UpsideDown Photos

I like facts. I like facts more than I like opinions or speculation. Speculating can be more fun, and expressing opinions may make me feel good and self-righteous, but nothing can beat a good verified fact.

In particular, I like numbers. “In the year 2012, there were 101 accidents involving pedestrians on Zebra crossings in the Kanton (County) of Zurich, excluding Zurich City and Winterthur”.

Can you beat that for precision and usefulness? Yes - the Kanton of Zurich has problems with its Zebra crossings and before it does anything, it wants some facts. A Kanton after my own heart. If liking data and facts is a characteristic of being Swiss, then I was Swiss before I arrived here. (Do I hear “b….y right and all”? – the cheek of it).

My theory is that the English do not like precise facts or rather they are indifferent to them. Too much precision is seen as fussy. “Billions of EU money spent on Polish Motorways”. How many billions? Two? Ten? Fifty? There is a fair old difference, you know. But of course, I am missing the point, aren’t I. The article is not designed to inform us, but to further irritate and annoy us, either against the EU institutions (not difficult) or against recipients of such largesse. In Poland’s case, this is misdirected, but I am prejudiced, having been treated to two months of Polish hospitality in Wroclaw (Look it up on the map yourself).

The latest scandal involving lack of data (and also lack of horsemeat, thank goodness) is the publication that there are hospitals in England where the number of deaths is above the national average. Talk about an article needing some hard facts. What is the national average (probably a national secret), what was the rate in the hospitals in question (and for six-sigma black belts, what is the standard deviation?).

But again, I have missed the point. We are not trying to have an intelligent discussion here, but to have a good story that gets us all excited and angry with someone. More relevantly, it gets the journalist noticed by the newspaper’s main editor.

Silly me.

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Most of you know that Hazel and I went to Seefeld in Austria three weeks ago for four nights to celebrate Hazel’s 60^th birthday. Here is a photo of our champagne breakfast. Whoops.

I feel compelled to carry my newly acquired iPad everywhere, take random photos (or ask others to do so for me) and send them to people. This photo demonstrates a particular Apple feature where photos sent to non-apple devices are turned upside down (and those sent to Apple devices are not). This less than obviously fine and useful function was further enhanced by the new the Photo “app”, which crashed every second time.

More useful is the Apple “Messages”on the Ipad. At the moment, we know of only four people who are registered. One of our friends in England, one in Spain, plus Hazel and myself. Hazel and I spend many a happy evening sending instant messages to each other, while watching episodes of 24. (No, I am not telling you the content of these messages. This is private, known only to us, Apple and the U.S. security services)

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I was asked by a friend what I was going to say about the Horsemeat Scandal. This is a tricky one, as there isn’t really a Grumpy or Clumsy angle. I would only observe that last week Hazel and I had a very good 850 gr (Beef of Horsemeat, I care which) Lasagne for only Chf 4.25, which is cheap for Switzerland.

So as Horsemeat hysteria enters its third week (is that right?), still no one has been killed, admitted to hospital or been made ill. But it is still possible and the news people are on the look out and have their fingers crossed for the next development with eager anticipation.

Why has no one yet marketed a “Do-it-Yourself” Horsemeat testing kit? Perhaps someone could develop an App and we could download it on to our Ipads. The French would no doubt make it compulsory to have one in your car, next to the breathalyser kit.

Can we keep this scandal / hysteria running until Christmas?

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By the way, we are up to the last episode of the first series of 24. Mrs Teri Bauer is definitely not someone you would want to have around you in a crisis. (“Oh no, Jack, I don’t know what to do”, at least once per episode. Together with “What’s going on?” Scriptwriters have a pretty easy job with her.)