A festival of pork

For a recent family festival we settled on pork, ordering a piece of rolled shoulder from the butchers in Manor Green Road.

But first to Kingston, the day of the water rats noticed at reference 3. Also the day when one of the clothes shops in the market square put out a whole lot of good quality wooden hangers for passers-by to help themselves to. I would have taken a dozen, but for some reason, BH drew the line at my taking just three.

Next to Bachman's, with my having been a little economical with the truth when I mentioned apple strüdel at reference 3. Yes we did take some strüdel, but we also took a lemon meringue gateaux, a sort of gateaux version of the humble lemon meringue pie. Sadly I forget to take a picture of the one we bought, and while the picture provided by Bachmann's is the right cake, it is not a very arty shot, and neither Bing nor Google could turn up anything better.

Next to the butchers where a fine looking piece of pork was waiting for me. I forgot to make a note of the weight and it was too much for our scales, so I was reduced to using a balance in the garage, with five pounds at the far end, as snapped above. From which we did the sum 47cm / 23.2cm times 5lbs equals 10.12lbs equals 10lbs 1.92oz equals 10lbs 2oz.

Snapped here after salting the crackling (all the better to crackle with), having been pleased to find that it did fit in our roasting tin. No need to take a slice off. But how long to cook it for? The last 5lbs piece was cooked for three hours at 160°C plus rest. It was getting on for twice as heavy as we usually had, but it was long and thin. So probably not twice the time. We settled on 5 hours: in at 07:45 and out to rest at 12:45, perhaps dropping the temperature 20° at the half way point. Which we did, giving it a good baste at the same time.

Snapped above at the point of service. I thought it rather overcooked, but others thought it was fine and four fifths of it went at a sitting, leaving just about a cold meal for the two of us the next day.

On the next occasion we have a pork joint of this size and shape, I shall drop the time by maybe an hour. Maybe even use the thermometer. Maybe take a look at reference 4, where there was a similar problem and which I should have turned up on this occasion.

Preceded by a spot of smoked salmon, for a change, and taken with boiled potatoes and salad. This last for another change. Taken without dressing and I don't recall anyone asking for any.

Also taken with some white wine, some of the sparkling variety (right), some of the almost sparkling variety (left). Both taken in the past but it is left as an exercise to the reader to find out when.

For dessert, the cake, which all went. Plus jelly (orange jelly with added tinned oranges, a dessert dish I am fond of, but which is not to be had from the sort of restaurants which we use), plus ice cream, plus cheese and biscuits. Lincolnshire Poacher with Carr's water biscuits of course.

I had intended to crack out some Calvados to wind up the proceedings but got diverted to entertaining younger guests outside and forgot about it.

The only items actually bought were the two beams from Travis Perkins. The bench was inherited. The necessary blue rope was picked up in the margins of a visit to the Barrowboy & Banker at London Bridge. The pole middle left was probably an estate agents' pole picked up on my rounds. Ditto the black sand filled bags from BT (perhaps intended to hold down lively cables stretched along the road) being used as markers. The fibre board came from a neighbours skip - although I did have to buy the screws.  And we free-sourced the tyre on the Isle of Wight (see reference 6). With the back garden sloping gently downhill towards the back of the house, there was quite a variety of challenges. Plus the emptying challenge proved popular: place tyre on its side and fill the under-side with water. Then the challenge is to get all the water out by shaking the tyre around (or otherwise) without getting wet oneself. Surprisingly difficult. Self bottom left.

PS: File Explorer has taken to rotating the odd thumbnail in the window used for image insertion. I think it is something to do with overwriting an image which has been rotated, with the file properties retaining some of the rotation bit but not the file itself. What you actually get on your screen varies.

Reference 1: https://www.masterbutchersepsom.co.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.bachmanns.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/water-rats.html.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=two+legs+lamb.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/04/having-noticed-dry-run-at-reference-1.html. It was also an occasion to crack out the special card holder, first used on the occasion noticed here, having decided that the regular cards on offer in the Ashley centre were not quite what was needed.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-tale-of-tyre.html.

Big trees

[A cloned redwood seedling roots in the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive laboratory in Copemish, Mich. Photo courtesy AATA]

Back in 2013, I mentioned at reference 1 a register of big trees maintained by the people at reference 2. A correspondent has now pointed out that the reference given there no longer works. Which is true enough, but a little poking around turns up reference 3, which is something of the same sort, with the Giant Sequoia being the first on the list, for which they offer some handsome, albeit rather small, photographs. In something called the php format which Microsoft does not recognise, at least on my laptop.

