Category Archives: amusements

amusements

DID – NOT!

Quite some time ago I came across the idea of an antitheses to Desert Island Discs.

For those not in the know, DID is a long running (it started in 1942!) weekly BBC Radio programme in which a public figure (the castaway on the eponymous island) chooses the eight pieces of music they would want to have with them. They are also allowed one book (in addition to The Bible and The Works of Shakespeare) and one luxury.


In the version I have in mind one chooses the music etc. one would least like to have. So here are my choices:

Least Favourite Records

  1. Middle of the Road, Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep
  2. Helen Kane, I taut I taw a Puddy Tat. Genuine torment of my childhood.
  3. Anything Country & Western
  4. Beatles, Blackbird, from the White Album. This always makes me depressed, which is the last thing I’ll need.
  5. Paul McCartney, Mull of Kintyre
  6. Vivaldi, Four Seasons
  7. Pachelbel, Canon in D major
  8. And finally it is a toss up between opera and Mozart. On balance I think I’d hate to have anything operatic (Gilbert & Sullivan excepted).

Least Favourite Book
I’d probably choose Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses which I am totally unable to read. I’d also not be too keen an anything by Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontës, Thomas Hardy (you can blame school for that collection).

Least Favourite Luxury
Golf clubs or Scuba diving gear — I cannot imagine ever wanting to do either, although I suppose the golf clubs could be useful for building a shelter or clubbing meat to death.

Anyone else fancy joining in? If so post your choices on your blog and leave a comment so we can all enjoy them. 🙂

amusements, current affairs

Silly Fools Day

Yeah, I know it’s the silly season. Everyone is on holiday and the media is being run by caretaker journos who don’t know one end of a biro from the other. But really, you’d think it was All Fool’s Day!

In the last couple of days we’ve had not one but two, yes, two, patently stupid stories blown up out of all proportion.

Today there appeared this superb notice at Farringdon Station on the London Underground.


Yes, it got seriously reported this morning. Until it became apparent to even the least intelligent that it was a most excellent hoax. So how do we know it’s a hoax? Do all ladies wear trousers and socks? Does no-one wear shorts? A real H&S concern would have covered these, wouldn’t it; and probably closed the station? Whoever perpetrated it should be really pleased for they did an excellent job of conning the unwary.

I just hope that if the perpetrator was a London Underground employee his (or her) bosses see the funny side of the prank: they certainly should do.

But that was just an amusing diversion compared with my second case: a lion on the loose in Essex.

Now look, good burghers of Essex, we know you have the reputation for not being the sharpest knives around, but … A lion? In St Osyth? Really!?!?!?

I’m quite prepared to believe that there’s the odd puma, even leopard, jaguar or lynx, prowling around the English countryside. But lions and tigers — oh my, no! They are just too large, and too hungry, to hide for long.

Yeah precisely, it didn’t hide. There were newspaper photos. Yes they were all of a male lion. And what was reported? A lioness. Yes, those photos are known to be fakes, made up by the press, for the press because they had nothing else to go on.

Mind you, we can’t really blame you Essex girlies for taking it all seriously, when the local plod’s reaction is totally OTT. As usual Heresy Corner does the demolition job. The Essex Constabulary were found wanting in the intelligence stakes.

Still I suppose it’s more fun than the pranks of assorted government ministers, City bankers and press barons. Oh, hang on. Isn’t that where we came in?

So if anyone can genuinely find, with 30 days, killer mice within 5 miles of St Osyth or an unclaimed lioness on the loose at Farringdon Station, I’ll eat my hat — as long as it’s a chocolate hat, that is!

amusements, pleasures, quotes

Quotes about Cats

Good quotes seem to be slow arriving at the moment. Maybe they’re like London buses and there will the three along in 5 minutes time. Meanwhile I thought we’d have a few quotes about my favourite animal: the Cat.

Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes.
Theophile Gautier

There are people who reshape the world by force or argument, but the cat just lies there, dozing, and the word quietly reshapes itself to suit his comfort and convenience.
Allen & Ivy Dodd

I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
Hippolyte Taine

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
Jean Cocteau

No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape
can ever totally remove his fur from your couch.
Leo Dworken

Cats’ hearing apparatus is built to allow the human voice to easily go in one ear
and out the other.
Stephen Baker

Cats are mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.
Sir Walter Scott

The cat is a dilettante in fur.
Theophile Gautier

amusements, science

A Rich Seam

The “Feedback” column in the latest edition of New Scientist (dated 4 August) mines a rich seam of amusements.

First there is an item reporting some mathematical work in pointless topology, which is what most of us thought about higher mathematics anyway.

There is an item reporting a conference call for papers as specifying All papers and presentations must be incomprehensible English, as would be expected at a technical conference.

And there’s a product description for a solar light which is ideal for areas where conversational electrical supply is not available.

This is followed by an amusing reference to the Large Hadron Kaleidoscope.

Finally I have to give you this piece in full as a masterpiece of lateral thinking:

Talk about units in Feedback reminds Tony Emerson of a story from “the 1950s or 60s” about “a scientist working in one of the atomic establishments”. This person got fed up with directives to use different systems of units — those based on the centimetre, gram and second; those semi-officially based on the metre, kilogram and second; and the very official units of the International Standards Organization. So they reported pressures in stones per acre.

The stone is a traditional English measure of the weight of people or grain — 14 pounds or 6.35 kg — and an acre, a unit of area, is 4047 square metres. As Tony says, stones per acre would be “the original agricultural unit” of crop yield. Its application to atomic research doesn’t bear thinking about.

Inspired!