Category Archives: amusements

amusements, food+drink, personal

Ten Things #17

For some time I’ve been collecting fun things one can do which shouldn’t be either especially scary (so no bungee jumping) or outrageously expensive (so no world cruises). I now have a list of 50 which don’t quite form a bucket list for me, although it is interesting to see which ones I’ve done and which I haven’t. When I get round to it I shall put the list on my website, but meanwhile I thought this month we would have a selection, just as a taster.
BA4623Ten Fun Things To Do (which shouldn’t cost a fortune).

  1. Have a summer picnic and remember to take the champagne
  2. See a lunar or solar eclipse
  3. Take part in a performance of Messiah (or any other choral piece) from scratch
  4. Every time you go more than 25 miles from home, buy a postcard and send it to a friend or relative
  5. Have something named after you (eg. new species, park bench, cocktail)
  6. Do some guerilla gardening: find a small piece of neglected public land, plant some flowers there and tend them
  7. Visit a different museum every month for a year
  8. Take a trip on the London Eye (or an equivalent large Ferris wheel) at sunset
  9. Have your fortune told (just don’t take the result too seriously)
  10. Buy yourself some flowers, just because

amusements, science, words

Oddity of the Week: Yi qi

Scientific names can be wonderful for many reasons. [There is] a bird whose name has rhythm, a fish with a fascinating etymology, and a butterfly named for a pioneering (and amazing) woman in entomology. Today’s entry is Yi qi, a newly described dinosaur whose name is interesting in origin and sound, and also wonderfully and surprisingly short.
Actually, the dinosaur is pretty wonderful too. Yi qi was a feathered theropod dinosaur … about the size of a large pigeon. In addition to feathers, it has two really odd features: a bony rod extending from each wrist, and sheets of membranous soft tissue that are preserved near the arms [which seem to be] wing membranes …
… two things about Yi qi‘s name.
First: why “Yi qi” (pronounced “ee chee”)? Yi means “wing” and qi means “strange” in Mandarin … So Yi qi is the “strange winged” dinosaur …

Second: what’s up with just four letters? We’re used to scientific names being long … and difficult to spell or pronounce …
So is Yi qi the shortest scientific name? Well, for an animal no shorter name is possible, because according to the International Code for Zoological Nomenclature … genus and species names must have at least two letters each … As it turns out, though, the race for the shortest name is a tie***: the Great Evening Bat is Ia io, also just 4 letters (and the only scientific name I know without consonants). Yi qi and Ia io have a few things in common besides the succinctness of their names: both are from China, both are flying predators, and both fly on membranous stretched from their arms.
*** With honourable mention to the Australian sphecid wasp Aha ha, at 5 letters.
From Wonderful Scientific Names, Part 4: Yi qi

amusements, books

Oddity of the Week: Oddest Book Title

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Oddest Title of the Year Award
Every year the Diagram Group offers a prize, via the column of the estimable Horace Bent in the Bookseller magazine, to the person in the trade who comes up with the oddest book title published that year. Many — but not all — of the winning titles are from professional, technical, academic and scientific publishers.
Since the prize was established in 1978, winners have included:

  • Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Nude Mice (1978)
  • The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution (1979)
  • Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual (1990)
  • The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling (1993)
  • Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (1996)
  • High-Performance Stiffened Structures (2000)
  • Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service (2001)
  • Living with Cray Buttocks (2002)
  • The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stones (2003)

Other submissions over the years have included:

  • Access to the Top of Petroleum Tankers
  • An Illustrated History of Dustcarts
  • Bombproof Tour Horse
  • Classic American Funeral Vehicles
  • Cooking with Mud: The Idea of Mess in 19th-century Art and Fiction
  • Did Lewis Carroll Visit Llandudno?
  • Diversity of Sulfate-reducing Bacteria Along a Vertical Oxygen Gradient in a Sediment of Schiermonnikoog
  • Fancy Coffins To Make Yourself
  • Lightweight Sandwich Construction
  • New Caribbean Office Procedures
  • Pet Packaging Technology
  • Principles and Practices of Bioslurping
  • Psoriasis at Tour Fingertips
  • Short Walks at Land’s End
  • Tea Bag Folding
  • The Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox
  • The Anger of Aubergines
  • The Fiat-Footed Flies of Europe
  • The Voodoo Revenge Book: An Anger Management Program You Can Really Stick With
  • Throwing Pots
  • Twenty Beautiful Tears of Bottom Physics
  • What is a Cow?: And Other Questions That Might Occur to Ton When Walking the Thames Path
  • Whose Bottom? A Lift-the-Flap Book
  • Woodcarving with a Chainsaw

From: Ian Crofton, Brewer’s Cabinet of Curiosities

amusements, people, photography

Weekly Photograph

So there I was in Uxbridge a few weeks ago, sitting waiting people watching while for Noreen to emerge from M&S, when these three beauties happened along. They seemed to be about to enact Act 1, Scene 1 of Macbeth.

Macbeth Act 1, Scene 1 in Modern Dress
Macbeth Act 1, Scene 1 in Modern Dress
Uxbridge, March 2015
Click on the image for larger views on Flickr