I might also remind readers that since 2013, I have started by own register of Giant Sequoias, often called Wellingtonia here in the UK, with the latest entry being at reference 4. Of course, with most of these trees being less than 150 years old, not exactly what a tree-hugger in the US would call old growth.

The correspondent, from the lawn operation at reference 5 which appears to span a large chunk of the continental part of the US, offers reference 6, from where I get to reference 7. An impressive looking operation which has learned how to clone very old trees, with some of them seemingly being dead or near dead. They also do plantations and are looking to expand these into Canada and to here in the UK. Something to be investigated. To all of which reference 6 serves as a handy introduction.

Reference 1: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/11/pondrosa.html.

Reference 2: https://www.americanforests.org/.

Reference 3: https://www.americanforests.org/get-involved/americas-biggest-trees/champion-trees-national-register/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/wellingtonia-36.html.

Reference 5: https://www.lawnstarter.com/.

Reference 6: https://www.lawnstarter.com/blog/tree-care/reborn-redwoods-cloned-from-giant-stumps-live-again/. 

Reference 7: https://www.ancienttreearchive.org/.

More statistics

Figure 1

Having put in a plea for serious statisticians at reference 1 a couple of weeks ago, in the course of perusing the helpful and accessible reference 2, I came across the figure above, presenting some changes in brain content with age, in humans. One of the points at issue being whether certain regions went up or down with age and whether such changes were linear, monotonic, quadratic or what. A question which is much easier to answer in these days of MRI – say from the year 2000 – than it would have been when one would have had to dissect a large number of brains, assuming a sufficient and disposable supply of same. Also a question which clearly needs statistical input.

Being keen on taking my social statistics raw and being suspicious of wheezes like seasonal adjustment, I was puzzled by what might be meant by standardized residuals and I was tempted to dig. This led me to reference 3, bottom right in the figure above, a response to references 4 and 5, all three papers appearing in Elsevier’s journal ‘Neurobiology of Aging’, to be found at reference 6. A transformative journal, whatever that might mean.

The data plotted in reference 3, for the purpose of giving a better span of age, is drawn from two previous studies, which added together give N=113. While the comparator at reference 4 has N=73 and that at reference 5 has N=87. So quite decent sized samples compared with some involving scanning brains that one comes across.

However, I seem to have missed something, as the two studies which have been added together – references 2 and 5 in the Jernigan and Gamst  paper at reference 3 – cover the age ranges 5-15 (N=35) and 30-100 (N=78), with a gap in the range 15-30 – while the scatterplots presented show no such gap. I tried counting the dots in Figure 2 below, getting first to around 140 and second to around 130, with the former count including a few dots which seemed to be under the lines. So both counts well in excess of the 113 expected, but well short of adding everything together too. A disturbing failure of understanding.

Nevertheless, the general idea seems to be to take various measurements of brains from a sample which gives reasonable coverage of age, and then to see how those measurements change with age across the sample. That is to say, just one set of measurements from any one subject, with all the measurements being taken at roughly the same time: an attempt to derive understanding of what happens over time from a snapshot in time. All in support of better describing, better modelling of, the processes underlying brain cell birth, migration, growth and death. 

It’s not been spelt out, but I now guess that the variable in question, say TV1, the volume of the thalamus, has been linearly regressed against CV, the cranial volume. We then have it that TV1 = α × CV + β + TV2, where α and β are the regression coefficients that have been calculated, either from the sample of heads to hand, or perhaps from some large sample, perhaps from some digital library of same, and TV2 is the residual, that is to say what is plotted on the vertical axis of the second panel from the left in the figure above. That part of the volume of the thalamus which is not accounted for by the volume of the host brain. I also guess that residuals have been adjusted to have means of zero, presumably not what happens anyway when one does a least squares regression. The point being to validate, to improve comparisons between subjects with different brain sizes – with the assumption here being that the size of a well defined region of the brain is not of some fixed size, doing some fixed job, but with a size which will vary with the size of the host brain. 

Aside, a quick Bing turns up reference 7, which suggests that while the size of the eye does indeed vary, I did not spot any suggestion that this variation is linked to height or brain size, although there is some correlation with host orbit size. And from my dental background, I recall that size of teeth is not tied to size of jaw – a failing which keeps orthodontists in business.

