Musings of a Lonely Roamer

2008-04-03T06:44:00.000-07:00

The power of humans

2007-11-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

A very strange thing happened on the way home tonight. After walking down the pavement to get home, a man in front of me suddenly sidestepped, pivoted, and continued walking in the same direction in a matter of a second. At the same time I heard a peculiar splat, and a bird flew above.

You can pretty much guess what happened - but unfortunately I was not so quick to the realisation of the events that had just transpired. Upon closer inspection, it appeared that he had avoided the stomach contents of a pigeon without looking up to see where it came from. That is really quite amazing. Our average reaction time is 0.2 seconds, but this guy was like lightning!

Of course he may just have been practising some basketball footwork and carried on totally unaware of the fact that he had saved himself some embarrassment and gained the awe of another.

Which brings us on nicely to the intended topic of the day. Can you imagine pulling something of that size (well a little smaller) with your eyelids? Apparently, the Guinness World Book of Records says you can. I don't have the statistics with me now, but the mere thought of doing something like this is beyond imagination. For one thing, I would almost certainly go tearing up my face at fist attempt. Secondly, I'm not exactly fond of inserting hooks in my eyelids.

No doubt that pulling trucks with your eyelids is a useful skill. Obviously, it would come in handy when you're stuck on that road, your truck breaks down and its only a short distance to the station for fuel. Of course, holding that doughnut with you left hand and scratching you bum with the other, munching on some maltesers leaves you only with your eyelids (or possibly your ears?) to complete that task of pulling that vehicle to civilisation.

And then there's those people that can hold their breath underwater for 10 minutes or so. I would say this is a slightly more useful skills than pulling a truck with your eyelids, but still amazing. The most I've ever been able to hold my breath for is a minute.

Us humans have done so much. We have made giant leaps in science, maths, and more, which is why I say we should stand back and admire what us homo sapiens (I hope I've got that right), as scientists fondly like to call us, can achieve.

The most annoying things in life

2007-11-09T12:15:00.000-08:00

I'm not talking about those big things, like mortages, cars, *coughs*chavs*coughs*, etc.

I'm talking about those little things. You know what I'm talking about - shoelaces. No matter what you do, how you leave them, and despite your efforts to equalise their lengths, it never quite seems to work.

You wake up the next day, and your shoes are innocently sitting there, acting like they've done nothing wrong. You tentaively pace around it, cautiously poke it from a distance, and when you've satisfied, you step up to it and inspect it further. It looks seemingly okay, when suddenly you are diverted by some event in your whereabouts. And when you look back? - the shoelaces aren't equal. The worst culprit are your sneakers.

And headphones. Those of you who have frequent meetings with our sound-emmiting drugs will find that they have minds of their own. If you leave them all by themselves, you'll find that they favour winding themselves up. It's as if they take the pleasure out of seeing you come back to your ipod/zen/other mp3 player to find that you have to spend at least 5 minutes of vital head-banging time to untangle the headphones.

In fact, all stringey things do this. Ropes, headphones, ties, you name it. Some objects in this world are just not to be trusted.

->How did they get it so neat?

Terminal velocity of cats

2007-11-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

First off, I've just realised that my random header is actually a company slogan (the company in question being Sparx.inc), so I've changed my header. But the real purpose of this post is to discuss the terminal velocity of the common household cat.

I read in a QI book (Quite Interesting), or possibly a Bill Bryson book, that cats, and many other small animals for that matter, have a terminal velocity and falling manner that aids in their survival.

I'm sure you know what happens when a suicidal maniac decides to jump off the top of a 20-storey building.

Of course, the above only happens if you happen to jump off a building at night and have pink flourescent blood. But you get the general idea - you DIE. But this is not the case with cats. As they fall, they panic, then approach terminal velocity*, at which point they spread out their arms and legs, increasing surface area, thus decreasing speed and friction, and so fall comfortably to a nice finish, most of the time not sustaining major injury.

Scientific studies have proven (though why they would do such things to poor innocent cats) that our feline friends have a higher chance of surving a 18-storey fall rather than a 7-storey fall (because from seven storeys they don't have time to reach terminal velocity). Which is rather good - from a practical point of view, back in the time of wildcats and ferocious beasts, a cat running from a predator could simply throw itself off a cliff. The big beast=pink splat, little cat =survive

So if you live in an apartment and want a pet, get a cat.

On the subject of pain

2007-11-04T04:24:00.001-08:00

As I'm sure we're all aware (or should be) pain travels through your body at 350ft. per second. No-one likes pain, apart from the attention-seeking emos. So is this really necessary? Pain is useful in many ways. It tells you when you're injured, for instance when you've been impaled in the leg and you fai to notice the copious amounts of blood pouring out of your body.

All of which is inconvenient for us humans - what if our body simply just gave little, unpainful signals? For instance there could be a 'pain indicator' on your forearm, that shows pain with the amount of senstaions you feel on your arm - perhaps one little dot for paper cut pain, 5 for a gash, and 10 for maybe a broken leg with the bone sticking out.

Of course, you would also need a another little dot of pain for where the pain actually was, or else you would waste the whole day trying to find an injury thats on your nose.

I have carefully painted red dots on the forearm above (copyright EXPIRED, so don't sue me) to demonstrate the painless signals. Ingenious isn't it?

Lets start with a random fact...

2007-11-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

Lets kick things offwith an absurd 'fact'

"Elephants are the only animals that can't jump"

I read this in the newspaper today, and thought 'yeah right'. And for obvious reasons of course (well, from my point of view...) - it's complete nonsense

Let's demonstrate a few examples:

I just randomnly chose the two animals above at a whim. But I'm sure there are many more.

I'm sure we can all agree that the two pictures above represent animals. And that neither of them can jump. But if we do take the assumption that they can jump, we would be looking at a whole new breed of animals here. Jumping whales, perhaps.

I'm sure we've all heard of the flying fish - the ones that glide (which incidentally, can normally glide for 30-50 metres, but can go on for hundreds on updrafts - isn't that amazing?). If whales were to suffer sudden burst of violence, they would be practically unstoppable.

Let us envision a situation where you were on a yacht, sitting on your deck, sipping a glass of orange juice , a fishing rod balanced comfortably by your chair, when a giant blue mass jumps out of the sea to your left. You're trying to calculate whether its whale PMS time whilst 170 tonnes of biomass rapidly descend upon you. It is only as you recall reading somewhere (a newspaper perhaps?) that elephants are the only animals that can't jump that you realise that you should never have placed your unwavering trust in tabloids.

We've learned a few good lessons from this (well I have anyway...)

Don't trust tabloids
Don't trust tabloids
Don't trust whales