Rodents are the largest group of mammals with over 2000 different species.
Category Archives: science
Quotes of the Week
This week’s accumulation of leaf-mould …
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
[Martin Luther King, Jr]
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
[Steven Weinberg]
What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.
[Anthony Robbins]
The idea of monogamy hasn’t so much been tried and found wanting, as found difficult and left untried.
[GK Chesterton]
The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is the license to be unfaithful.
[Carl Jung in a letter to Freud, 30 January 1910]
Why does society consider it more moral for you to break up a marriage, go through a divorce, disrupt your children’s lives maybe forever, just to be able to fuck someone with whom the fucking is going to get just as boring as it was with the first person before long?
[Susan Squire, I Don’t: A Contrarian History of Marriage]
If Botticelli were alive today he’d be working for Vogue.
[Peter Ustinov]
When we were kids, our mums used to write our name in our school uniform. Now we are adults, we have other peoples names on the front of our clothes!
[Thoughts of Angel]
Fact of the Week
Because fit is so important in the effectiveness of condoms, World Health Organization guidelines specify different sizes for various parts of the world: a 49-millimeter-width condom for Asia, a 52-millimeter width for North America and Europe, and a 53-millimeter width for Africa (all condoms are longer than most men will ever need) … According to an article published in Nature, Japanese and Chinese men’s testicles tend to be smaller than those of Caucasian men, on average. The authors of the study concluded that “differences in body size make only a slight contribution to these values.” Other researchers have confirmed these general trends, finding average combined testes weights of 24 grams for Asians, 29 to 33 grams for Caucasians, and 50 grams for Africans.
[Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, Sex at Dawn]
So there you are girls … Negroes really do have larger equipment. And the Chinese remain inscrutable. Not exactly PC but then that’s science for you!
Listography – Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
As this seems to be confessional time, here is Kate’s Listography from last week that I missed doing. It’s Things I’d Change About Myself … but more specifically characteristics I’d change. (Apparently the vanity of how I look is not allowed.) Hmmm…
My Weight. What do you mean this counts as looks? No it doesn’t. I’d look like a sack of spuds whether I was twice the size I should be or not. I have this characteristic which means I eat too much. Not necessarily the wrong things. Just too much. And if I’m not careful I drink too much beer as well. And I seem to be unable to switch it off. Why can’t I be down to fighting weight and sexy? Even hypnotherapy has so far only succeeded in chipping odd bits off the corners. And it’s all linked to …
Depression. Wouldn’t I love to get rid of my depression. It is so destructive. And I suspect I’ve had it since childhood. I also suspect that, although it is probably multi-factorial there is a genetic component; my father and his father were both depressive. I do seem to have made some progress here as a result of the hypnotherapy. My depression is now much less (giving up work helped a lot!) and I’ve halved the dose of my anti-depressants. Maybe that one is amenable to being smacked on the head.
Patience. I admit I’m not patient. I never have been. Although again I’m a lot better than I used to be. I hate being late. I hate others being late, or dithering, or being stupid, or disorganised. I hate standing in queues. I hate it when things don’t go my way; I get annoyed and sweary. Gggrrrrrrr! Just get a life and relax will you! NOW!
I’m not quite sure how to sum up this next one. But I would like to be less prone to having my arse stuck in my chair, doing more around the home, helping and generally being more engaged. I don’t mind being inept with my hands and having ten left thumbs for fingers (after all my father had twenty left thumbs and he survived to be 86). It’s partly down to the depression, but I feel that is really only an excuse. But I would appreciate being able to make myself do more; things might get done then. And I know Noreen would appreciate this too.
Finally, I need to be able to let go; be less “in control” all the time. Everything I do and say seems to be controlled; thought out; calculated. There isn’t enough spontaneity; not enough emotion. I seem to be frightened of being emotional, letting my emotions out and just allowing my self to relax into things and go with the flow. And for some strange reason it feels as if it has gotten worse recently. Or maybe I’ve just become more aware of it. Definitely something I need to work on.
