weird

Via the Slog: Researches are giving octopuses toys to find out if they prefer a tentacle over all the rest in everyday usage. Among these toys are Rubik’s Cubes. Now, I’m all for doing research on sea creatures, but when said creatures can actually solve these Rubik’s Cubes, look out, humanity…

Ottawa is a beautiful city—very much like Portland, we thought, what with the outdoor markets and bike-oriented citizenry and small-town charm in a big city. Also, everybody has terrific accents. We took high tea at the residence of the late Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and strolled around the beautiful grounds in the Parc de la Gatineau in Québec. The man was crazy: he decided to have fake ruins installed on the grounds because he thought they looked cool, apparently. Then we camped outside Ottawa for the night, where we successfully made stir-fry and fire—truly, we distinguished ourselves from the apes over and over again.

(As usual: All photos available here. There were over 50 added today again. Enjoy.)

In the morning, we went into town and observed the changing of the guard ritual on Parliament Hill. Essentially, over the course of half an hour about fifty people in bright red uniforms with shiny brass buttons and intimidating weaponry bark orders at one another and march around a big grass field. The ceremony involves music, marching, inspection of weapons, “exchange of compliments” between the commanders of the old and new guard units, and more music and more marching.

(I am mentally composing an angry letter to the Queen about how ridiculous the music selection was—half of it felt appropriately military, but the other half was bizarre and Disneylandish; not a very good feeling to try to evoke when you’re working with full brass band and a bunch of bagpipes. Seriously, it felt like they were going to start breaking into a show-stopping song and dance number at any moment. Also, they played the Wedding March from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro for quite some time, and not enough of good old standards like The Maple Leaf Forever. I don’t know what was up with that.)

After an excellent lunch and walk through the town and the outdoor markets, we took the tour of the Parliament building, which needless to say was terrific. We got to see the very spot upon which Stephen Harper and Stéphane Dion traditionally yell at one another Mondays through Thursdays at about 2:15 pm. The Parliament buildings are full of terrific artwork and symbolism. I also proved myself an insufferable asshole by answering all the tour guide’s semi-rhetorical questions because nobody else on the tour appeared to (a) know and (b) speak English anyway. So she was all like, “Does anyone know what the first four provinces to enter Confederation were?” and everyone had one of those “party silences” until I shattered the mood with the correct answer (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Québec, and Ontario, if you had to know). I also bought a coffee mug with the coat of arms of Canada to complement my coffee mug from the U.S. Congress with the First Amendment on it.

Next stop: Toronto.

Wow, so much to write about from Montréal…and yet it’s half past one in the morning here, so I’ll make it short. We did all the traditional touristy things here today—the Biodôme, the Place d’Armes, the Basilica de Notre-Dame—and a couple of not-so-touristy things. For example, the other church (the Cathedral of Mary, Queen of the World) is actually the seat of the archdiocese, not Notre-Dame; it is also, like St John Lateran in Rome, somewhat off the beaten path despite being ecclesiastically more important. But even the touristy things were awesome. The Biodôme is just as neat as I remember from when I was nine, or however old I was when I was last here. There was a special exhibit of lemurs, which had the good fortune to be curated in French, English, and Malagasy (!).

Anyway, enjoy the pictures; here are just six of the fifty-one that I added today:

Next stop: Ottawa! Also, lest we forget—happy Fourth of July!

Canada Day in Saint John was quite nice, except for the fact that it was so foggy (how foggy was it?) that they had to cancel the fireworks because they simply couldn’t be seen behind the clouds. We left fairly early in the morning, despite the continuing fog, and soon arrived at Fredericton—my old stomping grounds, as it were—where we saw soldiers drilling in a parking lot just outside the historic garrison. Some carried rifles and some carried axes, but I am nearly certain that a few of the axes were simply made of tin foil, so I can’t even vouch for the reality of the rifles. It was like some crazed LARP or SCA meeting or something like that.

After Fredericton, we turned north and went through Edmundston, New Brunswick into Québec, where we made a small detour to the town of Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!. Yes, Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! is a real place, but you don’t have to take my word for it—check out its entry on Wikipedia. Apparently nobody really knows where the name comes from—it’s probably just as well. At any rate, I have photographic evidence proving that (a) it exists and (b) I’ve been there. Count another notch on my list of places with crazy names that I’ve been to.

