Category Archives: amusements

amusements, environment, history, links, medical, science

Monthly Links

And for the last time in 2019, here’s our monthly round-up of links to items you may have missed.

Science, Technology, Natural World

There are lots of Rose-Ringed Parakeets in London (far from their native home in Northern India). How did they get here? The legend is that they were released by Jimi Hendrix, but they’ve been around a lot longer than that. Two reports on the latest investigation from the BBC and The Oldie.

A fossil forest has been found in New York State, and it is the oldest one known.

Now to one of my favourite subjects: wasps. Just what is the point of wasps?

There’s a new formula for converting your dog’s age into human years. [£££]
But note: it is different for cats.

Health, Medicine

There is a significant resurgence of measles with a number of countries, including the UK, losing their measles-free status.

A very small number of people have a mystery illness which causes a fever every few weeks, but finally the cause has been identified. [£££]

In the stomach, the mind, or the brain? Migraine’s causes and remedies have been debated for 2,000 years. [LONG READ]

Medical science has traditionally neglected women’s health, and still does. Why does medicine have a gender problem?

Environment

Now here’s an idea: reintroduce national service and use the victims to do environmental and conservation work.

How often do you mow your lawn? There’s a good chance the answer is “too often”, because less frequent mowing can help wildlife.

Social Sciences, Business, Law

We’ve heard of environmental rewilding, well now here’s political rewilding: the antidote to our current malaise of the demagogues.

Art, Literature, Language

Japanese artist Masayo Fukuda hand-cuts intricate images from a single sheet of paper.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Here are ten English archaeological finds of the last decade.

Archaeologists do keep pushing the boundaries. In Indonesia they’ve now found the earliest known cave art by modern humans.

And in Greece archaeologists have unearthed gold-lined Mycenaean royal tombs.

2020 is the 850th anniversary of the assassination of Thomas Becket, and it will be a year of commemorative events, culminating in a major exhibition at the British Museum.

Prince Albert is usually blamed for introducing the Christmas tree, but it is likely to be much older than that. One early instance dates from 1419 in Freiburg.

So, apart from the obvious, what went on in a medieval brothel? Well, it often wasn’t pleasant. [LONG READ]

An academic has discovered annotations by Elizabeth I on a document in Lambeth Palace Library.

Religious and secular celebration of Christmas was forbidden by the English Puritan republic, but not entirely successfully. [LONG READ]

London

There’s a very elderly eagle in Croydon.

The Greek god Priapus, protector of gardens, fruit plants, livestock … and male genitals, is an unlikely subject for a statue in the discrete streets of Pimlico.

Food, Drink

Peru, as we all know, is the home of the potato, and they have a potato museum which conserves well over a thousand varieties and could be important in breeding the plants to handle climate change.

Haggis is a traditional Scots food. Or is it? [LONG READ]

Lifestyle, Personal Development

So how do couples stay together long-term? Understanding the other person is trying to do their best is important.

John Horgan in Scientific American investigates whether mysticism can help us solve the mind-body problem.

Naked therapy is a (non-sexual) treatment to help people become more comfortable with their bodies.

How the tattoo became fashionable in Victorian England. [LONG READ]

And, oh dear, it seems the codpiece is back in fashion.

Shock, Horror, Humour, Wow!

And finally … In Turkey there’s a bee which builds its nests out of flower petals. and they’re stunningly beautiful.

That’s all for now, folks. The Fates permitting, we’ll be back in January. Meanwhile a happy New Year to everyone!

amusements, pleasures

Amusements of the Year, 2019

Here’s my usual round-up of things which have amused me during the year. Yet again, this has not been a vintage year. So here are the pick of this year’s sparse fruit.

Product of the Year
This is one of the few categories which has done well this year, with quite a few contenders. It has been almost impossible to separate the top five:

ToppCock Silver Hygiene for Man Parts with Odor Neutralizer
Yes, lads, a deodorant for your dangly bits. Buy it on Amazon.

Frisky Light Up Fidget Spinner Anal Plug
It’s what it says on the tin. Again, buy it on Amazon.

 

Unicum Zwack
Yes, I’m afraid we’re still being disreputable, except that this one is a Hungarian liqueur which can be obtained from The Drink Shop.

Cowshed Cow Pat Moisturising Hand Cream
This one’s specially for the girls. Again it may be procured from Amazon.

Walkers Crisps: Brussels Sprout Flavour
As if Brussels Sprouts weren’t bad enough with turkey, Walkers now make special Sprout flavoured crisps. I can hardly wait!

 

Headline
Well, of course, we had to exclude every thing to do with Brexit and the nonsense of the General Election. And that left us with these two winners:

Halal holiday bookings soar as Muslims opt for the Med
From the Guardian, 10 March 2019.

