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Called Bushkazi in Afghanistan, in Kyrgyzstan it's called Uluk Tartoosh, which means almost exactly Carpe Capram: seize the goat!
This picture is representative of the action; the fact that you cannot see the goat (I think it's in the hand of the man with the red stripe on his anorak) is only one of the things which has impeded the global spread of this game.
25,000 light years
Aug. 25th, 2014 11:08 pm
Milky Way - the centre of the galaxy is roughly behind the dust-cloud just over the hills 3/4 of the way across the image. Taken from Tash Rabat, from which the Milky Way was visible across the sky after 30 seconds of dark adaption.
Part of the enormous mural on the roof of the State History Museum (formerly Lenin Museum), Bishkek (formerly Frunze), Kyrgyzstan (formerly Kyrgyz SSR)
There was also a really very striking mural of Mother Russia (wielding a sword with the gold star on the pommel) defeating a Nazi warrior in an iron-horned helmet riding a huge bull with a garland of skulls and wielding a sword with the swastika on the pommel, but it took up so much of the ceiling that I couldn't get a photo that wasn't horribly foreshortened.
Kyrgyz activities
Aug. 21st, 2014 08:05 pmIn the last two weeks, I have:
Swum across an Alpine lake
Peered across the barbed wire into both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan
Ridden a black stallion across the plains around Lake Song-Kul
Climbed up beside the Tash Rabat caravanserai to a place where I could see fifty miles around the horizon, and another place where I could see two million light years up
And washed my undergarments in a glacial stream at sunset
Admittedly the stallion was called the Kyrgyz equivalent of Cuddles and was the result of a special request for the most tranquil horse in the beginners' herd, but the rest work in full generality.
There will be photos of everything except the horse-riding (because trotting while wearing a large camera around the neck is unwise) and the skivvy-laundering, in the fullness of time
set parametric
e=(sqrt(5)-1)/4
plot sin(t),cos(t)*e,e*e*sin(t)+(1-e*e),e*e*cos(t),e*sin(t),e*cos(t),(0.5+0.5*e-e*e)+(0.5-0.5*e-e*e)*sin(t),(0.5-0.5*e-e*e)*cos(t),(-1+e*e)+(e*e*sin(t)),e*e*cos(t),-(0.5+0.5*e-e*e)-(0.5-0.5*e-e*e)*sin(t),(0.5-0.5*e-e*e)*cos(t)
e=0.46
v=0.4073
u=0.673
phi=0.55
cp=cos(phi)
sp=sin(phi)
plot sin(t),cos(t),sin(t),e*cos(t),v-cp*e*sin(t)+sp*e*e*cos(t),u+sp*e*sin(t)+cp*e*e*cos(t),-v+cp*e*sin(t)-sp*e*e*cos(t),u+sp*e*sin(t)+cp*e*e*cos(t),v-cp*e*sin(t)+sp*e*e*cos(t),-u-sp*e*sin(t)-cp*e*e*cos(t),-v+cp*e*sin(t)-sp*e*e*cos(t),-u-sp*e*sin(t)-cp*e*e*cos(t)
The smallest peas match the radius-of-curvature of the ends of the ellipse; the smaller beans touch their mirror-images and the central ellipse and match the radius-of-curvature of the outer circle. Those constraints define e.
More culinary abominations
May. 17th, 2014 08:30 pmSo, there I was, contemplating some left-over half-chicken-breasts and a collection of memories of Mexico. Retried beans. Tomato sauce. Hey, can't I skip a step here using one of the more canonically readily available items of commerce? It had worked poorly in the haggis stir-fry last weekend, but in a generally gloopier context, maybe???
Chop a big onion; chop a deseeded red pepper and the raw chicken into thin strips. Put a bit of oil in a non-stick pan. Fry the onion and some garlic. Add (I know this sounds weird) some chopped black olives. Add the chicken if you want it with chicken, fry a bit more. Add a 400g tin of Heinz baked beans. Start stirring quite devotedly from this point: the Heinz sauce is a perfect substrate for the Maillard reaction, but if it sticks and crisps and burns the burned flavour will overwhelm the crispy brownness. Add a fair slug of tomato purée - half a tube, I guess - to play off against the sweetness of the sauce; the olives are also helping out there. Add the pepper, turn the heat down, start warming the tortillas, remember to keep stirring. Put a dollop in a tortilla with a piece of cheese on top, wrap, eat, repeat. Scrape the brown crispy bits off the side of the pan and eat them before washing it up.
