Little green men

The Christmas menu

Otherwise, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, otherwise SETI. For this, last week to the Royal Institution to hear a science flavoured journalist and writer called Keith Cooper promote his new book, 'The Contact Paradox'.

Entertained on the way by a herd of older ladies out for a jolly on the train and by a younger lady with elaborate dress and makeup on the tube. Elaborate which involved doing something complicated with the hair, the eyebrows and the finger nails. Which must have taken some time and effort to achieve - but it was worth it!

To the Goat to find that Greene King have taken Quickie of the menu and I had to settle for a glass of the stuff noticed in Epsom at reference 3. Is the new owner from the Far East already having an impact?

The book

At the Institution, about two thirds full. Lots of older men, not exactly wearing duffel coats, but tendencies in that direction and lots of younger women. As it turned out, the Prime Directive from Star Trek about non interference was very much in their minds. For readers who need to be reminded about this directive, there is always reference 4 from Wikipedia.

A rather irritating MC, who spoke too fast. Apparently we have had him before, but I don't recall. A speaker whose dress was irritatingly casual for such a lecture hall, with such a heritage. His talk was not that clever either, with rather more information to be found in his article at reference 2. And a lot of the questions at the end were rather silly. Which included some stuff about how difficult it would be to translate any message from little green men from whatever they did into English. While I recall something about using your very expensive radio telescope to pump out lots of copies of numbers like π (3.141592653589793238462...) and e (2.7182818284590452353602874713526...) out there, or maybe just the sequence of natural numbers, on the grounds that anyone with a telescope was likely to be able to work them out.

The equation

But he did talk about the Drake equation, snapped left, a useful framework on which to hang things. From which the take away for me was that contact was rather unlikely, at least at the present state of the art. The distances and times involved were just too long. Any signals all too likely to break up. It may well be that there is life out there, but we will be lucky if we see it. That a big enough telescope will be pointing in just the right direction and listening in at just the right frequency for long enough to catch something. And even if we do, what then?

Out to catch a Bentley SUV in Davies Street outside the Arts Club, possibly a Bentayga. Probably dearer than the Maserati version I saw recently and noticed at reference 7, but which turned out to cost less than a Range Rover. Are rich people into pretending that they go yomping out in the wilderness, or are the luxury goods companies trying to milk a bigger market?

Into the tube, to find another lady who had gone to a great deal of trouble with her appearance. But amusing because, while her head was properly covered with an expensive looking, but plain headscarf, she was also sporting a fair bit of handsome thigh between the folds of her other clothes. Not sure whether her dress would have satisfied her Imam. Her husband certainly seemed like a rather bad-tempered specimen.

And so to the Halfway House at Earlsfield for a spot of refreshment. Including, on this occasion, a couple of their sausage rolls, substantial affairs, quite reasonably priced. Good that public houses seem to be cottoning onto the idea that the is a demand for proper snacks, somewhere between a bag of nuts for 10p and a main meal for £10. We may even get back to the rolls, sandwiches and pies of my youth.

We also picked up a copy of their Christmas menu, snapped above, a much grander affair than the one we had picked up from the Goat earlier. Clearly a Youngs-wide effort, lightly customised for this particular establishment, with Christmas lunch coming in at £65 a head, exclusive of booze. Not my thing particularly, but clearly becoming increasingly popular with a lot of the pubs that do food offering one. With one benefit being that it gives all those young people who find family Christmas a bit stifling, paid employment outside the house, so killing two birds with one stone. Three, if you allow a bit of fun in the margins.

PS: my Microsoft phone had been giving trouble with its charge during the day, so I was interested to find that if I went into Settings, I could find out where all the power was going. And it turned out that the Photos and OneDrive applications were taking about 75% of it. Not sure whether that included the camera itself, but it certainly looked as if image processing and image movement was a drain on resources. This including the copying of images captured on my computer at home on to the telephone at large, which I don't particularly need. So mostly good stuff, but not a free lunch.

Reference 1: https://astronomynow.com/. I go the idea that Cooper was the editor of this magazine, but while he clearly writes for it, unable to confirm the idea.

Reference 2: https://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1004/26seti5/.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/celebration.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive.

Reference 5: https://www.theartsclub.co.uk/. I had always assumed that this place was a gambling club for the rich, well suited to its location opposite the outpost of the Government of the Cayman Islands of reference 6. But I find no gambling here, only a cigar lounge. One law for the rich and another for the rest of us?

Reference 6: https://www.cigouk.ky/.

Reference 7: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/posh-car.html.