Five hundred goats save the Ronald Reagan library from wildfires
Again from the Guardian, this time on 31 October 2019.

Plonker of the Year
Leaving aside Boris Johnson, there was only ever going to be one winner here:

Jacob Rees-Mogg for this comment on Twitter: The vassal state must not be replaced by penal servitude.

Magazine / Newspaper Title
This year’s award for the best magazine or newspaper title has to go to the Olive Oil Times. Next year the Popeye Times perhaps?

Auction Item
As regular readers will know, we love the strange things which people sell at auctions. This year’s superlative has to be from our local auction house in July:
A pair of designer novelty Christmas trees made from scouring pads on silver plated bases

Personal Name
The winners here are a pair of twin girls born in early December to Peter Florence and his partner: Lark Win Florence and Winter Glad Florence.

Organisation Name
Our winner here is the fucking wonderful Whitstable Profanity Embroidery Group.

Place Name
And, yes, we’re keeping the vein of profanity for this year’s place name winner:
Katies Crotch Road in Maine.

Oxymoron
The accolade for this year’s best oxymoron goes to … Hot Coolant which I spotted as a label by a filler cap on a Chiltern Rail train.

Animal
So now to our animal of the year, where we have two winners but for different reasons.

First place goes to Wisdom the Laysan Albatross who is the world’s oldest known wild bird at 68 years old, and who has produced 30 chicks.

And then there’s the wonderfully named Alston’s singing mouse, Scotinomys teguina

Sport
Having said this isn’t a vintage year, I again find myself having to declare a group with two winners. So this years joint winners of sport of the year are: Unicycle Hockey (basically Ice Hockey on unicycles) and Mule Dressage. In both cases one is left asking “Why?”.

Do what?
There are five winners in this year’s competition to make one say “WTF?”.

I would favor to call together among anyone sympathetic to pursuing higher tangled community subjects as regards our line of work, associate me through my web page conceding that you think the same.
[Hat-tip: Chris Comley on Facebook, 21 January 2019]

… light is known to be fuzzy at the quantum level. With the help of a team in Australia, researchers are sharpening the light by squeezing the fuzziness.
[From BBC News]

This book examines literary representations of hyperlocal spaces that subvert the idea of grounded and organic spatial identities. Figures such as the pond, the scientific particle, and Wedgwood creamware often go unnoticed, but they exemplify important shifts in culture and aesthetics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Hyperlocal in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literary Space argues that these objects, as well as locations such as alcoves in remote shires, city inns, and mountain retreats, were portrayed by writers in the late eighteenth and early-to-mid nineteenth centuries as gambits that challenged cultural hegemonies. It shows that the hyperlocal space or object, though particular, reaches beyond itself, affording an elasticity that can allow those things that seem beneath notice to reveal broader cultural significance.
[The blurb for Nicholas Birns, The Hyperlocal in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literary Space]

We introduced a control groups for this treatment group as one each for the three treatment groups too.
[Hat-tip: Steve Olle]

Y’all need to remember that heteronormative whiteness is the discursive cultural mechanism by which an oppressive hegemonic discourse of phallogocentrism serves to delegitimise a black/homoexclusive modality and reinscribes a proxi-fascist rearticulation of power structures.
[Titania McGrath on Twitter]

OK, so that’s all for this 2019 edition. We’ll be looking out for brilliance again next year; contributions are always welcome. Let’s see if we can make it a vintage year!

amusements, words

100 Day Challenge: Words #11

Episode eleven (days 51 to 55) of my 100 day challenge to find words I don’t know. I’m scraping words from https://randomword.com/ and each day picking one that I find interesting and which is also in the OED.

Day Date Word Meaning
51 Saturday 21 December ushabti figurine of deceased person placed in Egyptian tomb
52 Sunday 22 December lysarden a wind instrument of the cornett family, predating the serpent
53 Monday 23 December yellowplush ** a footman, especially one who wears breeches made of yellow plush; an underling; a lackey
54 Tuesday 24 December byrnie coat of mail or breastplate
55 Wednesday 25 December guyot a flat-topped, submarine mountain

** My favourite of the words presented.

Next episode in a few days!

amusements, links, pleasures

To Keep You Amused …

Just in case anyone is at a loose end over the holidays, the Guardian has printed the King William’s College 2019 GKP, as it has every year since 1951. This is the general knowledge paper 2019-20, the 115th issue, sat by the pupils of King William’s College, Isle of Man.

According to Wikipedia: Since 1904, the College has set an annual general knowledge test, known as the General Knowledge Paper (GKP). The pupils sit the test twice: once unseen on the day before the Christmas holidays, and again when they return to school in the New Year, after spending the holiday researching the answers. It is well known to be highly difficult, a common score being just two correct answers from the list of several hundred. The best scores are 40 to 50 for the unseen test and about 270 out of 360 for the second sitting.

