Category Archives: amusements
Oddity of the Week: Sperm
There is a surprising diversity of size, shape and number of sperm produced by different species.
Just as an example, sperm length varies by several orders of magnitude, and in general the larger the animal the smaller the sperm. For instance porcupine sperm is just 0.0003 cm long. Compare that with the sperm of fruit flies which is 6 cm in size — that’s some 20 times the length of the fly! This only works because the fruit fly’s sperm is like a ball of string which only unravels once inside the female’s reproductive tract (which is longer than the sperm!).
For more amazing facts about sperm see The Biggest Sperm Come In The Smallest Packages – And Other Odd Facts About Male Sex Cells.
Weekly Photograph
One from the archives this week. I spotted this some while back. This is the woodland burial park where my father (at the time) and subsequently also my mother are buried. My father would have been turning in his grave — which is only about 50m from this notice.
Dusk
Norwich, January 2013
Click the image for larger views on Flickr
Thinking Thursday #3 Answer
This week on Thinking Thursday I asked you to come up with the answer to Lewis Carroll’s famous riddle:
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Yes, it is a bit of a trick question because Carroll never intended there to be an answer; it was all part of Alice asking a serious question about the, to a child, mindless pursuits of adults.
However eventually Carroll did provide an answer:
Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!
The spelling of “nevar” is Carroll’s original, being “raven” backwards, but was lost in the printed version due to an over-zealous proofreader.
Of course this hasn’t stopped many other people providing clever answers, including “because Poe wrote on both” and “because they both come with inky quills”. You can find a longer explanation at, inter alia, wiseGEEK.
But I think the answer I like best is “because neither one is made of cheese“. Nor is either a helium balloon.
Something for the Weekend
Thinking Thursday #3
This week on Thinking Thursday were going to look at one of the most famous riddles of all time, and see if you can come up with an answer.
The riddle I pose is one originally penned by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland:
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
As always there is no prize except the fun of the chase but if you wish to put your answer in the comments I’d love to read it.
Answer on Sunday evening, as usual.
Oh and no cheating on this one by looking it up on the intertubes. ☺
Oddity of the Week: London's Fantasy Railway
In 1939 Punch published cartoons of a fanciful railway. But little did they realise that it would become a reality in the 1950s and that it would carry some 2 million passengers.
The reality was the Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway — a narrow gauge railway created in Battersea Gardens by Rowland Emett for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Being Emett it was one huge piece of whimsy, from the three locos, Nellie, Neptune and Wild Goose, and the two stations to the “Do Not Feed the Bats” notices at the tunnel entrance.
Sadly the original lasted only until 1953.
Read more at , The Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railways of Roland Emett and IanVisits.
Something for the Weekend
Oddity of the Week: Serpentfoot
Way away in Chattooga County, Georgia, USA the 82 year old woman who was born Carolyn Marjorie Ann Clay, has filed to change her name. Currently known as Serpentfoot Serpentfoot (according to her driving licence) this wouldn’t be the first time she’s changed her name — or done other weird and outrageous things including stripping nude at a Rome City Commission meeting in protest against them praying at the beginning of meetings.
Unsurprisingly her name change has already been rejected by a judge in Floyd County — despite her claim that it would be shortened to Nofoot Allfoot Serpentfoot. So she has moved to Chattooga County, revised her new name and submitted a new application to the courts there.
And what is that new name? …
Nofoot Allfoot-69-mouth-tail-solids-liquids-gases-animals-vegetable-mineral-all-predators-and-prey-that-consume-and-move-with-feet-fins-wings-wheels-canes-roots-limbs-vines-landslides-dust-wind-water-fire-ice-gravity-vacuums-black-holes-going-over-under-around-and-through-Our-Greater-Self-our-habitat-the-cosmos-of-which-we-are-but-part-and-where-all-life-feeds-upon-other-life-from-the-smallest-atoms-or-bacteria-to-the-great-black-holes-and-dog-eat-dog-and-“Last-Suppers”-where-we-are-what-we-eat-or-consume-and-each-lives-on-in-the-other…∞ Serpentfoot
Read more of this bizarreness in Chattanooga Times Free Press
Ten Things #23
This month I thought we would return to the humorous for our Ten Things …
Ten Exciting New Paint Shades
- Pregnancy Test
- Haddock
- Vampire
- Goblin
- Surgical Appliance
- Apoplexy
- Raw Prawn
- Old Troll
- Maxwell
- Golly