Caught between Paraskavedekatriaphobia and Cryophobia

Not Friday the 13th

Somehow, we all suffer from various degrees of paraskavedekatriaphobia [1] and for people who have computers, we have been told to fear the worst and keep our computers switched off – the reach of superstition cannot be ignored no matter how much technology we have around us.

33 years ago when Friday the 13^th was in February, General Murtala Ramat Mohammed [2] the Head of State of Nigeria was assassinated, he was only 37, in a bloody coup that failed and gave rise to first tenure in office of General Olusegun Obasanjo [3].

I knew exactly where I was on that day, I was down South in Sagamu living with my great aunt’s family as I prepared for common entrance examinations into secondary school – we were at play outside when someone came round to announce the event – we had no television then and heard it all on the radio.

I can live with history as well as contemporary events, but I think we have run into an outrageous celebration in the Netherlands.

No jumpers for cold hearts

The Carbon “Nazis” have hijacked the 13^th of February 2009 and named it Warme Truiendag [4] this translates to Warm Pullover Day.

It is 0ºC in Amsterdam and -1ºC in Arnhem [It is snowing, in fact] where I am working today and some smart climate change advocate has come up with the idea that I should wear something warmer so that the office can be converted into mini tundra.

Really, if I wanted live in Scandinavia and cavort with Santa Claus and his reindeers, I would go up there to freeze my crown jewels but spare me the Eskimo fashion in the Netherlands.

Indeed, we all have to do our bit for climate change but not at the risk of hypothermia that shivers my timbers to the point that life is stilled as if I were in cryogenic repose.

It is national cooling

So the email that came with this announcement encourages us to do our part by wearing a pullover, lowering the thermostat which saves 7% energy per degree Centigrade and we should eke out an economical day.

So, our participatory and enthusiastic management have turned down the thermostat by 2 degrees for today and asked what suggestions and plans we have to help keep our jumpers, cardigans and pullovers from looking like granny had a colour rush knitting the mittens, we might even win a pair of woollen earplugs.

Friday the 13^th is definitely going to be a cold day – Brrgh!

Sources

[1] Friday the 13th - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Murtala Mohammed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Olusegun Obasanjo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] warme truiendag

The Phobia List

The faucet apothecary

Water throw-ups

There was a period of about 10 years when I could not drink water without falling sick. One time, I was offered pills at a clinic with a glass of water and promptly threw up the whole thing in less than five minutes.

You cannot imagine the after-taste of bitter sick aided by pills that usually have to be sugar-coated to be ingested in the first instance.

Now, I can handle sparkling water quite well whilst still water makes me quite uncomfortable.

Beyond washing out my mouth with tap water, it would never go down my gullet, however, boiled water for tea or coffee is fine with me.

Water in the bottle

A few weeks ago, we had this entire rumpus about bottled water being immoral, now, there might be scientific or environmental studies that support the view that bottled water is not environmental sound, but when it gets hijacked by activists, anarchists and carbon Nazis, I suddenly go deaf to it all.

Then there is the view that we are wasting money and environmental clout on bottled water when tap water would suffice – that might be good for some, but how do I get the sparkle into my tap water? I definitely would not be doing D-I-Y (Do It Yourself) sparkling water – that is completely out of the question.

The faucet chemist

Just as one ventures toward the moral faucet of holy water, news comes to us from the States that Americans are subjects in a seeming homoeopathic drug trial of antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones.

It appears their tap water contains traces of these drugs, that is not to say that some bottled water that is just the repackaging of tap water does not contain traces, if tested for specific pharmaceuticals.

Traces and homoeopathy

I used the word homoeopathic earlier to highlight a worrying situation that we would be told to ignore considering scientists do not believe that homoeopathy has any efficacy.

Some people have benefited from homoeopathy to various extents where medicaments are diluted to a point that they are scientifically untraceable before being administered in treatment.

Advocates contend that water has a way of memorising information stored in it at one time no matter how much it is diluted – science contends the dilutions make the homoeopathic remedies no better than placebos.

I would say homoeopaths have not offered conclusive proof and scientists are testing within the framework of ideas and laws that may not explain to the best possible extent of knowledge available to man why homoeopathy is efficacious to some users and benefactors and not to others.

Curative water supplies

However, back to the stream of the modern faucet, if tests are able to detect with such assuredness the presence of pharmaceuticals a lot higher than typical homoeopathic dilutions, what is to say many are not already self-medicating through tap water to deal with bacterial infections, epilepsy, depression, sex alteration or erectile dysfunction? Perish the thought.

But with the price of drugs in the States, you can drink in New York what would fill you with heart medicine, infection fighters, oestrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabiliser and a tranquilliser.

Choose your city

The city of brotherly love would cuddle you with medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems, in fact, 56 pharmaceuticals or their derivatives.

You will never have a fit in Southern California and gender adjustment might just do fine in San Francisco – no allusions to realities there.

If you happen to live in the following cities of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Austin, Texas; and Virginia Beach, Virginia, there is nowt in the water, you need a new water board.

It is safe, they say

Before we get irrationally hysterical, we are told that all these supplies meet all federal and state standards for quality of water – which might mean standards have to be raised and some more exploratory tests need to be conducted to ascertain what comes to all in drinking water.

Meanwhile, when I sing in the shower, I might just wear a shower cap over my lips to create a new type of sound, this type of water pollution; which, it is, without any shadow of a doubt; is not confined to those across the pond, apparently.

At peace with the Nobel Peace Prize

Weathering the peace

The Nobel Prize week is just beyond us and there were a good few recognitions for work done though the most controversial was the Nobel Peace Prize 2007 in recognition of the science and the celebrity of the consequences global warming.

