Real Bread Week

This will please my son and my co-grandfather, both of whom are bread making devotees. Check out @bakerdanski on Instagram.

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Created and run by the Real Bread Campaign since 2010, #RealBreadWeek is the annual, international celebration of Real Bread and the people behind its rise. [get the pun] This year it runs from 20 to 28 February.

Real bread is apparently additive free and...well that's it, I think.

I should mention that I don't eat bread at home. Too many carbs for my attempts at weight control. Although I will eat the occasional McDonalds burger bun. [Oh no! I've been outed by the Real Breaders! My statue will be torn down]

I have had occasional impulses to bake some bread but they don't last long. That is both the bread - because it's usually tasty - and the impulse. But on the whole I regard any kitchen activity as a distraction from much more important activities such as ... blogging. Cooking and baking - get them over and done with as soon as possible, so that I can return to my sedentary lifestyle.

Not sure why these people need a Week. Why not Real Bread Day, or the International Day of Real Bread? Or Lockdown Real Bread Year. A Week sounds kind of...well, weak. Or greedy. Anyway 20 to 28 February is nine days, isn't it? Can't you count?

So get baking, you bread fanatics, and share the outcomes HERE!

Designated survivor: final take

In my previous post about the Netflix series Designated Survivor, I noted that it was "a pretty good TV series". A "mixture of The West Wing - daily travails of a President and his team; Homeland - a Congressman comes back from the dead as an unexpected survivor whom a female agent suspects of being a traitor - and 24, with its throbbing dramatic soundtrack."

I don't recall how many episodes I had watched at that stage but pretty sure it was early in season 1, which ultimately had 22 episodes. So did season 2; finally season 3 had just 10. Frankly I think it had simply run out of steam by then so was cancelled, apparently because of issues with actors' contracts, although how that can happen mid way through a season I don't know.

I've now ploughed my way through them all. Season 1 was perfectly reasonable, in that it had a purposeful and credible narrative where the Housing Secretary in the US government becomes President because he is the designated survivor when a terrorist attack destroys the Capitol and everyone in it during the State of the Union. Last man standing. The new President has to build a government and the season is that story, as well as that of the FBI agent tasked with unearthing the terrorists. There is a congressman who mysteriously survives the attack, despite attending the speech; is he genuine? See Brody in Homeland.

Season 1 is complete in itself; all the narratives are brought to some kind of satisfactory conclusion. It could easily have stood on its own. But no, TV production companies have to get their money's worth, so season 2 followed. But needed a reason to exist and to my mind never came up with one. It reverted to The West Wing, for want of any better idea. The daily travails of a President and his senior staff. The problem is that it's impossible to compete with The West Wing, in my view, because that show established a very high bar for realism, writing, characterisations and acting.

In The West Wing, the President's senior staffers are substantial characters who know what they are doing. They are strongly written and acted and form a capable ensemble. In Designated Survivor, they are weak. Is this because they are weak actors or because the characters are weak? Or both? Who knows? What I do know is that the ensemble is disjointed and unfocussed. I suppose you could argue that this is the essence of the underlying theme of a President thrown into the job and necessarily floundering along the way, with his team no better. But that is no basis for a strong TV series - or at least for the second season.

And that brings me to the President himself. Martin Sheen's Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing was calm, dignified and experienced. In contrast Kiefer Sutherland's Tom Kirkman is indecisive, inexperienced and, overwhelmed by this job to which he is unsuited, prone to sudden rages, verging on manic-depressive. The showrunners might say that it's interesting to see how this works on a personal level and how the character develops. No it's not; it's a TV show, not a work of art.

And so to season 3, which at least had a plausible narrative of the President standing for re-election (this term is used throughout, even though he was never elected in the first place). There are new staffers and some from season 2 (including Zoe McLellan's White House Counsel, whom I thought the best of a moderate bunch) didn't return. I wonder what is behind this unusually high turnover of actors. Anyway, after ten episodes the show ends.

I've missed out some significant plot details of all three seasons so as not to provide spoilers.

One of my main tests of a TV series is: can I empathise with any of the characters? Sadly, this show falls short on that, with the exception of Maggie Q's FBI (later CIA) agent Hannah Wells.  Obviously this taints my views on the whole series, so is very personal and shouldn't put anyone off. Particularly those of you whose empathies are likely to be different to mine. By the way, part of my connection with the Hannah Wells character is that she isn't Homeland's Carrie Mathison, whose craziness in the end made me shout at the TV in the way that I do during football matches.

It's not uncommon for me to give up on TV series before the end; I even gave up on Homeland because it seemed to me to lose its purpose - once Brody died - much as this series did after season 1. I think my son in Australia, and my daughter in law, said that they gave up half way through season 2. I get that. However, despite my clear reservations, I watched it through to the end. Now it's quite possible this was a result of lockdown fatigue but I did want to see how it ended. If you want something to occupy the long evenings, I wouldn't discourage you from watching Designated Survivor. If you do, tell me what you think!