We camped right near Québec City and went into town for the 400th birthday of the city, which was celebrated in a torrential downpour with church bells ringing simultaneously all across Canada at 11 am (eastern time, natch). Thousands of people turned out despite the rain, but we west-coasters were the only ones sans umbrellas, nyah nyah. There were boring speeches by dignitaries and a military parade that almost didn’t happen because of the rain. Of course, the anti-war protesters came out in force anyway and the Québec City police were ready to meet them face-on, as it were, in full riot gear with gas masks. I did not think it wise to try to snap photos of some of these events.

So, bonne fête, Québec ! To 120, or something like that.

As always, the full photo gallery is available here. Next stop, Montréal!

My prolonged absence, as it were, is mostly due to the fact that I stopped in Princeton, New Jersey for about a week so as to witness the nuptials of one of my friends from high school. I did not feel it necessary to blog about these in the Road Trip Update series because not only did I not have the time to do so, what with wedding preparations and suchlike, I have been to that part of the United States so often that it simply didn’t seem notable. (No offence to any of you who inhabit the Mid-Atlantic, of course.)

But now I’m back on the road, this time passing through Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine to get to Saint John, New Brunswick, where my travelling companion and I celebrated Canada Day. I call it a celebration, but what it really consisted of was hanging out on increasingly foggy docks by the harbour waiting for them not to shoot off fireworks. On the other hand, we met some extremely nice Maritimers with Opinions About Things, who were delightful, it appeared, to finally find a new audience at last. (They also had great accents, but that’s pretty much a given with Maritimers.)

Not too many photos of Saint John; we didn’t get here early enough to get any really good ones. Hopefully we’ll be able to take some more on the drive today while it’s sunny and not too foggy. As always, full gallery available here.

Next stop: camping probably somewhere outside Québec City!

I baked challah tonight for a number of friends who are starting to gather for a wedding this weekend. The challah took three hours to bake and fourteen minutes to devour. Therefore, for every one minute of challah consumption, there were thirteen painstaking minutes of preparation: mixing, kneading, braiding, slaving and sweating in the New Jersey humidity. I just hope the ravenous bunch who ate the challah appreciated how much arduous, backbreaking work went into that loaf of bread just so they could gobble up the whole thing in a fraction of the time it took me to make it.

Also, granules of yeast were literally jumping to their deaths out of the measuring spoon. Like, in a self-propelled, autokinetic, lemming-like way. It was the oddest thing.

Sure was tasty, though. (I’ll post the recipe at some point soon.)

We rolled into the ‘burbs surrounding Washington, D.C. last night after a series of events during which it became apparent that the world was conspiring to prevent us from actually reaching any of our goals: finding and getting on the highway, finding restaurants whose existence was only implied by exit signs, finding what to eat in said restaurants when they were finally found, and finding the correct motel at which the reservations were indeed made. I don’t have any photos from the trip up from Nashville through Virginia—the reason, unfortunately, is that there really wasn’t anything to take pictures of, and anyway when I wasn’t driving I was dozing in the passenger seat.

But we got up early this morning and walked around the already astoundingly hot National Mall before I had to say farewell to my travelling companion Alice and see her safely off to the train depot. So I was on my own for the Air and Space Museum, which was every bit as glorious as my pre-teenage mind remembered. Assorted other adventures, including photography of some of the terrific architecture here in D.C., followed; then sushi dinner and Iron Man (for the third time, now, but it hasn’t become any less geigh) with newfound friends; then interesting adventures trying to find where to put the car for the night that wouldn’t necessitate my waking up before 7 am to move it.

Full photo gallery, of course, available here—go look at it; there are 27 new photos today for a total of 80 so far. For now, a smattering:

Next stop: the Philadelphia area up to and including Princeton, New Jersey, and New York City, New York. All right, not really one area, but…deal with it.

We departed Little Rock, Arkansas this morning and proceeded through Memphis, Tennessee, to Nashville, a city which is described as “the Athens of the South”—and it has a full-scale replica of the Parthenon to boot! Complete with restored friezes and metopes. Man, is that awesome. Apparently there’s a big gold and ivory statue of Athena Parthenos inside, just like there used to be in the original; we may just have to go back before we leave town tomorrow.

Remember, the full photo gallery is here; there are quite a few photos from today’s travels. Here are some of my favourites:

This morning, we saw the Alamo in downtown San Antonio. I remember learning about it in my history classes as a high-schooler, and I saw it referenced more times than I can count on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—as summarized perfectly in the Cynic’s Corner:

LAUGHINGSTOCKS OF THE WEEK: I’ve heard enough about the Alamo; how about you? Miles and Julian have become jokes; it seems like all they’ve done this season is play Alamo and/or get made fun of for playing Alamo. And I’ve got a bad feeling about the “moat” discussion that they had with Quark, namely that O’Brien will decide, “Quark’s right! We can’t build a moat around the station, but we can use a <tech> <tech> <tech> to create a <tech> <tech> <tech> around the station!”

