Thursday 28 June 2012

Not exactly lizbians

I had to cheer Mocha up today, poor little princess.

Mocha Choca's a bit weirded out - her old flatmate, the older "female", Sandy, had laid infertile eggs in November. Definitely eggs, she laid them in the brand new egg box, they were identical to eggs laid by my other females and she also laid one right in front of us, right in the middle of her tank.

 With spring fever hitting, everyone has been a bit overexcited - normally I let the girls run round together, but even they've been bickering with each other. Jam's been a little madam, jumping everyone, and even quiet little Mocha has been bobbing at the others. Sandy has hit Jam back previously when Jammy's been a little toad and tried to dominate her - but today really caught me out.

Mocha and Sandy were having their afternoon potter, when Sandy suddenly jumped and pinned her. As I went over to break up the fight, Sandy whapped out fuchsia purple hemipenes and mated her!
I wish I'd have taken a picture to prove it, but then I guess I haven't got one of her/him taking eggs either.
When I have the time/finances, I'll have to take Sandy to the vets for an MRI to find out what's going on there!

Wednesday 27 June 2012

It's SCIENCE!

Walking home, I got stopped by two girls.
"Is that Fifty Shades of Grey, that porno book?" they sneered.
No... it's Stephen Hawking.
"Oh wow!"
There is hope for our future yet!

I have to say though, reading A Brief History' has really made me think. Unsurprisingly, the man is a genius - but he explains things so easily and with a great sense of humour. It's helped me understand some of the more complex issues regarding physics that I was struggling with, particularly how it is that black holes can appear to emit radiation and particles - despite being massively attractive gravitational singularities.

It also allowed me to come to some interesting conclusions myself. For example, utilising the simple fact that heat makes objects expand, it enabled me to come to this conclusion: I'm not overweight, I'm HOT.

Sod the Dark Side and their cookies.
Welcome to the Nerd Side.
We have Pi.

Monday 25 June 2012

Not that kind of plate.

Well, that was the first of many sessions to come with the Mormons, apparently. I think we upset the curriculum by asking lots of awkward questions, particularly when His Lordship kept drawing attention to some fishy discrepancies in time spans.

And they're mostly creationist. Luckily not like THESE ones in Louisiana though.

They kindly left us a copy of the Book of Mormon and asked us to read it and come to our own conclusions. And I have been reading it. And I have been wincing regularly. And I have a horrid feeling I'm going to have to write a translation - and they are not going to like it at all.

I may yet go on to dealing with other religions but, for me at least, Mormonism is a bit of an unstable one and open to scientific picking at. It has a modern (ish) beginning and some very wobbly foundations. Not to mention that the LDS have to give 10% of their earnings to the church - and then some.

Gosh. The first bit was a bit easier than I thought it would be... So here it comes in installments; The Pastafarian Remake: Amber's Book of Mormon

Saturday 23 June 2012

"Farfallelujah!"

What a spectacularly FSM-y week!

First, His Lordship found this AWESOME antique piratey chest in an auction house. It's sheet metal reinforced wood, with strip wood banding and chunky decorative metalworks.

Then on my way out from work, I discovered an Italian market had suddenly arrived literally right outside their door! I have loaded up on baklavas, pistachio cigarillas, rainbow spumoni, tricolore rigatoni and traditional nougatty treats...

And then we had Mormons turn up at the door!I think they might have chosen the wrong people to try to convert to their brand of Christianity... but they want to come back for more. Pastafarians don't go door to door, I'm happy to reverse the tables - if people come to MY door, I'm very happy to teach them the good word of our people and they have left our step significantly more enlightened in the ways of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, intending on coming back to see us on Monday.

It made me smile - they asked if there was a Pastafarian congregation locally. I was happy to explain that the FSM doesn't encourage physical places of worship as it detracts funding from where it's best used, such as improving healthcare and lowering the price of cable.

I'm pretty sure we're ready for these Latter Day Sainters - we have an imported, specially blessed by a Pastafarian priest tin of dried spaghetti, several bottles of rum (the type served depending on importance of event), my steel reinforced box of loot (gems, minerals and other genuine treasures), his bottle of sands from many shores (that he collected himself - it is a good luck charm for pirates) and our colander cutlass, amongst other little artifacts (each with their own history). And the book, of course.

We have our motley garb ready also, and will be serving a mighty pasta bake. With profiteroles for after. Profit is kind of loot, after all...