OK, it's an abomination in some senses, I will be haunted by the ghosts of a dozen Maya and of the chicken that I committed to the recipe. But it's a pretty tasty abomination for all that: amazingly filling. And it'll be even nicer for lunch during the week when the mysterious pepper-improving qualities of time have had their play.
Many thanks also to the people who have contacted me to say that they are donating to the charity directly rather than going through JustGiving.
You'll see on the JustGiving site that I've put in the promised matching donation.
If you did want to see the medical instruments, the relevant section of the museum's well-photographed and detailed catalogue is here (moderately large PDF file). What were on display at the museum were modern reconstructions of devices mentioned in Albucasis's great text from the turn of the 11th century.
I discovered on Thursday that this was supposed to be a sponsored bike ride to raise money for prostate cancer research, so it would be lovely if you could donate at https://www.justgiving.com/Thomas-Womack. I'll match anything donated (up to £200 total) and then use ARM's offer to match donations by their employees, so (thanks to the marvels of Gift Aid) every pound you donate will provide something like £3.50 for prostate cancer research.
If the fundraising goes slowly, I will dig out my copious collection of photos from the Istanbul Museum of Eye-Watering Surgical Devices Of The Early Caliphate, a period noted for exquisite blade-making and really rather inadequate anaesthesia, and post them with annotations - generally anatomical diagrams of the kind you would prefer not to see labelled 'cut here', thus labelled. This would be both uncomfortable for my readers and a moderate amount of work for me, so it would be lovely were the fundraising not to go too slowly.
Eighty-one of my better photos from the holiday: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152347744272429.1073741827.783247428
It was a really spectacular place to visit, and I had a fantastic time
Las Mayas estaban poderosas
Mar. 31st, 2014 02:09 pmPalenque (Temple of the Inscriptions: tomb of Pakal)
Uxmal, view from the top of the Great Pyramid towards the 'nunnery'
Chichen Itza: sacrifice-stone in the Temple of the Warriors
Tulum: watch-tower on the northern sea front
Tulum is the size of a big British site - same sort of area as Fountains Abbey, no individual building that impressive. But Uxmal and Chichen Itza are both bigger and more filled with buildings than the Forum in Rome; Palenque is even more impressive because most of the site, including the biggest pyramid, is still embedded in jungle.
More postcards from Mexico
Mar. 27th, 2014 03:24 pmYesterday we went to the Chocolate Museum, whose exhibits are now slightly depleted:
And today to the Agua Azul waterfall: you can, and we did, swim in the slightly less rushy bits upstream of this one.
Tomorrow, and the four days after, will take us to one Mayan complex per day: Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tulum, Chetumal. There Will Be Temples.
Some Maya traditions
Mar. 24th, 2014 04:11 pmThe status of a man or woman in the town of Santiago de Atitlán can be determined by the colour of his or her shirt or hat (red is the highest status), and by the number of birds embroidered on her top or his trousers
There is a Guatemalan tradition of making little crocheted balls, which can be decorated according to a great number of designs: this one is obscure, possibly Scandinavian?
Rough water looks amazing with a short enough shutter speed
I am, you can probably tell, having a lot of fun here.
Todo es mas bueno!
Mar. 24th, 2014 07:10 amI am in Guatemala, on the shores of Lago de Atitlán: dawn broke about an hour ago. Peace is disrupted only by the shrill whistles of the grackles, the clacking of amorous(?) coots, and the occasional motorboat-taxi across the lake. To the left Mount Atitlán is poking out behind Mount Tolimán; to the right, San Pedro.
Where did the endorphins go?
Feb. 25th, 2014 09:11 pmThe first couple of bits of vigorous exercise - 45 minutes of circuit-training outside, 45 minutes of core-focused weight-training in the gym - were absolutely glorious fun; I left the circuit-training so fizzing with energy that I had difficulty working that afternoon, I left the weight-training feeling weirdly upright and amazingly light on my feet. I jog-walked (run for a count of sixty, walk for a count of sixty, repeat) round the block and, while my lungs were definitely not happy, my brain was delighted.
But this has now stopped. After the last couple of gym sessions and the last bout of circuit-training, instead of feeling invigorated, I was feeling completely knackered and distinctly glum. And I can't figure out what it might be that I'm doing differently. It's not that my asthma inhaler has some sort of weird invigorating power, I had to use a fair amount of Ventolin in the circuit-training.
