This week on Thinking Thursday were going to look at one of the most famous riddles of all time, and see if you can come up with an answer.
The riddle I pose is one originally penned by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland:
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
As always there is no prize except the fun of the chase but if you wish to put your answer in the comments I’d love to read it.
Answer on Sunday evening, as usual.
Oh and no cheating on this one by looking it up on the intertubes. ☺
No I’m not going to start delving into all the recent mess; there’s too much uninformed and idle garbage being talked already. But I must just highlight what Brad Warner has said — he’s American, a Zen monk and talks much sense; unlike so very many Americans. Brad has written a ferociously forthright, and also in parts highly amusing, analysis on his blog.
His final sentences are:
The lunatics who think they can overturn all of [civilisation] are using technologies that could not possibly even exist at all if the rest of the world wanted to go back to life as it was in the seventh century. They will fail.
Greed, hatred and stupidity are universal human traits. But so are cooperation, love and intelligence.
And more people support cooperation, love and intelligence than will ever support greed, hatred and stupidity.
But what is brilliant, because even Brad admits it is funny, is what he quotes from a guy called John Oliver:
… it is important to remember, nothing about what these assholes are trying to do is going to work. France is going to endure and I’ll tell you why. If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck. Go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They’ll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloise cigarettes, Camus, Camembert, madeleines, macarons, and the fucking croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend. You are fucked.
As Brad says: “It’s a funny rant, but it’s also deeply true”.
Go read the whole of Brad’s post here, it’s not very long.
In 1939 Punch published cartoons of a fanciful railway. But little did they realise that it would become a reality in the 1950s and that it would carry some 2 million passengers.
The reality was the Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway — a narrow gauge railway created in Battersea Gardens by Rowland Emett for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Aposematic
A zoological term applied to usually bright colouring or markings designed to warn or alarm, and thus to repel the attacks of predators.
According to the OED the first recorded use was as late as 1890 and the word is derived from the Greek ἀπό apo away + σ̑ημα sema sign.
Wasps are a fairly classic example of aposematic marking.
When will the Western world understand that, by their actions, they are responsible for the terrorist attacks which are happening around the world? I’m thinking specifically of Paris last Friday but there are many many others.
By interfering — usually with military force — in the Arab nations all they are succeeding in doing is further radicalising those countries’ (potentially) disaffected youth and other (misguided) religious zealots.
And why are they surprised at this? If some set of foreigners, with a different culture and religion, were launching air strikes on us, wouldn’t we be sending anyone who would into their countries as insurgents? Especially if we had poorly organised and equipped military ourselves.
Of course we would — and we have. For starters, see the WWII French Resistance and other clandestine organisations like SOE. And we have officially sanctioned and organised terrorists called the SAS.
The more we meddle, and the more we retaliate, the worse we are going to make the problem. And it is a problem which is of our making! We started meddling in the Middle East way back at the time of the Crusades and it has escalated (on and off) ever since. In After the Victorians AN Wilson makes the point that one of the underlying causes of WWI was Britain trying to prevent Germany getting access to Arab oil which we had claimed. We’ve been interfering ever since. And it goes on.
None of these countries — in fact overall very few countries in the world — have a tradition of democracy. They are nearly all used to autocratic rule in one form or another. Just as we were, once upon a time. It has taken us 800 years, starting with Magna Carta in 1215, to get our democracy to its current (fragile) state. Some of the countries of our erstwhile empire have taken the English model on board. Other European countries have got there too by their own, often bloody, routes — see, for example, the French Revolution.
So how is it we expect to be able to walk into any country, tell them to embrace democracy and expect them to jump for joy and do so overnight? Why would they? How can they when it’s taken us 800 years? To them democracy is a revolution and a totally different culture. People don’t like change and they are mostly OK with what they have because at least they understand it. Nearly everywhere we’ve done this in the last 200 years we have ended up with, at best, a bloody nose.
The Arab countries are large enough and well enough orchestrated that they can bring their resistance to us. They have a religion which, by and large, transcends their tribal divisions and they aren’t confined to their own little enclaves like many African nations. Contrary to Christianity, when push comes to shove, the Arab religious beliefs will overcome any tribal animosities.
Why is it that politicians cannot learn from history? It isn’t that hard. If I, a mere scientist, can do so then so can anyone with more than six brain cells. (Oh, hang on, do politicians even have six brain cells?)
No I am not saying we should be soft on terrorists. Yes we have to deal with them on our territory according to our laws — just as they would if the tables were turned.