My view is that the award to Al Gore was more about making global warming an agenda issue in the highest forums of human endeavour and government rather then the nut and bolts of what is the accepted or disputed science of global weather phenomena and the consequences.

We might be in some millennial weather cycle or what we experience now might be man-made due to our consumption and disposal, it does not take away from the fact the land and water with the derivatives of food, shelter and resources are the primary causes war and dispute in many places especially Africa and the Middle-East.

Consensus for peace

The peace dividend is in finding fair and equitable means of managing these ever shrinking global resources of land and habitat being lost to development, desertification and the destruction of war all of which require a modicum of good governance and developmental economics.

Sharing the Nobel Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) where peer-reviewed science collides with compromise and political consensus indicates that the greatest advances in responding to climate change and its effects on the environment would come from UN-type organisations rather than weather propeller-heads postulating from citadels of academic overdrive.

The IPCC was formed in 1998 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess and monitor possible climate change cause by human activity the presentation that includes Al Gore gives this citation “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Another Nigerian in peace

It would be remiss to forget that the Secretary General of the WMO at that time was Professor Godwin Obasi, a Nigerian of impeccable academic credentials who held the position for 19 years from 1984 but unfortunately died in March 2007, no doubt, he would have been very pleased to see this phenomenon lauded and given this kind of profile.

In the end, I am at peace with recognition that the Nobel Peace Prize 2007 regardless of what the detractors, refuseniks and critics have to say on this matter, these recipients have done more to bring this matter into the mainstream, it would however placate the Carbon Nazis.

Rubbish elections or elections rubbish

In a week or two

Surely, the irony could not have been lost on any Nigerian, a person with a Nigerian heritage or relationship living in the United Kingdom.

The local elections would take place in a few days and the issue that is exciting the people and the campaigners is that of either collecting rubbish weekly or fortnightly.

The weekly collection deals with the issue of smells and vermin whilst in some way encouraging laxity in recycling and costing councils fortunes in landfill charges. The fortnightly collections do the opposite and the people are not happy with having to keep their rubbish for long periods especially in the heat of the approaching summer. Fair point.

Well, 4 out of 10 councils now do the fortnightly collections and there is a possibility that the Carbon Nazis would get into the heads of the administrators forcing them to install electronic chips on the bins (some bins already have them but have been vandalised) to record dumping and assess charges.

Somehow, someone is not comfortable with this revolt from the shires and is trying to make this issue become insignificant - Let's see.

Before I digress, did I see the rubbish of an election in Nigeria and an election on rubbish about to sweep the United Kingdom? Such, is the mystery of democracy.

Save us from the Carbon Nazis

The earth is changing

It is getting relentless and distracting, switch on your television and the chance is you are watching a drying up river, a depleted forest, marooned polar animals and wayfaring icebergs.

Amongst us, it is reports of severe drought in Australia, desert encroachment in Africa, floods in Asia, forest fires in America, severe hurricanes in the Caribbean or heat waves in Europe.

The sum of it all, global warming, or at least that is what we are beginning to believe it is.

We do need to do something about it, however, I do wonder if the way we are going about it has not been hijacked by a more sophisticated erstwhile membership of the anarchist Animal Liberation Front.

Offsetting your footprint

So, we have to measure our carbon footprints, reduce our carbon generating activities and consider carbon offsetting if our nominal carbon footprint is extended for satisfying out luxurious tastes.

Now, I naturally cannot sleep with my lights off or without having some sound playing in the background, I would be travelling to Berlin in the weekend and the choice between a 2-hour round-trip and a 12-hour journey is obvious if I want to maximise my holiday time, travelling by air than by train.

I would like to switch off my television, DVD recorder, video tape player, stereo player and microwave oven instead of leaving them in standby mode, but I would loose channels, time, settings such that getting the systems up and running would be an utter inconvenience, it should be manufacturers creating systems that retain all that in non-volatile memory.

Have to keep them going

Forget my fridge and alarm clock, and I need a night light; I have not been able to eat enough carrots to see in the dark. The supermarket on the ground floor brings food from all corners of the world, I am spoilt for choice and it closes at 9:00PM. If I want local produce, I have to go to the market, which is open till about 4:00PM when I would still be at work.

Supermarket food contains enough additives to keep for a while, fresh produce whilst tasteful has to be consumed sooner which means more inconvenient trips a week for foodstuffs.

Anyway, that is my selfish attitude to Global Warming, mind you, I do not have a car, and I mainly use public transport and do not directly use any fossil fuels in my house.

The march of the Carbon Nazis

But it is getting a bit too far, a whole lot of sanctimonious tree-huggers are now saying we should stop flying - now, I am no fan of no-frills air travel, they have rubbished the quality of travel one was once accustomed to hardly 10 years ago.

However, I would not squeeze into a cattle-class seat for the price of an imperial suite on QE2, it is annoying enough that the cost of flights is just 60% of taxes when it comes to European travel.

Then some people who desperately need to get a life queued up from 03:00AM for the £5.00 "I'm not a plastic bag" bag at Sainsbury's, this green thing might just gain traction if such interesting people were composted for plant nutrition.

They have also co-opted the Queen of England into this outrageous carbon trading scam, no, she would not be kayaking across the Atlantic to America, rather her courtiers would be finding ways to offset her carbon footprint - the last time I looked, though her feet were in shoes, they were hardly half the size of my long boats. Green Queen, they say - give me peace!

Gosh! I forgot, she was 81 on Saturday - Belated wishes, Ma'am.

The march of the carbon army is like some marauding pillage of our heretofore sacred liberties, that I am now screaming - Save us from the Carbon Nazis.