You may be aware of what some call conspiracy theories, such as the prospect of the WHO imposing restrictions on and within sovereign states in the event of another [so-called] pandemic, and the plans of the ‘liberal elite’, the few individuals who have more wealth than many sovereign states, to form a world government. Coco is not suggesting that Coco agrees with those who promote these theories, nor with those who might promote these alternate ideologies, but it does present an interesting prospect. We have seen how the restrictions imposed over the recent three years have provided significant economic opportunities for some but have left others impoverished due to an inability to work. For those who are able to gain in such times a return to them, in a more controlled way through the new institutions which may be established if these theories are correct, would not be something to be shunned, but rather embraced with open arms. But where does that leave those who are not able to benefit? The combination of these two ideas tends towards a dystopia of unparalleled dimensions; or is that really so?
After the death of Solomon, the new king promised his people one thing about which perhaps he would have been wiser to remain silent, but wisdom was not something for which he, unlike his father, was noted. He rejected the advice of his counsellors and made it known that his own ‘little finger shall be thicker than [his] father’s waist’. What did he mean? He intended by it to say that, paraphrasing into contemporary culture: Though taxes under my father were not light, under me they shall be much heavier. Naturally, the people decided that they did not want that king to reign over them. Remarkably it did not lead to an outpouring of blood, though preparations for that had been made, but the consequences of the rebellion were to be felt for many hundreds of years afterwards.
Now what does this mean? Let Coco remind you of a three things, briefly, before putting them together. Solomon means peace. In his day Israel enjoyed peace after the days of David, a man of war. However Solomon was a flawed man and did as the Lord had warned the people kings would do. The yoke on the people was heavy. Secondly, Jesus Christ is the true king of peace, whose yoke is easy. He is not a flawed man. And thirdly, the David of whom we have spoken, wrote a psalm: ‘Why do the nations rage, and the people’s plot in vain? The kings and rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his Christ saying: Let us break their bonds in pieces.
What are the people saying? They want to throw off the bonds of the one who says, my yoke is easy. With what shall that yoke be replaced, if not another yoke? We throw off the bonds of God, which are easy, only to take on the bonds of man, which are hard. We hardly blame the people for rejecting Solomon’s heir when his intention was not to ease the burden that his father had placed on the people, but rather to increase it. There was an injustice about it because it came from a flawed king. Would we not say that they were right when they said of the new king: let us break his bonds in pieces? Men always want to break the bonds that appear to shackle them; did we not mention a few days ago every one wants to be king, everyone does what is right in his own eyes?
But note in David’s words that it was the kings and rulers who led this cry. Who are they in today’s terms if not the sovereign nations and the liberal elite of wealthy individuals aforementioned? They wish to throw off the bonds established by God and replace them with their own rule. If these conspiracy theories have any truth in them then the WHO, the liberal elite, if they rule, what bonds, burdens, will be placed upon ordinary men in order to maintain their positions of new authority? We have only to look at the consequences of the recent lockdowns to gain a glimpse of what may be. Coco commented on the new normal quite a while ago, but will it ever come back? The economic crisis, caused by lack of opportunity to work and a printing of money, may mean that the parties and travel cannot return as they used to be, the new normal becomes an impoverished version of the old normal.
What is the solution? Well, the Lord pronounces his solution in that same psalm: he shall laugh them to scorn. Just as he pronounced his judgement on an earlier attempt to establish a world government and authority in opposition to his when he said: Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. And at Babel man’s attempt to throw off the yoke of God was thwarted, but we now laboured under a new yoke, but that is not today’s topic.
The real solution then is, as we mentioned a few days ago also, not to seek to throw off the yoke of God, but to submit to it. Come to me, the Lord says, my yoke is easy. I am gently and lowly in heart. I shall give you rest. As for the conspiracy theories, and the prospects of world government, or indeed any government, the Lord has set the boundaries of the nations, the extents of their empires and the length of their existence. They cannot overstep the boundaries that he has laid out for them. They rise up, but in their pride they shall fall. He shall laugh them to scorn. Governments come and go, perhaps not on the scale of the lifetime of many individuals (though the Alexandrian and Soviet empires may be exceptions), and shall do so until the everlasting kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed.