Word of the Week
Hoatzin
A species of colourful, remarkably saurian, chicken-like bird, Opisthocomus hoazin, found in swamps, riverine forest and mangrove of the Amazon and the Orinoco deltas of South America. It is notable for having chicks that possess claws on two of their wing digits; the chicks are also able to swim and climb — useful when you’re a pheasant-sized bird which nests in trees over water!
It is brown in colour, with paler underparts and an unfeathered blue face with maroon eyes; its head is topped by a spiky, rufous crest. The Hoatzin is herbivorous and has an unusual digestive system with an enlarged crop used for fermentation of vegetable matter — broadly analogous to the digestive system of mammalian ruminants. It’s common name of Stinkbird is due to the strong smell produced by the bird, perhaps due to its consumption and fermentation of leaves.
Despite its striking plumage, unwary nature and poor flight it seems to be only rarely hunted by the indigenous peoples of its native range. Consequently it is not endangered. It is the national bird of Guyana.
Quotes of the Week
Here’s this week’s usual eclectic and eccentric mix …
Biologists and philosophers have pondered for generations the ways in which our modern lives may be disconnected from our pasts, out of synch … When you look beside you in bed, you notice no more than one animal (alternative lifestyles and cats notwithstanding). For nearly all of our history, our beds and lives were shared by multitudes.
[Rob Dunn, The Wild Life of Our Bodies]
The moment that made us human in that series of happenings was not the language, the gods, or even the ability to draw Rubenesque women in stone. It was when we decided that when a leopard stalked the cave, we ought to go after it and kill it. When we decided to kill a species not for food or in self-defence, but instead in order to control what lived and did not live around us, when we did that, we were then fully human.
[Rob Dunn, The Wild Life of Our Bodies]
Grasses and cows were not the only species we favored. We also came to choose species that were beautiful to our senses … tulips and other flowers are shipped around the world at huge expense. Goldfish live in houses in nearly every country. Dogs, which appeal to our social sense of appeasement and connectedness, were brought into our beds. (Cats – well, no one can explain them.)
[Rob Dunn, The Wild Life of Our Bodies]
Anyone offering subtitles for the following?
[It’s] amazing how the secondary endosymbiosis has left its signature in the topography of plastid membranes like in dinoflagellates and cryptophytes.
[“fer” in a comment at The Loom]
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
[GK Chesterton]
There are more fools in the world than there are people.
[Heinrich Heine]
Is it true that cannibals don’t eat clowns because they taste funny?
[Thoughts of Angel]
Quotes of the Week
The usual eclectic and kleptological collection this week …
Blunt common sense is valued above Gauloise-wreathed nuances of gossip about concepts.
[AC Grayling, The Form of Things]
Religion is false but the masses should be encouraged to believe it; it keeps them in order.
[Plato quoted in AC Grayling, The Form of Things]
Harvester of maidenheads
[Description of the second Earl of Rochester, circa 1660, quoted in AC Grayling, The Form of Things]
The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
[Bertrand Russell]
… and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
[Friedrich Nietzsche]
I like prime numbers … I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your lifetime thinking about them.
[Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time]
The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
[Thomas Carlyle]
Long range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.
[Peter F Drucker]
Life begins at 40 — but so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times.
[Helen Rowland]
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
[Anon]
Skills I Do Not Have, No. 253 of 44975
I present you with the Common Wasp, Vespula vulgaris.
I found this critter dead on the bedroom floor this morning and in picking it up for recycling I realised just what stunning creatures wasps are. We so often think of them a nuisanceful pests whereas they’re amazingly engineered and even in death almost beautiful. So I had to photograph it – click the links below for larger views.
Image 1 (top left) shows just how hairy they are when we think of them as bald. And you can just see the tiny, shiny bulge of the top of the wasp’s compound eye.
