whole (the grey line). You may be able to see some faint lines representing other nations, but I shall not comment on them here.
Looking first at the grey world line, we see that roughly 70% of people live within 50 miles of their birth place or as the French would say: accueil familial.
We notice first of all significant disparity within the United Kingdom. Whilst England (the orange line) shows slightly more mobility than the world as a whole (only 63% live within 50 miles of their place of origin) Scotland (the blue line) for example shows great movement, only 15% live within 50 miles. It seems however that most Welsh born are still within the principality (93% within 50 miles). The reasons for these we shall speculate upon shortly.
I have not included its line as the graph quickly becomes quite hard to read, but China is worth a mention. The figures are perhaps difficult to compare with other nations because of its great size, so greater movement might be expected, but there are a number of conflicting things going on. There are the local restrictions which prevent you from moving far, but on the other hand there are not insignificant large scale centralised movements of population, and nothing very much in between. Interestingly the world total pretty much tracks the results for China and India when taken together; perhaps as they are such vast regions who together comprise 36% of the world’s population it is though interesting unremarkable.
We have already commented on France (the green line) above, but the results for France on this alternate basis bear out the earlier suggestion. 80% of French born are within 80 kilometers of the place of birth. This is not a continental matter, for the results for Germany show only 45% at this point. It is to be understood however, as a desire to remain where you are. The local degustation is familiar to you, as are the cheeses and wines of your own département, why would you move to another one? Quite a contrast with England where the cheese of one area has become quite ubiquitous, so it hardly matters where you live at all. The results in Germany (the dark blue line) clearly show us the effect of unification, with large scale movements crossing what was the border. Only 45% live within 50Km, increasing to 84% within 1000.
When we look at England (the orange line); the figures are, as already noted, below the mean until you get up to over 1000 miles. The conclusion drawn is that the English just want the sun and most of those who went for it now regret that they went to live in France and Spain and so were unable to vote in the referendum which led to their alienation from their homeland of choice rather than of birth.
Turning to Wales (the yellow line) and Scotland (the bright blue) we see that they are even further removed from the world mean, and extremely so. Wales is north of the mean, and Scotland far to the south. The reasons for this if you look at the graph in incremental rather than cumulative form as here (if you are really interested I can let you have the incremental graph, but I decided not to post it here as it is rather lumpy, used in the technical sense beloved of statisticians, which only makes a complex issue even more complex). The most interesting of the two cases however is perhaps Wales, which seems to indicate not an indolent but a contented population. In Wales there seems to be little movement, 93% are within 50 miles, as people want to stay where they are. It cannot be the cheeses and wines, but something else. They are a happy and contented people, and when they do move they have to make sure they are within a couple of hours of Cardiff Arms Park which sets limits on their mobility. Those who do move far make sure that they go far enough away that they do not rue the fact they cannot get back to Cardiff for the Game.
In Scotland however we have quite a different picture. Even at 65 miles we have only 15%, but then a rapid increase; 50% at 300; 84% at 500. Where have they gone? Well such distances can only be achieved by crossing the southern border. It is suggested that it is a fear of secession from the UK hence a desire to move quickly across the border which prompts this demographic change, otherwise there is little movement because there is nowhere to go.
As interesting as such analysis might be, perhaps the conclusion that we can really draw from this is that, even though we can say 60% of people in the UK live within 30 miles of where they were born, 70% live within 100 miles, 90% live within 1000 and 100% live within about 12000 miles of where they were born, that it is astonishing, when we look at the world as a whole, in which live more than 7.1 milliards of living souls, that none of them have moved further than 20 million meters from their place of birth.
With apologies in advance for errors of syntax, orthography and grammar which may be found embedded in this document whether arising from oversight, incorrect application of language packs or any other misadventure; and in general for any offence given, received or taken inadvertently, inappropriately or deliberately and, if you have managed to read this far, for any errors or omissions whether wilful, unintended, innocent or deliberate in the content of this article.
Where Coco first published this he was going to use the word kongratulations, correctly spelt of course, but something in the system insisted that it become a word of colour rather than an ordinarily coloured word in black ink. As Coco is the writer, he thinks that it should be for him not an editor with whom he cannot speak to decide whether a word required some form of emphasis, and in any event, emphasis in a sentence can often be achieved for a word simply by a repositioning or change of word order, so of something else Coco had to think.