This residual proceeding reduced the scatter and reduced, if not eliminated, any difference between the sexes. And if we then do a quadratic rather than a linear fit we get some nice curves. Maybe these relationships are not linear after all.

Figure 2

Figure 2 is the original from reference 3 from which the right hand panel of Figure 1, cerebral white matter, is derived. The dots are the sample points, the straight line is the linear regression, the dashed line both the best fit quadratic curve and the dot-dash line the best fit cubic curve – part of the point being that the cubics do not seem to add much to the quadratics.

But even to the eye, this scatterplot does not look to reflect a linear relationship underlying all the noise; there is a hump. From which the authors quite reasonably deduce that whatever is going on is more complicated than simple decay of white matter with age – which is the story one might tell if one only looked at ages 30 or 40 to 100, rather than the 0 to 100 we actually have here.

Figure 3

Figure 3 is another of the other diagrams in reference 3. Again, the dots are the sample points, the straight line is the linear regression, the curved line both the best fit quadratic and cubic curves – this time, more or less identical. But there is another hump, albeit not as strong as the first.

The question for me being, given the scatter, given all the manipulations that have got us from the underlying MRI scans to that scatter, how sure one can be sure about this? And how can one be sure that the three left hand panels of Figure 1 have not levelled off in middle age, with the steady decline into old age being no more than a mathematical artefact of fitting a quadratic to a scatter plot which starts high?

There is talk in reference 3 of Spearman's rank correlation coefficient or Spearman's ρ, which Wikipedia tells me is about testing whether a relation between two variables can be described as monotonic. Completely monotonic will give a value for ρ of plus or minus 1. But I did not spot anything stronger than the observation that quadratic gave a better fit than linear – not that I would have understood a statistical argument. And the paper ends on a properly cautious note.

While reference 2 goes no further than observing that the graphs in Figure 1 above ‘illustrate that during childhood and adolescence changes in brain structure are at least as dramatic as those at the end of life’. And noting that ‘all volumes are normalized for cranial volume –which does not change appreciably over this age range’. 

As noted above, this last is what makes it possible to compare one subject at one age with another subject at another age, assuming, as it were, that other things are equal. But maybe one day there will be enough data in digital libraries to do longitudinal studies, which look at the same subjects over a period of time, which would probably provide stronger evidence. Maybe that has already been done, given that the work reported here was done between 15 and 20 years ago.

Conclusions

Enthusiasm in drawing conclusions from nice curves which have been superimposed on scatter plots needs to be restrained by a bit of statistical common sense. Better still, apply some statistical skills.

PS: clicking on the figures should make any small print visible.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/teach-myself-all-about-fmri.html. 

Reference 2: The Basics of Brain Development - Joan Stiles and Terry L. Jernigan – 2010.

Reference 3: Changes in volume with age: consistency and interpretation of observed effects – Terry L. Jernigan, Anthony C. Gamst – 2005. 

Reference 4: Effects of age on volumes of cortex, white matter and subcortical structures – Kristine B. Walhovd, Anders M. Fjell, Ivar Reinvang, Arvid Lundervold, Anders M. Dale, Dag E. Eilertsen, Brian T. Quinn, David Salat, Nikos Makris, Bruce Fisch – 2005. N=73.

Reference 5: Normal neuroanatomical variation due to age: The major lobes and a parcellation of the temporal region - John S. Allen, Joel Bruss, C. Kice Brown, Hanna Damasio – 2005. N=87.

Reference 6: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/neurobiology-of-aging. 

Reference 7: Variations in Eyeball Diameters of the Healthy Adults – Inessa Bekerman, Paul Gottlieb, Michael Vaiman – 2014.

It's all over?

The FT seem to have stopped updating their graphic of world deaths put down to the coronavirus, the graphic which for me gave the best back-of-a-postcard summary going of what was going on. With the last update, back at the beginning of July, having been noticed at reference 1. Stopped updating at a time when deaths were still running at a higher level than they had through the middle part of last year.

I infer that they think that there will not be another, fourth surge of deaths. Let's hope that they are right - but I would feel more confident if that was the story that an updated version of the graphic told.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/graphic-time.html.

Trolley 426

Trolley 426 had been spotted on the bank of the stream running down Longmead Road on Saturday or the day before and was captured on Sunday. An outing for the grappling iron; not entirely necessary, but the bank was probably slippery and I had no desire to get either wet or dirty.

