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In the break area at work, they have a few crappy gossip magazines on the table (don’t know who brings them in, the one I’m referring to is called “That’s Life“). I don’t usually read them, but I was grabbing a drink and noticed the page had been left open at a ‘tips’ page.

One of the tips was something like this: “If you have freezer which isn’t full, fill empty milk cartons with water and put them in. These store the cold meaning your freezer won’t have to work so hard.” (Words to that effect, anyway). There was also a cheesy picture of a guy with a milk carton filled with water standing next to a freezer.

I had to do a couple of double-takes when I read that. Speaking as someone who doesn’t know much about physics (did an A-Level in it, but have forgotten most of it!)… surely that can’t be right! To start with, your freezer would have to cool down the cartons of water to form ice – this would take energy. Then, the freezer would have to maintain the temperature to keep them frozen (taking more energy).

But what I can’t get my head around is the fact that having what is essentially a great big block of ice in your freezer would actually help keep it cool. The question comes down to: does it take less energy to keep a block of ice cool, or a block of air?

I’m guessing that it takes less energy to keep air cool, because it’s more dense. But I could be wrong on that (my old physics teachers would probably be shaking their heads by now at my terrible forgetfulness). Thus, a completely empty freezer would do less work than a freezer loaded with ice.

Am I going mad?!

I’ve been having a discussion in the comments thread of Caity’s blog post on Kindness. The discussion revolves around the concept of morality: can we be ‘moral’ if there is no God?

My contention is that without the concept of God, there can be no absolute morals. By that I mean, no morals which would apply the world over. So, to take a topical example, suicide bombers could not be said to be acting immorally because they believe that it is right and moral for them to do so. There is no ultimate standard by which we can make value judgements on morality, therefore claiming that someone else’s action is immoral is actually illogical because you are only making judgements based on your own standard.

All of this hasn’t yet reached the point of Christian morality: all I’m doing is pointing out what I perceive to be inconsistencies in atheistic morals, and not defending Christianity as such.

However, Caity pointed out this quiz on Biblical morals, and I suggested that the writers of the quiz have got their theology wrong. She invited me to follow up this comment with something more detailed, so as a result that’s what I’m going to try and do.

(more…)

I read an article today about a woman who was texting whilst driving, and ended up smashing into a stationary car at 70mph. It seems absurd to me that in this day and age, where the dangers of using mobile phones while driving are constantly stressed, that people persist in doing it.

When I was at my old job out in Suffolk, there was a girl who I think must have worked somewhere around there and had similar hours to me. I would sometimes see her driving back from work – we’d share the same route for about 25 minutes (about 15 miles from Hadleigh to Colchester). She would invariably be talking on the phone all the way. This, incidentally, was after it was made illegal to use a mobile phone whilst driving. One time we drove past a police car and the mobile phone disappeared then – so she obviously knew it was illegal! A few times when she was driving behind me I did contemplate slamming on the brakes, but I thought it probably wasn’t worth it.

Aaanyway. Someone left a comment on the article I mentioned and suggested a tiered license system – similar to the one motorbikes already have. If you want to drive a bigger car, you have to get an upgraded license. I don’t think this is the real issue. You can drive any kind of car sensibly and safely, and you can drive any kind of car recklessly. Any modern car is capable of going at motorway kind of speeds – and is thus capable of killing someone if hit at that speed. If you’re driving without due care and attention, any car – whether a Metro or a Mitsubishi Evo 1 – will be dangerous.

One thing which might help is to stress when learning to drive how important it is NEVER to drive with a mobile phone. Some people still seem to believe that it’s acceptable to use mobiles while driving – even texting, which I would have thought is actually worse than making a call – and what is needed is more education, not harsher penalties or tougher licenses.

I can think of two deaths now which have been caused by texting whilst driving. Maybe if people start to realise that, they will stop texting and calling in the car.

Apologies for the rather poor (and ancient) pun. We are currently in the middle of a snow shower, and it’s made things very difficult for travel. I managed to get into work this morning OK, but I think I’m going to have difficulty on the way back out. The car park is the worst part – the snow has compacted down and is really quite slippery, if I get out without hitting anything it will be a miracle.