My day in pictures

Designated Survivor

Discovery of the week: an entertaining Netflix series Designated Survivor, in which Kiefer Sutherland does his tight-lipped, ultra aggressive Jack Bauer characterisation as a US Housing Secretary who becomes President as the Designated Survivor when the Capitol is bombed and destroyed during the State of the Union address. It's a mixture of The West Wing - daily travails of a President and his team; Homeland - a Congressman comes back from the dead as an unexpected survivor whom a female agent suspects of being a traitor - and 24, with its throbbing dramatic soundtrack.

I thought this idea of a Cabinet member designated by the President as being the one person not to attend the State of the Union and to take over if a catastrophe happens, to be a neat but implausible plot line. But it turns out to be real!

Apparently the idea of someone not attending the State of the Union or a Presidential Inauguration, and being sequestered in a safe and a secure location, began in the Cold War amid the threat of nuclear war in the 1960s. It's not just any old person, it has to be a person in the formal line of succession to the President, which effectively means a member of the Cabinet. In recent years Secretaries of Interior, Agriculture and Commerce have been designated. On 20 September 2001, nine days after the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney sat out President  George W. Bush's speech to a joint session of Congress. The designated survivor is chosen by the President and has to qualify as President, i.e. be at least 35, US natural-born and a US resident for at least 14 years.

I'm not sure but I think that, at the time, the designated survivor's name is not publicised but subsequent perusal of the list of attendees at events such as the Presidential inauguration can reveal a realistic guess. So who was not at President Biden's inauguration? Well, that would be none other than Donald J. Trump, of whom you may have heard. Was that the plan all along?

So it sounds like a sensible idea and I wonder whether other nations have similar protocols.

I could find no instances of that. For instance in the UK, what if the State Opening of Parliament was occurring when the Houses of Parliament were bombed into oblivion? The Queen is Head of State and there is a long  line of succession, so that seems OK, although I don't know whether a senior member of the Royal Family is sequestered in a secure location just in case. The monarch invites someone to form a government, i.e. become Prime Minister, so that seems OK too. No problem, we Brits have it sorted.

Anyway, it's a pretty good TV series. Enjoy!

Animal magic

Acquisition of a Joystick-Operated Video Task by Pigs (Sus scrofa). The heading of an article in frontiers in Psychology, by Candace Croney and Sarah Boysen of the Department of Comparative Pathobiology and Animal Science, Center for Animal Welfare Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana and the Comparative Cognition Project, Sunbury, Ohio.

Four pigs were trained to "manipulate a joystick that controlled movement of a cursor displayed on a computer monitor. Results indicate that despite dexterity and visual constraints, pigs have the capacity to acquire a joystick-operated video-game task".

I rang my local pig farm to see whether any of their pigs could give me a hand dealing with this problem I'm having with barbarians:

Unfortunately their pigs haven't yet achieved their BTEC in Video Gaming, but they suggested I talked to the chicken farm, as they had heard that their animals had some special skills.

A contributor to an online forum in BackYard Chickens:

This morning we are out in the pen with our girls. Feeding treats, doing chores etc. Everything as usual. But today, when the treats were gone, the girls went over to a corner of the pen and layed down, very close to each other. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm?

We got more treats, they came over, scratched, ate and enjoyed. Once again, as soon as the food was gone, back to the same corner huddled together. They have never done this before. 5 minutes later, we had an earthquake! Since the earthquake they have been up walking, scratching, pecking as they do every day.

The chicken farmer, having never experienced this behaviour as earthquakes are not all that common in Cornwall, referred me to a nearby reptile park.

The United States Geological Survey tells us:

The earliest reference we have to unusual animal behavior prior to a significant earthquake is from Greece in 373 BC. Rats, weasels, snakes, and centipedes reportedly left their homes and headed for safety several days before a destructive earthquake.

Neuroscientist Michael Brecht of the Humboldt University of Berlin conducted an experiment which showed that rats can learn the rules of hide-and-seek. However when I contacted him, he referred me to a horde of barbarians living in the tundra near St. Austell..........

Dynastic mini quiz answers

Q1. Who was Kublai Khan's grandfather? Genghis Khan

Q2. Who was the great grandmother of Sophie of Württemberg, Queen of the Netherlands? Catherine The Great

Q3. How many great grandchildren did Queen Victoria have? 87

Q4. What relation is a great great grandchild with another of different great grandparentage? Third cousin

Q5. What relation is Abraham Lincoln to George Clooney? Half-first cousin five times removed