All posts by Keith
Your Interesting Links
More interesting items you may have missed.
According to George Monbiot it is all very simple: if we can’t change our economic system, our number’s up.
In case you ever wondered, here a brief history of mathematical symbols.
Cats? Well OK, so what was the role of cats in Anglo Saxon England?
And while on cats, let’s have a quick look at the chemistry behind catnip’s effect on cats.
So how on earth do you manufacture a link from cats to the human penis? Oh well, maybe you don’t. Anyway, scientists are getting interested in all those microbes that inhabit our bodies, and one group is now looking at the microbiome of the penis.
So from old jocks to old books … What does cause that smell of new & old books?
OK, so you still need to get the kids interested in science … try the bizarre liquid that sometimes acts like a solid, and which you can make at home.
And from the crazy to the ridiculous (maybe) … here’s a possibly not so serious scientific investigation of mermaids.
And so to the truly astonishing. In Canada a group of swallows have worked out how to open automatic doors.
So yes, insects do sleep. Here are some nice pictures of sleeping jewel wasps.
And onto food … it now seems that the Mediterranean diet effect may all be down to salad and olive oil. Well who would have guessed!
Meanwhile everything you think you know about breakfast is wrong. Well almost everything.
Celery. Aphrodisiac or harbinger of death?
While on health things, here is a piece on the health benefits of sleeping naked. Personally I can’t imagine sleeping comfortably any other way.
OK so we’re on the slippery slope to nowhere, so here’s a brief history of 8 hallucinogens.
And Diamond Geezer tells us 30 things learnt about sex over the last 30 years.
While we’re talking about learning, it seems we learn better if we take handwritten notes and don’t use a laptop. Why do I not find this surprising?
What’s more learning to write by hand means young children also learn to read more easily. Seems it’s something to do with the connectivity in the brain.
OK, so hands. It also seems that the hand you favour shapes your moral space. Which I find kinda weird.
And finally to a couple of historical items. First up the next part in the series on Waterloo Station — this is part 6 on Waterloo’s wildlife.
Tom Shakespeare tries taking a look at what it would be like to take England back to the Dark Ages. I suspect we’d all agree it’d be fairly horrific.
And finally as a piece of lunacy it seems Great Britain has an underwater rugby team. Do what!?!?!?!
Oddity of the Week: Phallic Rock
No, Phallic Rock isn’t a new modern music style nor a variety of the traditional British seaside candy stick — though it ought to be both — but this …
Phallic Rock, a granite rock formation in Carefree, Arizona
Ten Things #6
Here’s my list of ten things for June. Something slightly different this month …
10 Things in My Bedside Drawer:
- Spare opened packs of medicines
- Blood glucose meter
- Condoms
- Bookmarks
- Spare spectacles
- Steel bracelet
- Pill cutter
- Hearing aid spares
- Aromatherapy oils
- Toothpicks
And as a bonus let’s also have …
10 Things on My Bedside:
- CPAP machine
- Table lamp
- Current medicines
Alarm clock- Post-It notes and index tags
- Extra strong mints
- Box of tissues
- Nail file & nail clippers
- House phone
- Pencil
Alarm clockPerhaps the only real surprise is that it is so ordinary!
Weekly Photograph
It is scary to realise that I took this week’s photograph eight years ago. It is a composite of at least half a dozen frames — well we didn’t get such good wide-angle lenses on cameras then! As the eagle-eyed will realise this is Paris. We were sitting having lunch with a friend outside her favourite bistro in Place Dauphine, a quiet square at the western end of Ile de la Cité, on a warm Friday in May. This was real non-touristy Paris, even down to the handful of Parisian corporation workers playing boules in the square.
Place Dauphine
Paris, May 2006
Something for the Weekend
I love the zen quality of this week’s cartoon.
Oddity of the Week: Blue Honey
French beekeepers were recently shocked when their bees started producing thick, blue and green honey.
After investigating, they discovered their bees were feeding on the colourful shells of M&Ms — a Mars processing plant was located just 4 km away.
The Mars waste-processing plant has now solved the problem and are cleaning any outdoor or uncovered containers that M&M waste was stored in, so it’s unlikely you’ll see the blue honey on the market any time soon.
As Reuters reports, the unsellable honey is a new issue for the beekeepers, who are already struggling with high bee mortality rates and dwindling honey supplies.
