The Frumplingtons

Where America leads, the rest of the world often eventually follows. So read this and, as they say, ‘inwardly digest’.

America’s FDA has approved the use of viruses as a food additive.

(And you thought e-numbers were scary?)

Here (cue use of trendy new phrases) is the ’skinny’:

A mix of bacteria-killing viruses can be safely sprayed on cold cuts, hot dogs and sausages to combat common microbes that kill hundreds of people a year, federal health officials said [on] Friday in granting the first-ever approval of viruses as a food additive.

The combination of six viruses is designed to be sprayed on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products, including sliced ham and turkey, said John Vazzana, president and chief executive officer of manufacturer Intralytix Inc.

The special viruses, called bacteriophages, are meant to kill strains of the Listeria monocytogenes bacterium, the Food and Drug Administration said in declaring it safe to use on ready-to-eat meats prior to their packaging.

The viruses are the first to win FDA approval for use as a food additive, said Andrew Zajac, of the regulatory agency’s office of food additive safety.

source: CNN

The bacteria-killing viruses are aimed especially at nasties like listeria and other things that can live on meat products. Luncheon meats are of course eaten usually without being reheated.

As we said at the top of this post, the new viruses may well eventually show up here in the UK. Whatever the merits, they are certain to be controversial.

Intralytix, based in Baltimore … has … licensed the product to a multinational company, which intends to market it worldwide, said Intralytix president Vazzana. He declined to name the company but said he expected it to announce its plans within weeks or months.

Intralytix also plans to seek FDA approval for another bacteriophage product to kill E. coli bacteria on beef before it is ground, Vazzana said.

What’s that I hear? Ah, the sound of cereal bowls sliding across cheap Formica tables as thousands of queasy Frumplingtons readers suddenly lose their appetites and abandon their breakfasts.

Chris

I have just performed my first operation, without anaesthetic…I needed it more than the patient.

Dennis is his name, we rescued him this morning, he was wearing nothing but a denim jacket, so we brought him home.

We found the object causing concern in his chest, a hard square object, we had no idea what it was. But I knew I had to open his chest and remove the object.

So carefully I made a small incision, slipping my fingers into Dennis’ chest I found the object and safely removed it. The batteries had long died, what appeared to be a growler no longer functioned.

Slowly I stitched up the incision, Dennis was very brave, he didn’t scream or even whimper. When I’d finished I put his denim jacket back on, he looked as good as new.

And he didn’t lose any kapok either, Dennis is one very brave Teddy Bear.

Shana

Fed up with too much advertising on tv? Well, get used to it, Buster, ‘cos there’s even more of it on the way:

Product placement in films, TV shows, video games and even song lyrics is set to triple by 2010, says a report.

The practice, where firms pay to have their products featured in the media, was worth $2.21bn (£1.2bn) last year, according to researchers PQ Media.

They say the market will grow to nearly $7.6bn (£4bn) by 2010, largely driven by advertising within dramas, sports and reality programmes on TV.

source: BBC News [Product placement set to triple.]

This post was brought to you by The Frumplingtons, in association with Auntie Brenda’s Home-style Lo-Fat Waffles.

Chris

After pleading ‘no contest’ to drink-driving charges, deeply-committed Christian actor Mel Gibson has been ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Even though we’ve only just got up (hey, we’re up in time for brelevenses) we’re still sufficiently alert to notice that this idea is fundamentally flawed. Two reasons:

1. The news has been splashed all over the worldwide media. Everyone knows Mel has to go to AA. Thus the principles of anonymity and secrecy have been dashed on the rocks. (’On the rocks‘. Oops. Slightly unfortunate turn of phrase for a drink-related story, but these things happen, don’t they?)

2. How can Mel Gibson be anonymous? As soon as he walks into his first AA meeting everyone will recognize him. Hell, even with blue paint smeared across his mug, you’d know who he was, wouldn’t you? You can just imagine the greeting he’s going to get from some of the sozzled old-timers: “I know you. You were in that picture weren’t you?. No, don’t tell me. Let me think. Yep, got it: ‘Die Hard’. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Sometimes, you just wish you could be a fly on the wall, don’t you?

Chris

Most of this evening I have been entertaining Shana with my efforts on the Yamaha Portasound PSS-470 electric keyboard. Over the past year I have made good progress with learning proper chords, but mostly what I do is either try to play a well-known tune from the hit parade of yesteryear (one of tonight’s offerings was the Black Lace classic, Agadoo), or attempt to come up with something original. My own stuff veers from a sort of primitive mock blues to a more ambient and relaxed feel as I explore the various instrument sounds that are available to me.

