Monthly Archives: July 2016

links

Your Interesting Links

Here is our monthly selection of links to articles you may have missed the first time around.
Science & Medicine
Honeymooning scientist discovers unknown giant, swimming, venomous centipede by accident in Thailand
Fur. Where did it come from, and why? Is it in any way related to feathers? It isn’t quite as obvious as one might think.

While talking about fur, cats are living much longer and healthier lives than ever before. When we first had cats, some 35 years ago, our vet said that living anything past 12 was a bonus; now it is increasingly normal for them to live into their late teens and even into their early twenties. Of the four cats we’ve lost over the years their ages at death were (in order) 12, 17, 16, 18. Apparently this longevity is in large part due to better nutrition and advances in veterinary medicine.
Although largely reviled, wasps should be valued instead. There are thousands of species, each in its own niche, but all are incredibly useful and efficient predators of other creepy-crawlies. They’re also very useful pollinators. Please cherish your wasps!
Some medics have managed to create a very simple, and very cheap, test for diseases like malaria. And it can be used anywhere, although the “test strip” does need to be mailed back to the lab.
Research from the US is suggesting that older people who use marijuana are actually saving the health services as they use fewer prescription drugs, and that opioid overdose rates are down significantly. Well, you don’t say!
Sexuality
Female athletes all too often have to undergo humiliating sex-testing. Here’s the low-down on an unacceptable practice that would never be tolerated if applied to males. [Long read]
Dr Luisa Dillner in the Guardian takes a look at whether it is more hygienic to remove one’s pubic hair. Conclusion: no it is likely to be less so — but then Fashion!


Social Sciences & Business
Here’s the Guardian‘s simple, nine-point, guide to spotting dodgy statistics and seeing through the obfuscation of politicians (and others).
It may seem incredible, but everyone on this planet is your cousin. What price racism and bigotry now?
Language
We have a perfectly good four-letter word beginning with C— and it’s use is becoming more common. So why is it still taboo? Rachel Braier in the Guardian (again) has some thoughts in its praise.
Art & Literature
We’ve covered miniature carvings from pencil lead before but this miniature landscape with elephants is just stunning!
History
Returning to the topic of marijuana, it seems that our prehistoric ancestors, those founders of western civilisation, were dealing in dope.
Archaeologists are using ‘personal hygiene sticks’ excavated from a 2,000-year-old latrine pit to uncover evidence of the transmission of infectious diseases along the Silk Road.
Over the centuries western civilisation has had some strange beliefs about nudity.
It seems there are a lot of mulberry trees in London and many date from the 17th and 18th centuries. Here’s a history of a few of them.
Charles Dickens was born in 1812, and when he was a teenager London already had horseless buses.
OK, so, Londoners … how much do you really know about Trafalgar Square?
And finally on both History and London … here are a dozen things you maybe didn’t know about St James’s Park — including the pelicans.

Shock, Horror, Humour
And finally … in Iceland they have had to divert a road so they don’t disturb the Elves. I’m told the same has happened in Ireland, but I find that much less surprising!

