Category Archives: amusements

amusements, beliefs, music, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

A better selection of quotes this week, which reflects a more varied weeks reading.

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.
[Steve Eley]

When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
[Psychologist BF Skinner]

We all are born mad. Some remain so.
[Samuel Beckett]

Physicists. Just because you’re not smart enough to know what the fuck they’re talking about doesn’t mean God exists.
[]

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
[Stephen Roberts]

Children are naïve – they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you’re asking for trouble.
[Frank Zappa]

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.
[Frank Zappa; Statement to the Senate Hearing on “Porn Rock”; 1985]

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
[Isaac Newton]

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
[Frank Zappa]

Just as long as that giraffe is made of choux pastry and dipped in chocolate! Might be best if it doesn’t mate with a pink unicorn too. 🙂

amusements, science

Prime or Not?

I came across this on the intertubes earlier. It may amuse those of a more scientific bent …

Several people are asked to prove that all odd integers greater than 2 are prime.

  • Post-graduate mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime. Ha! A counterexample.
  • Undergraduate mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime… so by induction, all subsequent odd integers are prime.
  • Statistician: Let’s verify this on several randomly selected odd numbers, say, 23, 47, and 83.
  • Computer scientist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, segmentation fault?
  • Computer programmer: 3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime…
  • Physicist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime…
  • Mechanical engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is approximately prime, 11 is prime…
  • Civil engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime…
  • Biologist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is… still awaiting results…
  • Psychologist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime but suppresses it, 11 is prime…
  • Economist: 2 is prime, 4 is prime, 6 is prime…
  • Politician: Shouldn’t the goal really be to create a greater society where all numbers are prime?
  • Sarah Palin: What’s a prime?


I especially like the Physicist and Mechanical Engineer ones.

amusements

Auction Eccentrica

Another in our irregular series of eccentric lots from our local auction house.

I’ve been thinking about what it is that makes some of these things so amusing and concluded that it is a mixture of
(a) the strange objects which are put up for sale,
(b) the almost inexplicably incongruous combinations which get put together to make up a lot, and
(c) those which appear totally unintelligible.

Anyway here’s this month’s selection:

A Royal Navy cocked hat by Rowe & Co, and another.

An extensive collection of matchboxes including a complete box of Sotheby’s Special Reserve Matches and two boxes containing ‘The Nostalgia Postcard’.

A mahogany canteen of Pedigree Plate cutlery for eight, including carving set, fish eaters, etc., with detachable legs.
[What do the detachable legs refer to? The ‘canteen’? The ‘fish eaters’? Or the ‘etc.’?]

An automated singing bird in gilt cage.

An interesting mixed lot […] including Gladstone bag, barleytwist candlesticks, British Cafe dominoes, a quantity of Torquay ware, Doulton footwarmer, old jeweller’s drill, old tins, oriental ware, wooden trough, corner brackets, etc.

A tribal drum, carved mask, oriental wooden plaque, ceramic sculpture, boomerang, linen including batik? panel, etc.

A large framed religious tapestry marked Ellen Simpson, aged 15 years, 1858; and a stone elephant.
[A excellent example of the strange combination of incongruous stuff]

A wonderful lot containing an adjustable hearth pot stand, brass motor for spit, old tins, early copper moulds, can opener in the form of a bull’s head, folding spectacles in case, carpet bowls, leather and metal hip flask, cast iron meat mincer, old leather and wooden children’s clogs.
[You just know anything beginning “A wonderful” or “An interesting mixed lot” is going to throw up something which boggles the mind.]

An old ship’s rudder, mahogany pipe stand, three brass candlesticks, small Doulton Lambeth vase, fawn pottery with blue and white raised decoration, novelty pop-up cigarette box, three crucifixes, pewter plate, oriental ware, children’s mugs, cat figurine, etc.

A good late 19th century German cuckoo clock, in carved walnut case, wreathed in vines and with bird surmount, the movement by gong striking and with two pipes, by GHS.

An old cavalryman’s lance in bamboo with steel point and end, branded mark ‘XIIIIX’, with red and white wool pennant attached

Five and a half Victorian architectural cast iron panels.

An antique Indian window frame with shutter door, now fitted with a mirror, and a decorative metal framed box.