It has been overshadowed in the last few days by the passing of a great man. The Duke is rightly to be remembered and his life celebrated for all the good he has done and in the idiosyncrasies that he displayed. His death reminds us that life does not remain the same; time moves on; until now in recent days, and I suppose that it shall return, there had been much talk in these parts about what the new normal will look like. I don’t know what you hear elsewhere, but what we hear doesn’t sound to me very much unlike the old.
Holidays in the sun is good for vitamin D deficient sun lovers unless they also have a melanin deficiency in which case extra strong skin cream is required. Racing to return to the gym, which provides bodily exercise for those who do not have to labour hard in the acre of land that the government allows them on which to grow maize and other crops. Eating out and visits to the cinema, theatre, opera, shows, concerts, dance halls, gigs (is that orthographically correct, or should it be gigues?) and the like are, well, without the need for justification of any sort, a necessary part of the new normal. Let us eat drink and be merry¹, seems to be the message.
Are we any different? There has been much celebrated over the past year of dedication, selfless giving, service, but little (but not nothing) has been said about the cleaner who was no longer needed because her employer now WFH had recovered two hours a day not being required to travel, or the employer who simply told his staff not to bother to return the next day, they would not be paid. The poor still had mouths to feed and bills to pay.
Do not think I am about to suggest that wealth is bad, Abraham² did not berate the rich man for enjoying the things that he enjoyed in this life but for failing to believe in the Son of Man. He was not asked to give half his wealth to Lazarus who sat at his gate, but rather to remember justice, righteousness and compassion. It was this that he forgot.
In the new normal, will we simply revert to type, and behave as we always have done? Noah³ left a world that was filled with violence to sail into a new world. What sort of violence? Physical, economic, emotional, therapeutic? Did Noah hope for better in the new world into which through the flood he had sailed? But his own behaviour and that of his sons soon showed that the world that they had left behind had come with them. The new world was no better. We today seek to deal with violence, but the very need to do so simply exposes our shame that it continues to exist.
The last year is no cure for our condition; it has shown many good things about the image of God in which we are made, but it has also exposed that our condition is unchanged.
There is but one cure, the man, who himself suffered violence at the hands of his own people, is our cure. Jesus now sits at the right hand of God⁴ and will come again to take his people to a world which really shall be new and different than this one, where there shall be no violence, no hurt, no harm. That will be the new normal; it will be an extraordinary, previously unimagined normal⁵, but it is the only new normal for which it is worth waiting.
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 is spring in Paris. Ooops, Coco’s mistake, of course it is not, unless there has been a strong deflection of the geocentric axis of which we have been unaware until now. Still, it was a mistake and as much a mistake as Coco’s attempt to draw a snow scene. Pooh had also come to understand this, that pencils were rarely inclined to go where you would prefer to go, but would find their own way to where you would not.
It was towards the beginning of the covidavian pandemic around Easter 2020 that the penguins of the isolated Prince Edward territory had implemented for the protection of their fragile avian society a new social distancing policy.
In recent days as spring approached the rising of the sun shed a new light upon the devastating impact of the influence of the pandemic….
It occurred to me the other evening, or perhaps it was morning, evenings and mornings rapidly roll into one another, that after David had conducted a census of the people that there had been a plague, the proportions of which I could not remember. It is recorded for us in chapter 24 of the second book of Samuel. In the light of the pestilence that faces us I thought I should look it up.
David in conducting a census had done wrong, not because the census in itself was wrong but because David had succumbed to pride, pride in his own rule of Israel, and pride in Israel. He had forgotten the Lord. He understood this no sooner had the partial results of the census been delivered to him and he sought forgiveness. The prophet Gad came to him to offer him three things: famine for three years, war (and defeat in battle) for three months or plague for three days. David did not make a choice, but rather fell on the mercies of God and asked of Gad that he fall into the hands of the Lord rather than the hands of men. So the matter was settled and the land would suffer three days of plague. In three days seventy thousand men died. It is fair, I think, to assume that these were fighting men as the census was only of the number of them. The count had been around 1.2-1.5 million. In three days about one in twenty had died. That was quite some plague.
On the third day Gad instructed David to build in Jerusalem an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of a gentleman called Araunah. This David did. He paid a good price for the land and its equipment and offered there burnt offerings to the Lord. The Lord heard David’s prayer and at that time the plague was brought to an end. The destroying angel was told to restrain his hand and return his sword to its sheath.
