Danskcolin: Saturday, November 3, 2018

08:00 Lois and I get up early and walk around the corner to our local doctor's office. We have an appointment at 9 at one of the clinic's nurses who is going to give us the health system's annual flu vaccine. The waiting room is stuffed with old crows like us and we have to sit down in the hallway. Damn!

It's very annoying to be in a crowd of other old crows, I have to say that, but I have a technique I've developed to help me deal with major crowds of people: I do not look at anyone, which makes the whole experience much less annoying. I use the same technique in crowded supermarkets etc - and it helps a lot!

On our way into the waiting room we bump into Edward and Claire, parents of Angela, our daughter Alison's best friend throughout her schooling. It was very tragic, but Angela, married with a child of about 10-11, died earlier in the year of breast cancer at the age of 43. Edward and Claire were understandably traumatized by Angela’s unexpected death, but they seem to be finally coming through it and we hope we can invite them over for dinner sooner or later.

flashback to August 1986 and our daughter's 11th birthday party

in our back yard. The late Angela, Alison's best friend at school,

is the short, fair-haired girl sitting at her right hand.

Lois is behind Alison looking over her shoulder

It is a lucky thing that we mostly do not know what tragedies are in store for us. Poor Angela.

09:15 We come out of the doctor's office and drive into the village. We swing by Waghornes, the local butcher's shop to buy meat, cheese and bread. Again we find we are two old crows in the middle of a bunch of other old crows in the shop - my god! The whole world has gone mad - that's for sure!

10:00 We come home and relax on the couch with a cup of coffee. Lois finds out to her surprise that she has an ache in her shoulders after her flu shot - damn!

11:30 We have discovered in the past few days that Minx, our 18 and a half-year-old cat, who in our opinion suffers from mild dementia in addition to arthritis, has got in the habit of treading randomly through the cat litter in her litter tray and accidentally spreading small particles of cat litter all over the house. And because Lois and I suffer from poor eyesight, we have only just noticed this. Yikes!

I wonder if we had better vacuum every day, but we're not completely sure about this - the jury is still out on that one. I decide to replace both the bag and the filter in the vacuum cleaner and afterwards I meticulously vacuum the living room, the dining room, our bedroom and the stairs. That means, at least, I will not have to do this annoying task tomorrow, which is nice.

12:30 Margaret, who, like me, belongs to Scilla's small U3A Old Norse group, has sent me an email. On Wednesday, the group is holding its first meeting in 6 months, but Scilla's 3 members (me, Margaret and Kath) are still in the dark about which chapter of Njal's saga we are going to be starting from. Scilla is lousy at the administrative side of her group - and the Scilla itself would be the first to admit this.

Margaret says that Scilla sent her some revision notes 2 months ago, but it appears that Scilla forgot to send these notes to Kath and me. Good grief, what madness !!! Fortunately, Margaret forwards the notes to me today via email so I can browse through them through before Wednesday's meeting.

13:00 We have lunch and afterwards I go to bed and take a huge afternoon nap. I get up at 3 pm and iron my underwear and pajamas while Lois swings by the neighbors (Bill and Mary) to talk a little with Mary, who suffers from mild dementia. Lois is so warm-hearted if only I could be more like her!

15:30 Lois has not turned up yet, so I settle down on the couch and listen to the radio, an interesting program all about the iconic question, "Would you go to bed with me?". The host of the program is the charming Tom Whipple.

The program revolves around a famous survey that was conducted 40 years ago by academics at Florida State University. A team of researchers with "average sex appeal" approached various strangers and asked them one or other of the following three questions: (1) "Would you go out with me tonight?", (2) "Would you like to come over to my apartment ?" or (3) "Would you go to bed with me?".

When it came to the third question, the researchers discovered that most men answered yes, but all the women answered no. The experiment has been repeated a few times since 1982 in different countries, but in general, the results have been the same despite the many social and sexual changes that have taken place during this period since the early 1980s.