amusements

Auction Strangeness

More strange juxtapositions from our local auction house; as so often the sting is in the tail. My heart sinks whenever I see words like “interesting”, “unusual”, “mixed”, “impressive” or “decorative” because you know what follows is going to be miscellaneous toot.
A mixed lot to include an oval tray with glass bottom set with butterflies, Hon. Artillery Company notebooks, an autograph book, Boots the Chemist cylindrical cardboard box, Nymph ladies’ razor set, etc.
A collection of loose stamps, mainly UK from Victoria on, some in part sheets, also USA and other countries and an early pair of ski boots
A collection of ethnic wooden carvings including men in a boat, a figure of an Oriental man, two busts, face masks, etc.
A decorative lot to include an onyx and brass floor-standing ashtray, three enamelled trinket boxes, vases, six Faberge glasses with bird decoration to the stems, a tureen in the form of a duck and a collection of various plates
A Mills bomb grenade number 36M, an ARP whistle, three cased razors, one by Wilkinsons [sic] Sword
Approximately three hundred thimbles, mainly in display cases, including those made of china, glass and enamelled, encompassing commemorative, Disney and religious
A quantity of old photographs in wooden frames, an old blood pressure machine, vintage wrapping paper, a quantity of items including binoculars, box Brownie cameras, decorative mantel clock, wooden bowls, a framed mirror, folding table, a pair of small footstools
A vintage Bugs Bunny pull-string soft toy and an old teddy bear
A collection of African and Indonesian wall masks depicting deities and others, a large wall fan depicting a rural village scene and a decorative bow and arrow
A Neato XV21 new and boxed pet and allergy vacuum, plus a glass yard of ale
A collection of vintage tins and items including Oxo, a Betty Boop wooden cut-out, and two 1950s/60s wooden cut-out tray holders and bases including that of a ballerina and another of a Hawaiian lady, brass ornaments including horses, a turned wood-handled warming pan, a Sparklets soda fountain, cased tennis racket and other interesting items
Three shelves of boxed Asian dolls and figurines, plus Indonesian wall masks, decorative wooden elephants, figurines, boxes, etc.
A Bolex Paillard movie camera, a Kodak Retinette camera, boxed prawn cocktail set, a collection of part tea services, two silver-plated goblets and silver-plated box, Royal Adderley flower ornaments, cake plate and matching servers, a boxed sewing machine, camera case, a brass companion set and irons, etc.
Two similar impressive two-handled [sic] swords with ornate brass hilts and turned grips, 64 and 66 ins
[They mean “two-handed” and they were obviously made for display purposes]
A collection of mainly 19th century glassware and pewter, comprising: eight various rummers, a Nailsea-type rolling pin, Bohemian amber beaker, a roemer, blue float, two sugar crushers, four Georgian pewter plates, two mugs, two prize-loving cups, mustard pot, stopper, Indian copper spoon and a hardwood club
An impressive Italian reproduction clock garniture in marble and gilt and bronzed metal, the clock with German mechanical movement, the side pieces as candelabra for five lights
[This, together with the following item (both pictured) are about the most hideous things I’ve seen in a very long time]

534 574

A pair of elaborate Japanese bronze vases, each with dragon handles and bird panels, with detachable necks…
A set of vintage pine stepladders and a vintage pine stool, also a Stanley 2 3/8 inch boxed plane and a Marcons heavy metal iron
[Guess what, the step-ladders look like old-fashioned wooden, paint-splattered rickety step-ladders, like the ones your father had in the shed and which are probably safest in the tip!]
A hydraulic palette truck/lifter
A good selection of items including vintage tennis racquets, a small collection of brass animals by Manuhm, an old child’s toy dachshund in original box, an Imari plate, oil on canvas, picnic basket, vintage cricket set, walking canes and sticks, one with a silver top
A pair of watercolours of exotic birds, a vintage golf bag and clubs, a Windsor voltometer, two Pathe vintage projectors, and box, a brass jam pan, leather attache case, metal cash box, etc.
Two vintage part-metal signs, one Rowntrees(?), with royal warrant for HM the King, the second a brewer’s sign, and a mirror
[“part-metal” = pieces of metal!]
Hallmarked silver coaster, silver bladed fruit knife ‘the Metropolitan’, a whistle by J Hudson and Co, Birmingham, Military badges, a silver pencil case and bracelet, a small quantity of jewellery, decimal coins and an old chocolate tin containing a photograph memoriam cards, 1937 Coronation map, an old premium bond etc.
A mid 20C bedroom chair with a 5 sided back upholstered in a funky floral fabric…
Well, OK, I’ve seen a lot worse; at least there are no badly stuffed ferrets. Although there is enough alcohol to float a battleship and enough cigars to keep Winston Churchill going for several lifetimes.

amusements, people, photography

Photographs

As long-time readers will know, in between anything else happening I enjoy a bit of people watching. In the last week or so I’ve seen these.

