books, environment, history, links, medical, science, sexuality

Monthly Links for April

Leave a comment

As usual in this month’s collection of links, we’ll start with the hardest stuff …

Science, Technology, Natural World

Quite a lot of years ago, mathematicians worked out why waiting for a lift (elevator, for those in America) always takes forever. [££££]

How likely are you to be killed by a primordial black hole? [££££]

Whether you believe in astrology or not, your star sign is likely wrong, but you can find the correct one. [££££]

The Chernobyl exclusion zone has become a most unusual ecological experiments on Earth, leading to some unexpected results. [LONG READ]

So why do cats get the Zoomies, especially late at night?

Health, Medicine

If you had cardiac arrest in public, would a stranger give you CPR?

Most men have two balls, but are three balls better?

Sexuality & Relationships

The Kamasutra is more than a sex manual, with consent as an underlying principle.

A 300+ year old sex manual that got pretty much all of it wrong.

Well who would have guessed? Human sperm get lost in space. [££££]

As if boob jobs weren’t enough, labiaplasty is a growing fashion. Why? Just why? [LONG READ]

Environment & Ecology

Jaguar (below) are becoming increasingly rare, so researchers were pleased to see one in a wildlife corridor in the Honduran mountains. [££££]

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Archaeologists have discovered a variety of 12,000‑year‑old dice, and they illuminate ancient play.

The oldest known recipe for toothpaste comes from … Ancient Egypt.

So how many of the purported priest holes are actually what they’re said to be? [LONG READ]

Samuel Pepys was, in many ways, a very naughty man – even to the extent of concealing letters about being offered an enslaved boy as a bribe.

London

Matt Brown of Londonist has taken a look at the origins of some of the City of London’s street names.

Matt Brown is also creating a coloured version of John Rocque’s 1746 map of London. Here’s the latest section covering Chelsea and the King’s Road (above).

Meanwhile a researcher has been able to unravel the mysterious location of Shakespeare’s house in Blackfriars.

London Historians visits Benjamin Franklin’s London house.

Food, Drink

Here’s a quick look at some of the factors which produce the myriad types of tea.

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

Humans have been documenting their appreciation of the nude body for thousands of years, and photography has made it much easier and more accessible.

The New Testament letters of Paul are not what they seem; many weren’t even written by him. [LONG READ]

Shock, Horror, Ha ha ha!

Finally, New Scientist considers the size of a “shedload“. [££££]

quotes

Monthly Quotes for April

Leave a comment

Welcome to this month’s collection of recently encountered quotes!

Understand this, you can sound confident & have anxiety. You can look healthy but feel bad. You can look happy & be miserable. You can be good looking & feel ugly. So be kind because every person is fighting a battle you know nothing about.
[unknown]

Women who orgasm from penetration alone carry an older blueprint – a leftover from a time when the body needed the feedback loop of penetration to trigger ovulation.
[Sarah Ward; https://substack.com/home/post/p-190982511]

There is nothing like early promiscuous sex for dispelling life’s bright mysterious expectations.
[Iris Murdoch]

When all seems lost and there is no hope left, remember that this time will pass and, you will look back and see how it made you stronger.
[unknown]

Do not put your work off till to-morrow and the day after; for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor one who puts off his work: industry makes work go well, but a man who puts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin.
[Hesiod]

Where do bad rainbows go?
To prism. It’s a light sentence, but it gives them time to reflect.
[unknown]

Forgetting is not a flaw. It is a function. It allows movement. It allows redefinition.
[Kamila Murkowska]

Man’s a kind of missing link, fondly thinking he can think.
[Piet Hein]

Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
[Robert Hanlon]

The Shepherds Delight. Both by Day and by Night. Describing the Shepherds simplicity; And their Felicity: their birth, and their mirth: their lives, and their wives: their health and their wealth: their ways, and their plays: their diet, and quiet. And how with their Dam’sels they laugh and lye down, And to each pretty Virgin, they give a green gown.
[English 17th-century Broadside Ballad found in Samuel Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge]

science

April Quiz Answers

Leave a comment

Here are the answers to this month’s six quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.

Physical Science & Mathematics

  1. How many faces does a Dodecahedron have? 12
  2. What is the cube root of 64? 4
  3. The Sun is (of course) the closest star to Earth. What star is the next closest? Proxima Centauri
  4. Who discovered that the Earth revolves around the sun? Nicolaus Copernicus
  5. What is the chemical symbol for the element mercury? Hg
  6. How is the Earth protected from the effects of Solar Winds from the Sun? By the planet’s magnetic field

Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2025.

books, quotes

This Month’s Poem

Leave a comment

April Rain (opening)
Mathilde Blind

The April rain, the April rain,
Comes slanting down in fitful showers,
Then from the furrow shoots the grain,
And banks are fledged with nestling flowers;
And in grey shaw and woodland bowers
The cuckoo through the April rain
Calls once again.

Find this poem online at The Other Pages

current affairs, environment, thoughts

On Oil and Ethics

1 Comment

“Europe will suffer jet fuel shortages in just three weeks if the Strait of Hormuz does not reopen”, Airports Council International (ACI) Europe has said, “particularly with the approach of the summer tourism season”.

Oh good!

We have to find a way to stop people, and freight, flying. We’ll never get close to Net Zero if we don’t.

Forget all the hype around Aviation Biofuel; opinion suggests that there will be too limited a supply and it will be too expensive (see here, for example).

Flying people and stuff around the world to the unnecessary extent we do is just not sustainable.

Moreover, although it is slowly being cleaned up, shipping is no better, given the bunker fuel most big ships still run on.

No, I’m not saying we have to stop flying (or shipping) entirely, but we need to be much more circumspect and use it only where really necessary. We need to go back to making and growing as much as we can as locally as we can – accepting that there are some (pseudo-)essentials of modern life that we can’t.

As I’ve asked before … Do you really need to fly to Australia, or USA, just for a 2 hour meeting with a client (which could just as easily be done over a video call), because the client says so? That’s a question of skewed business and management ethics.

Why do we ship, for example, wine, apples and lamb from the Antipodes – or airfreight runner beans from Kenya – to UK when we have lots of these commodities on our doorstep in Europe, if not at home. In reverse why do we fly long-haul for a few days break? These are questions of skewed marketing and consumer ethics.

We need to update our ethics – both personal and societal. Maybe an oil crisis will help the paradigm shift.

memes, science

April Quiz Questions

Each month we’re posing six pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month.
As always, they’re designed to be tricky but not impossible, so it’s unlikely everyone will know all the answers – just have a bit of fun.

Physical Science & Mathematics

  1. How many faces does a Dodecahedron have?
  2. What is the cube root of 64?
  3. The Sun is (of course) the closest star to Earth. What star is the next closest?
  4. Who discovered that the Earth revolves around the sun?
  5. What is the chemical symbol for the element mercury?
  6. How is the Earth protected from the effects of Solar Winds from the Sun?

Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.