The results suggest that there is a fundamental evolutionary, biological difference between men and women that has remained the same for hundreds of thousands of years, and that it is simply not in the interests of women to be extremely promiscuous with strange men - personal safety, risk of pregnancy, etc. And it's interesting that feminists do not like this conclusion - they tend to say that the apparent differences between the sexes are just one of the consequences of living in a male dominated society, and so on.

It is another interesting result of some of these surveys that women over the years have only expressed interest in going to bed with a stranger if it was put to them that the man was some attractive celebrity. But I suspect that they only answered yes to such surveys because they were absolutely certain the idea was completely theoretical.

A study a few years ago in the US discovered that the celebrity that the fewest women were interested in going to bed with was Donald Trump (the survey was carried out before he became a politician) while on the other hand it was Brad Pitt who topped the women's list of ideal sex-partners. Angelina Jolie topped the men's list, and Roseanne Barr was at the bottom. Poor Roseanne !!!!

Roseanna Barr and Angelina Jolie

Brad Pitt and Donald Trump

My god, what a crazy world we live in !!!!

16:00 Lois has still not appeared yet, so I watch a bit of television, the first half of an interesting documentary about humanity's place in the universe. The host of the program is the charming Brian Cox.

Brian admits that it was quite natural for primitive people to believe that the earth is the center of the universe - the earth does not seem to be moving whereas the sun, the moon and the stars all revolve round us. It was Galileo, using the new clear lenses that had begun to be made in Venice, who first saw defects in celestial bodies and observed that the planets and the earth must be revolving round the sun.

Then the program jumps forward to 1968 when for the first time an American spacecraft (Apollo 8) went into orbit round the moon, and Bill Anders and the astronauts aboard saw "Earthrise" for the first time in history. What a moment that was - it would be hard to find a better one, that's for sure.

flashback to 1968 - one of the photos taken by Apollo 8

astronaut Bill Anders and his crew

When I see this photo in the middle of the program, I recall that it is one of the photos that members of the International "Flat Earth Society" most often call out as "fake". Earlier this year, the society held its annual conference in England. The society has an undoubted international appeal especially in the English-speaking world for some reason. The annual conference took place last year in North Carolina, and next year's event is planned to be in Canada.

Gary John opened this year's conference in England. He told the 200 people in the audience that he did not believe in anything 100% apart from the fact that we did not live on a globe.

It's a bit of a shame, in my opinion, that the members do not agree on what form their flat earth actually takes: a large disc with the polar circle in the middle, a circle under a dome maybe with a lot of water on top, one of a row of ponds in a large ice field, or just a flat surface under 4 cosmic rings in a huge egg-shaped universe.

I myself do not really like any of these theories. The row of ponds sounds lovely for relaxing next to with a glass of strong gin and tonic, but if the ponds are in the middle of a large ice field, it immediately becomes less attractive to my taste.

Sheer madness! Let's just stick to the globe theory!

The Flat Earth - Let's End this Madness Now !!!

16:30 Lois comes back from the neighbors so I turn off the television and hear about her visit with Mary - Bill had gone out with Jack, his brother, to the local football stadium to see the town's football team play and Jack's wife was sitting in with Mary . Jack's wife was very happy to see Lois come by because it's hard work talking to someone (like Mary) who has dementia - that's for sure !!!

18:30 We have dinner - kedgeree, rice and home-grown green beans - yum yum!

20:00 We spend the rest of the evening watching a bit of tv, an interesting documentary about developments in artificial intelligence and its implications for our healthcare system. The host of the program is the charming Dr. Hannah Fry.

It sounds good to be able to get an app that tells you if you are seriously ill or not and the like, but the program's conclusion is that we are not yet really there. All the hi-tech firms with their young executive directors and crazy young jeans-clad, enthusiastic IT employees who are in the business, need more independent assessment on their software, it seems.

Meanwhile, Lois and I sometimes wonder exactly when we are going to get so old that the whole healthcare system will simply write us off - yikes, scary !!!

21:00 We continue watching television, 40 minutes of the 3rd hour of an interesting 3 hour long "slow tv" program, all about the Australian railroad from Adelaide to Darwin.