Click the images for larger views
blokes
Blokes, Plotting
Pinner; July 2016
3_Witches
Three Nubile witches
South Ealing; July 2016
visions1
Visions of Babushka
Northfields, Ealing; July 2016

medical, ramblings, science

Piloerection

Piloerection — more commonly known as goosebumps …
We all get goosebumps.
But I have recemtly found out two things about this common phenomenon — one is general and the other seemingly specific to me.


Firstly piloerection (hairs standing up) is interesting because it is a demonstration of evolution not happening. We are all familiar with the cat with its fur fluffed out and tail bushed, usually when confronted with an aggressor. We’re all also familiar with the robin, or pigeon, fluffed up in the winter against the cold. Both these are the original uses of what we still have as goosebumps.
The way this works is that the tiny muscles around the hair follicles (or equivalent for feathers) react to cold or to adrenalin (produced in response to fear, or excitement). In contracting these tiny muscles pull the hair into a more erect state and cause the little bumps around the hair follicle. Humans have lost (most of) their fur, but we’ve not lost the response mechanisms to cold or which stimulate production of adrenalin. So we still get goosebumps, although they apparently confer no advantage on us. There is no cost, the reactions aren’t deleterious, so there has been no evolutionary pressure to remove the reaction. This is one of a number of traits which (some of) us exhibit and which are evolutionary remnants; others include our tails, widom teeth and appendix.
Like everyone I get goosebumps, and the tingling sensation of the skin that usually goes along with them. And, also like most, this is strongest on the forearms. But what I’ve noticed recently is that this is more marked on the right side of my body than the left. Sometimes it is only on my right side. Sometimes both sides but the right predominates. Whether it has always been like this I don’t know, but I think it probably has. I find this strange and I can neither find, nor conjure up, a satisfactory explanation. Does anyone have any clues?