To congratulate the gold awards winners at the JWC WU WHS (https://www.jwcwuwhsawards.com/) awards ceremony would be insufficient, they have worked hard for what they have achieved, but not in order to win an award, but rather to further the health of men and women. We were reminded this evening that John prayed for the Gaius (3 John 2) that he should prosper and be well [in his body] as he is well in his soul. The winners of the awards are engaged in this work.
It is invidious to single any of them out, and who is Coco to judge anyway, but he shall, and in compliance with good statistical practice he shall declare a significant data selection bias, and mention the ILF (https://www.lympho.org/), where Professor Christine Moffatt CBE is a trustee, and UTokyo, where Dr Gojiro Nakagami works on BioFilms which as you will all know are even more scary than Hitchcock films.
Finally, Coco takes the opportunity to remind you that should you know any young people with lymphoedema who have not yet completed the QOL survey, please do ask them to consider the LYMPHOQOL (https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/LYMPHOQOL) questionnaire. PostScript: Whilst the official survey closed late in 2022, and the results taken for analysis, from which reports are expected early 2024, the questionnaire is still available and entries being monitored. You may find the questions useful and helpful. If you leave personal details then the team may be able to follow you up.
If you wish to jump into the video of the awards ceremony, then you will find Professor Moffatt at 2566 and Professor Nakagami at 3282.
The 2020 JWC WUWHS Awards: ‘The Olympics of Wound Care’ These awards seek to recognise the hard work done by health-care professionals in all fields of wound care over the four years since the WUWHS 2016 conference. As with the JWC awards, these will highlight the great contribution that nurses, clinicians, scientists, researchers and academics make to the development of wound-care research and practice. The 2020 JWC-WUWHS awards are open for nominations now. The deadline is Friday 26 November, after which we will shortlist and ask our editorial board members and representatives of the associated societies to judge the top 5–8 nominees on a number of criteria. We also want to draw your attention to the Most Progressive Society award. This accolade is for the associated society who has made the biggest impact in wound care in the past four years. Download Flyer Here
If Coco said that the opinion that ‘A is safe’ is supported by 100 years of medical experience, and the opinion that ‘A is not safe’ is only supported by sixty such years, which opinion are you more likely to trust?
If Coco further told you that one hundred second year medical students had formed the first opinion, but only two consultants in their late fifties had formed the second, would you remain of the same view?
What bearing then does the fact that there are 100 years of medical experience between the UK regulator and the committee advising which groups of people should be vaccinated first have upon the opinion that the CMO promulgates?
Furthermore, we all know that it was a committee that designed the first camel to win the Grand National.
On Thursday, the UK’s deputy chief medical officer Prof Jonathan Van-Tam told the BBC he was “very confident” in the MHRA. He said there was more than “100 years of medical experience” between the UK regulator and the committee advising which groups of people are vaccinated first.
It has been said if a lie is to believed it must be a big one
Now certain reports have suggested to Coco that not many of you are likely to read this post through as it is too long, nevertheless it shall be long. Sometimes a short rebuke is both necessary and effective, but in reasoning and critique a longer reply may be required. Another reason for you not wanting to read it through might be that it is far too convoluted, perhaps, some would say, dense or even turgid, but whatever your reason might be Coco hopes that you will be able to overcome any such propensity and continue to plough a furrow through it such as shall not be erased at least not before the late rains have come.
Paul was not afraid to use words spoken by those with whom he would not be in full agreement when they spoke the truth: so in Athens ‘in him we live and move and have our being’, as well as possibly a more famous extract from a Cretan poet there and elsewhere, are used by him to great effect. In our day however when you quote someone who happens to belong to a proscribed group you risk the most severe of opprobria, not to mention discipline, that our society can, if it believes in discipline, find. Coco says this because Coco intends to quote from one who comes in for even greater censure than the one who said something like: When a great opportunity arises, do not play with trifles.
It was this man, whom Coco shall not name but who will be well known to you, and to whom Coco is very happy to attribute the words Coco shall use should you wish to ask, but will not do so here in order to avoid the risk that this post shall be heard in Moscow or Peking having so been reported by the automated trawlers to those who think they have authority over us and what we post here and yet to the real authorities are unwilling to accept any responsibility for what we post; but that subject is really outside the scope of what Coco wishes to say here, and consequent to their audit result in a potential redaction of this post.