We understand that the land which David bought would become the site of the temple which Solomon built. A thousand years later another sacrifice would be made on a nearby hill which would stem an even greater plague.
David had forgotten the Lord. In the pride he had in his achievements he turned away. The Lord is however merciful, and David was brought to repent, though it was not to be without no cost to his people. David threw himself upon the mercy of the Lord, and in obedience and reliance upon him offered an appropriate sacrifice. I am not one who looks into the book of Revelation and to say: Oh look, this is this and that is that. The trumpets sound, and the bowls are poured out. We live in a world where the trumpets sound each day – John Dunne put it:
Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
Plague and pestilence are neither novel nor unexpected, but the severity of them may be. We are faced with a severe plague, perhaps not so severe, though we have only seen the beginnings of it yet, as the great plagues of history, and nothing yet like the pestilence that David saw, but do we hear the trumpet in the plague? Do we hear the warning? Or are we like David so proud of our own achievements that we forget the Lord? The trumpet is sounding, but we still are not woken up. We only need to look at how little notice many have taken of the warnings of our governments to see how little notice is taken of the trumpet sounding.
David’s sacrifice did not actually stem the plague in his day. It was the mercy of the Lord that brought it to an end. But David’s sacrifice did prefigure the sacrifice of the one who now sits upon his throne, the Lord himself our Jesus, the Messiah. I mentioned that above that that sacrifice would stem a greater plague, the plague that has a hundred percent mortality. It is this plague that causes us to forget him, that causes us not to want to know him, that causes so much destruction, despair, and damage in this world, in our own lives and in other people’s lives by what we do and say. It is sin. Jesus died at the hand of both Jew and Gentile for the sins of the world. That he rose from the dead confirms that his sacrifice was accepted and we, you and I, may have peace with God and eternal life in him. And more, we can look forward to a resurrection like his, where we shall receive bodies which do not suffer the weaknesses of our present bodies.
The pestilence is sounding its own trumpet to us. When it has passed there are many here today who may not be here then, but before then, will we hear the trumpet and look to the one who can stem the plague?
God can justly show mercy and provide forgiveness to sinners.
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.
Hmmm…this may not turn out quite as Coco had hoped..ah well here goes.
In the old days people used to write letters. Some of you will not even know what a letter could be different than these characters that we use to spell out words, but these different kind of letters were rather like posts in in this forum except that they had been written by hand using a pen to scribe letters out on a piece of paper. Such letters were greeted with great enthusiasm when they arrived in your house. They may have come from another part of the world and it may have taken several weeks to reach you (in those days in the UK you could send a letter in the morning and by the afternoon it would have reached and have been read by its recipient, but the postal service in the rest of the world was not quite as efficient as that. Since those days the UK has worked very hard to reach the same standard as the rest of the world). Often these letters would begin with an interesting story or description of an unusual event before going on to the real subject matter. Interesting things might be like, well, so much seems to revolve around those endless pictures of what is on the plate in front of you today, but it might be that you would be interested to know what I, the writer, of the letter had for breakfast this morning. Well, of course you are! Most of the time it was quite different, like the lady from sub-Saharan African who announced in her opening words that they had had a new toilet installed at their house. The choice of the preposition at is deliberate and accurate.
In fact one of these letter writers did so think that you would be interested in breakfast. Coco knew some people who worked in Brazil, well, actually in the Amazon basin, just a little way up the river…sorry it is easier to say down from the source a few hundred miles or so. Some would say the area was uncivilised, but there was a civil society among the tribes, just not the sort of civil society that you or Coco would expect, though Coco supposes today they are as busy posting into the forum of social media as anyone else. We would have called them hunter gatherers. Well one day, actually it was probably in a quarterly letter so far they were from any kind of even an irregular postal system, we were introduced to a typical breakfast, which could only be consumed of course after you had actually gone out of the village circle to gather it. French snails are interesting, aren’t they? Prawns, those cockroaches of the sea, are consumed in their millions. Aardvarks are known by another name which betrays their voracious diet. Well, here it is a five star Amazonian breakfast…
No, the grapes are not an illustration of that breakfast. Coco thought better of it. Coco changed his mind. Coco repented. It might put you off anything else that you might eat or want to eat today, or even for the rest of the week as ‘it’, the breakfast, preys upon your mind.