So yeah, at any rate, there was the Alamo. A big battle was fought there. The white people lost. But then they won in the end because they remembered the Alamo, so I guess it all worked out. Also, there’s totally archaeology going on there! They’re uncovering bits of frescoes in the surviving walls that they didn’t even know were there until a few years ago.

We continued on from San Antonio through Austin, Dallas, and Texarkana. Two thoughts kept occurring to me:

1. Texas is simply too gol-dang big.
2. This part of the world has very questionable policies when it comes to naming towns. Hope? Italy? Texarkana? Arkadelphia??

Anyway, here are a few of today’s photos—as always, the full gallery is awaiting your browser.

Next stop: Nashville, Tennessee!

Classics lovers and computer nerds rejoice! A California sculptor has created a new piece of art: Pan with his iPod.

[Sculptor Adam] Reeder explains: “In mythology Pan played his flute and danced in the woods. In my sculpture, the flute is replaced with an iPod. The nature of Pan hasn’t changed, but the context in which he is seen has changed. The technology has changed what Pan is doing.”

Adam’s masters thesis through The San Francisco Academy of Art University is based on a series of sculptures where mythological or classical figures are used to represent Western culture and are combined with modern technological objects to illustrate how technology has changed the way people interact.

The best part: one of these meisterwerks will set you back a mere $9800.

The attorney (all right, not really an attorney, but it’s still awesome) for The Stranger, Seattle’s only newspaper, has filed the awesomest letter ever in court, to attempt to convince the judge that—well, actually, it’s not important. But seriously, go read the letter. You won’t hear speeches like that out of Jack McCoy’s mouth.

From E. Sapir (1915), “Noun Reduplication in Comox, a Salish Language of Vancouver Island”. Canada Department of Mines, Geological Survey, Memoir 63, p. 10 note 1:

qÁq‘tā’amas — game with wooden ball

Formed from q‘tá’abas, “wooden ball covered with spruce-roots.” There were two sides in the game, with the same number on each. Each side had a goal consisting of a little pit, which was guarded by one man. All but the two guards gathered in the centre. One man threw up the ball and everyone tried to catch it, run with it to the goal of the opponents, and put it into the pit. Those of the other side tried to take the ball away from the one that had it. The side that first made ten goals won the game. After four goals had been made, the game was suspended for a while and a general free-for-all fight took place.

I swear, it’s basically hockey: goals, goaltenders, and free-for-all fighting. Nothing changes.

Hat-tip: Alexa

Let’s get these tabs into some links so Firefox can stop memory-leaking all over my computer and making it unbearably slow.

Israel at 60, Jews at ±3000

• Problems of every sort: demographic, political, religious, you name it. Can Israel continue to exist? Mayyybeee…
• Israel’s huge demographic problems are being compounded as the government sits on its hands with regards to the deepening Sudanese refugee crisis.
• News flash: Anti-Semitism still exists in Eastern Europe. (And the NY Times still reports on it in the “Art & Design” section.)

Saudi Arabia and mobile pornography

• Porn constitutes about 70% of all files exchanged between teenagers’ mobile phones in the sexually repressive Arab kingdom.
• To deal with the sexually repressive culture—and Bluetooth harassment by young men—Saudi girls have developed all kinds of strategies, such as cross-dressing. There is an interesting debate over whether or not reading a man’s Facebook page is tantamount to hearing his voice, since all you’re perceiving is his writing.

Other random stuff

• Jane Doe (i.e. anonymous) rape kits will soon be available on a national scale in the United States. It’s about fucking time.
• After all these years, there is still nothing business analysts love more than to predict doom and gloom for Apple.
• Summer music camps—of whatever musical persuasion—aren’t just for young people anymore.
• A NY Times columnist comes to the startling realization that young people hold huge political power.
• M.C. Escher drawings recreated in Lego.
• A book entitled Uncensored Amazon Kindle Buyer’s Guide: Know for Sure if the Amazon Kindle is Right for You is now available in Kindle format.

If you ask Google Maps to calculate directions between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario—the only point where you go due south to enter Canada from the United States—and then ask for directions via public transportation, here’s what you get:

And here’s what you get if you reverse those directions:

There are, of course bus services operated by both cities’ transportation systems, naturally. I am uncertain as to whether you can walk through the Detroit-Windsor tunnel, though.

Happy Pi Day! Today’s date, expressed at M/DD, comes out to an approximation of the value of pi—3.14. And if you celebrate the day at 1:59:26 (and forgive the ‘p.m.’), then you’re doubly a geek. More interesting information and links can be found in the Wikipedia article, or in the LA Times Web Scout blog here.

Today’s date expressed in DDMMYYYY format (14032008) occurs 9,209,525 digits after the decimal point in the value of pi.

I am going to make pie for dessert tonight. It will be ten inches (25.4 cm) in diameter at its base, and therefore, my slide rule informs me, 31.4 inches (79.8 cm) in circumference, since circumference of a circle is its diameter times pi. It will be 78.5 square inches (about 506 square cm) in surface area at its base, since surface area of a circle is calculated by multiplying the square of its radius (half its diameter) by pi. But, you ask, how much pie is there really? This is a bit more complicated and involves trigonometry (gasp!).

To find the volume of our pie, we have to go back to our high school math and remember our geometry and trig. This calculation is a bit trickier since the pie’s edges are (mostly) slanted, making it a frustum of a cone. To calculate the volume, then, we simply subtract the volume of the smaller from the larger cone, leaving the volume of the pie as the difference. The formula for the volume of a cone is one third of its height (from the tip to the centre of the circle at the base), times the square of its base’s radius, times pi. However, we don’t know the height of the cones, since these cones are only imaginary (in the metaphysical, not the mathematical, sense). Visualize the cones, in cross-section, as a triangle. The radius of the base of the smaller triangle is 5.00 inches, and we can use a protractor to find out that the base angle is 70 degrees exactly. Trigonometry tells us that the ratio of the two legs of a right triangle is given by the tangent of the angle opposite, so taking the tangent of 70° and multiplying by 5.00 gives us the height, which is 13.74 inches. This means that the volume of the smaller cone is 359.71 cubic inches. Because angles cut by a transversal on the same side of the transversal and parallel lines are congruent, the angle of the base of the larger triangle (the top of the pie) is also 70°. My ruler shows that the depth of the pie tin is 2.5 inches, so assuming the pie rises and is baked properly, we can use 2.5 inches as the height of the frustum. Add it to 13.74 from the height of the smaller cone and we get a total height of 16.24 inches. We now find the tangent of 70° and divide the total height by it, since we want to find the length of the radius of the base of the triangle. This yields a radius of 5.9 inches across the top of the pie, which allows us to calculate a volume of 592 cubic inches for the larger cone. Subtract the volume of the smaller cone and we get a volume of 232 cubic inches, or about 3800 cubic centimetres.

I will post a picture of this insane amount of pie in all its tasty glory once the baking is complete. (Blueberry filling, I don’t think I mentioned yet.) Whee!

Google Calculator is pretty nifty, and able to handle some rather complex high-level (i.e. English-like) syntax. For example, it handles 1.190 CAD per litre in USD per gallon quite nicely, to let you figure out just how much that tank of gas you bought this afternoon cost (the answer, if you can’t be arsed to click on the link, is about USD$4.55—that’s what you get for having high oil prices combined with the recent woes of Alberta oil companies), compared with what they’re paying in the States (more than a dollar less, on average, per gallon). And Google Calculator is pretty awesome for this sort of thing.

But try stringing together several conversions, and even though it gets the parentheses right, it still utterly fails. The calculation 1.19 CAD per litre per 16 litres should parse as 1.19 $/L x 16 L, which reduces to $(1.19 x 16), but the calculator fails utterly on the calculation. Just look at the ridiculous answer: 75,111.0894 USD/metres to the sixth power! U.S. dollars weren’t even mentioned, and metres to the sixth power?? Now I truly understand what they mean by ‘a higher plane of existence’.

Today, 29 February 2008, the Leap Day, Frederic turns 156 (or 152), though he is yet a hale and hearty man of 38 birthdays.

How do we arrive at this number? (By scribbling arithmetic all over the back of an interlibrary loan request form while I should have been filling out said form for research purposes, naturally.) Well, Frederic declares to Mabel that ‘In 1940 I of age shall be,’ referring to his 21st birthday, at which point he would have lived 88 years. But, you say, there are four years between leap years, and 21 times 4 is 84, so how do we get 88? Because 1900 was not a leap year. It is not clear whether Gilbert and Sullivan were under the misapprehension that it was. If they believed it was, then Frederic would have been born in 1856 and celebrated his eleventh birthday on the nonexistent day of 29 February 1900. But since 1900 did not contain an intercalary day, Frederic would of necessity have been born in 1852, thus making him 88 in 1940 and 156 today, his 38th birthday. (That 1900 did not contain a leap year is the reason the old Macintosh system epoch was chosen for 1 January 1904, to ’save a half dozen instructions in their leap-year checking code.’) On the other hand, if Frederic did somehow manage to celebrate a birthday in 1900, then he would have been born in 1856, and the multiplication would come out all nice and pretty to 84 years on his 21st birthday in 1940.