I am prepared - even if they're Creationists. I have THIS to my hand.

Wednesday 20 June 2012

Hi Phen!

Disturbing a Hyphen after midnight is a bit like feeding a Gremlin after midnight. They turn into something horrifying, disturbing, and downright creepy.

He's been a real weirdo of late. Rather than eating his locusts, he's now decided they're to live with him - and doesn't even complain when one decides to sit on his head until it accidentally pokes him in the eye.

That's weird enough, but not as weird as he gets. Hyphen's having a seriously bad case of the herpy-derps. The boy has issues. With my doormat. 


He's had affection-related problems with inanimate objects before - but this is new on me. 


Hyphen has a major malfunction when it comes to carpetting. Mocha was sat on it when the little guy came over for a look - then CHARGED right at her. She launched an all out offensive-defence on him - and was utterly thrown when he neatly jumped over her and attacked the doormat!


Mmmm sexy carpet - feel how neat her pile is. Maaaassage the sexeee caaaarpet... I whisper the sweetest of words to you, my sugar blanket. Oh, devine floor covering of my heart...

I tweaked his tail as if Mocha had gone for him - she was much too confused to think of doing it herself - and he responded with a prickly thigh brace and tail whip. Though it didn't distract his attention from his new objet d'amour, even when she DID catch up with the situation. 


He just ducked round her to keep attacking the mat she was standing on! 


Hyphen's suffering bad; the carpet love has gone on to the dragon-slope, though in fairness, it's coated with the same stuff. I guess I have to accept that he's a beautiful little lizard - a very odd beautiful little lizard.

In a slightly unrelated story, my friend Gianmario found a wonderful little article: The Diary of a Space Zucchini! I am sure many of you will enjoy reading it - it's very cute!

Quote of the Day: I'm glad I can stay home and do nothing. It gives all these people with extreme sports the opportunity to be awesome, rather than the norm. - Himself.

Sunday 17 June 2012

Homemade Pop Farts

Hmm. It doesn't happen often, but it seems I suffered a cookery fail.

I wasn't aware there are different forms of marshmallows - and apparently I picked confectioners marshmallows rather than cooking 'mallows. It turns out that it is a very important difference.

Confectioners marshmallows sort of... dissolve. And they turn into an interesting pink glaze. I can't say they were great; more sort of sickly, sticky and hollow. Mind you, it didn't stop Marty from eating them. My friend will eat ANYTHING. And he didn't even noticed the goop.

In other news, I do have something to counteract it: I can now successfully name ALL the countries of Africa. You can try if yourself HERE.

Word of the day: asosmwe
Pron: ass - oss um-weh.
Definition: something so amazingly cool that you can't even put the right letters in, never mind put them in the right order.
Usage: "omg thats asosmwe!!!!!!!!!!1"
Origin: Jacksfilms.

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Stardust and Sensibilities


An extract from "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene set me to thinking earlier. (I'm reading it for the third time, and still finding lots to think about - does anyone have any BG books they'd be interested in selling?)

Steven Weinberg says: "At the other end of the spectrum are the opponents of reductionism who are appalled by what they feel to be the bleakness of modern science. To whatever extent they and their world can be reduced to a matter of particles or fields and their interactions, they feel diminished by that knowledge..."

Greene comments: "Many find it fatuous and downright repugnant to claim that the wonders of life and the universe are mere reflections of microscopic particles engaged in a pointless dance fully choreographed by the laws of physics. Is it really the case that the feelings of joy, sorrow, or boredom are nothing but the chemical reactions in the brain - reactions between the molecules and atoms that, even more microscopically, are reactions between [particles] which are really just vibrating strings?"

I don't understand why people find it so shocking, or cold and callous. Am I missing something? Why does there have to be this romanticised undercurrent? Is it not possible that, even in the reductionists view, the universe is an incredible and amazing place - not just despite the fact we're just energy, but BECAUSE of it?

Please, I ask you, can you enlighten me - I appear to be unable to grasp the concept of whatever it is that people feel is missing when something is viewed in scientific detail.

Sunday 10 June 2012

Schroedinger's Hat

Hey, God-Botherers!

Yes, you lot, those that like to say "But the universe HAD to have been designed, it can't have come from nowhere!" I'd like you to bite THIS, my zealous friends!

