I have insomnia because
my right sinuses are full of polyps which prevent me breathing when
asleep. I have been given a course of prednisolone to shrink the
polyps. The drug *has* shrunk the polyps so I can breath at
night. However the stuff has side effects. It causes insomnia itself
so I have trouble sleeping. And it is a diuretic (makes you piss
more) so as soon as I nod off I wake up needing to go to the loo.
Several times.
As an added bonus I am
experiencing many other side effects of the stuff including having
hot flushes, experiencing noticable weight gain, and feeling
particularly miserable pretty much of the time (even more than
usual!). It also suppresses the action of my immune system, so I
am on antibiotics to counteract that. Pills for my pills (!)
So I am now in the
position that my insomnia is worse and I am paying for pills to make
it so, and to also make me uncomfortable and disagreeable into the
bargain... only three more days of them.
Over brekkie I watched
"Family Guy" and while trying to waste an hour or so
before work I browsed the Internet. A couple of years ago I did an
on-line course about astro-biology. The course provider emails me
with matters of note from time to time. This morning they sent a
frankly
nonsensical article explaining why we haven't yet found any
aliens. The crux of the author's argument is that *if* life
does advance and proceed by natural selection, then biological life
will be supseceded by artificial intelligences and life forms.
An interesting premise
until one gives it thirty seconds thought. Leaving aside the fact
that the author of the paper has (like everyone else) avoided
making any definition of what he means by "life",
his theory explains nothing. Rather than asking "where are
the aliens?" we should instead be asking "where are
the robots?" Fermi
remains unanswered.
Mind you it was rather
apt for astro club day...
I was on an early start
today, and set off to work shortly after dawn. As I drove the pundits
on the radio were discussing the pros and cons of putting the
calorific value of beers and wines onto the labelling
of bottles and cans of the stuff. Apparently people have been
observed in pubs and restaurants each consuming some four hundred
calories less (on average) per piss-up when menus giving out
calorific contents are made available to them. In these days of
combating obesity, putting the calorie content onto a label is
demonstrably a sensible thing to do. But will the drink industry do
it? Apparently not because beer and wine is not "officially a
food stuff".
I can't help but wonder
how many faceless administrators have to be given a back-hander to
re-label a bottle of Spitfire.
Perhaps equally
nonsensical is the revelation (from our old friend science)
that dogs tend to align
the direction in which they are facing with the Earth's magnetic
fields when having a dump. However when it comes to having a tiddle,
only girl dogs point themselves in a north-south manner; boy dogs
tiddle in all directions. One lives and learns.
I shall take a compass on
my next dog walk and see if "Furry Face TM"
craps in a northerly or southerly way. Having established this I can
then use him as a makeshift compass should the need arise when next
out on a long walk.Who needs a compass when one has a shitting dog?
If nothing else it's another reason to hurry his recovery.
My lunchtime was (mostly)
spent on another sax practice. I managed to blag my way out of having
to waste any more time with "Goose on the Razzle" at
last night's sax lesson. I am now on "Hello Dolly"
and a famous American piece of music which everyone has heard, but of
which no one knows the name. It starts with a "da-da-da
daa-daa" in ascending note order kicking off from a G (I
think). "Hello Dolly" has promise, but the other
one is still leaving a lot to be desired. It don't help that he sax
keeps going squawky.
An early start made for
an early finish, and as it was the last Friday of the month I had an
appointment in McDonalds with Luke Warm for McScoff before going
round to the new-look new-format astro club.
It's no secret that the
attendance at the astro club is noticably down on what it has been. A
lot of the once-regular members haven't been seen for months or
years. We need to do something to bring back the old hands and retain
the new ones. So there's been a change to the way the evenings will
proceed. The idea is that during the winter months we'll start with a
quick welcome and intro session. Then go out with telescopes, and
then tea, coffee, raffle, and end with the lecture.
Now *perhaps* (!)
I'm biased here. I admit I have no interest whatsoever in looking
through a telescope at a faint splodge of light that might be
absolutely anything. (And judging by the rather poor attendances
at so many organised observing sessions over the last five years, I
would say that neither have more than half a dozen other past or
present club members). I'd rather have the talk earlier in the
evening. Because that's the bit I like, and for which I go along to
the club. And when people go out and shiver round telescopes later in
the evening, make polite excuses and go home five minutes later,
that's when I put all the chairs away and then go home myself.
Leaving a few hardy souls to stand around shivering out in the cold
whilst I go home to where it's warmer.
The whole plan hinges on
the premise that people want to look through telescopes. Personally I
don't. And from experience I don't think many others do either.
Perhaps that's why I'm not keen on the idea.
(And doesn't that
little rant sound negative.... I wrote it this morning over brekkie.
I considered deleting it, but I shall leave it as a reminder to
myself and the world of the mood-altering power of prednisolone.)
There's no denying I went
along tonight expecting the worst. But I thought I'd give the idea a
go before dismissing it out of hand. After all, if nothing else, over
the years this blog has catalogued many instances of me being
completely wrong. And was I wrong this time?
On reflection I wasn't
*entirely* wrong. The evening started according to plan with a
welcome and introduction session. But it wasn't quick... with a lot
of interesting news it went on for forty five minutes. According to
the schedule that only left fifteen minutes for stargazing, so the
schedule had to be rapidly re-vamped.
The stargazing session
went... I wouldn't say it didn't go well, but a good quarter of the
people present didn't go outside at all, and over half of those that
had gone out were back inside within twenty minutes. Mind you I do
sometimes feel that the first part of the evening involves too much
sitting about. And tea time can be something of a scrum; tonight's
observing session with people coming and going was much more relaxed
so maybe having the observing session earlier wasn't a bad thing.
Completely contrary to
what I had been expecting, pretty much everyone stayed after tea when
usually half the people present go home. People then had the choice
of carrying on with telescopes or listening to a lecture. Exactly as
I had thought, judging by how many seats were taken for the lecture,
I don't think more than half a dozen people could have stayed outside
telescoping (on the clearest night you could hope for). People
*do* go along to listen to the speakers.
Mind you I was wrong in
that I had gone along expecting the worst. For all that we tried a
radical departure from our usual plan, it was a really good evening.
With a couple of very minor tweaks this new format might just work.
Change isn't necessarily a bad thing...
What a rant today has
been.... did I mention that this Prednisolone stuff I'm taking is a
depressant...?
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