Yes, quite so …
All posts by Keith
How can they?
MPs given go ahead for 10% pay rise to £74,000
How can MPs justify a 10% pay rise when the rest of the country (except bankers, of course) are getting 1% at best?
Oh, so they can no longer claim expenses for duck houses and they (may) get smaller pensions. So that’s all right then.
But I still find this inexplicable and inappropriate.
Oddity of the Week: Victorian (Medical) Oddities
Warning: not for the squeamish.
Conjoined piglets and two-faced kittens! Oooo-eerrr!
In the 19th century, bodies (both human and animal) were hard to come by, so medical and veterinary schools abandoned many dissections and taught their students using remarkably odd objects like waxwork embryos and exploded skulls as well as preserved specimens like this octopus.
The Guardian has a gallery of more interesting examples at www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jul/09/victorian-oddities-two-faced-kittens-conjoined-piglets-in-pictures
Enjoy your lunch!
Your Interesting Links
Another of our irregular round-ups of links to items you might have missed the first time.
We all drop our dinner down our shirt — some of us more than others — but how often do we stop to think about the chemistry behind stain removal?
I’m almost always warm and yet I know plenty of people who, unless sitting on a tropical beach, are always cold. So why do some of us feel the cold more than others?
While talking about people it seems that some people can’t picture things; they can’t conjure up mental images, almost as if their “mind’s eye” is blind.
Which leads me on to an interesting three-part article from Maria Konnikova on sleep: falling asleep; why we sleep; and on waking up (or not). [Long read]
More human wonders … Why do some people collect lint in their navels but others don’t? Spoiler: hair and clothes.
Apparently broccoli is bad for you, like, really toxic bad. Or then again, maybe it isn’t?
A list of links wouldn’t be complete without some reference to our feline friends, now would it! This attempts to explain what your cat is trying to say to you.
And while on language, here’s an interesting infographic on the world’s 23 most spoken languages — they’re spoken by over half the world’s population.
If you’re like us you love the iconic Le Creuset cast iron cookware. David Lebovitz does and he managed to get a tour of the Le Creuset factory.
If you had to think up a new use for recycled plastic, I bet you wouldn’t dream of a plastic road. Well the Dutch just did!
Shuffling quickly now from the modern into the historical … Here are five interesting facts about Lewis Carroll.
And from Carroll’s love of logic and puzzles to the secret codes on British banknotes.
Going backwards, someone has found, dumped in a skip, a wonderful collection of photographs of the construction of Tower Bridge dating from around 1890.
Next our friendly blogging London cabbie takes a look at the curious history of Craig’s Court, off Whitehall.
And even further back here’s an alternative view of the Middle Ages.
And finally back down to earth. Critics claim that pornography degrades women, dulls sexual pleasure, and ruins authentic relationships. But does it? Seems the evidence suggests the critics are wrong.
Weekly Photograph
This week something very sunny from the archives …
Hibiscus
Greenford; November 2010
Click the image for larger views on Flickr
Greece without a Paddle
Greece has been shafted. Whatever the outcome of the farce unravelling in Brussels, the Greeks are stuffed, like so many dolmades. Austerity upon austerity and a collapsing economy if they agree to another bailout. Total chaos, a collapsed economy and international ruin if they don’t get a bailout and leave the Eurozone (even if only temporarily).
If you want to understand more about the international machinations which have brought this about then read this by George Monbiot for the Guardian last Tuesday, and this by Heather Stewart in yesterday’s Guardian. Do go and read them.
I’m not going to try to summarise them articles here except to say that international debt is out of control and pretty much every country in which the IMF has intervened has been largely destroyed.
Gawdelpus!
Quotes
Another collection of quotes, both interesting and amusing, gathered over recent weeks.
The better half applied hot soapy water to it, as is her way with things she encounters. It is the same as tom cats pissing on them, a way of taking ownership — but much more hygienic.
[Robin Bynoe]
We’ve been taught a woman’s body will cause men to sin. We’re told that if a woman shows too much of her body men will do stupid things. Let’s be clear: A woman’s body is not dangerous to you. Her body will not cause you harm. It will not make you do stupid things. If you do stupid things, it is because you chose to do stupid things.
[Nate Pyle, How to See a Woman: A Conversation Between a Father and Son]
This is a filthy people, wallowing in vice. Of all peoples it is the least instructed in the rudiments of the Faith. They do not yet pay tithes or first fruits or contract marriages. They do not attend God’s church with due reverence.
[Giraldus Cambrensis, History and Topography of Ireland, III.98 AD 1185]
Wine is sunlight held together by water.
[Galileo]
When asked by my 11 year old last week what Quantum Physics was about, I was able to answer: ‘It’s exactly like a mille feuille, but in space.’ She said: ‘What’s a mille feuille?’ To which I responded: ‘It’s like a vanilla slice, but in universal terms I am sure there’s no icing on it, and I’d go for confectioner’s custard over cream. It holds the space time continuum together better. Are we clear now?’ To which she responded: ‘Yes.’
[Katy Wheatley at Katyboo1’s Weblog]
The elephant is a dainty bird
It flits from bough to bough,
It makes its nest in a rhubarb tree,
And whistles, like a cow.
[No-one seems to know the author, although many are suggested]
The state has an interest in preventing us from thinking independently, and it cultivates and exploits our worst tendencies in order to do so, for grownup citizens are more trouble than they’re worth … We all suffer from the fact that we have no appealing models of adulthood — young people who fear that there’s nothing to look forward to as well as older people who fear they need to resign themselves to being able to do nothing interesting or meaningful after a certain point in their lives. It is this view that is profoundly unhealthy.
[Susan Neiman, quoted by Brad Warner at Hardcore Zen]
The real sign of maturity is when you can actually be who you are rather than what someone else thinks you ought to be.
[Brad Warner at Hardcore Zen]
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
[Henry Longfellow]
You have to accept the fact that some people will always stay in your heart, even if you are already gone in theirs.
[Unknown]
… ethics based on external reference points like religion or philosophy will always be inferior to the ethical system I cultivate myself through thinking, reflection, and cultivating empathy.
[Gesshin Greenwood at That’s So Zen]
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
[Charlie Chaplin]
Ten Things #19
This month’s “Ten Things” is a bit more unusual. There are many strange diseases out in the wild and some are weirdly named, so I bring you …
Ten Oddly Named Diseases (with the animal/plant affected in parenthesis)
- Astrakhan Spotted Fever (humans)
- Flaccid Trunk Disease (elephants)
- O’nyong-nyong fever (humans)
- Whirling Disease (trout)
- Lime Witches’ Broom Phytoplasma (citrus trees)
- Wobbly Possum Disease (possums)
- Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (humans)
- Huanglongbing (citrus trees)
- Motley Dwarf Disease (carrots)
- Corridor Disease (bovines)
Something for the Weekend
Oddity of the Week: Monorail
According to the Monorail Society website, the first ever passenger carrying monorail was in my home town, at Cheshunt:
1825 — Cheshunt Railway
The first passenger carrying monorail celebrated a grand opening June 25th, 1825. It had a one-horse power engine … literally. Based on a 1821 patent by Henry Robinson Palmer, the Cheshunt Railway was actually built to carry bricks, but made monorail history by carrying passengers at its opening.
And I’m pleased to have been on the world’s oldest monorail which is still in operation: the Wuppertal Schwebebahn (above) which is also the only public passenger carrying dangling railway. It is certainly an interesting ride.