To summarise the article, they nicknamed the results "Schroedinger's Hat". There's an exotic "particle" known as an exciton; I say "particle", but it's better defined as a type of mobile energy formed by an excited electron and an associated "hole". Anyway, scientists have trapped and cooled the excitons so effectively that they condensed and cohered to form a giant matter wave.

 Yeah. You read that right. That's energy = matter, for real.

And we all know that energy doesn't disappear, it just transfers into radically different formats. Honestly, this shouldn't be a major surprise for most logical people. After all, you put matter into your mouth and it converts to energy and so on. And that energy can then be converted to kinetic (movement), or sound, or light, or potential - all incredibly different configurations of energy. So it's perfectly reasonable that there are other forms of energy we haven't discovered yet.

After all, we're still not certain what Dark Matter is yet, except that it comes with a whole heap of Dark Energy too.

(Further reading here:http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/mathematicians-can-conjure-matter-waves-inside-an-invisible-hat)


Friday 8 June 2012

Bacon

Bacon solves everything.
It doesn't matter how bad a day you have, if you have bacon, it is infinitely improved. I can't think of anything that bacon doesn't improve - and there's only one way to improve bacon: more bacon.

Actually, it's been shown that bacon is addictive, as it possesses six ingredient types of umami - the fifth basic unique taste that makes things sooooooooo good.

After all, there's Baconnaise, Bacon Balm, Bacon Salt - even Bacon Flavour Oxygen. That's not even the limit of it: Arun Gupta has discovered: "bacon ice cream; bacon-infused vodka; deep-fried bacon; chocolate-dipped bacon; bacon-wrapped hot dogs filled with cheese; brioche bread pudding smothered in bacon sauce; hard-boiled eggs coated in mayonnaise encased in bacon (called, appropriately, the 'heart attack snack'); bacon doughnuts, cupcakes and cookies; bacon mints; Wendy's 'Baconnator' (six strips of bacon mounded atop a half-pound cheeseburger - which sold 25 million in its first eight weeks); and the outlandish 'bacon explosion' - a barbecued meat brick composed of 2 pounds of bacon wrapped around 2 pounds of sausage."

Oh, and the Wake 'n' Bacon - an alarm clock that emits tasty, tasty bacon smell. And bacon.

There's even a name for the Bacon Obsession: Bacon Mania.


Monday 4 June 2012

MILLIPEDES! At long last, I have the RIGHT species! I've recently received three of these brilliant black beauties - hundreds of garnet red legs and a darkly gleaming shell that looks like pvc coated conduit cables.

Apparently I've received two males and a female - the younger male is timid (curled up in the pic), the bigger male is bold and brash, and the female has dark brown bands in her wide carapace. When I say wide, I mean wide - she's thicker than my thumb.

 Jam is terrified of the millipedes. I lifted her up so she could see them through the glass, and she went "ZOMG T'S A SNAKE!!!"

Sunday 3 June 2012

Logic and love, hand in hand.

I love watching His Lordship deal with religious zealots, or relate some fun tale. He does this marvellous, fluid ... dance of gesticulatory angst and frustration. His whole expressive capacity goes into overdrive, his whole body defines the phrases he offers: for example, the tight lean in, both fingers and thumbs close, the squinting visage and the high pitch of "teenytiny", followed abruptly with a firework of wide arms, explosively describing the vastness of that which we do not know.

The enthusiastic, sincere fashion with which he quite literally gets carried away is quite contagious; watching him pace the pentameter of his phrases, punctuated with smooth, accurate gestures, you can't help but try your hardest to grasp whichever bugbear has him in its grip.

 I also love his logic: "I'm glad I can stay home and do nothing. It gives all these people with extreme sports the opportunity to be awesome, rather than the norm. It's because of me that these guys look so good"

Saturday 2 June 2012

Grand Gadsby!

For an astounding amount of months I had a wish... no, I had a vigorous notion, an ambition, to look into "Gadsby" - a short book by an unusual author. I say "unusual" in a particular fashion, as Wright had an odd ability or, perhaps, a gift.

This author was stubborn and would finally finish scripting it in 1939, around a mighty obstruction - a lack of particular icons, a particular uncial... Wright's story is a lipogram. And so is this post.
Try it. Warning - it is most difficult to avoid pitfalls!

It is akin to playing music without a "D" string on your guitar... How abominably frustrating!

Link in this location.