A11 Sunset, originally uploaded by kcm76.
I took this photo on the journey from Norwich to London on 27/11/2010, late afternoon. We are heading south across Thetford Chase. I always seem to take shots of those trees as they always stand out well against the sky! Oh, and before anyone asks, no I wasn’t doing the driving!
A few weeks ago I speed read Susie Bright’s Full Exposure: Opening Up to Your Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression. While I found much of the book mundane here are a few snippets which struck me and/or helped crystallise my thinking.
We have no tradition in our culture for showing respect to anything sexual. We don’t promote erotic education. Our health care establishment barely has a clue about our sexual bodies. Our political system finds sex to be a fine whipping boy. The gossips and preachers are our typical sex advisers, and their tone is usually damning, rarely daring.
*****The puritans are suspicious of sex education because it leads to tolerance, and there’s a world of sexual learning in everything from anatomy books to Leaves of Grass [by Walt Whitman] to Hot Legs magazine.
*****The right to free speech, when you get right down to it, is the right to make someone else uncomfortable, to outrage the respectable, and to question everything held dear. Who, after all, needs protection to say they like Mom and apple pie? It’s the same with our legal rights to privacy […] We have persecuted people (from socialists to separatists, gay liberationists to pot smokers) who made unpopular statements or did unusual things.
*****If you are drawn to a non-traditional, non-Western ideology [any ideology? – K], ask yourself where sexual liberation lies in its philosophy. Are masculine and feminine roles fluid and accommodating, or are they drawn to fit a predetermined role? Does your faith tell you that masturbation is selfish, that it wastes one’s precious energy? Or that monogamy is the only mature relationship in the eyes of your God? Are you led to believe that your sexual satisfaction is something that only your faith can give you, or some¬thing that must be sacrificed to get closer to essential truths?
If any of these Rules of Living sound familiar, ask yourself why something that is supposed to be so very divine and far-reaching […] would hand you [a] load of body-loathing, double-standard, sexually shaming intolerance.
*****What wouldn’t I give for even one politician to get up and say, “One thing I’ve learned from this awful mess is that we must decriminalize sex between consenting adults”! Now that would take some honesty, not to mention balls.
*****There’s a difference between secrecy – hiding significant information – and privacy, which is our right to maintain an existence that isn’t constantly orbiting around our mate. Secrecy devastates relationships, but privacy enhances them, because it distinguishes us; it resists the urge to merge.
The universe is not only queerer than we suppose,
but queerer than we can suppose.[JBS Haldane]
It is reported that the following edition of the Book of Genesis was discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And Adam said, “Lord, when I was in the garden, you walked with me every day. Now I do not see you any more. I am lonesome here and it is difficult for me to remember how much you love me.” And God said, “I will create a companion for you that will be with you forever and who will be a reflection of my love for you, so that you will know I love you, even when you cannot see me. Regardless of how selfish and childish and unlovable you may be, this new companion will accept you as you are and will love you as I do, in spite of yourself.”
And God created a new animal to be a companion for Adam. And it was a good animal. And God was pleased.
And the new animal was pleased to be with Adam and he wagged his tail. And Adam said, “But Lord, I have already named all the animals in the Kingdom and all the good names are taken and I cannot think of a name for this new animal.”
And God said, “Because I have created this new animal to be a reflection of my love for you, his name will be a reflection of my own name, and you will call him DOG.”
And Dog lived with Adam and was a companion to him and loved him. And Adam was comforted. And God was pleased. And Dog was content and wagged his tail.
After a while, it came to pass that Adam’s guardian angel came to the Lord and said, “Lord, Adam has become filled with pride. He struts and preens like a peacock and he believes he is worthy of adoration. Dog has indeed taught him that he is loved, but no one has taught him humility.”
And the Lord said, “I will create for him a companion who will be with him forever and who will see him as he is. The companion will remind him of his limitations, so he will know that he is not worthy of adoration.”
And God created CAT to be a companion to Adam. And Cat would not obey Adam.
And when Adam gazed into Cat’s eyes, he was reminded that he was not the supreme being.
And Adam learned humility. And God was pleased. And Adam was greatly improved.
And Cat did not care one way or the other.
I’ve today spotted the following on PubMed. The mind boggles!
Removal of a Long PVC Pipe Strangulated in the Penis by Hot-Melt Method.
Jiatao J, Bin X, Huamao Y, Jianguo H, Bing L, Yinghao S.
Department of Urology, Changhai Hospital, […] China.Abstract
Introduction. Penile incarceration for erotic or autoerotic purposes has been reported in a wide range of age groups, and often presents a significant challenge to urologic surgeons. No ready method has been reported for removing a polyvinylchloride (PVC) pipe entrapped on the penis. Aim. To present our experience in using hot-melt method to remove a constricted PVC pipe on the penis. Methods. A long melting split was made on the PVC pipe entrapped on the penis by using the long narrow branch of forceps heated on a gas stove. Results. The heated forceps was able to make a melt split on the PVC pipe. Consequently, the PVC pipe was removed by pulling the edges of the pipe apart without much difficulty. The total operation time was 20 minutes. Conclusion. Penile incarceration is a urologic emergency, for which resourcefulness is required in some unexpected cases. Hot-melting has proved to be an easy and effective method for removing penile strangulation by a PVC pipe. To our knowledge, it is the first report about the removal of PVC pipe entrapped on a penis.
