Safe as milk

Best before 19-11-66
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Everything in your fridge has a Best-Before date on them.

Milk goes bad... well not really it just changes. Some little microbe decides that it can reproduce by utilizing the lactose which is a sugar in the milk and as a by product lactic acid is produced.

Of course since all the milky goodness is now forced to exist in an acid environment the casein protein of the milk denaturates and unfolds, and as a consequence the texture of the milk changes. It curddles.

Now some people would say the milk has gone bad, and other people from other cultures would call it buttermilk and drink it down.

Proteins in milk have a habit of expressing themselves in different ways and it usually finds an expression when the proteins become denaturated. Heat is another way of denaturating a protein. Boil up some milk and then leave it to cool and a skin will form on the surface of the milk. The skin is denaturated protein.

P.S. What a load of codswollop. The protein stuff was good and that is the way milk gets modified to make fermented milk products, but I tell you here and now if you eat bad stuff then you will get sick.

I should know I was up at 3 in the morning with a blowtorch at my backside singing John Cash's "Ring of fire", while my stomach churned like a cement mixer as a prelude to projectile vomiting. I am in bed for the day and well past my sell-by-date.

When the gods ruled our hearts

Doof

It has been said by the Greeks that whom the Gods would destroy first they make insane. But then again the Greeks had strange ideas about Gods. The Greeks never got angry. It was always the goddess of anger that invaded their heart. It was she that made them go to war and fight. The Goddess of war was responsible for all the evil that they did to each other.


Kapow

But then there was also the goddess of compasion, who could also invade your heart, and inexplicably you would for some obscure reason, unfathomable to you enemies, show them mercy, even though they did not deserve it.


Biff

Often the godess of anger would get her brothers rage and fury to invade a persons heart, and then there was no controlling them. When faced with such unmitgated wrath the goddess of compassion would call up her brothers and sisters, mercy and love, and there would be a monumental stand off.

Each side calling up reinforcements, jealousy, envy, hatred, vengence, retribution, revenge, bitterness, all aligning themselves under the banner of the goddess of anger. What chance did forgiveness, reconcilliation, goodness, benevolence, charity have against such mighty foes?



Wauuuuugh

It was usual that the old god of tiredness was the one who resolved the situation.

The world would be a better place if more people were tired. It would solve so many problems. If they were tired of arguing, tired of fighting, tired of scheming, tired of wheeling and dealing.

Being tired means you need sleep and everyone is innocent when they dream.

The trouble with being blind

The first thing you see is the shirt collar. One peak of the collar is sticking out over the pullover, while the other one is tucked in underneath the pullover. If you look closely one trouser leg will often be hitched up over the top of the bootleg, and the overcoat will be buttoned up wrongly, the first button having been put into the second buttonhole, so the whole coat is hanging lopsided off the shoulders, and the hem is six inches lower on the left than on the right.

You then notice the bed head hairstyle, all spikey and out of control at the back, and the egg yolk on the chin, and the bristles of hair on the adam's apple that the razor has missed. Then there is the Stevie Wonder waving of the head from side to side as though they are being wafted by some huge invisible giant fan.

They walk with hesitant steps and for the partially sighted a shadow on the ground can be a unexpected hole. The trouble with being blind is that you can not see how scary you look. You have no way of knowing that you have egg on your face, and that your chaotic nervous movements to avoid falling into holes or stumbling up steps that aren't there, are viewed by the outside world as some sort of psychotic mental aberation manifesting itself as schitzoid dancing while being unkempt and badly dressed.

But sit a blind man down in the back of your taxi and you might learn that Eliel Saarinen moved to America when he was fitfy and made a new career for himself. After being a huge success in Finland he experianced failure after failure, always coming second in any design competitions. The classic Samuel Beckett line 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' could have been applied to him. But in the end Saarinen did succeed and went on to found the Cranbrook college in the USA.

Never judge a book by its cover or a blind man by the way he buttons his coat.

Patrick pulls one

SATURN
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity

British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience at home.

The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity.

Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation.

Hundreds of people claimed to have felt it. One woman even reported that she and her 11 friends floated around the room.