So to move on, it makes good business sense, some would say, that you go where the big money is. So on the eve of battle you might expect to hear: when there is an opportunity to make money out of [repeatedly] providing a vaccine to everyone on the planet, why go after (play) with something that will only benefit one in 1,000, unless the profit out of that trifle is at least 1,000 times greater than the profit to be made out of each dose of the vaccine?
Or perhaps the authorities might say: when there is an otherwise greater and more significant opportunity to exercise control over our people (they do not like to remember that at least in the West it is the other way round, they are our governors) why go after anything less? They see that there are some social benefits, although also significant costs, in social order. They forget though that a former Dutch prime minister who having done the historical analysis over a hundred years ago, concluded that the best solution to social deprivation and vice would be for the government to promote the preaching of the evangelical Christian gospel such was the evidence from the previous two hundred years of the turn around and improvement that there had been where that gospel had touched the hearts and lives of men and women. Coco is again in danger of drifting, rambling some might say, outside the scope of what Coco came here to say.
Now, if you have read Coco carefully you will note that Coco has not actually said or accused anybody of doing something or saying something which they have not said, but let Coco ask a question, based upon a remark of one who was probably knew and was known by the one who said: in the face of a great opportunity do not play with trifles, unlike Drake who when faced with the Armada continued his game of bowls, or Belshazzar who partied into the night when the Medes and Persians were at his gates.
Before Coco does so, just a brief reminder of our mortality. Before the beginning of the 20th Century our mortality rates were around 20 per mille. Coco shall not argue over whether they were as low as 17 or as high as 25. Using a five year average by 1970 they had fallen to around 12 per mille and continued to fall until about six years ago hitting a low just above 8.5 per mille. It is currently at something just under 9.5 per mille. The rates for other countries may differ, and the rates Coco has provided may differ from other sources, but the differences are not so significant as require an explanation here. Coco understands there is some kind of correlation between mortality rates and life expectancy, but it is a complex relationship, in physical terms a three body problem, so Coco must leave that to the experts in that field. Whilst reading into this matter (researching would be too strong a term) Coco was astonished to find that some work had been done on the correlation of wealth production and life expectancy. If they are right perhaps the owners of this forum might be expected to outlive Methuselah. However, causation cannot be proven, for the numbers do not determine the date of Coco’s death, rather it is the deaths of all who have gone before us which determine these numbers. Ours will only affect numbers which we shall never know.
Now in the light of what was truthfully said: if you are going to tell a lie make sure it is a big one, what conclusion might you reach over whether, if they are lies, what Coco has suggested might have been said or whether, if they are lies, what was actually said by the authorities, whether they are governing authorities or scientific authorities, which Coco has not reported here, about the current infection is the bigger lie?
In accordance with good examination practice (should we ever see them again), you are required, please, to set out your reasons in no more than the number of words that Coco has taken to reach the next following full stop.
Finally, one of the sources of the data requires Coco to state: Office for National Statistics various years, Data obtained through the Human Mortality Database, www.mortality.org on 17 November 2020
☺ With apologies in advance for errors of syntax, orthography and grammar which may be found embedded in this document whether arising from oversight, incorrect application of language packs or generally any other misadventure; and in general for any offence given inadvertently or inappropriately or both taken or not taken by those whose sensibilities, whether grammatical, orthographical, moral or simply personable, have been offended whether, not or if you have not incorrectly misunderstood the content, intent, meaning and purpose of this article, and to those whose copyrights may have been inadvertently or wantonly infringed, but never as to cause damage the copy holder’s rights, and, if you have managed to read this far, for any errors or omissions whether wilful, unintended, innocent or deliberate in the content of this polemic, and with thanks to you who have made it thus far for your patience.
Did you read the recent article about the black light?
You have probably heard about them before, perhaps in the context of a disco or the sun tan parlour. Black lights were given that name because they produced ultra violet light which of course we cannot see, but which when absorbed by other materials produces photosynthesis, suntan, strange glows, which were considered to add atmosphere, or ambience, to the venue, otherwise known as fluorescence, sunburn and cancers. But the article was not talking about that sort of black light, but something quite different. It was felt for a long time that the search for the black light was rather akin to the long running race to breed the first truly black tulip. Many very dark tulips have been bred of course, but rather like the familiar black lights used in discos they are actually simply a very dark shade of violet¹.