So let him turn to the point of this tale. The photograph is not there to show you what Coco had for supper, or anyone else had for breakfast, though it might actually do that, but to point out a fault in the grapes. There is probably also a fault in the image of the grapes, but Coco takes responsibility for that.
Should Coco take them back to the store which sold them and complain about their lack of quality control? Is this a defective grape, or has it been genetically modified? Or is it a twin? That is incorrect, are they Siamese twin grapes? Is it edible? Does the mechanism which controls twinning in grapes also produce other intensely kenotic or phthartic metabolic agents which would be toxic if ingested? These and many other similar thoughts and questions swim around as it were in a delirium.
Answers to these and many other questions may be sent on a postcard please to all of your friends. And if every one of those friends send this message, and any further messages, on on the day of receipt within one month the postal services would have to deliver approximately π billiard tonnes of postcards on the next day, if any postcards were available to be had.
It was the appearance of this in the local press that left me wondering whether statisticians have become disembodied heads.
It was the appearance of this in the local press that left me wondering whether statisticians have become disembodied heads.
Whilst Coco has every sympathy for those who suffer from the disease of the body which we know as diabetes, Coco has little sympathy for those statisticians who though they are irrefragable in the use of the art to which they are devoted, show little or perhaps even no common sense.
The reporter who brought this matter to his attention does however at least stand one step of contempt above the reporter who recently published an article about the discovery of a decapitated head. Well, Coco has never seen nor even heard of such a thing, have you? Decapitated bodies are not uncommon, as are perhaps dismembered ones, but decapitated heads? It seems as unlikely as a dismembered arm. Perhaps the real intention was to say scalped head, you might ask, but no, the find was of a head, a whole head. One can however understand the dilemma of the reporter, this was clearly a head alone, not attached to any body, but to call it a disembodied head would hardly have conveyed the right impression, and in any event, a disembodied something would be rather difficult to find, given that that which is disembodied no longer has a material presence in this universe. Perhaps they really meant decapacitated, but shied away from a word which may only have reflected back upon themselves.
Coco was unable to find a complete copy of the article online, but you may read the article for yourself here:
One can hardly blame the reporter, poor chap, what does a reporter know about statistics? That question is rhetorical, in case it needs to be said. Coco is not unaware that there may be reporters who have had a good, and far better than Coco’s, grounding in such. But one is left wondering whether or not common sense has been applied.
It does not take much effort to see that the statistical result of two and a half times more likely is incorrect, whatever the results of the statistical analysis might yield. Coco would like to suggest that the answer is really much more like one hundred percent more likely, which is to say almost certainly going to be the case, if not actually in reality, without even the need to apply any statistical analysis at all. For it seems so very clear to Coco that although most young people die old, and many young people have died young, it is impossible that anyone who is old shall die young. Old people always die old. So then, let us read again what the article suggested: The risk of early death was 2,5 times greater for those diagnosed before 40 compared with those diagnosed after 60.
That is a wonderfully incredible statement. Please allow Coco to break it apart. In order to be able to say that one thing is greater than another we need to know, if not the absolute magnitude of the two things, the relative magnitude. In this case we are talking about a comparison of the level of risk. So we should have some idea of the level of risk faced by the two gorups, those who are under forty and those who are over sixty. Now perhaps first we should simplify the examination by removing from it the complicating factor of type 2 diabetes, and we shall adjust, if necessary, our findings later for that omission. We shall add a more general comment about mortality also.
So then we must determine what is the risk of dying young for a forty year old and for a sixty year old? Now Coco is not skilled in the arts of the actuary, but it does not seem unlikely to think that although a forty year old may die young, a sixty year old will never die young. Though if someone thinks that a sixty year old may die young, then it is likely that they have discovered the elixir of life for which the alchemists of yore vainly sought for centuries. Perhaps they would care to share their secret with Coco, or at least publish their results subject to peer review and set up production and marketing companies for the benefit of wider mankind. Oh, Coco apologises, you may have noticed, the mention of statistics does rather cause Coco to stray and indulge in flights of fantasy, unlike Leonardo of course who was the precursor of our own* Wright brothers..