Voyager 1 is one of the most successful space missions of all time. (See the Bad Astronomy blog and NASA for lots more detail.) Launched in 1977, it visited Jupiter and then Saturn, providing better close-ups of the two planets than had ever been seen before. But it sailed on, crossing the orbits of both Uranus and Neptune (its sister, Voyager 2, actually flew by these two planets). Now after 33 years, it is 17 billion kilometres (10.6 billion miles) from the Sun and has reached the point where the solar wind has slowed to a stop. In another 3-4 years it will truly be in interstellar space and entirely beyond the sun’s influence.
Just imagine! Voyager was built and launched before personal computers were everywhere (it was 4 years before IBM PC was announced), before cell phones were a commodity and when the internet was still a research and defence tool! It is based on Z80 (remember the Sinclair ZX80?) and/or 1807 computer chips. It is still phoning home to send back streams of useful data and its battery/power supply is expected to last until 2025 – that’ll be almost 50 years in service! Even more amazing is the thought that Voyager 1 has already been flying for almost a third of the time since the Wright Brothers first heavier than air flight in 1903.
And Voyager 1’s sister Voyager 2 is doing much the same, but flying in a totally different direction. What’s more earlier this year engineers reset the software in Voyager 2 to correct a fault which was corrupting its data transmissions. And that’s with a transmission delay of around 15 hours! – so 15 hours for the signal to reach Voyager and at least another 15 hours before you know if its received and working.
On top of that these two spacecraft are fractionally not where they should be according to our best theories of ballistics. That in itself is proving to be interesting new science as the cosmologists try to understand why this is.
As one a commenter at Bad Astronomy says:
I’m not sure what’s most amazing – that this machine is still working after 30 years in deep space (hell, how many machines do you know that can work non-stop without maintenance for 30 years in a nice warm garage?), the incredible distance that this probe has brought our eyes to by proxy, the fact that it’s literally leaving the breath of the sun behind and venturing into the still coldness of interstellar space, or the fact that we can actually communicate with the probe over such distances.
However you look at it this is some stunning achievement!
When I post these quotes it shouldn’t be assumed that they are new to me. Very often they are quotes I have know (even if only vaguely) for some while, but which I have stumbled across during the week and wished to (re) record. For instance the first two of this week’s selection have been useful on many occasions over the years.
Listen, strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony […] You can’t expect to wield supreme power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! […] I mean, if I went around saying I was an Emperor because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, people would put me away!
[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together.
[Psalms 2:1-2; Handel, Messiah]If we could gather all the electric eels from all around the world, we would be able to light up an unimaginably large Christmas tree.
[Kazuhiko Minawa, Enoshima Aquarium, Japan; seeYou don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live now.
[Joan Baez]
If you’re interested in archaeology, history, science, engineering or Lego go read the unbearable lightness of LEGO.
I knew about the Antikythera Mechanism, a supposed 2000 year old Greek computing machine recovered from an ancient shipwreck in 1900. But I didn’t know anyone had worked out in such detail what it did, let alone built a working model – in Lego!
The Cocktail Party Physics piece, and the videos etc. it links to, tell more of the story.
It’s a fascinating read even though I still have this sinking feeling the mechanism is going to turn out to be one of those elaborate Victorian hoaxes. Hope I’m wrong, though.
From the Feedback column of New Scientist, 4 December 2011 …
Composing witty error messages has long been one of the ways […] in which geeks try to show their human side. We’re not so sure what species of side is exhibited by the geeks responsible for the nLab, a website devoted to “collaborative work on Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy” in the context of “category theory”, which is … er … a set of mathematical tools for describing general abstract structures in mathematics and relations between them. And the general abstract relations between those relations, and so on up …
It is perhaps inevitable that the holding page they have prepared for times when the nLab site isn’t working […] announces that it is […]
“currently experiencing some difficulties due to local fluctuations in reality. The Lab Elves are working hard to patch reality. In the meantime, edits on the nLab have been temporarily disabled since the fundamentals of mathematics may vary during these spasmodic variations. Normal service will be restored once we are sure what ‘normal’ is.”
I’ve not posted recently on curiosities noticed at auction because our local auction house have been relatively well behaved of late. Apart that is from selling a Chinese Vase recently for a world record £43 million – see here, here and here.
However their next sale has thrown up a few further oddities:
A good Japanese porcelain figure of Ho Tei [Laughing Buddha], with hairy belly in richly enamelled robe and holding a fan, 12″ high …
Two skin handbags, a tin of buttons, postcards, unframed pictures, old tin, chandelier, a quantity of lace and linen …
An onyx three piece clock set …
A native blowpipe and three barbed fishing spears with oak shafts.
Victorian Taxidermy: a woodcock in glazed case labelled Robert Blanks, Maldon, and a modern Papilio Ulysses butterfly in case.
A pair of African candlesticks, a model of the Taj Mahal, a small boat, and an egg posy holder.
A pair of filled silver dwarf candlesticks.
It was the last two that really floored me. WTF is an egg posy holder; how do you make eggs into a posy? Who knew silver dwarfs existed, let alone one could fill them (what with?) and make them into candlesticks?