Category Archives: amusements

amusements, books, science

Crocheting Robot Mice

I must share the following; it’s from the “Feedback” column of last week’s (17 April) issue of New Scientist.

We are pleased to see that science is well represented among the contenders for the Diagram prize for the oddest book title of the year. The top titles for 2009 were announced last month by UK magazine The Bookseller, which organises the prize.

Overall winner, with 42 per cent of the 4500 public votes cast, was Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Diana Taimina. This beat off competition from Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by David Crompton, Governing Lethal Behaviour in Autonomous Robots by Ronald Arkin and The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by Ellen Scherl and Maria Dubinski.

The less obviously scientific What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua? by Tara Jensen-Meyer and Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich by James Yannes came second and third, respectively.

Horace Bent, custodian of the prize at The Bookseller, admitted that his personal favourite had been the spoons book, but went on to acknowledge that: “The public proclivity towards non-Euclidian needlework proved too great for the Third Reich to overcome.”

Philip Stone, the prize administrator, said he thought that “what won it for Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes is that, very simply, the title is completely bonkers.”

The Diagram prize has been running since 1978. Its inaugural winner also had a scientific theme: it was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.

The mind boggles at the mere thought of reading almost any of those titles!

amusements, current affairs

Welcome to the Quinquennial Donkey Derby

1 Comment

So at last they’re not only under starter’s orders but the race for the next parliament has begun. No more jostling at the starting tape, this is for earnest now. And already the mud-slinging has started, albeit in a muted way.

There’s an interesting 10 point guide from the BBC on what to watch for during the race. Watch the race with our indispensable guide …

It really matters this time. So we’re always told. Guess it does matter more this time given the fact that the country is bankrupt.  Or does it matter?  (See “policy” below.)

The TV debates will dominate. Yes, dominate the boredom, most like.

The internet will also dominate. Yes we’ll all die under a welter of email, SMS, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other such spheroids. That’s in addition to the usual sheaf of paper stuffed through our letterbox, less than nothing in the papers (no, not even fish & chips; nanny banned them, remember!) and extra drivel on the airwaves.

Slogans will matter less. Did they ever matter more? At all? Mind this could be true; the sound-bite may be less important because lots of people are learning to see through them.

Policy will matter more. Oh, really? You mean any of them have a clue what their policies are? Or how to implement them? And even if they do know, are one lot really much different from the others? Aren’t they all their to feather their own nests?

The battle of the wives. I hear the bottom of a large barrel being scraped. Or are they auditioning for “Sex and the City”? Or to replace Kim and Aggie? Or Nigella Lawson? Someone pass the bucket please.

It could get personal. Delete “could”; insert “will”.

The local factor. It never made much difference before; don’t see why it will now. We’re much more global now; much more knowing about what our masters (tell us) they’re up to. Seems to me that means there’ll be even more voting for the party rather than on local issues.

Lies will be told. This is probably the only certainty here. But wait …

Nobody knows the result. This should be a certainty too. But do fat ladies sing? Will anyone even know the result when the results are in? As the BBC says, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. My money’s on a hung parliament and nothing being able to be done for about 2 years until it all crumbles, by which time the country will be in even deeper doo-doo.

Goggles down for a full house!

amusements, science

Absurb Scientific Papers

Discoblog over on the science channel Discover has reported today a list of 10 absurd scientific papers of 2009 as highlighted in Wired UK magazine.  I list them here for your delectation:

  1. Optimising the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel
  2. Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behaviour
  3. Swearing as a response to pain
  4. Pigeons can discriminate “good” and “bad” paintings by children
  5. The “booty call”: a compromise between men’s and women’s ideal mating strategies
  6. Intermittent access to beer promotes binge-like drinking in adolescent but not adult Wistar rats
  7. Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time
  8. More information than you ever wanted: does Facebook bring out the green-eyed monster of jealousy?
  9. Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?
  10. The nature of navel fluff

Can anyone actually explain to me how any one of these papers usefully expands the sum total of human knowledge? No, I thought not.

amusements, books, sexuality, thoughts

Will He Care?

1 Comment

Quite by accident while undertaking completely different research I happened upon this on Amazon UK earlier today … the Gentleman’s Willy Care Kit …

 

In case it isn’t obvious (why would it be?) the kit is said to comprise: fluffing brush, mirror, medallion, styling shears and the luxury case.

I can’t conceive why I would possibly want one and I must admit to having a good snigger.  After which I’m left with just one question: Why?

amusements, beliefs, current affairs, science

Mythbusters

The latest (March 2010) issue of the BBC’s popular science magazine Focus contains an article busting some of the world’s most common myths.  For example:

Goldfish have short memories. 
False; they have memories which last at least a week according to experiments.

Sugar makes kids hyperactive. 
Experimentally proven to be false.  But that’ll be about as popular a result as the finding that MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism.

Men with big feet have big penises. 
Sorry girls, also false, according to just about every survey ever conducted.  There is no reliable way to determine the size of a guy’s lingam without seeing it.  Enjoy!

At the end of the article they add a few new myths suggested by readers, including the following with rather zen qualities …

In the era of black and white films,the world was black and white.
According to which logic the world didn’t exist before films were invented.  Interesting idea for a thriller story though!

When you jump up, the world moves forwards a bit before you land, so you touch down in a slightly different place.
This is an old one and I’ll get into trouble with the science community here but I reckon this is actually true.  When you jump the world moves on, but so do you as you have angular momentum (essentially forward motion) from when you were attached to earth.  However you will, I suggest, be slowed very marginally by friction with (resistance from) the air and thus will land in a subtly different spot from where you jumped.  But this effect will be so tiny it will be unmeasurable even after a huge number of jumps.  So for all practical purposes this is also false.

People with outie belly buttons are more attracted to people with innie belly buttons because they fit together: like a jigsaw
Would that life were so simple.  But if it were around 80% of us would be single as outies make up only around 10% of the population.  And no-one knows why.

Every zebra, when scanned by a barcode reader, comes up as ‘frozen peas’.
Unless there is some strange default barcode which defaults to “frozen peas” (very unlikely) this can’t be true as a zebra’s stripes do not conform to the coding of thick and thin lines which make up a barcode.  But I love the zen quality of the idea.  Another good plot-line for a short story?

Anyone got any other new myths?