A collection of CDs, boxed Lego Technic unopened, a cycle hat, a carton including new gadgets including Braun shavers, cycle light, earphones, flints, new plumbing parts, electric fret saw, a shredder, telephone hand sets, tool boxes, a solar wireless alarm system, a case of screws, Draper appliances (unused), a workbench, a duvet, sleeping bag, teddy bears, an electrical extension reel (boxed), etc.

Six old red painted fire buckets.

amusements, environment, memes, quotes, topographical

Facts of the Week

This is the first in what will probably be an occasional series highlighting unexpected, unusual or just amazing facts I come across. It is really for curiosity value rather than a resource of those who take part in pub quizzes. Wherever possible I will, as always, provide a source for the information. So here is the first selection of factlets …

Each year, an estimated 10,000 shipping containers fall off container ships at sea.
Between five and six million containers are in transit at any given moment.
[]

The Sendai earthquake shifted the earth’s figure axis by about 17 cm and moved the main island of Japan [Honshu] around 2.4 metres.
[US Geological Survey]

The Sendai earthquake also shortened our day by about 1.8 milliseconds (thousands of a second).
[NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]

The original Polynesian and South Pacific origin of the word ‘tabu’ actually refers to that which is sacred: the application of a taboo actually designating that which is holy.
[OED]

amusements, quotes

You Just Can't Get the Staff

Yesterday we received a communication from the Civil Service Club in London. In this they advertise their Annual Dinner as follows …

Three course dinner with Champagne reception & Canopies, with the Committees guest speaker.

How many committees? And whose marquees?

amusements, current affairs

Committee Decisions

Excellent letter in yesterday’s Times:

Sir, Professor John Murrell has been given the wrong definition of a committee. I always understood that a committee was a group of people who individually could do nothing, but collectively decided that nothing could be done.
Campbell Sylvester

amusements, people, quotes, thoughts

Marriage Quotes

Yesterday I came across these Marriage Quotes from Kids. As always there’s more than a grain of truth in them!

Question: How can a stranger tell if two people are married?
You might have to guess based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.
[Derrick, age 8]

Question: What do most people do on a date?
Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.
[Lynnette, age 8]

Question: Is it better to be single or married?
It’s better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.
[Anita, age 9 ]

amusements, beliefs, pleasures, quotes, science, sexuality, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week’s selection of the good, the bad and the ugly …

Relationships are like a card game where you start with two hearts and a diamond, but end up needing a club and spade.
[Tony Green on Facebook]

Every concept the mind can create includes its opposite. No thought is ultimate because each idea depends on every other idea it might possibly contrast with for its apparent self existence. Our own existence as individuals is dependent upon all of creation. This does not negate our individual existence. It is an attempt to see our individual existence in a different light.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com]

When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?
[Montaigne]

Urethane treatment is standard on all products (with exceptions)
[Amtico Flooring Brochure]

Comedians really aren’t that different from scientists. They look at the world and question why things are as they are and try to find an answer. It’s just that scientists do it with far more rigour and the possibility that humanity will be much improved by their discoveries. Perhaps comedians are just lazy scientists. Very, very lazy, stupid scientists.
[Robin Ince, The Times Eureka Supplement; March 2011]

And finally, dreadful joke of the week …

Why did the scarecrow win a Nobel prize?
Because he was out standing in his field.
[The Times Eureka Supplement; March 2011]

Bring back Basil Brush, all is forgiven!

amusements, pleasures, science, thoughts

Mapping the Cat Brain

Oh, yes. Cat’s certainly do have brains. They have very well developed, subtle and devious brains. In fact it has been shown recently that Cats Adore and Manipulate Women. They do it to men as well, but either they don’t like men as much or we’re more immune to it.

The bond between cats and their owners turns out to be far more intense than imagined, especially for cat aficionado women and their affection reciprocating felines, suggests a new study.
[…]
The researchers determined that cats and their owners strongly influenced each other, such that they were each often controlling the other’s behaviors. Extroverted women with young, active cats enjoyed the greatest synchronicity, with cats in these relationships only having to use subtle cues, such as a single upright tail move, to signal desire for friendly contact.

And then today I came across this mapping of the cat’s brain at CatStuff.

In the light of this latest research the diagram clearly ought to contain a tiny gland for sniffing out male humans and a much larger gland for detecting females.

Oh come on lads, you already knew we stood no chance!