Aaaaanyway. The weekend, and what happened in it. Well, on Friday evening we watched “The Darjeeling Limited”. It was a pretty good film, similar in style to Wes Anderson’s other films. It was a pleasant evening’s entertainment, although I’m quite glad that we got it on our lovefilm subscription and didn’t actually buy it.

On Saturday we did some shopping in the morning, and then headed over to Chelmsford in the afternoon. We had dinner at Strada, and then went to hear the University of Essex Choir performing Monteverdi’s Vespers at Chelmsford Cathedral. It was really beautiful – we both loved it! I didn’t realise until the day that Monteverdi was such an early composer, and it comes across – he experiments with a lot of styles his contemporaries were working with at the time.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning (both services!) and then went to the Yew Tree in Great Horkesley where we met with Phil’s parents for lunch. The lunch was excellent, as it usually is there! I was incredibly full by the end of it though – perhaps having a dessert as well wasn’t a good idea…

In the evening I had a music practice at Fordham for the youth service next week. After that I came back home and watched Lark Rise to Candleford. And that is pretty much everything! I just hope I can get back home safely this afternoon – I’d settle for not hitting anything! (On the way back home last night I was only doing about 20mph and managed to skid gently across the road and bump off the curb, about 100yds away from home. But that doesn’t count.)

Everybody stand back, this is going to be a serious rant. I’ve virtually got steam coming out of my ears right about now!

Can anyone believe NuLabour and their stance on ID Cards? I simply cannot believe some of the crap they’ve spouted about it.

Apparently “Wacky” Jacqui Smith said (on cards being available from 2012): “I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don’t want to wait that long.” What The Heck? I haven’t yet spoken to anyone who is in favour of ID cards. Now, to be fair, I should mention that other countries have ID cards and it’s not a problem – it’s the UK version of ID cards that I don’t like.

The whole “Linking up everything to a massive database” thing.

When was the last time that a government IT project – such as a massive database – went well? NEVER! That’s when! Have the government proved that they can responsibly administrate large amounts of data without it going missing? Most emphatically, NO!

In short, no valid argument has been put forward for ID cards and yet they are still (despite massive opposition from the likes of NO2ID) going ahead with it.

I tell you, if ID cards go ahead as planned I will seriously consider moving. Well, either that or blowing up the houses of parliament. This just reminded me why our government should never be trusted: they are our elected representatives, and yet they continually and willfully ignore our opinions and steamroll ahead with their own plans, no matter what the arguments are.

Your uppance will come, NuLabour. I just hope it’s soon…

Recently on Absolute Radio they’ve been playing some really good new music. One of the songs they’ve been playing is called “Close to Midnight” by The Airborne Toxic Event. I liked it so much that I went out and bought the album, which arrived just over a week ago. I’ve had the chance to listen to it a couple of times now.

The album is basically in the Indie style, although some songs (such as the aforementioned Close to Midnight) contain soaring strings and are a bit more pop-friendly.

In general I was impressed by the album. Some of the songs are more memorable than others, and the lead singer can be a bit ‘shouty’ at times, but they’ve written some really solid tunes. Close to Midnight is my favourite of the album, but the first two tunes (Wishing Well and Papillon) I really like as well. Although of course all is subject to change as I listen to the album more 😉

This weekend was the good kind of busy. On Friday night we went to 21 and I did a talk on Judges 6 (Gideon and the Midianites who say “Ni”). It seemed to go pretty well, despite me inadvertantly calling bits of the Bible boring! I don’t envy whoever has to do the talk on Judges 7 and 8 though – particularly Judges 8, where Gideon seems to drift into apostasy.

Still. On Saturday we went to Colchester Winter Ale Festival, which was put on by Colchester CAMRA. We met up with a few other people including Tom, Dan, Alison, Alex, Elisa, and a couple of people from the uni who I hadn’t met before. It was a great afternoon – we had some good conversations, and it was a really relaxed atmosphere. Phil isn’t really a fan of ale so she tried a few of the ciders (which were very nice), and I had some ales, as well as a cider and a Belgian beer. (Must try and find out where I can buy some Belgian beer locally, by the way – I had a top cherry beer which I can’t quite remember the name of).

