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President Trump’s threat to ‘blockade the straits of Hormuz’ following the collapse of the Islamabad peace talks between the US and Iran yesterday brings to mind something known as a ‘counter-pincer’ in the Japanese game of Go. https://senseis.xmp.net/?CounterPincer A ‘pincer’ or hasami 螯 in Go occurs in the opening phases of a game when one player attacks another player’s corner stone, and that player defends their corner by pincering the attacking stone with one of their own. A counter-pincer occurs when the pincered player doubles down by pincering the pincering stone This almost invariably leads to a highly complex and fluid contact fight in that area of the board. Suffice to say it’s a line of play that novices are strongly recommended to avoid, and one that even experienced Dan level players think twice about, because of the complexity of the territorial exchanges that can ensue. The Straits of Hormuz carry not only about one fifth of the oil shipped around the world, but also large amounts of key mineral resources such as aluminium that many Asian economies depend on. Shortages of oil caused by a naval blockade in the Straits of Hormuz don’t just affect the price of petrol at the pumps. They also affect the supply of many other items such as plastics and pharmaceutical products that depend on a petrochemical feedstock. Relatives living in France tell me that there are major concerns there about the future availability of quite common household medicines, as long-standing supply side problems in the French pharmaceutical industry are compounded by the current blockades in The Straits of Hormuz. Several days ago the Airports Council International (ACI) warned that European airline operators could start running out of jet fuel within three weeks because around 50% of Europe’s aviation fuel comes from Gulf sources. This could lead to wholescale flight cancelations and the shutdown of smaller airports right in the middle of the summer holiday season https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3w37ggp011o Yet another problem arising from the ongoing blockade of Gulf shipping will be a worldwide shortage of helium which has already doubled in price since the start of this crisis. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/3/26/helium-hitch-why-us-israel-war-on-iran-could-cause-mri-scan-delays Around one third of the world’s supply of helium comes from Qatar, the world’s chief producer of this chemical which is of critical importance in the operation of medical MRI scanners which rely on superconducting electromagnets; and to the semiconductor sector which uses helium extensively for cooling purging and plasma control during chip manufacture.

Oddly enough I had completely forgotten about that A.C. Clarke story, from 1970, though I do vividly recall the Larry Niven story ‘Neutron Star’ which came out 4 years earlier in 1966 as part of the ‘Known Space’ series. Niven later said that he kept meeting people who had done full mathematical analyses of the tidal effects in his story, and they told him the hero could not possibly survive, as the ship comes out of hyperbolic orbit spinning.

Done ? - You have been !

More questions are being asked about the real nature of the SAR (search and rescue) mission conducted in Iran by US forces last weekend. According to a website called Defence Security Asia, US losses included: 1× F-15E Strike Eagle destroyed 2× HC-130J Combat King II destroyed 1× MH-6 Little Bird destroyed 1× A-10 Thunderbolt II destroyed 1–2× MQ-9 Reaper drones destroyed 2× HH-60 rescue helicopters damaged https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/us-2-billion-burned-iran-f15e-rescue-mission-hc130-helicopter-losses/#google_vignette Additional reports suggest that an F-16 Falcon and a KC-135 Stratotanker also declared emergencies over the same period, amounting to a jaw-dropping $2 billion worth of destroyed hardware. The Hercules HC-130J in particular is one of the very largest cargo aircraft flown by the US air-force, making this one of the most expensive SAR missions in US military history. The incident began on 3 April when an F-15E fighter belonging to the 494th Fighter Squadron of the 48th Fighter Wing based at RAF Lakenheath UK was shot down inside Iran by IRG air defences. Initial reports suggested that this happened within mountainous terrain inside Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province in southwestern Iran. But the subsequent destruction of US aircraft took place several hundred miles further north at a disused airfield about 35 Kilometres from the city of Isfahan which happens to be one of the principal Iranian nuclear material storage sites believed to hold up to 400 kilograms of near weapons grade Uranium 235. On 1 April (two days before the F-15 was shot down) the BBC posted an article suggesting that president Trump was mulling the option of sending a special forces team into Iran to seize this stockpile of Uranium in what would have been a high-risk covert operation https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvglv5v4yvpo The BBC News website returned to this theme last night with a follow-up report suggesting that the SAR mission to rescue the missing F-15E was actually used as cover to conceal an operation of this type - an operation that went very badly wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ0t7WBITyk Iranian defence sources are in no doubt that this is exactly what happened, and are already describing the weekend events as ’Tabas II’ - a reference to the ill-fated ‘Operation Eagle Claw’ in 1980 when US Delta forces were forced to abandon a covert operation to rescue US diplomat hostages after a Hercules C-130 and a helicopter collided at a staging area called Tabas during the early stages of the operation - a disaster which killed 8 US service personnel, and cost president Jimmy Carter the 1980 presidential election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw

By pure chance I happened to be watching a YT video about the difference between gasoline and kerosene, and why jet aeroplane engines are designed to run on the latter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKl7Gva_ums At just over 1m elapsed you will find this handy illustration of a fractional distillation tower, and what all the different distillation products are used for.

Few actions can convey just how well a war is going as firing three of your top military leaders just four weeks into hostilities - yet this is exactly what has happened at the Pentagon earlier this week. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/3/hegseth-fires-us-army-chief-of-staff-in-reported-string-of-dismissals On Thursday April 2nd Pete Hegseth the so-say ‘Secretary of War’ stunned the military establishment by announcing the immediate ‘retirement’ of General Randy A. George the Army Chief of Staff since 2023, in tandem with General David Hodne, the head of the Army’s Transformation and Training Command, and Major-General William Green jnr - the Army’s Chief of Chaplains. This move which has been described by some military insiders as “completely insane” was reportedly provoked by a personal clash between General Randy A. George and Pete Hegseth over the latter’s decision to block the promotions of four officers - two black and two female - in a list of 29 otherwise white officers gazetted for promotion. According to the Baptist News, this marks the first occasion that an Army Chief of Chaplains has ever been dismissed from post within their four-year term of service - by a curious coincidence Major William Green jnr. also happens to be black. https://baptistnews.com/article/for-first-time-ever-army-chief-of-chaplains-fired-by-hegseth/ Meanwhile in other war news; The Sun has published a video of two US military aircraft that had to be blown up by their own special forces while searching for shot-down F-15 pilots after the rescue aircraft themselves became bogged down in sand behind enemy lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siqL6V70McU The Mirror has published video of a $700 million AWACS E-3 spy-plane reduced to rubble on the runway at Prince Sutan Air Base in Saudi Arabia by a $20,000 Iranian Shahed 136 drone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQn04k-eUD4 And The Times of India has published a detailed report claiming that an Iranian drone attack on the US Embassy in Riyadh KSA on 3 March last month caused far more damage than previously acknowledged:

Trump Says Intelligence Played No Role in His Decision to...“Intelligence is for losers.”

Ketamine and Ecstasy (MDMA) which are popular ‘party’ drugs among young nightclub attendees are both capable of causing some degree of hyperthermia - i.e. a rise in body temperature as well.

At least they didn't have to sit through another turgid and incomprehensible speech delivered in robotically inflected English...

Article 5 of the Constitution of Iran refers to the leadership of the Ummah (Islamic community) during the occultation of of the Twelfth Imam, and states that this post should be held by a just and pious faqih (Islamic jurist) who is knowledgeable about affairs of the day, in accordance with Article 107. Article 107 of the Constitution of Iran specifies the qualities and theological qualifications (further specified in Article 109) that such a candidate is expected to possess in order to be elected supreme leader by the 88-man ‘Council of Experts’. https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Iran_1989 If you are interested in a balanced discussion of the Constitution of Iran, then you might also wish to consider: Article 13 (Recognized religious minorities) - which states that: "Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian Iranians are the only recognized religious minorities, who, within the limits of the law, are free to perform their religious rites and ceremonies, and to act according to their own canon in matters of personal affairs and religious education." Article 14 (Non Muslims) - which states that : "In accordance with the sacred verse ("God does not forbid you to deal kindly and justly with those who have not fought against you because of your religion and who have not expelled you from your homes" [60:8]), The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and all Muslims are duty-bound to treat non-Muslims" with "Islamic justice and equity", provided those non-Muslims "refrain from engaging in conspiracy or activity against Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran". I have found nothing in the text of the Constitution of Iran so far to support your claim that:

The maverick Victorian adventurer, linguist and explorer Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890) made a scholarly contribution on this topic while serving as the British Consul in Trieste from 1872 onwards. https://greatbritishnutters.blogspot.com/2008/03/sir-richard-burton-gone-to-devil.html Unfortunately this unusual piece of scholarship did not long survive his demise from a heart attack in 1890 aged sixty-nine, and the protective behaviour of his wife.

