This is one of the best April Fool articles I’ve seen in a long time.
As always given away by the details, but otherwise all too plausible especially for the Rye coastal area!
Quotes of the Week
A better selection of quotes this week, which reflects a more varied weeks reading.
Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.
[Steve Eley]
When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
[Psychologist BF Skinner]
We all are born mad. Some remain so.
[Samuel Beckett]
Physicists. Just because you’re not smart enough to know what the fuck they’re talking about doesn’t mean God exists.
[]
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
[Stephen Roberts]
Children are naïve – they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you’re asking for trouble.
[Frank Zappa]
Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.
[Frank Zappa; Statement to the Senate Hearing on “Porn Rock”; 1985]
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
[Isaac Newton]
You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
[Frank Zappa]
Just as long as that giraffe is made of choux pastry and dipped in chocolate! Might be best if it doesn’t mate with a pink unicorn too. 🙂
Prime or Not?
I came across this on the intertubes earlier. It may amuse those of a more scientific bent …
Several people are asked to prove that all odd integers greater than 2 are prime.
- Post-graduate mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime. Ha! A counterexample.
- Undergraduate mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime… so by induction, all subsequent odd integers are prime.
- Statistician: Let’s verify this on several randomly selected odd numbers, say, 23, 47, and 83.
- Computer scientist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, segmentation fault?
- Computer programmer: 3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime…
- Physicist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime…
- Mechanical engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is approximately prime, 11 is prime…
- Civil engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime…
- Biologist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is… still awaiting results…
- Psychologist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime but suppresses it, 11 is prime…
- Economist: 2 is prime, 4 is prime, 6 is prime…
- Politician: Shouldn’t the goal really be to create a greater society where all numbers are prime?
- Sarah Palin: What’s a prime?
I especially like the Physicist and Mechanical Engineer ones.
Coffee Houses
Now we all know the importance of coffee houses in the history of our society – Lloyds of London (the insurance market-makers) was started in a coffee house in 1774. By this time the coffee house had been in existence for well over 100 years having been started in London in 1652. Slightly surprisingly the Commonwealth government were in favour of coffee houses as they didn’t provide intoxicating liquor.
But like all good British institutions they had their rabbleous side. I came across this last evening:
There was a rabble going hither and thither, reminding me of a swarm of rats in a ruinous cheese-store. Some came, others went; some were scribbling, others were talking; some were drinking [coffee], some smoking, and some arguing; the whole place stank of tobacco like the cabin of a barge. On the corner of a long table, close by the armchair, was lying a Bible. Beside it were earthenware pitchers, long clay pipes, a little fire on the hearth, and over it the high coffee pot. Beneath a small bookshelf, on which were bottles, cups, and an advertisement for a beautifier to improve the complexion, was hanging a parliamentary ordinance against drinking and the use of bad language. The walls were decorated with gilt frames, much as a smithy is decorated with horseshoes. In the frames were rarities; phials of a yellowish elixir, favourite pills and hair tonics, packets of snuff, tooth powder made from coffee grounds, caramels and cough lozenges.
This is by one Ned Ward writing in the 1690s and quoted in Jonathan Bastable, Voices from the World of Samuel Pepys. Not so much different from your average Starbuck’s really.
[12/52] Delirium
![[12/52] Delirium](https://farm6.static.flickr.com/5052/5565191572_f90d6a9d9d.jpg)
Week 12 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
This was a grab shot from the car while waiting at traffic lights at Greenford Broadway last weekend. I was attracted by the wonderfully colourful primulas (they must be Primula locus-concilium they are such a favourite of local authority Parks & Gardens Departments) in the Spring sunshine.
This wobbly processed form is about how I saw the picture at the time as I was just starting a high fever from some nasty flu-cum-bronchitis-bug-thingy that seems to be doing the rounds here at present. This bug is nasty. Noreen is now four weeks into it and is still not 100%. I thought I’d got away with it (just had a bit of malaise for a few days when Noreen was first down with it). But no, it mugged me and I have spent a large part of the last week snuggled under the duvet trying to get rid of a fever and graveyard cough and feeling like … well let’s not go there. I now feel bodily coldy; still totally depleted of everything both mental and physical; still with a cough, although that is going slowly; but today almost no voice.
But then I have just put away a hearty salad of pulled lamb, lamb’s lettuce, tomato and avocado with a couple of large glasses of white Burgundy (first alcohol in over a week!) which does somewhat restore the soul if not the body.
Quotes of the Week
Slightly thin pickings this week as I’ve been flattened by some nasty flu-cum-bronchitis-bug-thingy all week which has precluded almost everything except lying in bed being date expired.
In the past, when marriage was a more pragmatic institution, love was optional. Respect was essential. Men and women found emotional connection elsewhere, primarily in same-sex relationships. Men bonded over work and recreation; women connected through child rearing and borrowing sugar.