So then, back to the point, for the sake of clarity and being able to do some calculations, without suggesting that the numbers are correct, let us say that the risk of dying young at age forty is 1% of 4‰. We have already said that there is no risk that a person diagnosed at age sixty will die young, such a thing is impossible, therefore the risk of dying young for this group is 0% of 4‰. We may then restate the point in the article as The risk of early death was 1%/0% times greater for those diagnosed before 40 compared with those diagnosed after 60.
Now all we need is a mathematician who can tell us how we can reduce the ratio 1:0 to a number that we shall understand. Coco thinks that it means this: The risk of early death was infinitely greater for those diagnosed before 40 compared with those diagnosed after 60.
This can be put in an even more blunt manner that the research suggested that it was certain that those who were diagnosed before 40 would succumb to an early death, whereas those who were diagnosed after age sixty would die, as expected, old. Coco remains unconvinced of the veracity of this argument, as it is clear that not all who are disagnosed before forty die young, some will die old. However, the mathematics suggests it, and incidently it would make no difference what the actual level of risk was for a forty year old (and we therefore do not need to enter a correction for the diagnosis or otherwise of the condition of type 2 diabetes), the result would always be certain, just as the statistics suggests that the ratio is 2.4.
Coco suggests that one should perhaps also note on the matter of increasing mortality with age, that if at age sixty you are discovered to have a condition which reduced life expectancy to about twenty years then at sixty when life expectancy is less than twenty years, it is perhaps of no great concern. You are likely to have been taken before the condition takes you. If however you are discovered to have this condition when you are only forty years of age, when your life expectancy may have been up to forty years, then you would view the condition in a different way and perhaps feel more threatened by it. The discovery of the condition for a forty year old increases the expectation of mortality significantly, but in a sixty year old hardly at all.
Given the uncertainty that this all provides, should we not be glad that there is one who knows all things and declares to us: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die shall live’ John 11:25. Those who trust the Lord Jesus Christ need not fear. Diabetes may shorten your life on this earth now, but he will raise us up again at the last day to live on a new earth in new bodies where there shall be no more death, from any cause, nor crying, nor tears, but all shall live in love and harmony with him and with one another.
*Much like Formosa, we are waiting for the colonies on the mainland of the American continent to acknowledge their lawful and ancestral ruler. No doubt the erudite and skilled shall find much worthy of contempt in this the article of Coco, but Coco would wish to remind such that erudition, skill and facts should not be allowed to spoil a good story as long as it is properly recognised that it is indeed a good story.
It was the appearance of this in the local press that reminded me of a report from elsewhere that left me wondering why.
The story referenced above is devastating in the approach taken to hygiene in the kitchen but these give you reason to wonder.
I was reminded of a report from France. The restaurant, I shall not mention its name for reasons of good etiquette and not to be thought to rejoice over the ill-fortune of others, had been established since the days of the third republic and was renowned for the quality and voluptious nature of its fare. Only the best and the good would eat there, the rest would visit perhaps for a small drink, but rarely two, being quite wary of the generous sums afforded by its ménu.
As with all such establishments they were inevitably subject to an inspection by the local authorities.
After the first inspection the Inspectateuse imposed an order of Désistament. The restaurant quite naturally refused to comply with this order as it had not changed its behaviour since inception and the previous inspections had not had any reason to complain. We know however that standards do change and over time more is expected of businesses. One could say that the law becomes stricter, but it is perhaps society’s expectations that change.
Finding that the order of Désistement had been ignored the Inspectateuse indicated that the matter would be brought before the Officeur de Jurisprudence. The restaurateur appealed to the Conciliateur, who merely opined that had the matter been brought before him before an order to appear before the Officeur had been made he would of course have heard the matter, but in the circumstances his hands were tied unless any further order were made by the Officeur to bring the matter before him.
The Inspectateuse was unimpressed by the efforts of the Restauratuer to avoid justice and his apparantly careless attitude to both the order and now the appearance in the Court de Jurisprudence and prepared her case carefully. She would not as the English would say over egg the pudding but merely refer to some relatively straight forward breaches of standards.
The appearance before the Haut Magistrat did not go well. The Restaurateur had expected the petition of the parquet to be thrown out and had not prepared to take part in the débat contradictoire. This to was his great loss, and it would have been a better outcome for him if he had simply not appeared at all. The fine would be €20k. It was a significant sum, but not unaffordable. The Restaurateur consoled himself that the publicity surrounding the case would neither be detrimental to his honour nor to his business.