A trolley made of a mixture of round section and square section, with the general idea being to cut a wedge out of the end of a square section when butting it onto a round section. Not particularly neat looking, but it does substantially increase the contact of the weld. Perhaps the use of a wedge to butt square onto square above the wheel was a mistake. By the robot or by the apprentice?

All packed up and ready to deliver the trolley. But where to? It was a Homebase trolley, but did Homebase still exist after the Australians withdrew from the fray? It was a bit battered, far from new, possibly dating from the days when Homebase was part of Sainsbury's: would they want it back anyway? Plus, the Homebase store was further than I fancied pushing a trolley - this despite the fact that it was only just over three years ago that I carried a couple of galvanised steel grids home from the place (as noticed at reference 4). What about the tip around the corner? Would they let me in despite the facts that I was not a car (no pedestrian access) and I had not made an appointment. In the event, I settled for taking it home pending further thought. I can always put it in the back of the car and take it away again.

PS: just before I reached the trolley, I came across a pile of grass clippings on the edge of the bank. Possibly just a common or garden fly tipper, possibly the council grass cutters. I dare say the the clippings will rot down fast enough, but it sets a poor example to the rest of us and may leave some patches of bank a bit bare for a while.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/08/trolley-425.html.

Reference 2: https://www.homebase.co.uk/. Homebase clearly alive and well, and the 'about' section includes a short history, ending up by telling us that the company is back in profit after a CVA - bankruptcy lite - and it now part of the Hilco family.

Reference 3: https://www.hilcocapital.com/. A private company from Illinois which appears to specialise in mending broken companies, either by purchase, investment or advisory service. High end asset strippers?

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/new-wheeze.html.

To London Town

A week or so ago we paid our first visit to Wigmore Hall since the beginning of last year. While I had visited London as recently as at the beginning of the same month. To hear Ronan O'Hara, whom we had heard once previously, noticed at reference 2, give a mixed programme not unlike the first one. So Schubert D.840, Brahms Op.79 and Beethoven Op.13. And we still thought he looked very like a man from Belfast, with what I regard as the typical square head, despite the fact that he actually came from Manchester.

But going back to the beginning, the fig tree across from Platform 4 was looking good, despite a front bough having broken away, I think some time last year. Plus the creeper left was doing well. Presumably hop or bryony. Mask discipline on the not very busy train from Epsom was good. Battersea Power Station, having sported lots of cranes for what seemed like years, has now more or less disappeared behind some tower blocks, at least as seen from the train. Why on earth did the heritage people waste their powder? Make the developer preserve the turbine hall and rebuild the four chimneys? Couldn't they find some bigger fish to fry?

Tube a bit busier and I was offered a seat by a young lady. Declined. I had forgotten that I am now of an age where this happens quite regularly.

All-Bar-One open, quiet and licensed, so I was able to take a beverage while BH had coffee with smarties. The waitress - quite possibly the duty manageress - did not insist on our ordering by telephone, which was just as well. But I was rather taken with the little carafe my wine came in: much more tasteful than the big glass with thick rim used in many pubs - and quite a few restaurants. By the time we left at around 12:30, several more staff had clocked in and the place had got much busier. An establishment which suits us, not least because of the high ceiling.

Out through Cavendish Square where outdoor fun is clearly the order of the day - rather than the concrete drain store of reference 2. I suppose that, until things settle down, we do need outdoor facilities, but I do hope that the square is put back to rights before too long.

Not too impressed that the Marsden had taken over a chunk of the fancy building, newly refurbished, on the west side of the square, for private care. I dare say that if you are the hard pressed financial controller at Marsden, it is anything to make the books balance - but it is not what I expect of the National Health Service.

And maybe they need to give a bit more thought to where exactly they put these commemorative plaques. Maybe somewhere not so near the fag ends.

The Wigmore Hall itself turned out to be properly spaced out, with less than half the seat occupied and lots of doors open. But rather to our surprise, only about two thirds of the audience, mostly but not exclusively of pensionable age, saw fit to mask up. Which we were surprised about - and rather put off for the future. For the moment the advice is to mask up in indoor public settings and we propose to follow that advice. To set an example, to encourage those (like our fat leader) who are impatient with rules, truth and all that sort of thing.