The actual engineering of a black light showed itself as a possibility with the advent of the wave particle duality coupled with its quantum mechanical aspects. In theory a black light light could be produced simply by reference to wave mechanics, and an appropriate use of laser technology. Interference is a well understood phenomena, even if it is generally unwelcome when used in actual communications (aka TV signals), and the existence of nodes, essentially a point in space in which the wave dynamic amplitude is reduced to nil. In sonic applications, in particular sound damping applications in industry, interference is often used to silence what would otherwise be an intolerable sound. This works well where the sounds are regular and predictable. Often however the complexity of the wave formations in the real world, and we are thinking now of the electromagnetic waves which we experience as light, make the use only of wave mechanics an impossible mountain to climb, and even if it were possible to climb it the computing power required to control the laser output is simply beyond anything that we have yet been able to build. Quantum computing may overcome this of course, but that is still in its infancy.
The alternative approach which relies upon the quantum effects of the wave particle duality however help us to overcome the computing difficulty. What we are doing, in layman’s terms, is moving the computing power required out of the machines that we build and into the real world and utilising its own quantum effects. This is analogous to the industrial sound damping problem where a digital solution fails, but an analogue solution prevails. You will all be aware of the difficulties of quantum mechanics in the real world; this is the Schrödinger’s cat problem. The Schrödinger’s cat problem however relates to a single quantum event. In the real world we are dealing with billiards of events and across these we can predict with certainty the outcome of the events taken as a whole. This has been understood clearly throughout most of the twentieth century, but the problem then became how can this understanding be applied to the black light problem? The breakthrough came in the early years of the twenty first century. One year before beforehand the year 2000 problem hit many of our computers. Of course adequate preparations had been, by all who knew that moving from dates with years commencing 19 to years commencing 20 would be an issue, made and most of the popular operating systems had addressed the matter many years earlier. A few machines were however ill-prepared for the change.
The specific issues that these machines faced is not the subject of the article, of course. They were not machines that had any public impact, but were used in many academic laboratories. The anomalous results produced in that final year of the twentieth century led to an investigation into the nullification (actual nihilifaction, but that is quite a difficult technical term to describe in this bus passengers’ summary of the scientific article. I also read of kenotic interactions in the main article, a term which inspired more dread even than the first) of photons in free space, and it was discovered that this was a process that had taken place quite naturally and we had not even noticed. Quantum interactions took place in parallel with the interference observed in wave mechanics to produce nodes in the space-time continuum which were free of, in simple terms, light. In other words those nodes were in complete darkness.
This discovery led the academic teams to consider three general areas:
whether the size of these nodes could be controlled
whether it was possible to generate these nodes – in whatever way
whether it was possible to stabilise the nodes in the fourth (time) dimension
This is a huge simplification of course, and others may take exception to the way I have presented the issues in these three areas. It will do for me today, if you can think of a better simplification, and I have no doubt that text books will soon be published which provide a different but nevertheless isodocic, or at least not incongruent, with mine, presentation; please, let me know.
The first step was to demonstrate the possibility of supporting negative energy fields. Other so-called forbidden energy states, and in particular transitions to and from them, are well understood, in the matter for example of phosphorescence. The ideas underlying this concept had been present in quantum theory since at least the days of Paul Dirac’s quantum sea proposal: Don’t worry that is the only equation you will see in this article. It is perfectly well explained in other publications, but in any event it has been superseded by a better understanding of these things. The results of the new work were presented at the Icarus Project. At that stage the end game of the studies was kept well under wraps.
Further work however was required to answer the questions that had been posed. Progress was slow, but the theory answered yes to each of these matters. Having shown in theory that it may be possible to control the nodes, various aspects of the theory were put to the test, primarily through post graduate doctoral theses, as these were relatively cheap, and being quite narrow in their scope would not give away the big idea too soon. Each thesis had to design, run and prove experiments to test some aspect of the theory. After several years the original team had dispersed across several universities, but continued to work together on this project utilising the time of whatever PhD student was willing to work on it. As the individual parts of the theory were proven, where they could, testing began on multiple aspects. All of the abstracts to these doctoral theses are available online in the usual places, if you have access to the appropriate libraries. For the full script you must approach the authors or visit the university libraries.
Eventually it was possible to involve the engineers, who were to build prototype engines which were intended to control the size, shape, intensity and stability of the nodes. One engineer of German descent hit upon a relatively simple model engine, which his colleagues wished to name Awesome, but he insisted in honour of his much loved Oma that it be named Aweful which was a play on her name and his family name, though it required significant power input. At a power input of 40kw it was able to produce a stable intensity of -300lumens/s/cu.m in a volume of 2.5l for a period just under 10ms. The earlier attempts were able to produce nodes for durations measured only in nanometres and µs.