The quiz is always introduced with the Latin motto Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est, “To know where you can find anything is, after all, the greatest part of erudition.”

You can find this year’s GKP at https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2019/dec/24/king-williams-college-quiz-2019 or https://www.kwc.im/uploads/gkp-questions-2019-20.pdf.

As usual I shall not be getting 100% as tonight’s bedtime reading.

amusements, arts, science

Advent Calendar 24


An Advent Calendar of Notable Scientists
Leonardo da Vinci


Image from Wikipedia

An Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, palaeontology, and cartography. He is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualized flying machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, an adding machine, and the double hull.

amusements, science

Advent Calendar 23


An Advent Calendar of Notable Scientists
Edmund Halley


Image from Wikipedia

English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720. From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena, Halley recorded a transit of Mercury across the Sun, and realised a similar transit of Venus could be used to determine the size of the Solar System. From his September 1682 observations, he used the laws of motion to compute the periodicity of Halley’s Comet in his 1705 Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets; it was named after him upon its predicted return in 1758, which he did not live to see.

amusements, science

Advent Calendar 22


An Advent Calendar of Notable Scientists
Johannes Kepler


Image from Wikipedia

German astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. He is a key figure in the 17th-century scientific revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. These works also provided one of the foundations for Newton’s theory of universal gravitation.

amusements, words

100 Day Challenge: Words #10

Episode eight (for days 46 to 50 – we’re halfway through!) of my 100 day challenge to find words I don’t know. I’m scraping words from https://randomword.com/ and each day picking one that I find interesting and which is also in the OED.

Day Date Word Meaning
46 Monday 16 December sindonology the study of the Turin Shroud
47 Tuesday 17 December gelada an Ethiopian baboon, Theropithecus gelada, characterized by a heavy mane in the adult male, and by a tufted tail
48 Wednesday 18 December vervecine ** of or pertaining to a sheep
49 Thursday 19 December vallum rampart; wall of earth thrown up from a ditch
50 Friday 20 December hyperarchy excessive government

** My favourite of the words presented.

Next episode in a few days!

amusements, science

Advent Calendar 21


An Advent Calendar of Notable Scientists
Edward Jenner


Image from Wikipedia

English physician and scientist who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, the world’s first vaccine. The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from Variolae vaccinae (smallpox of the cow), the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox. Jenner is often called “the father of immunology”, and his work is said to have “saved more lives than the work of any other human”

amusements, quotes

Monthly Quotes

OK, so we’ve got to the last round-up of iinteresting and/or amusing quotes for this year. So here goes …

Firewood, after becoming ash, does not again become firewood. Similarly, human beings, after death, do not live again.
[Eihei Dogen]

When an animal is being particularly busy underneath a few leaves, thinking very deeply about things, giving himself up to very serious reflection, he does not want to be disturbed.
[AA Milne]

Preparation and precaution were, however, the natural flowers of Mr Mudge’s mind, and in proportion as these things declined in one quarter they inevitably bloomed elsewhere. He could always, at the worst, have on Tuesday the project of their taking the Swanage boat on Thursday, and on Thursday that of their ordering minced kidneys on Saturday. He had, moreover, a constant gift of inexorable inquiry as to where and what they should have gone and have done if they had not been exactly as they were.
[Henry James, In the Cage]

Science is not a system of beliefs. According to the philosopher Karl Popper, science is the search for truth, not the search for certainty. It is an iterative process of posing a question, designing a controlled experiment to test the question, and making interpretations based on experimental outcomes.
[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-do-we-know-what-we-know/]

Last sleep in day of holiday
White linen sheets
In an all white room
Two stir slowly
As winter day breaks
Fingers trace along lines
Till hands open unto curves
Skin awakens before eyes
Warmth beckons our movement
As instinct guides
On a January morn
[KiraLili; Slow January Morn]

eyes slurred dews cherry
kisses and masturbations
a high school story
[Rajat Kanti Chakrabarty; A High School Story]

late at night
a shepherd
woke his wife
 
I saw … heard
angels sing
in the sky!
 
it’s the wine
she mumbled
or UFOs!
[Paul Callus, A Light-Hearted Christmas]

What if Dogen was, like, right about all that “there are millions of eyes everywhere” stuff? What if, like, the universe is the Ultimate Surveillance State?
[Brad Warner]

To an astonishing degree, nature is the way it is because it couldn’t be any different.
[Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine]

All that was required of them (ie. the brain-washed masses) was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.
[George Orwell]

That’s all for now. Have a good Christmas and New Year and we’ll see you with more quotes in January.