Esther Perel; Mating in Captivity: Sex, Lies and Domestic Bliss]
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
[Richard Feynman]
We still live in a world where progress only happens with funerals.
[Violet Blue]
Every law is an infraction of liberty.
[Jeremy Bentham]
I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
[Rita Rudner]
Auction Eccentrica
Another in our irregular series of eccentric lots from our local auction house.
I’ve been thinking about what it is that makes some of these things so amusing and concluded that it is a mixture of
(a) the strange objects which are put up for sale,
(b) the almost inexplicably incongruous combinations which get put together to make up a lot, and
(c) those which appear totally unintelligible.
Anyway here’s this month’s selection:
A Royal Navy cocked hat by Rowe & Co, and another.
An extensive collection of matchboxes including a complete box of Sotheby’s Special Reserve Matches and two boxes containing ‘The Nostalgia Postcard’.
A mahogany canteen of Pedigree Plate cutlery for eight, including carving set, fish eaters, etc., with detachable legs.
[What do the detachable legs refer to? The ‘canteen’? The ‘fish eaters’? Or the ‘etc.’?]
An automated singing bird in gilt cage.
An interesting mixed lot […] including Gladstone bag, barleytwist candlesticks, British Cafe dominoes, a quantity of Torquay ware, Doulton footwarmer, old jeweller’s drill, old tins, oriental ware, wooden trough, corner brackets, etc.
A tribal drum, carved mask, oriental wooden plaque, ceramic sculpture, boomerang, linen including batik? panel, etc.
A large framed religious tapestry marked Ellen Simpson, aged 15 years, 1858; and a stone elephant.
[A excellent example of the strange combination of incongruous stuff]
A wonderful lot containing an adjustable hearth pot stand, brass motor for spit, old tins, early copper moulds, can opener in the form of a bull’s head, folding spectacles in case, carpet bowls, leather and metal hip flask, cast iron meat mincer, old leather and wooden children’s clogs.
[You just know anything beginning “A wonderful” or “An interesting mixed lot” is going to throw up something which boggles the mind.]
An old ship’s rudder, mahogany pipe stand, three brass candlesticks, small Doulton Lambeth vase, fawn pottery with blue and white raised decoration, novelty pop-up cigarette box, three crucifixes, pewter plate, oriental ware, children’s mugs, cat figurine, etc.
A good late 19th century German cuckoo clock, in carved walnut case, wreathed in vines and with bird surmount, the movement by gong striking and with two pipes, by GHS.
An old cavalryman’s lance in bamboo with steel point and end, branded mark ‘XIIIIX’, with red and white wool pennant attached
Five and a half Victorian architectural cast iron panels.
An antique Indian window frame with shutter door, now fitted with a mirror, and a decorative metal framed box.
A collection of CDs, boxed Lego Technic unopened, a cycle hat, a carton including new gadgets including Braun shavers, cycle light, earphones, flints, new plumbing parts, electric fret saw, a shredder, telephone hand sets, tool boxes, a solar wireless alarm system, a case of screws, Draper appliances (unused), a workbench, a duvet, sleeping bag, teddy bears, an electrical extension reel (boxed), etc.
Six old red painted fire buckets.
[11/52] First Light
Week 11 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
First light on Saturday 19 March.
When I opened the study window to take this I was greeted by a chorus of birdsong, which was really lovely and slightly unexpected in mid-March. There was also a nice frosty chill.
The camera was on “sunset” mode.
Facts of the Week
This is the first in what will probably be an occasional series highlighting unexpected, unusual or just amazing facts I come across. It is really for curiosity value rather than a resource of those who take part in pub quizzes. Wherever possible I will, as always, provide a source for the information. So here is the first selection of factlets …
Each year, an estimated 10,000 shipping containers fall off container ships at sea.
Between five and six million containers are in transit at any given moment.
[]
The Sendai earthquake shifted the earth’s figure axis by about 17 cm and moved the main island of Japan [Honshu] around 2.4 metres.
[US Geological Survey]
The Sendai earthquake also shortened our day by about 1.8 milliseconds (thousands of a second).
[NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
The original Polynesian and South Pacific origin of the word ‘tabu’ actually refers to that which is sacred: the application of a taboo actually designating that which is holy.
[OED]
A Refreshing Perspective
This BBC analysis article by Prof. David Spiegelhalter, Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University puts the radiation risks from the Japanese nuclear situation into perspective. I commend it to everyone as a balanced piece of scientific reporting. Let’s not lose our heads just because those around us are running about being unnecessarily demented. Let’s keep a sense of perspective. And please let’s put an end to all the hysteria!
[Hat-tip Brad Warner at Hardcore Zen]