Image 2 (top right) shows some of the mazing engineering: just look at the hooks and barbs on the legs – just what is needed for gripping caterpillar/insect prey and crawling over plants.
Image 3 (bottom left) shows the face and jaws which are the characteristics that identify this as Vespula vulgaris rather than any of the other UK species.
Image 4 shows something I’d never realised before (although my book shows it clearly) and that’s that wasps have two pairs of wings: look carefully and you can see in front of the large main wing a smaller wing. No wonder they’re such skilled flyers.
These are tiny, amazingly delicate yet robust insects. This individual, a worker, is just 12mm long with a wingspan of about 22mm. In her lifetime she may well have “salvaged” numerous flies, caterpillars etc. as food for the next generation of grubs – without wasps we would be knee deep in creepy crawlies.
This was taken under my desk lamp (hence the slight colour cast) with my point-an-shoot Lumic TZ8 – which is amazing for macros like this as it will focus down to just a couple of centimetres (much better than my dSLR)!
And as I was taking these I thought: how the hell do you go about dissecting something this small? Clearly scientists have done so, but it’s a skill I don’t have and I’m not dexterous enough to ever conceive how to do it! Amazing insects and amazing scientific work to dissect one!
Montage created with fd’s Flickr Toys
Quotes of the Week
Somehow I’m not writing this week, probably because I’ve spent a lot of time with my head in family history research. But here is this weeks strange set of bedfellows.
First I’ve been reading a 1923 book about my home town and discovered that even Cromwell’s officials in 1650 could write estate agent-ese …
The Presence Chamber. One very large, spacious delightful Room called the Kinge’s Presence Chamber, being wainscotted round with carved wainscott of good oak, coullered of a liver color, and richly guilded with gold, with antique pictures over the same ; the ceiling full of guilded pendants hanging down, setting forth the roome with great splendour […] Also a very fair, large chimny piece of black and white marble, with four pilasters of the same stone […]
[Government Survey of Theobalds Palace, 1650 quoted in Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt]
This really is what it’s thought Theobalds Palace looked like!
And from the same volume this delight …
For, if those enemies to all good endeavours, Danger, Difficulty, Impossibility, Detraction, Contempt, Scorne, Derision, yea, and Desperate Despight, could have prevailed by their accursed and malevolent interposition either before, at the beginning, in the very birth of proceeding, or in the least stolne advantage of the whole prosecution; this Worke of so great worth had never bin accomplished.
[John Stow, Survey of London, quoted in Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt]
And now for some things much more of our time …
Face to face advice on the internet.
[BBC TV London News, 11/07/2011]
Be especially sure to wipe your children down. Children are just about the grimiest thing in the world.
[Rob Dunn at Scientific American Blogs]
Boris Johnson knows even less about geology than he does about geography. Undercutting Ealing with a tunnel means my constituents, and his electoral voters, will fall into the ground. London’s transport system is built on clay, it would cost more money to tunnel through that than if we replaced HS2 with sedan chairs and walked people to Birmingham.
[Ealing North MP, Steve Pound, on Mayor Boris Johnson’s idea of tunnelling HS2 rail under outer London]
Ten Things – July
Number 7 in my monthly series of “Ten Things” for 2011. Each month I list one thing from each of ten categories which will remain the same for each month of 2011. So at the end of the year you have ten lists of twelve things about me.
Something I Like: Beer- Something I Won’t Do: Parachute
- Something I Want To Do: Visit Scilly Isles
- A Blog I Like: Not Exactly Rocket Science
- A Book I Like: Diary of Samuel Pepys
- Some Music I Like: Amanda Palmer, Map of Tasmania
- A Food I Like: Cheese
- A Food or Drink I Dislike: Tapioca
- A Word I Like: Numpty
- A Quote I Like: It will pass, sir, like other days in the army. [Anthony Powell]
Something I Like: Beer