quotes

Quotes

Lots of quotes in this month’s selection …
The handicap under which most beginning writers struggle is that they don’t know how to write. I was no exception to this rule. Worse bilge than mine may have been submitted to the editors of London in 1901 and 1902, but I should think it very unlikely. I was sorry for myself at the time, when the stamped and addressed envelopes came homing back to me, but my sympathy now is for the men who had to read my contributions. I can imagine nothing more depressing than being an editor and coming to the office on a rainy morning in February with a nail in one shoe and damp trouser legs and finding oneself confronted with an early Wodehouse – written, to make it more difficult, in longhand.
[PG Wodehouse on his early writing career]
It is best to accept the real conditions of contemporary life as soon as possible. One has got to put up with them for better or worse, and the only hope of changing them is in facing them, not in living in a dream of the old world. But I am tired of saying what is so obvious to me.
[Stephen Spender, letter to Isaiah Berlin, 1932]
It is such a rest to be folded after all my wandering … I have the most entire faith in the healing qualities of sunshine and sun warmth.
[Aubrey Beardsley, letter to John Gray, 3 April 1897]
In principle I agree with bringing in an appropriate set of book shelves. However, I view the acquisition of another mirror as superfluous.
[Hermann Broch, letter to Armand Broch, Spring 1928]
A story — a good story — writes itself; that is, it develops spontaneously under the pen. One incident entails another, as in life, and the denouement, as in life, is beyond control. Remember, I am speaking of good stories; bad ones can be written on preconceived lines, but I don’t care to write bad stories; at least I don’t care to publish them with a waste-basket within easy reach.
[Ambrose Bierce, letter to John O’Hara Cosgrave, 19 November 1905]
I sent an American acquaintance three pages of typescript & asked “Is the American slang authentic?” Weeks passed. Now I have back 50 pages on Embassy paper giving the opinions of three public relations officers.
[Evelyn Waugh, letter to Nancy Mitford, 22 November 1954]
I sometimes fear that people think that Fascism arrives in fancy dress worn by grotesques and monsters as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis. Fascism arrives as your friend. It will restore your honour, make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job, clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you once were, clear out the venal and the corrupt, remove anything you feel is unlike you … it doesn’t walk in saying, our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.
[Michael Rosen]
Knowledge is always provisional. It’s easy to forget that. It’s easy to get caught up in a futile search for some kind of ultimate knowledge. It ain’t gonna happen.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/but-what-if-were-wrong/4584]
Being natural & matter-of-fact about nudity prevents children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body.
[Dr Lee Salk]
When considered rationally, there is no justification for believing that anything happens to anyone upon the moment of his or her death. There is no reasonable counter to the prospect of nothingness. Any anecdotal story about ‘floating toward a white light’ or Shirley MacLaine’s past life on Atlantis or the details in Heaven Is for Real are automatically (and justifiably) dismissed by any secular intellectual. Yet this wholly logical position discounts the overwhelming likelihood that we currently don’t know something critical about the experience of life, much less the ultimate conclusion to that experience. There are so many things we don’t know about energy, or the way energy is transferred, or why energy (which can’ t be created or destroyed) exists at all. We can’t truly conceive the conditions of a multidimensional reality, even though we’re (probably) already living inside one. We have a limited understanding of consciousness. We have a limited understanding of time, and of the perception of time, and of the possibility that all time is happening at once. So while it seems unrealistic to seriously consider the prospect of life after death, it seems equally naïve to assume that our contemporary understanding of this phenomenon is remotely complete …
… We must start from the premise that — in all likelihood — we are already wrong. And not ‘wrong’ in the sense that we are examining questions and coming to incorrect conclusions, because most of our conclusions are reasoned and coherent. The problem is with the questions themselves.
[Chuck Klosterman; But What If We’re Wrong?]
You know how cats are attracted to the people who give them the least attention? Teenagers are basically cats (children aged four to 10 are Labradors, obviously, and the under-fours are the product of some unholy union of howler monkey and honey badger).
[Emma Beddington at https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jun/25/why-your-teenager-thinks-youre-an-idiot]
The raven is about rebirth, recovery, renewal, recycling, reflection and healing. He signifies moving through transitions smoothly by casting light into the darkness.
[unknown author]
There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another.
[Emma Goldman, social activist (1869-1940)]
there is … enormous moral and political confusion that mixes together the desperation of those who know they are losing, the opportunism of those ready to change sides, the guilelessness of those who haven’t understood anything, and even the desire for revenge in those who are about to arrive.
[Carlo Lucarelli]
“A great illusion is that government is carried on by an infallible, incorruptible machine,” Pennistone said. “Officials — all officials, of all governments — are just as capable of behaving in an irregular manner as anyone else. In fact they have the additional advantage of being able to assuage their own conscience, if they happen to have one, by assuring themselves it’s all for the country’s good.”
[Anthony Powell, The Military Philosophers]
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
[Oscar Wilde]
The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.
[Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948]
In a poll, we ask people what they think when they don’t think. It would be more interesting to ask what they think after they had a chance to think.
[James Fishkin, Political Scientist]
Find your strengths. In your allegiance, what are you best at? Your unique sweet spot (the place where you can make the most difference) is determined not by what you want to do, but where your skills meet a community need.
[Kat Craig; Guardian; 20 June 2016]
As Gove doesn’t rate experts, I presume his policy advisors will be made up of clairvoyants, astrologers and Coco the clown.
[Robert Talbut, Chaiman, EFG Asset Management; Times; 2 July 2016]
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
[Samuel Johnson]
Boris Johnson, who in the judgment of naturalists is the only leading politician bred directly from Highland cattle, had been expected to declare himself a candidate for the Tory leadership. Boris, after all, was a booming voice in the Leave campaign, and he has long been both a marshal and a mascot of the right. He also enjoys a profile as high as anyone in the land; friend and foe alike refer to him by his first name — a distinction that he shares with Britney, Whitney, Dolly, Rihanna, and Oprah. The brand recognition is secure.
[Anthony Lane, New Yorker]
If democracy ever dies, it won’t be the Red Army; it’ll be the media that destroy democracy: by denying people the voice so they can tell the government what they want.
[Tony Benn]
How insulting to God is the arrogance of mankind, when we take it upon ourselves to cover and hide His creation and claim that it is an improvement?
[unknown author]
The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything . How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out . How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind.
To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.
[Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive]