‘What are you, a sorcerer? / Only at home. In company I drink out of the cup.’
– Take it from Here, BBC radio comedy with Frank Muir and Dennis Norden
Celebrate Minor Mundanity
bbc
New Saliva and Prostate Facts
We all know that facts taken out of context can be misleading, that spurious correlations can be misdirecting. There’s even a website (and a book) that specialises in spurious correlations. One of my favourites is the 80% correlation between the letters in the winning words of a spelling bee and deaths from spider venom. Ah, the joys of unmoderated, unrefereed information.
Sharpness and Wavelets
I’ve used metaphors throughout my life to illustrate how things work. I’ve come to realise that may be because the use of the metaphor helps me understand why we do the things we do. As Simon Sinek said ‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.’
Stylish Violence
The period after the Great War was, for Europe at least, a time of great insecurity. Governments and gangsters both struggled to maintain order.
Bird Migration
Jetting from London to Houston, with noise cancelling headphones isolating me from both a snoring neighbour and the rumble of our propulsion, I imagined a Bantu throwing a spear at a stork. I also wondered what it was like in 1822 when no one could imagine a White Stork making an annual round trip after breeding in Germany, going south of the equator in East Africa to avoid European winters. At that stage in our understanding, the ancient Greek idea that birds turned into fish for the winter was still popular.
Imagined Futures
This time next year, a week short of entering Rome on foot, I hope to be resting for a day in Viterbo, between Lakes Bolsena and Bracciano. Each of these lakes occupies the caldera of a dormant volcano and I will enjoy the sight of them.
‘So the first lesson about trusting your senses is: don’t. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it’s true, that doesn’t mean it is true.’ (from Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman).