He indicated that he would wish the matter to be heard by the Court de Cassation, but in the meantime it would of course be necessary to pay the fine.
The court unusually had not ordered the destruction of the offending items of his victualry, and so he delivered one up to the hands of a famous auction house, who regularly held proceedings in Paris and New York for the disposition of such items. Indeed the matter quite exceeded everyone’s expecations. There was significant excitement that an unopened bottle of Napoleon III brandy was going on sale. There was no question of the authenticity of the wine as it had been in the hands of the restuarant since it had been purchased from a small shop in the Rue de Valois. It and several others had been in the safe keeping of the proprietors ever since.
The price in the auction rose quickly beyond the reserve but slowed as the hoped for target approached. Then at €22,500 the bidding tailed off until there were only two who tipped each other €10 at a time. The auctioneer was unhappy with this state of affairs and without denying that he would continue for as long as they wished to do so, asked if one of them would not mind bidding up €500 to put the other out of his misery. Three bids later there was silence. €24,090 became the hammer price. The fine was paid and the small surplus used to thank the Inspectateuse and the Haut Magistrat for their work.
It was over dinner that evening that the Restauratuer learned that the Haut Magistrat had himself been the proud owner of a bottle of Napolean III brandy. It had served him well for twenty years being an excellent mouthwash he said after dinner, the liquor had long since been spent, since when he had sought to acquire a Napoleon III brandy for the kitchen of the Court, but no-one was willing to sell any even if any were available. Had he been to the auction the Restauratuer enquired? It would not have been proper for the Haut Magistrat to reply, but he was able to confirm the that kitchen at the Court did now have in its inventory such a thing.
Then a second report came to light. In the East End a new restaurant had been established by two individuals in partnership to celebrate the British diet in the years 1939 to 1945. The ingredients for the meals were sourced from small farms in Lincolnshire, the Fens and north Wales. The farms agreed to ensure that only war time methods would be used for this produce, so far as was consistent with modern standards of hygiene. And the owners sent out notes as far and wide as possible to obtain recipes and other items that might be of use or for display. To their surprise they found that many had kept old tins and packets, as well as ration cards, which were falling now into the hands of the house clearance experts. This they thought could be good for his business, so they contracted to take up tinned and bottled victuals.
Then came the inspection. They had not actually used any of these items in their kitchens though should guests wish to have any they were not unwilling to sell tins of ham, spam, corned beef etc or jars of pickled onions etc to them.
No other problems arose on the inspection, but that apparently that broke all of the rules. There was out of date food on his shelves and it had to go. Unless they wished to be taken to court something must be done about it. There was also the threat that they would be closed down if they did not act.
This was unwelcome news for the proprietors, but they said they would give serious consideration to the matter and how to deal with it. The following day one of the owners rang the officers and informed them that as the partnership had been dissolved he would close the restaurant with immediate effect for two days. It would be reopened, under new ownership, on the Friday of that week, should they wish to reinspect.
On the Friday the inspectors came. All was well. The offending items had been removed. But the restaurant was slightly smaller than on their first visit. Ah yes, the owner explained. We had to partition some of the restaurant off in order to accommodate a small boutique vendor of objets d’art. The gentlemen had approached them, being a specialist in the second great war, with the idea of a curiosity shop next door to the restaurant. He thought it would be a most appropriate situation in which to be located, but had had difficulty in obtaining the premises either side, would they help?
It was then that the inspectors saw an new item on the wall, which was not out of place in most eating establishments in public places, but unusual in a place like this: Guests are reminded that only food purchased in the premises may be consumed in this restaurant. We will however make an exception for those who can prove that their victuals were processed before 1950, and in common with unlicensed restaurants we shall make a caulkage(sic!) charge for those who wish to avail themselves of this exception.
Hastening outside the inspectors did indeed find a new boutique, which sold all manner of war time memorabilia, but whose stock for the most part consisted of tins, bottles and jars. All of them were labelled: Objets d’art – not for human consumption. And behind the counter, the restauratuer’s former partner, who welcomed them and asked them to browse and perhaps purchase if they were willing.
Shark attack