This was a great achievement, in scientific and academic terms, but a wholly impracticable solution for the real world. Further developments were made. Input to output ratios were lowered by a factor of ten thousand, but stability proved to be a greater problem. Advances in other forms of lighting engineering however were adopted which produced significant improvements. The original machine design was retained, but the components were upgraded to use the newer materials which had become available. There was then an unexpected shift in both the I/O ratio and the stability of the luminous intensity. For the academics, this required further work on the theory, as they were reluctant to proceed without a proper understanding of what had changed. The engineers however were delighted with the result and pressed ahead building into their designs and machines control mechanisms to prevent overloading of the output. At the same time they looked at the possibility of controlling the output through processes similar to the optical amplification and stimulation techniques which were used for lasers. In their view this would provide a much safer source than the original idea of a random source.
The engineers raced ahead with the material they had, though not understanding why things were working until the academic team had caught up with them and were able to confirm an understanding of the results that had been seen in the real world.
They were then ready to go public on the matter. By now the engineers had been able to produce a machine that was little larger than a lectern and would run, though admittedly not for very long, on batteries. They packed the batteries into the lectern stand, controls on the face of the reading desks and the source into a rather bulbous expansion box at the top of the reading desk. The academics sought the lecturer who had given the negative enegry field presentation at the Icarus Project and arranged for the first public presentation to take place from a viewing platform high above the city.
The quality of the picture is not good, but the engineering did not fail. The source was able to produce a black out flux at approximately -10000 lumens/s/cu. m for thirty seconds. This black out flux was able to control the whole of the pyramidical space delineated in the image, a volume of roughly 1 cu. m. You will note from the shadows that the source was pointing directly at the sun, thus demonstrating the efficacy of the flux. An appendix to the paper provides technical details explaining the marginal effects of tinting in the windows.
The academic team are now looking for industrial partners to develop the Aweful engine further. There are many commercial, industrial and military uses for Aweful, providing it can be scaled up.
It is seen as an effective and non-lethal weapon. A sufficiently powerful source would be able to provide a black out flux across a wide area, such as a battlefield, ensuring that no fighting could take place. Infrared and night vision goggles would be rendered ineffective. Radio and wireless communication of all sorts would also be impossible as the flux operates on all electromagnetic waves through their quantum interactions. With further work it is thought that frequency specific holes could be left in the black out to allow defenders to communicate. Laser technology would allow the source to be placed high in the sky, perhaps even ultimately on a satellite, and the black out applied with precision and considerable accuracy. Presently the technical challenges of providing a sufficiently powerful energy supply would militate against the use of a satellite.
It is also seen as a security device. A black out device could be used in any place which requires high security, even in homes, to protect against intruders. But perhaps the most likely use will be in the field of entertainment. There are many places which would benefit from such a device. A lower powered device, which would be able say to continuously provide -5000 l/s/cu. m, would be sufficient to provide a sufficiently dark ‘room’ even in the open air as it operates by bathing the area in negative luminous energy, the flux. In a completely blacked out zone, any light from sources in, or shining into, the zone is nihilifactored (neutralised to you and me) by the kenotic quantum interactions with the flux from the source, but if the black out is not complete then it is rather like being in a room with very low level lighting. This would provide some very interesting possibilities if the frequency specific holes problem can be solved.
Thus there are many exciting commercial prospects and already the engineers have prepared to lodge a planning application to the Sydney City council for the provision of a day time open air discothèque on Bondi beach, concluding that the black out lighting would have not only value as an entertainment venue, but also have collateral health benefits, in that day time exercise could be obtained in the open air without the issues of overdoses of UV. It would also reduce the number of shark attacks as the day time occupants of the beach would be likely more attracted to the disco than to the sea.
Shark attack
In the assured prospect that the appropriate planning consents will be provided, the dear lady after whom the Aweful flux engine has been named, Frau Awril Fuhldü, has agreed to be present for the opening of the venue, and she has said, to be the first to dance the floor.
1 The claim may be disputed by some. The date of that article, unlike this, is undisclosed. 2 Apologies to anyone whose copyrights Coco may have inadvertently infringed.
Shark attack