I find it hard to believe that G&S would have let poor Frederic live eight years between his eleventh and twelfth birthdays (1896 and 1904); therefore they must have erroneously believed that 1900 was a leap year and set his birthday in 1856. Then again, I also find it hard to believe that everybody would just take Ruth at her word when she reveals that the pirates are in fact simply fallen noblemen, so what do I know. However, the canon evidence, such as it is, is that Frederic celebrates his 21st birthday in 1940, making today his 38th birthday. He is therefore 156, or possibly 152, more or less (but rather less than more).

How quaint the ways of Paradox!

Our friendly cyber-neighbourhood rabbi Lazer Brody is at it again, it would appear. You may remember our unfortunately-named friend from an incident last month in which he told a woman experiencing homosexual urges that she could ‘lick the battle’ with her latent desires by, among other things, making sure to ritually wash her hands in the morning. Today, Rabbi Lazer is peddling a cure for cancer found in mushrooms, which somebody forwarded to him in the full-blown manner of an e-mail scam. The typography has been preserved exactly:

THERE WAS A MAN IN BORO PARK (BROOKLYN, NY) WHO WAS DIAGNOSED WITH PANCREATIC CANCER. HE ASKED FOR A FRUM DOCTOR, BUT HIS INSURANCE AFFORDED HIM WHAT THEY OFFERED JAPANESE DOCTOR. IT ENDED UP, THAT THIS DOCTOR WAS A GIFT FROM HEAVEN. THE DOCTOR WAS STRAIGHT WITH HIM AND TOLD HIM THAT THE MEDICAL PROFESSION COULD GIVE HIM 6 MONTHS OF LIFE, BUT IN HIS COUNTRY (JAPAN) THEY USED A PARTICULAR MUSHROOM WITH SUCCESS AND THAT HE COULD GIVE HIM SOME AND SHOW HIM HOW TO USE IT. 4 YEARS LATER HE IS THANK G-D DOING WELL. FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED, THE CURE IS BASED ON THE CONCEPT OF A PH BALANCED BODY, THERE IS THE OPINON THAT CANCER FEEDS IN AN ACID BASED BODY. THIS MUSHROOM IS VERY ALKALISING.

Amazing, isn’t it? If you only ‘balance’ the pH of your body, you can cure cancer! And guess what—doing this is, in fact, really easy, because all you have to do is eat this mushroom! There is a link to more information, helpfully provided, on a Hebrew-language website from Israel about the pseudo-medicine of reflexology. More nonsense can be found on a herbalism website, which again refers to the natural powers of this mushroom to balance your pH.

For his part, Lazer himself responds:

From what I understand from alternative-medical literature, cancer patients have too little L-Lactic acid (+) in their connective tissues. In theory, as long as L-Lactic acid (+) is predominantly present in tissue, cancer cannot develop. When there is a deficiency, the cellular respiration starts to fail and this leads to a build up of DL-Lactic acid (-) in the tissues.

Of course! The obvious problem, with cancer, is that they’re missing the right kind of acid in their connective tissues! Why did the medical establishment never think of this, and insist that they just go home and drink a tall glass of milk? (It could be mushroom milk, if you really want, I guess.) No need for all this expensive chemotherapy or anything debilitating. Besides, what do these doctors really know? All they have are fancy degrees from fancy medical schools. They don’t have the thousand-year traditional knowledge of Eastern medicine to back up their ’science’! (By the way, this particular orientalizing tradition among many Jews—especially among, but by no means limited to, Hadisim—is one worthy of a lengthier rant, but that’ll have to come at a later time.) Back to Lazer:

The Kombucha cultured fungus … is supposedly able to re-balance the blood pH and, in so doing, prevent disease conditions from occurring, and repair and relieve existing suffering. I need to learn more about this, but in the meanwhile, I sent out emails to all the Cancer patients who are in contact with me. This is certainly worth further investigation.

