Life, the universe and everything.

A quiz for you: (answers are at the end of this post)
1. Name Blondie's 6 UK No.1 singles.
2. Which Dicken's novel includes the characters Bentley Drummle, Mr. Jaggers and Compeyson?
3. Name the 7 capital cities of Central America (from North to South).
4. Which grape variety is used to make Beaujolais wine?
5. Name 7 of Islay's malt whisky distilleries.
6. Which former England captain scored the English Premier League's fastest hat-trick?
7. Which 1996 film starred Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Danny DeVito, Annette Benning, Pierce Brosnan and Michael J Fox?
8. List the 6 geological periods of the Palaeozoic era.
9. Which 6 English batsmen scored centuries in the 2010/2011 Ashes series?
10. Name the six murder weapons found in Cluedo.

I enjoy quizzes (I used to compile and host them in my pubs) and, if asked, I could have reeled off the answers to the above without much hesitation (maybe I would have been a little unsure about whether El Salvador's capital lay north or south of Hondura's capital). Hooray! Bully for me! But, really, this knowledge is rarely of use. Put me in a pub quiz or put me in the instructor's seat of a car and I am very confident in my knowledge.
Ask me something a little less black or white - Which is the best Islay whisky? What should we do with the garden this Spring? Why is anyone interested in what Katie Price does? Is it acceptable to serve Shark's fin soup or Foie Gras in a restaurant? Do any of the clothes in my wardrobe suit me? Why are some drivers considerate in their approach to learner drivers, where others treat learner drivers as though they were something they have just stepped in? Are blood transfusions wrong? Is there a God? - and I am a little less sure-footed in my reply. I have my opinions (apart from where it concerns my wardrobe - I could hardly care less), but I can usually see that alternative opinions may have some validity.

My last post was the result of being repeatedly hassled by telesales. I know the score, they are just doing their job, and they NEED someone to agree to buy adverts (or whatever else they are selling). The simple fact that they were really struggling to sell me something reminded me of a time, when I was much younger, when Jehovah's Witnesses would call at our house. This post has attracted attention from people who were putting 'Jehovah' into their search engines. Now, it is very easy to make cheap, throwaway comments about Jehovah's Witnesses, or any other group of people, so perhaps me posting about something that was slightly beyond the realm of my knowledge was not best advised. As a result, I have made further research and found some of the information quite interesting and even illuminating.
It may be true that blood transfusions have taken place unnecessarily, and it is certainly encouraging that science is looking at alternatives to blood transfusion. However, my opinion is that, if it is the difference between life or death, then it is always necessary.
No-one KNOWS exactly how the universe (and life) was created, there are no surviving witnesses. We have three choices. We can either say "I don't care what happened, maybe there was a creator, maybe there wasn't." We could say "Centuries of scientific research, experiments, data collection and analysis seem to suggest that the universe was formed almost 14 BILLION years ago, the Earth began to form approximately 4.5 BILLION years ago, and life on Earth began, through abiogenesis (organic matter being formed from inorganic matter through chemical processes which have been demonstrated in laboratories), over 3.5 BILLION years ago and has evolved into the variety of life we have on Earth today." Or we could say "God created the universe and all life, but we don't know when and we certainly don't know how."
Now, 'life, the universe and everything' lies beyond the area of my expertise (driving and other trivia), so I only have my opinions. I believe that, until someone discovers a quark, lepton, boson (or any other sub-atomic particle) with God's signature on it, I will believe that some physical reaction created the universe. Similarly, I believe that the WEALTH of fossil evidence (including that of those 3.5 billion year-old microbes) clearly suggest that all life on Earth evolved from very simple single-cell organisms.
I also believe that Katie Price's life should be of no interest to anyone except her friends and close family, and I believe that, even if L-plates were 2 metres wide and in flashing lights, some drivers would still drive dangerously close to them.
But I welcome all alternative beliefs.

Quiz answers:
1. Heart of glass, Sunday girl, Atomic, Call me, The tide is high, Maria.
2. Great Expectations.
3. Belmopan (Belize), Guatemala City (Guatemala), Tegucigalpa (Honduras), San Salvador (El Salvador), Managua (Nicaragua), San Jose (Costa Rica), Panama City (Panama).
4. Gamay.
5. Ardbeg, Bowmore, Bruichladdich, Bunnahabhain, Caol Ila, Kilchoman, Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Port Charlotte, Port Ellen.
6. Robbie 'God' Fowler.
7. Mars Attacks!
8. Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian.
9. Cook, Strauss, Pietersen, Bell, Trott, Prior.
10. Candlestick, dagger, lead piping, rope, revolver, spanner.

The devils of advertising and the existence of God.

Are we being lulled into a false sense of springtime? Up here in the Highlands the temperature has recently had maximum temperatures of 8-10C (and I mean PLUS 8-10) the last few days, with an extra bonus of some generous sunshine. It feels odd not having the car heater on and walking without a jacket. I've probably jinxed it now..... the third week in january is far too early to start getting optimistic about the weather.

I seem to have been bombarded by telesales of late. barely a day goes by without some company offering me 'exclusive' advertising, or priority listings, on Google, Yell or Facebook. Usually when they call it is at an inconvenient time, so I interrupt them before they launch into their interminable spiel and I end the call. Today, they timed it perfectly, just as I had finished the lesson and had an hour's gap before the next; so I decided to listen to what they had to say. After fifteen minutes they finally got around to asking me to commit. I politely said that it was an interesting idea (bad move), but I wasn't interested at this time. Strangely, as he became more desperate, offering better deals and dropping the price, I began to get a perverse please from his desperation. After nearly nearly forty minutes I had to put him out of his misery by telling him that I was going to end the call so that I could get to my next lesson.

It is rare to have the luxury of having time to take these calls. It reminded me of when I was a student at the University of Birmingham, living in the Selly Park area. Jehovah's Witnesses were regular callers and, like most people, I would answer the door, say "No thank you", and shut the door. One day - I must have been in a Christian mood - I listened while they went on about The Creation and, being a geology student, I began to question them about the age of the Earth. The more they struggled to answer my questions about the consistency of isotope dating, the time required for light to reach us from distant galaxies, helioseismic dating and the fossil record proving that the Earth (and the universe) is likely to be in excess of four billion years old (the universe considerably more), the more I enjoyed their visit. I would later enjoy further visits from Jehovah's Witnesses when I grilled them about the morality of refusing blood transfusions and the existence of God in a world of genocide and natural disasters. They probably walked away from my door muttering "bloody students".

Like most people, I find my time increasingly precious. So, if you want to sell me something, whether it is advertising, religion, or something else I don't want, I hope you have plenty of time........ because I might be in the mood to waste it.