Having recently read Inside Out (drummer Nick Mason’s autobiography and personal history of Pink Floyd) I am reminded that musicians have a name for the kind of aimless tinkering and wanton jamming that I indulge in: they call it ‘noodling around’.

So tonight was noodle night.

By the way, Inside Out is quite a good read. It’s all there, from the early Floyd days, through the supposedly acrimonious split between Roger Waters and the rest of the band. There’s some stuff about Nick Mason’s car racing exploits, including David Gilmore’s horrific accident (off a cliff edge at eighty miles an hour) during filming for Carrera Panamericana. There are plenty of amusing anecdotes, especially about the revolving stage they had to use at one of their gigs, and all the mishaps they have had with inflatable animals. Well worth getting hold of a copy. (It’s a Frumplingtons five-star recommended read.)

And now, back to noodle night…

I tend to be fine with keyboards when I’m playing one-handed. It’s when I try to use both hands, and especially when I try to use both hands with some kind of coordination, that things go awry. There are more bum notes than a tramps’ orchestra. And if you have ever seen footage of comic Norman Wisdom floundering about on stage, calling for Mr Grimsdale, whilst seemingly getting all tangled up in his own jacket and eventually falling over in a heap, you will have a good idea of what things are like.

My solution to the problem is to take the pop star route: just play simple riffs with one finger (two at the most) and spend the rest of the time looking cool and enigmatic, like Russ Mael (or was it Ron? The one with the Hitler tache anyway) out of Sparks; or whatsisname from the Pet Shop Boys; or (if desperate) Richard Clayderman. (No, I’m just joking about him.)

To be perfectly honest, I’m more into percussion really. We have a djembe and a pair of bongos that I will pound vigorously on a fairly regular basis. Failing that, it’s a spoon and the plastic lid of a big coffee can; or a knife and fork on any available wooden surface.

Shana is quite good at percussion too. Especially if I am in the kitchen and am being a trifle too noisy with the cutlery. Bet you never knew the back of your head could sound like a snare drum, did you? Take it from me, it can…

Chris

Howdy y’all!

From today, we shall be doing our best to eliminate Americanisms from both our writing and our speech. No complicated reasons for all this; it is simply because this is an English blog based in England, and it can often seem a bit affected for an English blogger to slip into a mid-Atlantic twang. (The same argument can be applied in reverse, to any American bloggers who write as if they have seen too many episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs. Doesn’t quite sound right, does it?)

The first casualty of this linguistic pruning will be the word ‘brunch’. (Ugh!)

We shall not simply be getting rid of ‘brunch’ though; I’ll be darned if I’m going hungry just for want of a name for our meals. As Nature is said to abhor a vacuum, the Frumplingtons similarly abhor rumbling noises coming from their tums.

So ‘brunch’ will be swiftly replaced, with:

Brelevenses.

Gotta go now. I’ve just noticed, it’s five to eleven. And you know what that means.

Chris

Shana was intrigued by something the commentators said during the current televised athletics championships from Gothenburg. Something about women not having been allowed to take part in any long races until the 1960s.

That’s ridiculous, we both thought. How can you effectively restrict half the world’s population from the sporting stage.

It’s true though. Which sort of makes it even more incredible.

Here’s what we found out after a bit of research:

The modern Olympics were started in 1896. Women, however, were permitted to take part in only a limited number of sports for many years.(This is still a big improvement on the original Olympics in Ancient Greece, where women were not even allowed to watch.)

Women were not allowed to swim in the Olympics until 1912, when (according to the Women’s Sports Foundation) Australian Fanny Durack, wearing a long woolen swimsuit with a skirt (yes, we had to read that twice as well), won the 100m freestyle to become the first female champion in the Games; impressively, her time was the same as the men’s winner.

The Amsterdam Olympics, sixteen years later, were quite controversial too:

Amsterdam got its chance [to host the Games] in 1928, over the objections of its own monarch. Queen Wilhelmine thought the Olympics were a pagan festival and refused to make an appearance at either the opening or closing ceremonies.

source: cbc.ca

For the first time in the Olympics, women competed in gymnastics and five track and field events: 100m, 4X100m relay, high jump, discus and 800m.

There were still many who objected to women competitors, because they thought it would “damage their delicate reproductive systems”. (Obviously, long-distance running hasn’t done Paula Radcliffe any harm, has it?) And when Lina Radke, the winner of the first women’s 800m gold and Germany’s first female track medallist, collapsed after the race, many suggested that women should again be banned from the Olympics. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that:

In the end, a compromise was struck: After 1928, all women’s races of more than 200m were banned until the 1960 Olympics.

source: cbc.ca

And it wasn’t really until Montreal 1976 that sport was really opened up to women.

And it wasn’t until the 1980s that the IOC gained its first female member.

One wonders who is it that has lost out most because of these restrictions over the years? Women? Sport itself? The viewing (and paying) public? Or a combination of all three?

Certainly, if there was a gold medal for saying ‘amazing’ or ‘bloody hell!’ the greatest number of times, while we were researching this subject, we would easily have won it.

Chris

We are enjoying the current series of Restoration on BBC2, in which (for those unfamiliar with the programme) a number of ramshackle old buildings are all competing over a six-week period to get gullible discerning viewers to vote for the one they think most deserves to be restored back to a relatively good condition. The building with the most votes wins the prize. (I think it’s something like a million pounds, but don’t quote me on that; I don’t usually bother paying much attention when people are only discussing small change.)

This week featured the tumbledown mediaeval church at Beckingham in our very own county of Lincolnshire. As usual, Ptolemy and Marianne (Restoration’s in-house architect and surveyor) were dispatched to give the church the once-over. We adore these two; Ptolemy (the ‘P’ is silent — as in bath) with his slightly bemused air, is the perfect foil to Marianne’s gushing enthusiasm.

Beckingham church was a fine specimen, although it had been much abused first by Cromwell’s soldiers, who nicked the lead off the roof in order to make musket balls; and (surprise, surprise) by the Victorians, who were convinced they were making ‘improvements’. Ptolemy said he thought the floor looked as if it belonged in a toilet. (And that was one of his more complimentary remarks.)

Most of the featured buildings have at least a modicum of appeal. Although we both joked, during the first programme of this series, that an old boatshed in the south-east maybe ought to be treated to the wrecking ball, as it was in such a poor state of repair. (Actually, the Beeb really should give some thought to the idea of a series, maybe called Wrecking Ball, in which viewers could take part in a competition, with the winner getting the chance to demolish the architectural eyesore of their choice. It would be sure to achieve good ratings. And as a gesture of my faith in the idea, I shall nominate our Lincoln townhouse as the first in a long list of monstrous local carbuncles that we would love to see levelled.)

Chris

We were watching some of the athletics on telly yesterday. It’s the European Championships, from Gothenburg (where goths come from?) in Sweden.

I was only half paying attention, distracted (in my usual manner) by reading the advertising boards at the edge of the track. (Yes, I know. I really ought to get a proper hobby, like stamp collecting or train spotting.) Suddenly, I blurted out, “That’s what I want. One of those psycho watches.”

Patiently, Shana explained, “It’s not ‘psycho’. It’s pronounced ’say-ko’. S-E-I-K-O. ‘Say-ko.”

I stand corrected.

Chris

In a similar vein to the alarming statistics about Americans’ reading habits mentioned on our recent post, Read any good books lately?, Shana has, by chance, discovered an article from the New England Journal of Medicine, which explains how low literacy levels can have an impact on a person’s health.

In The Silent Epidemic — The Health Effects of Illiteracy, by Erin N. Marcus, M.D., M.P.H. , there are some more scary stats. And just in case you think they may have been calculated from a mere handful of interviews, the article clearly states:

Percentages are based on a sample of 18,102 household respondents and 1156 prison inmates. Data are from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy.

There are two things that are particularly worrying (or they should be, especially for the educational system in the USA). Firstly,

12 percent of U.S. adults are estimated to have below basic “document literacy,” the ability to read and understand documents such as transportation schedules and drug or food labels — they may be able to sign a form, but they cannot use “a television guide to find out what programs are on at a specific time.”

(My bold in the above quote.)

Secondly,

22 percent of adults are estimated to have below basic “quantitative literacy,” the ability to perform fundamental quantitative tasks — they may be able to sum the numbers on a bank deposit slip, but they cannot compare the ticket prices for two events.

Now, math(s) was never my strong point, but I do know that in a country of some 250 million people (in case I’m wrong about that, geography wasn’t my strong point either), twenty-two percent adds up to an awful lot of the population.

The article calls literacy problems a ’silent epidemic’. And the author acknowledges that one of the biggest barriers to a solution is the social stigma surrounding low levels of literacy.

Social stigmas are only a part of it. For one of the richest countries in the world, statistics like these are appalling, a disgrace. There is really no other way to describe them.

Chris