If Lois and I ever take this trip, this stretch from Alice Springs to Katherine will be the ideal opportunity to go to bed - that's for sure! It is by far the most boring part of the journey.

What we're watching is so-called "slow tv", not strictly a documentary, so we mostly only see pictures without dialogue, and there are no interviews either with the train driver or with the passengers, which is a bit of a shame. It would have been nice to hear what the couples, for example, spend time doing during the long boring stretches, but we suspect that a lot of alcohol is consumed, that's for sure!

We see long boring stretches of monotonous, bland landscape

this couple appear to suddenly catch sight of a white camel, but they have both been

hitting the bottle both during and after lunch - no doubt about that!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz !!!!

Danish translation

08:00 Lois og jeg står tidligt op og går rundt om hjørnet til vores lokale lægehus. Vi har aftale kl 9 hos en af lægehusets sygeplejersker, der skal give os sundhedssystemets årlige influenzaskud. Ventesalen er propfyldt med gamle krager ligesom os, og vi skal sætte os i gangen. Pokkers!

Det er meget irriterende at være i en mængde af andre gamle krager, det må jeg nok sige, men jeg har en teknik, jeg har udviklet, for at hjælpe mig med at handle større masser af mennesker: jeg kigger ikke på nogen, hvilket gør hele oplevelsen meget mindre irriterende. Jeg bruger den samme teknik i overfyldt supermarkeder osv – og det hjælper meget!

På vej ind til ventesalen støder vi på Edward og Claire, forældre til vores datter Alisons bedste ven gennem hele hendes skolegang, ved navn Angela. Det var meget tragisk, men Angela, der var gift med et barn på ca 10-11 år, døde desværre tidligere på året af brystkræft. Edward og Claire blev forståeligt meget traumatiset af deres datters uforventede død, men de er endelig kommet ovenpå igen, og vi håber, vi kan invitere dem til middag før eller senere.

tilbageblik til august 1985 og vores datters 11. fødselsdagsfest

i vores baghave. Den afdøde Angela, Alisons bedste ven på højskole,

er den lave, lyshårede pige, der sidder på hendes højre hånd.

Lois står bag Alison og kigger over hendes skulder

Det er heldig, at vi for det meste ikke ved, hvad der er i vente for os. Stakkels Angela.

09:15 Vi kommer ud af lægehuset og kører ind i landsbyen. Vi smutter ind i Waghornes, den lokale slagterforretning for at købe kød, ost og brød. Igen befinder vi os som kun 2 gamle krager midt i en flok af andre gamle krager – du godeste! Hele verden er gået galt – ingen tvivl om det!

10:00 Vi kommer hjem og slapper af i sofaen med en kop kaffe. Lois opdager til sin overraskelse, at hun har lidt ondt i skuldrene efter influenzaskuddet – pokkers!

11:30 Vi har opdaget i de seneste nogle dage, at Minx, vores 18,5-årige kat, der efter vores mening lider af mild demens udover gigt, er kommet i vane med at træde gennem kattegruset i sin kattebakke og ubevidst at sprede små partikler af kattegrus over hele huset. Og oven i købet lider Lois og jeg af svagt syn, og derfor har vi bare nu bemærket alt det der. Yikes!

Jeg spekulerer på, om vi må hellere støvsuge hver dag, men det er vi ikke helt sikre på – juryen er stadig ude om det. Jeg beslutter i hvert fald at udskifte både posen og filteren i støvsugeren og bagefter støvsuger jeg omhyggeligt i stuen, spisestuen, vores soveværelse og på trappen. Det betyder i øvrigt, at jeg i det mindste ikke vil måtte gøre denne ubehagelige opgave i morgen, hvilket er rart.

12:30 Margaret, der som mig tilhører Scillas lille U3A oldnordiske gruppe, har sendt mig en email. på onsdag holder gruppen dens første møde i 6 måneder, men hendes 3 medlemmer (mig, Margaret og Kath) er stadig lidt i mørket om, hvilken kapitel af Njals saga vi skal starte fra. Scilla er elendig til sin gruppes administrative side – og det ville selve Scilla være den første til at indrømme.

Margaret siger, at Scilla sendte hende nogle repetitionsnotater for 2 måneder siden, men det viser sig at Scilla glemte at sende disse notater til Kath og mig. Du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!! Heldigvis har Margaret videregivet notaterne til mig i dag via email, så jeg kan blade dem igennem før onsdags møde.

13:00 Vi spiser frokost og bagefter går jeg i seng og tager en gigantisk eftermiddagslur. Jeg står op kl 15 og går i gang med at stryge min undertøj og pyjamas, mens Lois smutter ind hos naboerne (Bill og Mary) for at snakke lidt med Mary, der lider af mild demens. Lois er så varmhjertet, hvis bare jeg kunne ligne hende mere!

15:30 Lois er ikke dukket op endnu, så derfor sætter jeg mig til rette i sofaen og lytter lidt til radio, et interessant program, der handler om det ikoniske spørgsmål, ”Vil du gå i seng med mig?”. Programmets vært er den charmerende Tom Whipple.

Programmet kredser om en berømt undersøgelse, der blev foretaget for 40 år siden af akademiker på Florida State University. Et hold bestående af forskere med ”gennemsnitlig sexappeal” henvendte sig til forskellige fremmede studerende og stillede dem et eller andet af 3 spørsmål: (1) ’Vil du gå ud med mig?’, (2) ”Vil du komme over til min lejlighed?’ eller (3) ’Vil du gå i seng med mig?’.

Når det kom til det 3. spørgsmål, opdagede forskerne at de fleste mænd svarede ja, men alle kvinder svarede nej. Eksperimentet er blevet gentaget nogle gange siden 1982 i forskellige lande, men resultaterne er i generelt blevet det samme, på trods af de mange sociale og seksuelle forandringer, der har fundet sted i dette tidsrum.

Resultaterne foreslår, at der er en grundlæggende evolutionarisk, biologisk forskel mellem mænd og kvinder, der er forblevet det samme over tusindvis af år, og det simpelthen ikke i kvinders interesse at være ekstremt promiskuøse mod fremmede mænd- personlig sikkerhed, risiko for graviditet osv. Og i øvrigt kan feminister ikke lide denne konklusion – de har tendens til at have lyst til at påstå, at forskellen resulterer fra konsekvenserne af at leve i et mandligt domineret samfund osv.

Det er et interessant resultat af nogle af disse undersøgelser, at kvinder gennem årene bare har udtrykket interesse i at gå i seng med en fremmed mand, hvis manden var en attraktiv kendis. Men jeg mistænker imidlertid, at de fik mod til at indrømme denne interesse, bare på grund af, de var helt sikre på, at muligheden for at gå i seng med den smukke kendis var helt teoretisk!

En undersøgelse i USA opdagede at kendissen, de færreste kvinder interessede sig for at gå i seng med var Donald Trump (undersøgelsen blev foretaget, før han blev politiker), og på den anden side var det Brad Pitt, der toppede kvindernes liste. Angelina Jolie toppede mændenes liste, og Roseanne Barr var i bunden. Stakkels Roseanne!!!!

Barr og Jolie

Pitt og Trump

Du godeste, sikke en skør verden vi lever i !!!!

16:00 Lois er stadig ikke dukket op endnu, så jeg ser lidt fjernsyn, den første del af en interessant dokumentarfilm, der handler om menneskehedens plads i universet. Programmets vært er den charmerende Brian Cox.

Brian indrømmer, at det var helt naturligt for primitive mennesker at tro at jorden er universets center – det ser ud som om jorden ikke bevæger sig, mens solen, månen og stjernene alle kredser om os. Det var Galileo, ved hjælp af de nye klare lense, der var begyndt at blive fremstillet i Venedig, som først så defekter i himmellegemer og observerede at planeterne og jorden måtte kredse om solen.