The Constitution of Iran (in its 1989 amendment form) contains 177 articles organised in 14 chapters. Perhaps you would like to specify which articles you are referring to ?

Today I learned that the word TARE found on railway wagons and shipping containers comes from an Arabic word طَرْح ṭarḥ meaning “deduction” or “that which is removed”. The word refers to the unladen weight of a cargo van, vessel or container, and its use in English dates back to the reign of King Henry VII at the end of the 15th century. A TARE weight is subtracted from the value recorded on a weighbridge to calculate the actual weight of the cargo for customs or shipping charges. The photo is of a “Cavell Van” a type of railway parcel van, so named because it was famously used to transport the body of nurse Edith Cavell from Belgium back to Britain in 1919. https://kesr.org.uk/the-cavell-van/

I’m not entirely sure what you are criticising or taking exception to here. The pernicious effect of what is commonly known as ‘Christian Zionism’ in neo-con political circles concerned with US foreign policy has been widely documented for quite a number of years. To avoid any misunderstanding, what is being referred to here are white evangelical fundamentalist christians who believe that they are living in elder times in which the apocalyptic events described in the Book of Revelation are being re-enacted. They fervently believe that the locale and the geo-political objectives they are pursuing will coincide with the arrival of the Antichrist and his defeat in the final battle of Armageddon on the plains of Megiddo and the valley of Jehoshaphat, followed by the second coming of the messiah, and a ‘rapture’ of the faithful up into heaven by the Lord. President George W. Bush was susceptible to this form of bible-thumping, and it was one of the factors that helped direct his administration’s disastrous march into the second Persian Gulf war from 2001 onwards. Mike Pompeo a former director of the CIA who became the Secretary of State in the first Trump administration was yet another believer. A New York Times article from 30 March 2019 spelled out quite clearly what that belief system involved: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christian-policy.html Mike Huckabee the current US Ambassador to Israel is another senior political figure who has expressed views similar to those of Christian Zionism in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson https://forward.com/news/807715/mike-huckabee-christian-zionism-tucker-carlson/ President Trump still routinely holds ‘prayer meetings’ in the Oval Office with fundamentalist christians, and there have been troubling reports that key foreign policy decisions are sometimes being influenced by what used to be known as Stichomancy (from the the Greek root στιχος - “row, line, verse”) aka Bibliomancy, a form of divination in which the bible is opened to a random page and a finger placed on a verse with your eyes closed. The same was said to have happened during the G.W Bush administrations as well.

“I think it means bringing the end of the world closer, sort of.” (Illuminatus! - Vol 1 - Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson) According to a report in ‘The Guardian’, US military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical “end times” to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran-war-christian-rhetoric The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has received more than 200 complaints from personnel across the US armed forces including members of the Marines, Air Force and Space Force. According to one complaint from an NCO in a unit on standby to be deployed “at any moment to join “operations against Iran, their unit commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.” “He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’”, the NCO added. According to Mikey Weinstein (MRFF’s president) “These reports indicate an increase in Christian extremism in the military”, noting that the complainants “report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders” who perceive a “‘biblically-sanctioned’ war that is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘End Times’.”