What I am saying is twofold: (a) stop meddling in other countries, except perhaps through diplomatic channels, and (b) stop bombing the shit out of them at any excuse. Unless, of course, your objective is to radicalise them.
Let me leave you with two final thoughts.
(1) Never lose sight of the fact that your enemy is a human being too. He (or she) has a mother, a sister, a child, a spouse who loves them. They eat, pee and lust the same as you. They were once that carefree child playing in the street. To lose sight of your enemy’s humanity is to lose all respect for others and yourself.
(2) And in the words of Abraham Lincoln:
This week I bring you a really poor quality shot, but one for the record. n Saturday lunchtime we had a fox in the garden. This isn’t unheard of, even in daylight, but it isn’t something we see more than about once a year. But on this occasion Mr Reynard hung around for quite a while — maybe 15 minutes — sniffing around the garden and finding the odd tasty morsel which the starlings have missed. So I managed to get a few, not very good, photos. They’re poor partly because I was shooting through the study window, and the window is grimy hence the slight mistiness; but I knew if I opened the window this would be enough to scare the fox away.
Mandrel
1. A tapered or cylindrical axle or spindle which can be inserted into a hole in a piece of work to support it during machining.
2. A metal bar that serves as a core around which material (usually metal) may be cast, molded, forged, bent, or otherwise shaped.
3. The shaft and bearings on which a tool (as a circular saw) is mounted.
4. A miner’s pick.
According to the OED the word is usually believed to be an alteration of the French mandrin, which has the senses 1 & 2 above. However the French word has not been traced earlier than 1690 and is of obscure origin.
So here we are again with another round of links to interesting (or amusing) items you may have missed previously. I’ve decided to try splitting the items into sections, starting with the scientific and ending with the more light-hearted.
Science & Medicine
Let’s start off with the most important question ever … Are Cats Domesticated?
I think this next item could well be a top nominee for “research of the year” and maybe even an Ig Nobel. The headline reads: Old Mice Drinking Champagne Three Times A Week Navigate Labyrinths Better.
And so from one of cats’ main prey items to another — birds. It seems that there are some interesting mechanisms underlying the colour of birds’ plumage, and it isn’t all down to pigmentation.
So what do we really know about nutrition? It seems that in really scientific terms the answer is “not a lot” because most of the studies which have been done are of such poor quality. Aaron Carroll takes the studies apart.
It’s a bit late for Halloween now, but here’s a piece on some of the chemistry of blood.
Why do germs spread better in winter, when one would think that the cold weather would kill them off? Scientists are at last unravelling the actuality.
There is no hope. We are all doomed. It seems that the changes in our sense of humour as we age may be the early signs of losing our marbles altogether.
Touching. Some like it, others don’t. And we all have areas where we don’t like to be touched. Research has recently mapped out this awkwardness with being in physical contact with other people.
Excuse the question, but have you had a good shit lately? The chances are that none of us have, as scientists are telling us we’ve been doing it all wrong — at least since the advent of the flush toilet. But I have to ask how this is new news? It is something I’ve known for about 40 years and was based on research then!
Many (maybe all) of us are not a single genetic being; we have some level of chimerism. We likely all contain our mother’s cells; maybe our older siblings’ cells too; and mothers may also contain their children’s foetal cells. But it seems, that at least for mother, this may be a good thing.
And these cases of chimerism come to the fore where paternity tests throw up unexpected results. Oh, and maternity tests!
Anatomical question of the week … Why is the human vagina so big?
Sexuality
One American father has done his kids proud by following the Dutch model of sex advice. And guess what? It’s a model that works.
Social Sciences & Business
Seems the culture of overwork is erroneous and that working fewer hours really would make us more productive. Now why did I fairly strictly control the hours I spent in the office?
Time. We seldom have enough. But where does all your time go? [Long read]
Language
We have countless words for colours and even sounds, but why do most languages have very few words for smells?
History
The Tampon: A History. [Long read]
OK, so it was invented by the Sumerians, but what is Cuneiform anyway?
He was a mathematician, magician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, alchemist and spy; and he lived during the reign of Elizabeth I. Who was he? Yes he was Dr John Dee. London’s Royal College of Physicians is putting on an exhibition about John Dee, from 18 January 2016.
… it is important to remember, nothing about what these assholes are trying to do is going to work. France is going to endure and I’ll tell you why. If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck. Go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They’ll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloise cigarettes, Camus, Camembert, madeleines, macarons, and the fucking croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend. You are fucked.