Category Archives: amusements

amusements, science

Oddity of the Week: Banana Radiation

We are exposed to ionising radiation every minute of every day, much of it in the form of background radiation including cosmic rays, rocks in the ground, radon gas, water and food.

banana

Bananas, for example, contain naturally occurring potassium-40, a radioactive isotope of potassium. Incredibly, there is even something known as the ‘banana-equivalent dose’, an attempt to contextualise artificial radiation exposures for the general public.
An X-ray screening at a US airport is roughly two and a half times a banana-equivalent dose.
From Simon Flynn, The Science Magpie (2012)

amusements, people, photography

Weekly Photograph

This week’s photograph was taken last summer while sitting outside a pub in London’s Covent Garden. The guy spend quite some minutes ferreting around his pockets while making mobile phone calls, it appeared all in aid of paying for parking his motorbike. It was street performance at it’s best — completely impromptu!

Click the image for larger views on Flickr
Contortionist
Contortionist
Covent Garden; August 2013

amusements, arts, ramblings

Five Questions, Series 5 #3

So here you go with my answer to question three of the Five Questions in Series 5 that I posed at the beginning of the month.


Question 3: Do stairs go up or down?
Well now there’s a question! It’s a bit like “Is the glass half full or half empty”.
The answer is really either both or neither, depending on one’s philosophical position.
You can look at it as stairs going up to or from something or equally down to or from something.
But do they really?
No, not in my book of logic. Stairs are stationary. It is we who do the going up or down.
mce

So I would submit, m’Lud, that stairs go neither up nor down. They go nowhere. They just are.
Unless of course they’re on the back of a truck (or other conveyance) when they could well be going from place A to place B. But that also may be neither up nor down; or it could be both.
Confused? Yeah, well that’s philosophy and logic, innit!

amusements, photography

Buggered Britain #20

Another instalment in our very occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.
This magnificent frontage is not far from where I live; I spotted it earlier this week. What you cannot see is that the “stonework” is actually some very badly finished concrete and that the sides of the mini-porch-let are scrofulous wood in the same style as the tympanum. The door is a disgrace and the whole was just set off by the dying Christmas tree and recycling bags & bins. Seldom have I seen such awful construction.

buggered

amusements, food+drink

Oddity of the Week: Penguin

Penguin eggs were relished by the Vicomte de Mauduit:

Penguin eggs: greenish white … about the size of a turkey’s, should be eaten hard-boiled, cold with a salad. To hard-boil them takes about three-quarters of an hour; when shelled, the whites appear like pale green jelly … they are as delicious to the taste as they are attractive to the eye.
[The Vicomte in the Kitchen; 1933]


Penguin meat itself was served up by John Thompson, cook on Captain Cook’s first expedition to the Southern Ocean (1768-71); Cook described the flesh as “reminiscent of bullock’s liver”.

amusements

Ten Things #1

BA4623Here beginneth a new monthly series. My idea is that on the tenth of each month I will post a list of 10 things. They may be things I like; things about me; fun things; stupid things; or just random things like ships’ names or types of cauliflower. Who knows until we get there!? It’s just a bit of fun. I’m going to start semi-seriously with …
10 things I want to do in 2014:

  1. Sleep
  2. Eat well
  3. Relax more
  4. Be more active
  5. Be miserly
  6. Keep breathing
  7. Meditation
  8. Have a holiday
  9. Take more photographs
     

    10. And finally what could be better than …

  10. Drink more champagne
amusements

Oddity of the Week: Sheep Walking

OK, guys and gals, here’s another silly little regular (I hope) series to pique your interest in the middle of the week: Oddity of the Week.
There are just so many odd, curious and amusing facts out there. And they just cry out to be shared. Like everything here some will be serious; some will be amusing; and some will just be terminally out of their tree. It all depends how I feel at the time.
Let’s start with one of those real curiosities of English Law, and in this case a modern one:
Sheep-Walking.
On 10 December 2003 the then Under Secretary of State at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Ben Bradshaw MP, provided a Commons written answer to confirm that taking one’s pet sheep for a walk does not require a licence. However, walking one’s pet pig does: a regulation introduced in 1995 to reduce the risk of spreading disease.