On Sunday March 1st at UTC 18.11, shortwave radio-hams in France and Italy noticed that a new ‘Numbers’ station had begun broadcasting in Farsi on 7910 KHz. The broadcasts began the day after the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran by US and Israeli forces on Saturday 28th February. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErmbTpxAM7Q Numbers stations are enigmatic radio broadcasts that consist of nothing but a human voice reciting cryptic groups of numbers. They are widely believed to be communication channels used by intelligence agencies to transmit instructions to field-agents in foreign countries. The numbers are copied down by agents equipped with shortwave receivers, and decoded with the help of a one-time pad. Provided that the one-time pads are never reused, the encryption is unbreakable. Numbers stations have been extensively used by western intelligence agencies from the Cold War period onwards, but Iran has no history of ever having used them up to now - which makes the appearance of a brand new Farsi language Numbers station all the more remarkable. Article 111 of the Iranian constitution provides detailed instructions on the succession plan to be followed in the event of the death of the Supreme Leader, but the decapitation attack carried out by Israel and the US appears to have killed many of the Iranian officials who would have been in charge of carrying out the succession plan. This raises the possibility that the activation of this new Farsi Numbers radio station might be part of a Doomsday contingency plan. Faced with the death of their leader and the imminent destruction of their state, Iran’s surviving military leaders have already launched widespread and indiscriminate missile and drone attacks against infrastructure and civilian targets in many neighbouring countries of the middle-east. The worry must now be that the new Numbers station might be sending instructions to activate whatever sleeper agents and terrorist assets Iran possesses throughout the whole of the middle-east and Europe. This could mean not only a sudden spate of fresh gun attacks in western capitals, but the nightmare scenario of a ‘Fourth Protocol’ attack ( c.f. the 1984 Fredrick Forsyth novel) involving chemical, biological or improvised radiological weapons. Not for the first time I fear that the US may have underestimated its opponent.

Known as a "Fifths Tuning" because you are tuned in perfect fifths from the bass string upwards. Some tenor banjo players recommend using C.G.D.A instead - they say the fingerings flow slightly more naturally if you are playing fiddle tunes.

Texan singer Sarah Jarosz performing an Appalachian style version of ‘Ireland’s Green Shore’ by Tim O’Brien, with Sam Grisman (son of David Grisman) on bass, and virtuoso Alex Hargreaves on fiddle - something of a dream team if you happen to be a modern country/bluegrass music fan.

In China there is conflict between the modern day economic pressures that drive younger people to leave their native villages to seek work in far-flung megalopolises, and a core Confucian value called Xiao 孝 meaning ’filial piety’ which enjoins a deep reverence for one’s parents and ancestors. One of the Confucian classics is called the Xiao-Jing 孝經 which enjoins a three year period of mourning and ancestor veneration rituals like the spring Qingming festival 清明 节 (’Tomb Sweeping Day’). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_of_Filial_Piety These traditional values remain highly influential even within the Communist PRC, and the emphasis they lay on caring for your parents in their old age has led some Chinese communities to counter the social dislocation of modern urbanization by introducing support contracts for elderly parents. In Confucian thought, children owe an "eternal debt" to their parents for the gift of life, and the years of protection and care they received, especially in the first three years of their life when they were wholly dependent on them (hence the three year period of mourning). The ideogram for xiào (孝) depicts a child (zǐ, 子) below an elder (lǎo, 老), symbolizing a son supporting or carrying an older person.

I think the viral spike in this app’s popularity is related to a number of cultural trends in mainland Chinese society. The average age of the population has been rising quite rapidly for some years because of the “one child per family” rules enacted in the PRC between 1979 and 2015 which has led to a rise in ‘4-2-1’ family structures, and growing numbers of seniors living alone. Throughout the past decade, hundreds of millions of younger people have migrated from their hometowns to find work in distant megalopolises like Shanghai, Chengdu, Wuhan, and Guangzhou leaving behind emptying rural villages and isolated elderly parents who feel particularly vulnerable when they become widowers. There has also been a dramatic decline in the number of new marriages in China which fell to a new low last year: This coupled with a plunging birth-rate has meant that unusually large numbers of younger people are living alone too, and up to 19.6% of those aged between 16 and 24 are also likely to be unemployed according recent job stats : https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/30/economy/china-youth-unemployment-intl-hnk All of which adds to a pervasive sense of anomie - depression, anxiety and isolation among younger Chinese people - along with a morbid fear of living and dying alone.

