The Real Macoy

The true sign of fish and chips are that the chips are genuine pieces of potatoes that a big enough to compare your stubby fingers with,
and genuine fish meat that you can sink your teeth into underneath all that crunchy batter.
Droool

A Life Saved

Apparently I have actually saved someone's life before.

No kidding.

I had forgotten about it, and just got reminded of it.

As a trained life-saver, I was on duty one year at our school annual aquatic swimming meet. It happened to be my turn to be on duty at that time.

So yes, I saved someone from drowning.

And she just reminded me today.

Oh, and we haven't met each other in over 30 years. She asked to be my friend on Facebook and then sent me a message.

Must make amends on time lost, don't you agree?

An Invitation...

If you are in town,

Burning the Candle

How many ways can you burn a candle?

Someone would say two ends - the wick end and the bottom end.

When you do that, the candle burns faster than the norm. Twice as fast, obviously. The candle is worked extra hard.

Hence the phrase, "He's burning the candle at both ends".

I know someone who does that and more - even the middle!

A Warning

Article taken from Daily Mail

How computers can harm your children's future... by damaging their brains

Children who spend hour after hour on the computer may be damaging a vital part of their brains. Here, in a stark warning, Baroness Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution and Oxford Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology, explains how this could be creating a generation blighted by obesity and gambling.

One can look at the world through experience or poetry, or one can view it in terms of science. Science does not invalidate other ways of perceiving things, but it can help explain what we see. And it can do so with regard to young people who spend several hours of the day playing computer games, or in online chatrooms.

The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to every event. We cannot complacently take it that our ways of learning and thinking will remain constant. Humans are highly responsive to change and so quick to adapt - in part because of the prefrontal cortex.

Senseless: Long hours in front of the computer could be eroding our children's ability to think

This area of the brain is more evolved in humans than in any other creature. It also forms late in our development, not becoming fully active until our teenage years.

If you damage the prefrontal cortex, your senses and movements are not impaired but you change; you become more reckless, lose a sense of sequence and consequence, of narrative and of your place in these sequences.

We know this from studies of gamblers. We know it from obese people: the fatter you are, the lower the activity of your prefrontal cortex. We know it from small children in whom the area is not developed and from schizophrenics, whose prefrontal cortex is damaged.

What do all these people have in common? Well, a gambler is aware of the consequences of gambling but does it, regardless, for the thrill. People know that if you eat too much you get fat but an obese person will keep eating. Small children have no understanding of consequences. The schizophrenic inhabits a world of dazzling colours but it is all about them: they live entirely in the moment.

These conditions are about the sensory, self-centred 'here and now' instead of sequence and consequence.

What I am advocating is a hypothesis. That if we were to scan the brains of young people who spend a lot of time playing computer games and in chatrooms, we would find that the prefrontal cortex is damaged, underdeveloped or underactive - just as it is in gamblers, schizophrenics or the obese.

We would find that they become confused between reality and screen life in their virtual world. And that in this confusion, they risk losing, neurologically, the ability to think.

For centuries, humans have listened to stories that have long working memories. When you read a book, the author takes you by the hand and you travel from the beginning to the middle to the end in a continuous narrative of interconnected steps.

We can then compare one narrative with another and so build up a conceptual framework that enables us to evaluate further journeys which, in turn, will influence our individualised framework.

We can place an isolated fact in a context that gives it a significance. The narrative - the basis of traditional education - enables us to turn information into knowledge.

Now imagine there is no robust conceptual framework. You are sitting in front of a multimedia presentation, such as a computer game or chatroom, where you are unable, because you have not had the experience of many different intellectual journeys, to evaluate what is flashing up on the screen.

Crucial: The prefrontal cortex helps us make sense of the world

The immediate reaction would be to place a premium on the most obvious feature - the sensory content, the 'yuk' and 'wow' factor. You would be having an experience rather than learning.