But the concert was good, despite O'Hara being rather keen on the fast and loud bits. The Schubert I was rather taken with. The Brahms not so much, and the Beethoven is well known. So more or less what we expected. There was a short and entirely suitable Schumann encore. O'Hara did say what it was but I have not retained more than the Schumann bit. The Schubert has been heard several time since, in the Kempff version. Given his dates it is possible that I have heard him play live, but I couldn't put it stronger than that. I do have a few discs and CD's.

Having taken the precaution of booking a table on our way to the concert, out to a very good lunch at 2 Veneti, a place we last seemed to have visited in March last year.

Mixed bread good, rather better than the Yarbridge on the other island. Fell for a Florentine steak, taken medium rare and served on a wooden platter which came with - and needed - a gutter. Very good, if not quite as spectacular as that we had one evening in Florence, just north of the Port San Gallo and noticed at reference 8. I think another time I would ask for medium rather than medium rare. I might also take my pocket Laguiole (the French one, which kept its razor edge for a long time) as they left a fair bit of meat on the bone, hard to get at with the knives provided.

The wine we took with the steak, something white from the 2017 harvest in the Alto Adige, run down via Facebook in Arabic to reference 9. What looks like the wine in question is to be found under etiquette. Perhaps Italian for brand or label?

Followed by an excellent tiramisu, served with some house pudding wine. One portion with two spoons, a format all good waiters are familiar with. Followed by mint tea for her and grappa for him, both nicely presented. The grappa in a proper grappa glass.

BH did not think it appropriate to locate the nearest M&S and walk this trolley back to it, preferring to climb onto the tube. More crowded than earlier and once again I was offered a seat, declined.

Two changes to get home, the second at Raynes Park where a good haul was noticed at reference 10. Another seat offered on the last leg to Epsom, where there was a scatter of racing people, some in full fig.  The taxi driver did not remember us, but he did remember the house, telling us on the way that the last year had been a bad year with him on furlough for most of it. One got by but it was a bit miserable.

PS: the Wigmore Hall is clearly watching costs a bit. The piece of A4 used for lunch time programmes has lost its colour and most of its printing. Just half of one side on this occasion.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/penultimate-outing.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/03/ronan-ohara.html.

Reference 3: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ronan-ohora-mn0002184646/biography.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/two-kinds-of-cheese.html. My last visit to London.

Reference 5: http://www.2veneti.com/.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/penultimate-outing.html. The last visit - perhaps the first since they started opening on Sundays. The present day being a Thursday.

Reference 7: https://www.royalmarsden.nhs.uk/private-care.

Reference 8: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2008/10/culinary-matters-reprised.html. The first and best Florentine steak. Possibly the Perseus restaurant in the Viale Don Giovanni Minzoni. Format looks right, as we were on a small terrace and allowed to smoke after our meal.

Reference 9: http://www.vignaiolofanti.it/. 

Reference 10: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/platform-library.html. Notice of the haul on the platform library at Raynes Park (southbound) on the way home.

Trolley 425

I started raining - very hard for ten or fifteen minutes - more or less just as I left the house this morning on a Ewell Village anti-clockwise, but it had eased off by the time I got to this trolley, No.425, on West Hill, just before I got to the High Street. I assume some leaving-the-pub prank of the evening before, a prank which may have pushed over the slim black box, just the other side of the large black box from my telephone. I thought that it had probably been out all night and was probably free of any plague it may have caught from either prankster or shopper, and so safe for return to the M&S food hall.

Both Ashley Centre and town were quite quiet, people having been put off by the rain.

I reached the bottom of Longmead Road about an hour later, to find an impressive puddle, I think just collected in the depression there, rather than from the stream to the left, well down from the grass at this point, although rather nearer further up the road.

One small washer picked up at some point.

It took me near two hours to get around, rather than the hour and a half which was usual before the plague, before I largely switched to the bicycle. Maybe the walking muscles are not what they were. I also wondered whether heavy summer rain correlates with air quality, a notion which BH agreed with, having had a good friend who suffered from asthma, but Bing did not. Amongst other things, offering the suggestion that carbon dioxide was more water soluble than oxygen, resulting in a greater concentration of oxygen in wet air. 

Raining quite hard again now, it being near 16:00. Off and on all day, although I can't see from the upstairs study window whether the three micro ponds have become one, there being rather more vision-blocking vegetation in August than in March when the snap at reference 2 was taken.

PS: inspection later in the afternoon revealed that the three had indeed become one.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/trolley-424.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/pondemonium-revisited.html.