From http://sciencealert.com.au/news/20142405-25561.html
Weekly Photograph
In this week’s photographs we bring you the world of Beatrix Potter …
We were in the village of East Carleton, just outside Norwich, the other day visiting my mother. Driving slowly through the village we came across Jemima Puddleduck with eleven quite well grown ducklings meandering slowly along the verge. We stopped the car and I took their portraits from the passenger seat.
Mother looked like a Aylesbury-Mallard cross; white like an Aylesbury but only Mallard size. There were four white and seven “tabby” ducklings. The ducklings were quite fearless, and once we stopped the car they were happy nosing around just inches from the wheels — until mother called them to come away. All the while they were making little chirping noises at each other and clearly enjoying the lovely wet day.
Here’s Jemima Puddleduck herself …
Jemima Puddleduck 3
East Carleton, May 2014
And here are some of the ducklings …
Ducklings 2
East Carleton, May 2014
And another with mother in the background …
Mother & Ducklings 1
East Carleton, May 2014
Word: Carabiner & Piton
Carabiner or karabiner
An oblong metal ring with a spring clip, used in mountaineering to attach a running rope to a piton or similar device.
The word is a late introduction (1932 according to the OED) from the world of mountaineering; it is a shortened form of the German karabiner-haken, spring-hook.
Piton
A metal spike fitted at one end with an eye for securing a rope and driven into rock or ice as a support in mountain climbing.
A slightly earlier introduction (1898) which derives from the French mneaning a “ring-bolt”.
Thoughts on Nudity
I recently came across a couple of pieces by writer Nick Alimonos on his blog The Writer’s Disease. And given a number of things which have been happening recently they make some sense (although I don’t agree with everything he says).
These first two quotes are from the article Nudity is the Future from April 2013.
I recently had the fortune to read an article in Cracked, “The Five Craziest Ways Men Have Censored Female Sexuality” … what really stood out for me was how Islamist countries like Iran fight to repress human nature. Censors paste cartoon shirts on all of the female characters on the show Lost, because tank-tops are just too arousing. Even things we would never consider sexual, like a man and a woman sitting on a couch or the bulge of a woman’s blouse, is deemed unacceptable. Iranian censors will even blur a closeup of a woman’s face. No matter how many things the Iranian government tries to omit from TV and movies, boys will find something to be aroused by, because sexual desire comes from within … Trying to repress this instinct is a lost cause. It’s plugging up a pressure cooker bound to explode. The irony is that, by making everything taboo, everything becomes a forbidden fruit. Essentially, Iranian censors are creating the sex crazed society they are trying so desperately to prevent … The battle against free information cannot be won, as history has proven again and again. The only recourse is acceptance, and acceptance is a good thing, because human nature is in the right. Honest, open, free information results in the good of any society. As nudists, we find nothing inherently sexual … so that the act of sex develops naturally, by getting to know a person as a person.
The Internet is changing more than Islamic society, however; it’s changing ours as well. The last irrational, moralistic taboo in America is that of public nudity. There is no difference between an Iranian woman being arrested for going out in the streets without her hair covered and an American woman being arrested for stepping out her front door without a top on. Nobody can give a rational explanation for anti-nudity laws. The government uses, instead, abstract terminology like “disturbing the peace” or “public indecency”. Without realizing it, we criminalize nudity on strictly moral grounds, based on ancient and outdated religious biases that have no place in a modern society.
And these three are from a piece on Alimonos’s philosophy of Naturism.
As Americans, we live in an insane world, where you can legally carry and conceal a gun, but risk imprisonment should anyone see your genitals.
I reject the notion that men and women cannot live in sight of one another without clothes. I reject the belief that bodies are inherently sexual and must be hidden from view. And I know, with certainty, that nudity is not harmful to children — in fact, quite the opposite is true — shaming our kids, making them believe that their bodies are sinful, harms their self-esteem and their sense of identity.
For tens of thousands, if not more than a hundred thousand years, mankind was oblivious to nakedness. After the Ice Age, we adopted textiles to retain heat, but at some point in our history, an invention of necessity became a global neurosis, a hatred for our own bodies.
It seems to me that there is a large amount of common sense there even if some of Alimonos’s views (not really represented here) do support the patriarchy more than one might like.