I don’t know anything about this subject, but I sent this nugget of information out to every cancer patient I know. This has all the trappings of an e-mail scam, doesn’t it? ‘I don’t know anything about Prince Omar, the deposed former president of Nigeria, but his story is just so compelling, I think I have to send it to everyone in my e-mail address book!’ Or, ‘I don’t know anything about these penile enlargement pills (or that they could be called “male enhancement supplements”), but the mere fact that someone somewhere says they work is enough to get me to forward it to my entire e-mail list!’ Or, ‘This eight-year-old girl who survived a catastrophic plane crash…’ you get the picture.

Seriously, how can seemingly intelligent people buy into this crap—and not only buy into it, but repost it without a second thought on their blogs, and more importantly, send it to all the cancer patients they know, thus proving, yet again, that (false) hope springs eternal? Pity the fool who buys into this miracle mushroom cure (and stops her chemo as a result), but no pity for the man who sells them the snake oil.

A big Beam blessing to Ruth from Crown Heights!

Just…no.

A clearly mentally unbalanced fifty-year-old married man with six children tried to hire a hit man to kill his wife. The hit man in question turned out to be a police informant, and the man subsequently got fifteen years for his troubles. What is amazing, though, is the motive:

James Gau pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder for asking a police informant in July to go to his wife’s American Fork, Utah, home, pretend to be a robber, and strangle her.

Gau said left his family and moved to Reno because he wanted to live as a homosexual.

The article (from the AP) makes note of this point twice in its five sentences: he wanted, apparently, to ‘live as a homosexual’. What does that mean, and just how much underlying homophobia is there in this particular formulation? (On the other hand, the jokes basically do write themselves…)

The phrase to live as X generally entails, I believe, the notion to adopt the characteristics of other Xs. If the article said ‘moved to Brooklyn to live as a Hasidic Jew’ we would know what it meant: we would suppose he grew a beard and sidelocks, stopped watching television, and attempted to commit fraud on federal subsidies. Of course, I don’t mean to paint Hasidim with such a broad brush, but this is exactly my point: the phrasing to live as X brings up a particular set of images, not all of which may be appropriate, but many of which would certainly be present, rightly or wrongly. So what does ‘he moved to Reno because he wanted to live as a homosexual’ entail? Certainly it evokes particular images—both of Reno and of a specific type of homosexual—again, rightly or wrongly. Does this reflect latent homophobia? Possibly, but I’d be more inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt, if only because ‘to adopt a homosexual lifestyle’ would have been far too obvious and ‘because he realised he was gay’ doesn’t really have the same ‘ring’ as a motivation for murder, does it? Mental instability, sure, but homosexuality? Doesn’t really work.

Hat-tip: Jess.

My thoughts this morning on learning that there was a snowfall warning for Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, as expressed via a dinosaur comic parody of mine own devising:

A photograph recently released by NASA from the Spirit rover on Mars shows what appears to be a humanoid form in a rock formation, curiously similar to the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen. Naturally, the BBC science section, traditionally noted for its stellar science reporting, picked this up and immediately ran it under the headline ‘Mystery image of “life on Mars”‘. Casting this as an even-handed, two-sided report between alien life enthusiasts and dour, grumpy old skeptics, the Beeb reported, apparently in all seriousness, that theories explaining this phenomenon ranged from a garden gnome to Sasquatch to the Virgin Mary. But by far the best comment came from some poster on some site somewhere, which the BBC did not see fit to identify except by the handle ‘Madurobob’, who ’said it was a statue “obviously built by an ancient civilisation that later departed Mars and settled Denmark”.’ There are also some gems to be found in the talking point page on the BBC website.

Bad Astronomy, mentioned in the article but not linked to, has some terrific commentary and follow-up posts.

The version of the Christmas carol ‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen’ that I know begins thus:

God rest ye merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay;
Remember that our Saviour
Was born on Christmas Day.

Wikipedia lists this as an ‘alternate version’ and seems to believe that the proper version goes something like ‘upon this day’ rather than ‘on Christmas Day’, which obviates the problem I am about to outline. But if we do not accept this emendation, we are faced with a somewhat incredible tautology: of course the day on which Jesus was born would have to be Christmas Day, given that it was the day on which Jesus was born! Regardless of the date—the end of December or the middle of July or whenever—the birthday of Jesus would have to, of necessity, be Christmas. Therefore the exhortation and justification provided don’t really make much sense, do they, given that the date is completely arbitrary and only of necessity is Christmas Day?

I’m certain I’m not the first person ever to have realised this. I don’t know why this is making me so excited. Maybe it’s the snow.