The sounds and sights of a fast-moving multimedia presentation displace any time for reflection or any idiosyncratic or imaginative connections we might make as we turn the pages, and then stare at a wall to reflect upon them.

Screen life has no memory: it is reaction-action-reaction-action-reaction. If you live in that cacophonic environment for six hours or more a day and at a time when the prefrontal cortex is forming, becoming developed and active, what is going to be the effect?

The brain has many chemical reactions, one of which is the release of dopamine. This is associated with immediate sensual gratification, and can influence the prefrontal cortex.

Taking cocaine or amphetamine will release high quantities of dopamine. And it becomes addictive.

Now consider screen life - life playing computer games and spent in chatrooms. What you see is what you get. Screen life is a series of logical tasks that demand immediate attention, which are to do with process, and not with content or substance.

To understand sequences and consequences is to think, to proceed from the sensory to the cognitive, to be able to consider and understand the development and interrelation of things beyond the here and now. The notion of sequence, the order of things, is what we mean by thinking.

It is crucial: it is your life. You cannot live your life backwards or start again. The notion of narrative is that you cannot go either way with a click of the mouse and then go backwards again.

But in a computer game, you can. You can start again.

Take the tale of a princess locked in the top of a tower. Read the story in a book and you are concerned for the wellbeing of the princess.

But try to rescue her on a computer game and it's about you. You don't give a damn about the princess: she is just a goal.

The story is about you completing a task, with a reward if you win, frustration if you lose.

In neurochemical terms, it is similar to gambling or taking drugs. It shows the same disregard for consequence and a confusion between reality and screen life as if you beat up an old lady on the street, recorded it with your mobile and put it on YouTube.

The hypothesis is that those exposed to this environment over a period of time become emotionally stunted. If nothing has narrative and meaning, you do not have narrative and meaning, nor do the princess or the old lady.

It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains becoming different from those of previous generations. And I feel sad that this is happening after 5,000 years of civilisation.

We have to ask ourselves: Is this what we want?

• This article first appeared in The Frontline Broadsheet, produced by The Frontline Club (www. frontline club.com)

© The Frontline Club.

Knowing Almost Everything

Q: Why are many coin banks shaped like pigs? (piggy banks)
A: Long ago, dishes and cookware in Europe were made of a dense orange clay called 'pygg'. When people saved coins in jars made of this clay, the jars became known as 'pygg banks.' When an English potter misunderstood the word, he made a bank that resembled a pig and
it caught on.

Q: Did you ever wonder why dimes, quarters and half dollars have notches, while pennies and nickels do not?
A: The US Mint began putting notches on the edges of coins containing gold and silver to discourage holders from shaving off small quantities of the precious metals. Dimes, quarters and half dollars are notched because they used to contain silver. Pennies and nickels aren't notched because the metals they contain are not valuable enough to shave..

Q: Why do men's clothes have buttons on the right while women's clothes have buttons on the left?
A: When buttons were invented, they were very expensive and worn primarily by the rich. Because wealthy women were dressed by maids, dressmakers put the buttons on the maid's right! Since most people are right-handed, it is easier to push buttons on the right through holes on the left and that's where women's buttons have remained since.

Q: Why do X's at the end of a letter signify kisses?
A: In the Middle Ages, when many people were unable to read or write, documents were often signed using an X. Kissing the X represented an oath to fulfill obligations specified in the document. The X and the kiss eventually became synonymous.

Q: Why is shifting responsibility to someone else called 'passing the buck'?
A: In card games, it was once customary to pass an item, called a buck, from player to player to indicate whose turn it was to deal. If a player did not wish to assume the responsibility, he would 'pass the buck' to the next player.

Q: Why do people clink their glasses before drinking a toast?
A: It used to be common for someone to try to kill an enemy by offering him a poisoned drink. To prove to a guest that a drink was safe, it became customary for a guest to pour a small amount of his drink into the glass of the host. Both men would drink it simultaneously. When a guest trusted his host, he would then just touch or clink the host's glass with his own.