Sileme (Chinese - 死了么 - “Are They Dead”) A viral mobile phone app created by developer Moonscape Technologies Inc. which recently leapt to the #1 spot on Apple’s paid download charts has been renamed Demumu according to a company Weibo post today. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/14/chinese-app-are-you-dead-to-change-name-after-surge-in-popularity It’s a lightweight social safety tool aimed at an estimated 200 million people who may be living in one-person households in China by 2030. The online tool which costs 8 Yuan ($1.15), or £0.99 on the UK Apple Store encourages users to log in once a day to confirm that they are still alive. If the user fails to log in on 2 consecutive days, then an automatic notification is sent to a designated emergency contact. In a country with a population of around 1.4 billion, where a growing a number of seniors are living alone, the app has been welcomed by many social media users - “For the first time, someone is concerned about whether I’m dead or alive,” one wrote on the blogging platform Weibo. The new name Demumu has no Chinese character equivalent. It is derived from a word play on the English word “Death” and the syllabic pattern of “Labubu” - a plushie monster and popular collectible toy from the Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung's "The Monsters" series, known for its mischievous grin, pointy ears, and big eyes, often sold as a furry elf in blind boxes by Pop Mart.

Bon Appetit ! I can recall my great-aunts brewing up this mixture in a large preserving pan (aka ‘Maslin Pan’) creating a real reek of vinegar as it boiled down, before bottling it, and storing the jars in a dark pantry chill room.

Back in those days they used to serve enormous oven-roasted turkeys at Xmas which took forever to cook and ages to carve, and they invariably wound up with such a tonnage of left-overs after stripping the carcass, that you would be eating cold cuts and hot vegetables for the rest of the week. Apples by the way do play a significant role in Indian cuisine, though usually in the more northern Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir regions. https://applesandpeople.org.uk/india/ Which would be consistent with the ‘Cashmere’ theme of this chutney.

As far as I can recall the chutney was placed on the dining table in a cut glass decanter with a stopper, and was mainly consumed with cold cuts of meat served with hot vegetables - e.g the usual Boxing Day repast. Some ppl also liked to add a dollop to their biscuits and cheese - if taken as a third course. It’s basically quite a sweet-tasting apple chutney with a pervasive tang of root ginger. The recipe that I found is written in my mother’s hand, but I strongly suspect that she herself copied it out from an older recipe written by one of her own paternal aunts who was an excellent cook. Quite where she originally got it from is anyone’s guess. At least one of my distant relatives on that side of the family was a clipper captain who sailed the world in the second half of the 19th century - so the recipe could well have come from the Raj.

Not long ago I mentioned an old family recipe for “Kashmir Chutney” in a thread about ‘The Third Condiment Mystery’ (Chemistry - 5 June 2025). During the Xmas holiday season, I decided hunt out and check that recipe from a box of ancient family papers in my brother’s possession. To my considerable surprise, the hand-written recipe I unearthed was clearly titled “Cashmere Chutney”. I had always been under the impression that this condiment was called “Kashmir Chutney” and that Cashmere was a type of Himalayan goats wool normally used for making sweaters and shawls ! The explanation seems to be that Cashmere was once the normal anglicization for the Himalayan areas now known as Kashmir and Ladakh from the 17th century up until the beginning of the 19th. In the Napoleonic period however, shawls and garments made from a fine wool known as pashm in that area became fashionable imports into Europe. Within a few decades, the name ‘Cashmere’ had become firmly attached to these woollen products, and an alternate Sanscrit based word ‘Kashmir’ was being used to refer to the general geographical area. The decisive change came in 1872 when the British Raj in India decided to adopt a new grapheme-based system for transliterating Indian place names. It was called the Hunterian system, and was perfected by Wiliam Wilson Hunter, the Director General of Statistics in India. Thereafter ‘Kashmir’ became the official geographical name used in all government documents and maps - which provides a useful dating clue as to when our family’s chutney recipe was first written down. https://grokipedia.com/page/Hunterian_transliteration For anyone who is curious, the recipe for “Cashmere Chutney’” is as follows: Cashmere Chutney 1lb Cooking Apples 1lb Demerara Sugar 1/2lb Raisins---------------------- 1/4lb Sultanas 1 Onion only -------------------- 3 Ripe Tomatoes (med size) 1oz Salt 2 oz Root Ginger preserved 1/2 Dessertspoon Mustard 1 Lemon Fruit & Rind 3/4 pt Vinegar 1/4 oz Red pepper Method Put all ‘ingredients’ through mincer and boil for half an hour (N.B. except Ginger which is bruised & tied in a muslin bag & boiled with rest.)