Afterwards, we went to the Ashiana curry house. I had a chicken jalfrezi, which was delicious but very hot! And then after that we headed round to Tom’s flat and watched QI followed by Shaun of the Dead. So all in all it was a pretty successful day, must have more like it!

And I’d definitely recommend anyone to try going to an ale festival, it was a really nice atmosphere in there and there were lots of nice beers / ciders / wines to try.

Sunday – I’ve gone on long enough so I’ll just say we went to church in the morning, had our next door neighbour round for tea in the afternoon, and then watched Lark Rise in the evening.

Oh, and this morning it took nearly two hours to get into work. TWO HOURS! For a 45 minute journey. I wish people would drive more carefully on the A12, we’ve had loads of delays due to accidents recently. Still, I’d rather it happened in the morning than in the evening!

Those of you with excellent memories will remember that I DJ’d at Ian and Lucy’s wedding in May. It wasn’t a long set, but a couple of the people there are getting married this year and have got in touch asking me if I would like to DJ at their wedding. The only drawback with asking me is that I don’t have my own PA system (given that I’m not really a mobile DJ).

Anyway, apparently one of their friends is a sound engineer and can provide a PA, so it looks like I will be able to DJ there after all. I will also probably get a few bits of new equipment – CDs and MP3s are all the rage these days (vinyl seems to be on the way out, unfortunately) so I think I will try and get some CD decks – I’ll post up when I have some more info about that.

I actually have been flirting with the idea of getting more of my own equipment and advertising myself as a wedding DJ, still not sure whether that would be a good idea or not though. Still, you do see so many … well, crap wedding DJs – I’m sure I would do a better job than some of them (trust me, it wouldn’t be hard – one friend of ours saw a wedding DJ basically put on a playlist and then spend half the time stuffing his face at the BBQ there)! At the same time, if you have to play the same old cheesy stuff week in week out I’m sure you would get bored of it, hence why some wedding DJs seem rubbish – they’ve just got bored of the same old crap which people actually like and want to try something different which people don’t like!

Ah well, decisions decisions…

This weekend was a pretty quiet one actually – which I think we both needed! Friday evening we didn’t do much – just watch the usual selection of TV. I like the fact that QI is back 🙂

On Saturday we did a bit of shopping. We bought ourselves a new Kenwood food processor and blender, our old food processor died a couple of months ago and they are actually surprisingly useful. We have a few recipes which call for their use, including a very nice cashew nut curry. We didn’t have a blender before, though, and we made good use of it on Sunday. But more on that later.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then afterwards Laura came back with us for a “comedy-a-thon” (as we called it). Basically, Laura is an apprentice at Fordham and we discovered recently that we haev pretty much exactly the same taste in comedy as she does 🙂 So we invited her round for lunch and a watching of lots of various comedy things, which was great. She’s loaned us the first series of Black Books which we haven’t seen before (amazingly enough), watched a couple of episodes of it yesterday and it was great.

Oh, and we used the new blender to good effect – we made a milkshake using a cadbury’s fruit & nut bar. Not as good as a Shakey Jakey’s, but not bad for a first try! Anyway, the afternoon went well, we will have to arrange another one soon…

One more thing to mention: we also managed to sell the car 🙂 £361 in the end, which isn’t a bad price at all considering webuyanycar.com offered me £50! I’ll feel happier when I have the money in my hand, but still – the winning bidder is coming to pick the car up this afternoon. Now I’ve started, I might try and sell a few other things on eBay – I’ve got lots of bits and pieces I don’t really want but I’m sure someone would be interested in.

Well, I’ve now got 27 people watching the auction! Not only that, but someone has made a bid. Yay! So, if you’re interested in a Hyundai Lantra, now’s your chance 🙂 At the time of writing there are 3 days, 22 hours left on the auction.

Get it while you can! 😉