Q: Why are people in the public eye said to be 'in the limelight'?
A: Invented in 1825, limelight was used in lighthouses and stage lighting by burning a cylinder of lime which produced a brilliant light. In the theatre, performers on stage 'in the limelight' were seen by the audience to be the center of attention.

Q: Why do ships and aircraft in trouble use 'mayday' as their call for help?
A: This comes from the French word m'aidez -meaning 'help me' -- and is pronounced 'mayday'.

Q: Why is someone who is feeling great 'on cloud nine'?
A: Types of clouds are numbered according to the altitudes they attain, with nine being the highest cloud. If someone is said to be on cloud nine, that person is floating well above worldly cares.

Q: Why are zero scores in tennis called 'love'?
A: In France, where tennis first became popular, a big, round zero on scoreboard looked like an egg and was called 'l'oeuf,' which is French for 'egg.' When tennis was introduced in the U.S., Americans pronounced it 'love.'

Q: In golf, where did the term 'Caddie' come from?
A. When Mary, later Queen of Scots, went to France as a young girl (for education & survival), Louis, King of France, learned that she loved the Scot game 'golf.' So he had the first golf course outside of Scotland built for her enjoyment. To make sure she was properly chaperoned (and guarded) while she played, Louis hired cadets from a military school to accompany her. Mary liked this a lot and when she returned to Scotland (not a very good idea in the long run), she took the practice with her. In French, the word cadet is pronounced 'ca-day' and the Scots changed it into 'caddie..'

Now you know almost everything

Shopping in the East End of London

In 1979 when I went to England, the corner shop was the place you would nip into when you ran short of a bit of sugar for your tea or some salt for your dinner. The gentlemen and ladies who ran the shop would always have time for a little natter and often if you lingered, you would hear some local gossip being exchanged. These shops closed at 6pm, summer or winter.

In my latter years, based in the East End of London, you could see the people change. More and more West Indians moved into the area. It was cheap accommodation. Many run-down places. This is a shop selling Afro-Caribbean groceries.
When I returned to the same area twenty years later, I was amazed to see even more change.

The majority of the shops had changed hands. It wasn't just the local chippie (fish and chips). In fact, we couldn't find a decent one in the old place we stayed. Instead, we found these.

The finest Indian and Pakistani clothings and cloth shops. Honestly, I have not seen such nice ones in our local high streets. The quality and variety was exquisite and extensive. I was tempted to add to my dozen and more saree collection. But imagine saying, "I went to London and bought a saree". Just doesn't sound right, does it!
The whole area had changed. More cash and carry shops.
Even the local Chinese takeaways were taken over. This is an Indian takeaway!
When we went in to get something for our Malaysian-born Chinese friend married to an Englishman, the local people knew her order despite us being unsure. She stood out in the area, even as we did, being Oriental. Our Englishman friend, her husband, was the only white-skinned man along the street.

Here is an interesting new development of greengrocery. Take a look at the shop on the right. See that front display of the shop named Bazaar?
There are bowls of fruits, vegetables, and such, neatly laid out in front. Most times, the normal greengrocer would have his ware displayed out the front, but in bowls? Not usually.

This is a sign of the times.

In East London, many of the women folk marry and come to England without learning to speak the local language. But they were still expected to manage the house while their husbands went out to work. Can you imagine the obstacles these women have just to get the evening meal on the table?

Language aside, there was the clash of culture. For instance, you couldn't go into a shop and negotiate and bargain like you did in the local bazaar, even if the shop was called a bazaar. It just isn't done in England!

At the same time, you couldn't very well go in and asked for a quantity you couldn't imagine. How much is one pound in weight? How much is one sterling pound of sugar?

Hence the front display. Every bowl is a single sterling pound.

"Bananas? Just one pound please."

"Potatoes? One pound please ma'am"

"Lovely mushrooms ma'am? One pound only!"

Times have changed......