Cognitive dissonance and Clare Balding
Cognitive dissonance is something I am as guilty of as anyone when it comes to consuming chicken, fish and dairy. I don’t know how people achieve it when the animal abuse is going on right in front of them. Clare Balding, for example, attended the Cheltenham Festival this year and I have discovered has an upmarket genealogy and a lifelong passion for horse racing. Not only is it inherently cruel, the total number of horses who died this year reached four: HMS Seahorse, Envoi Allen, Hansard and Saint Le Fort. The RSPCA has deamanded a response from the industry. 24 horses have died already in 2026. The British Horseracing Authority has said that “improving equine welfare is a priority” but it cannot be or the authority could not exist.
The incident with the cow who wants to be eaten in one of Douglas Adams’ book sprang to mind when I read about a study involving sales at a university canteen. Menus which featured pictures of animals led to more people choosing vegetarian options by making cognitive dissonance that much harder.
Gordon Ramsay and the guga hunt
Another celebrity, the professional bully Gordon Ramsay is under fire:
Gordon Ramsay cooked baby seabirds into a ‘delicacy’ and the footage is hard to stomach
This is to do with the notrious guga hunt which I wrote about here: They steal baby Gannets and eat them, don’t they? – Animal Wild
Ramsay not only seems to revel in the whole process, he cannot hide his revulsion when presented with the end product. He even describes Gannets as “notoriously greedy” which is ignorant beyond belief. Pot and kettle.
Elephants killing humans
There is nothing new in elephants sometimes killing humans. 500 per year is the very rough figure. Sometimes these are tragic accidents but often the elephants have good reason to put an end to the abuse they suffer. One recent case involved an elephant mistakenly believed to be dead after he or she had been shot in the leg. A woman thought it would be a good idea to go up and pull his or her tail.
Woman killed by ‘dead’ elephant which came back to life as she snapped pics with animal
Mathematics
I am quite enjoying the podcast Lateral, which is a bit like Only Connect, similarly requiring lateral thinking to make connections or sense of a narrative. This led me to a video by one of the guests, stand-up and mathematician Matt Parker about the kind of fun with numbers I love.
He reveals that the number 3435 is unique in that if you take each digit to the power of itself and add the results together you get to 3435:
33+44+33+55 = 3435
Zero to the power of zero – Wikipedia
I actually got through a book about seventeenth-century mathematician Fermat’s Theorem but not without much bafflement. The equation on which the theorem is based is quite simple:
xn + yn = zn
Other than 1 and 2, Fermat tried to prove that the equation doesn’t work for any more positive integers and indeed he may have done so as he claimed but if he did the solution was lost. In spite of best efforts, no solution was found for 350 years until British mathematician Sir Paul Wiles finally cracked it after a number of years work in 1994 using advanced techniques not available to Fermat.
The nature of time
You wait ages for a stand-up comedian/mathematician and then two come along at once. I still cannot decide what I think of Robin Ince’s book The Importance of Being Interested; adventures in scientific curiosity, Atlantic Books, 2022, but the chapter on the nature of time is certainly thought-provoking. The author admits that most of the concepts are quite beyond him and they are certainly beyond me but I love the notion that time is what stops everything happening at once. Or is it merely a construct? I also love that the chapter opens with a quote from the original Star Trek episode ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’. Geologist Chris Jackson understands processes in geological time and we learn when we look at hills and valleys across north Derbyshire and much of the north of England what we are actually seeing were once coral reefs. In the Andes whale bones have been found at altitudes of more than 5,000 feet. Chalk is a product of a living thing, “fossils created by plankton-like algae.”
Keith Mann
I was recommended this tribute to the late.animal rights campaigner and activist Keith Mann:
For the Animals: A Tribute to Animal Rights Activist Keith Mann
He didn’t think about the consequences for himself, was imprisoned twice for his activism and respected all life. He was vegan simply because he was against violence. What kept him awake at night, he said, was the thought of not doing anything.
I doff my hat to Alexandra Paul for her part in rescuing beagles from a breeding facility (for animal experimentation) in America:
Baywatch alum Alexandra Paul arrested in shocking farm raid
Scones
I have long been aware of the amusing controversy about cream teas. Should you put the jam on first, then the cream, or vice versa? What I didn’t know but a friend pointed out is that it’s jam first in Cornwall, cream first in Devon. I think I am a cream first person. It reminds me of the long conflict between nations in Gulliver’s Travels over which way up an egg should be placed in an eggcup.
The Royal Mint
The Royal Mint is for the first time incorporating flora and fauna in the designs for its coins. The decisions are made by a number of committees, the government and the monarch. It can’t have been easy. Nothing too controversial and not animals we have wiped out or many would like to, so badgers and beavers would be out. A fox might be embarrassing for the current government which is still dragging its heels over trail hunting. Even so, the choices of Atlantic Salmon and bees seem likely to provoke debate – we have the appalling salmon farming industry and neonicotinoids which have done so much harm.. Hazel Dormice, Puffins, Capercaillie and Red Squirrels are all red listed so it’s good if the coins are drawing attention to that, but odd from an anti-nature government. I have since read that the decisions are yet to be finalised.
As a side note, author Melissa Harrison points out that not allowing dogs to run free and keeping them to well-used paths is crucial especially for ground-nesting birds. Even if there is no actual damage, birds will be aware of the potential predator and possibly abandon the nest as an unsafe space.
Red Tractor
Jeremy Clarkson has had something of an epiphany but he now sings the praises of Red Tractor food labelling, conveniently ignoring the fact that the scheme has long since been completely discredited. See Animal factories – Animal Wild.
Trump and Malaysia
Words fail everyone it seems when it comes to Trump in all his wickedness but it was quite something to see Emily Maitlis come out with “F***ing hell, where does this end?” in reference to his actions and threats regarding Ukraine, Greenland, Venezuela, Iran and now Cuba. Malaysia is a country very close to my heart. I appalud them for declaring their US trade deal null and void. In case you missed it, Trump recently said that the governor of California, confusedly describing him as president of the United States, suffered from dyslexia (which he does) and learning disabilities – “everything about him is dumb”. It is becoming increasingly clear that no one person should ever have as much power as he does.
Animal Rahat
To end on a positive note, a report has arrived from Animal Rahat who do so much for animals in Asia under the PETA umbrella. As well as running sanctuaries, they rescued 51 animals from life or death situations in the last quarter. They vaccinate and sterilise animals whose young would be born only to lives of great hardship, educate children to see animals as individuals and promote the use of tractors to spare the terrible lives of beasts of burden.
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