Category Archives: amusements

amusements, science

Oddity of the Week: Poronkusema

A contender for probably Feedback’s favourite-ever unusual unit arrives in an email from Mark Dowson, and it has the more unusual cachet of likely great antiquity. Apparently, reindeer are unable to walk and pee at the same time: they have to pause at set intervals of distance.
In Finnish, this interval is known as poronkusema or “reindeer’s piss” and was an old-fashioned description of rural distances. By Mark’s calculation, it is about 320 blue-whale-lengths.


This is a WikiFact, but it seems almost too nice to be true. So Feedback asked a friend — the Finnish journalist Heikki Jokinen. He confirms that it is used in Lapland and was delighted to be diverted from other work to discover its actual value, which is about 7.5 kilometres for a reindeer drawing a light sledge — and that it is important: reindeer eating lichen produce urine as strong as battery acid, he says, and they get sick if deprived of their comfort breaks.
From “Feedback”; New Scientist; 22 March 2014

amusements, personal, ramblings

Five Questions, Series 5 #5

I’ve just realised that I never answered the last of the Five Questions in Series 5 that I posed way back at the beginning of the year. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but anyway here at last is that answer.


Question 5:Unicorns or magic carpet as your only form of transport? Why?
That just has to be a magic carpet. It should be much more comfortable a ride and there should be space for others to come along too. Moreover magic carpets probably fly lower, so you can see things along the way.
I assume that unicorns are basically horses. I don’t like horses. To me they are temperamental and untrustworthy beasts. I’ve sat on a horse only once, when I was a kid; it was very scary and bloody uncomfortable. So I can’t imagine being able to cling onto a flying unicorn.
No, the “My Little Pony Club” can have my share of unicorns. I’ll have a magic carpet, thank you!
– oo OO oo –

OK, that concludes Five Questions, Series 5. I’ll do another series in a few months.
Meantime, I would like questions to answer — ask anything and I will see if I can answer it. No promises though ‘cos you really don’t want to know about my … TMIA!