Derefter springer programmet frem til 1968 og den første gang, en amerikansk rumfartøj (Apollo 8) begyndte at kredse om månen og Bill Anders og de astronauter om bord så ”jordopgangen” for første gang i historien. Sikke et øjeblik - det ville være svært at finde et bedre, det ved jeg med sikkerhed.

tilbageblik til 1968 - et af fotoerne taget med Apollo 8

astronauten Bill Anders og hans besætning

Da jeg ser dette foto midt i programmet, mindes jeg om, at det er et af de fotos, som medlemmer af det internationale ”Selskabet for den flade jord” oftest kalder ”fake”. Tidligere på året holdt selskabet sin årlige konference i England. Selskabet har imidlertid en vis international tiltrækningskraft i sær i den engelsktalende verden, det ved jeg med sikkerhed: konferencen fandt sted sidste år i North Carolina, og næste års event er bestemt til Canada.

Gary John

Gary John åbnede dette års konference i England. Han fortalte de 200 folk i publikummet at han ikke troede på noget 100% bortset fra, at vi ikke bor på en kugle.

Det er lidt af en skam efter min mening, at medlemmerne ikke er enige om, hvilken form deres flade jorden rent faktisk tager: en stor disk med polarcirklen i midten, en cirkel under en kuppel måske med en masse vand ovenpå, en af en række damme i en stor ismasse, eller bare en flad overflade under 4 kosmiske ringe i et kæmpe ægformet univers.

Jeg selv kan ikke rigtig godt lide nogle af disse teorier. Den række damme lyder nydeligt for at slappe af ved siden af med et glas stærk gin og tonic, men hvis dammene ligger midt i en stor ismasse, bliver det med det samme mindre attraktiv efter min smag.

Rent vanvid! Lad os holde os til kugle-teorien!

den "flade2 jorden – lad os ende dette vanvid nu!!!

16:30 Lois kommer tilbage fra naboerne, så jeg slukker for fjernsynet og hører om hendes besøg hos Mary – Bill var gået ud sammen med Jack, sin bror, til det lokale fodboldstadion for at se byens fodboldhold spille, og Jacks kone sad med Mary. Jacks kone var meget glad for, at se Lois komme forbi, fordi det er hårdt arbejde at snakke med én (som Mary), der har demens – det er der ikke nogen tvivl om !!!

18:30 Vi spiser aftensmad – kedgeree, ris og hjemmedyrkede grønne bønner – yum yum!

20:00 Vi bruger resten af aftenen på at se lidt fjersyn, en interessant dokumentarfilm, der handler om udviklinger i kunstlig intelligens, og dens implikationer for vores sundhedssystem. Programmets vært er den charmerende dr. Hannah Fry.

Det lyder godt, at kunne få en app, som fortæller én, om man er alvorligt syg eller ej og lignende, men programmets konklusion er, at vi ikke endnu er nået dertil. Alle de hi-tech firmaer med deres unge administrative direktører og vanvittigt unge jeans-klædte entusiastiske IT medarbejdere, der er i forretningen, har brug for mere uafhængig vurdering, lader det til.

I mellemtiden undre Lois og jeg os nogle gange præcis hvornår vi kommer til at blive så gamle, at sundhedssystemet simpelthen vil afskrive os – yikes, skræmmende!!!

21:00 Vi fortsætter at se lidt fjernsyn, 40 minutter af den 3. time af en interessant 3 timers lange ”langsom tv” program, der handler om den australske jernbane fra Adelaide til Darwin.

Hvis Lois og jeg nogensinde tager denne rejse, vil dette strækning fra Alice Springs til Katherine være den ideal mulighed for at gå i seng og tager en gigantisk lur – det har vi ikke nogen tvivl om! Det er langt den kedeligste del af rejsen.

Alt det her er det såkaldte ”langsom tv”, ikke strengt taget en dokumentarfilm, så vi for det meste bare ser billeder, og der er ikke nogle interviews enten med togchaufføren eller med passagerne, hvilket er lidt af en skam. Det ville have været rart til at høre hvad parrene eksempelvis bruger tiden på under de lange kedelige strækninger, men vi mistænker, at en masse alkohol bliver forbrugt, ingen tvivl om det!