Category Archives: amusements

amusements, environment, science

Fact of the Week: Blue Moons

1 Comment

The term “blue moon” comes from the traditional agricultural naming of the full moons throughout the year.

The 12 full moons we see each year are named according to their relationship with the equinoxes and solstices. The names vary in different regions, but well-known examples are the harvest moon, which is the first full moon after the autumnal equinox, and the hunter’s moon, which is the second full moon after the autumnal equinox. Similarly the Lenten moon, the last full moon of winter, is always in Lent, and the egg moon (or the Easter moon, or paschal moon), which is the first full moon of spring, is always in the week before Easter.

By this system there are usually three full moons between an equinox and a solstice, or vice versa. However, because the lunar cycle is slightly too short for there to always be three full moons in this stretch of time, occasionally there are four full moons. When this happens, to ensure that the full moons continue to be named correctly with respect to the solstices and equinoxes, the third of the four full moons is called a blue moon.

There are seven blue moons in every 19 year period. The last blue moon was on 21 November 2010, and the next will be on 21 August 2013.

[Aidan Copeland in “The Last Word”, New Scientist, 1 October 2011]

amusements, books, current affairs, memes, pleasures, quotes

Quotes of the Week

Well let’s start this week’s selection where we left off last week, with something from John Aubrey …

Even the cats were different, and Aubrey could recall when ‘the common English Catt was white with some blewish piednesse sc gallipot-blew, the race or breed of them are now almost lost’ … Aubrey says that Archbishop Laud had been ‘a great lover of Catts. He was presented with some Cypruss-catts, our Tabby-catts, which were sold at first for 5li a piece. This was about 1637 or 1638’. Tabbies are still called ‘cyprus cats’ in Norfolk.
[Anthony Powell, John Aubrey and His Friends]

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”.
[Isaac Asimov in Newsweek, 21 January 1980]

I discovered books and music while everyone else got into drugs. Books and music were my drugs. What I read and listened to then shaped and changed my life forever.
[Katy Wheatley on her weblog]

I find being middle aged rather liberating. I wear what I like. I eat what I like. I listen to and watch what I like. I do not  feel ashamed of anything that makes me happy and makes my life feel richer, better and more joyous.
[Katy Wheatley on her weblog]

Katy, dearest, how many more times do I have to tell you that you aren’t middle aged? You can’t be middle aged — you’re younger than I am! Anyway I’m not having it, if only because if you’re middle aged then I’m senile and I ain’t ready for that yet.

To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as an easy way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.
[John Perry, University of Stanford, Winner of the 2011 Ig Nobel for Literature]

And finally, confirmation from an unknown source of what we all suspected …

Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.

amusements, science

No Sense of the Ridiculous

Three snippets from the “Feedback” column of this week’s New Scientist. Some people really do have no sense of the ridiculous.

“Generations of medical students and doctors have been taught to tell their patients to ‘never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear’,” Michael Glanfield, himself a doctor, assures us. The Asda supermarket chain has clearly taken this advice to heart. The warning on its own brand “D” battery, which has a diameter of 3.3 centimetres, states “…if swallowed or lodged in the ear or nose seek prompt medical attention”.

Geoffrey Hardman is grateful to transportdirect.info for warning him: “Certain combinations of outward and return journeys would result in you needing to leave your destination before arriving at it”.

“By now you will have noticed that the sole purpose of our exotic expeditions is to gather gems for Feedback,” says regular contributor Jenny Narraway. Her latest is the multilingual wording on a waste bin seen on a walking holiday in the Azores. It said: “Lixo Indiferenciado” for Portuguese speakers, “Poubelle Indiferencie” for French speakers and, for the English, “Undistinguished trash”.

Why is the waste bin on a walking holiday, one wonders?

amusements, links, science

Sublimely Ridiculous

This week’s selection of things which attracted my attention and which you may have missed …

Can the human body combust spontaneously? Most of us think not, unless you’re an Irish Coroner.

Fake degree? Check. Fake Rolex? Check. Fake girlfriend? What? You want fake girlfriend? OK, then see here and here.

Bored with your current home? Fancy your own Lord of the Rings film set? Then build your own Hobbit home. Must admit it looks comfy, but where’s the bathroom?

Now you’ve mastered being an architect here’s just the thing for your design studio … Use your Amazon Kindle as an Etch-a-Sketch. Sadly available only in the US.

And finally the big news of the week: Wasabi fire alarm scoops Ig Nobel prize! Yes, it’s that time of year when the Ig Nobel awards are announced. If you’ve missed out on them before they are serious scientific prizes which honour achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”. Full reports here and here.

Enjoy your weekend!