North Brother Island, New York

Just the thing for your little ones... Atomic Toys

Radiohead - B side from OK Computer

http://youtu.be/LTGnujQfcRg Radiohead - Pearly

This didn't make it on to OK Computer - still an amazing song!

Music from last decade

http://youtu.be/U8BWBn26bX0 The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist

This is classic The Avalanches... Warning: don't try to critically analyse the video

I don't like tatoos myself...

I don't like tattoos myself, but if you have to get one then at least make it literary eg David Foster Wallace is a good start

Why aren't I a plumber?

So I went to medical school, spent 9 years in post-graduate training, and still I get paid less per hour (after-hours) than a plumber...and the plumber who came around today to fix my leaking toilet, left after half an hour, with the toilet leaking more than before, in search of a spare part... "I'll get back to you..."

Can you imagine: "I'm sorry Mrs Jones, the surgeon only had time to remove half your gall bladder, he'll ring you soon to come back to have the other half removed".

Something to read

This is a classic... Ignatius J. Reilly, the central character is a slob, who spends his waking hours disdaining everything.  It's the only book of literature with the pyloris represented that I am aware of!

I gave a copy to my niece when she was 17 because she wasn't a fan of reading - she couldn't put it down.  One of the true modern classics, with a truly heart-breaking story of it's publication

Good shot!

http://youtu.be/2nHE-EErdWs

The water epidemic

Everywhere you look, people are swigging on a bottle of water.  Eight glasses of water a day has been the generally accepted recommendation.  This myth may derive from a US Recommended Dietary Allowance report in 1945.

Beverage companies have jumped on the band-wagon to perpetuate this myth.  So on office desks, strewn over the back seats of cars, and stuffed into hanbags is the ubiquitous bottle of water.

Fortunately the eight glasses a day is a myth., so you can happily have a drink just when you feel thirsty, unless you are engaging in relatively vigourous exercise or are ill.  The reason you don't need to rigorously count your fluid intake is because of a gland in the centre of the brain called the hypothalamus.  This gland (or more correctly, an extension of the nervous system) monitors fluid and electroltye balance within your body without you even being aware of it.  It will alert you if you need to take in more fluid by making you thirsty.  Incidentally our bodies monitor many aspects of our physiology without us being aware of it eg. blood glucose, potassium, acid-base status, etc.

Not for claustrophobics - submarine pics

The past is a different country unless that country is North Korea in the present

If you have any spare time and an electromagnet

http://vimeo.com/23155536

A picture tell a thousand words...

Well at least Uncle Harry is enjoying himself

Try these illusions!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvvcRdwNhGM&feature=player_detailpage

I remember learning about this in physics in high school

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laty3vXKRek&feature=player_detailpage

Discrimination or do I have a problem??

A Facebook quiz asked me "Are you a righty or a lefty"?

Whilst I write, throw balls, play golf and cricket with my right hand, I throw Frisbee & use a bow-and-arrow with my left-hand.  I am left footed - I kick a football and soccer ball with my left foot only.  I am not ambidextrous, but definitely not a righty or a lefty either.... am I the only one??

Silent Underground

When the drive to the airport is too long...

A motoring dilemma

So I was about to get in my car yesterday when I noticed something shiny on my tyre. On closer inspection it was a screw embedded in the tyre.  The question was, had it penetrated the tyre completely, and if so, if I removed it would the tyre deflate?

To remove or not remove, that was the question.  So I removed it.... and the tyre rapidly deflated.  So now I have to drive around on a dinky wheel until I get a new tyre.

2 Songs

http://youtu.be/gzk-LXb9OUw Gypsy & The Cat - Jona Vark

http://youtu.be/o5c9w6uWBOI Codex - Radiohead

A literal moving picture

Click on the image

Two observations

1. Following on from the GFC and Greece's teetering economy - Beware of Greeks bearing gifts - they may not have been paid for.

2. Birds flying in flocks never seem to bump in to each other

Art by Evol

This looks incredibly real - but is in fact a miniature art installation

2 songs by The Beloved

http://youtu.be/JXLYf5XBx7M - Deliver Me

http://youtu.be/7-41xQ8ki1Y - Sweet Harmony

The Beloved formed in a most unique way.  The founding member put an ad in the UK music press asking like-minded souls to meet three years to the day hence, in a diner in Covent Garden... one person turned up and thus the nucleus of the band was formed.

Two unique Buildings

                                          Robot Building, Bangkok

                                        Wooden Skyscraper, Archangelsk, Russia

These photos have nothing in common!

This is some kind of suet pudding - I think my grandmother made this for us when we were kids... it tastes delicious, but just don't ask what suet is (or rennet, or Parson's Nose, or sweetmeat for that matter)

Little Chef

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_QHCzAkUII&feature=player_embedded

A real dancing bear!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9og9YZu8gI&feature=player_detailpage

Shanghai 1990 and 2010... keeping the global economy going!

The Temper Trap

http://youtu.be/jxKjOOR9sPU The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition

Coffee

I was reading an article in the paper today about coffee type and personality - so I obviously have a "vanilla" personality because I usually have a skinny cap. at work.

Last week at the cafe at work someone in the queue ahead of me ordered a "strong decaf" - I am pleased to report the barista didn't blink an eye (he didn't even flinch when a rather portly man ordered a latte with FOUR sugars, either).

In the last 2 years, two of my junior colleagues have had adverse effects to caffeine - one had an episode of SVT (supraventicular tachycardia) related to her TEN TO FIFTEEN caffeine fixes per day!

50 years of manned space flight

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, so many of the pictures, stories, and games of my childhood were of rockets and space travel.  Pop culture reflected this eg. My Favourite Martian, The Jetsons, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and of course David Bowie's Major Tom.

A father of one of my friends at school worked on the Apollo project, and so we often got to see 8mm films from NASA hot-off-the-press as it were. Truly inspiring to a boy in the early 70s.... on the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon, my mother took my brother and I out of school, and made us sit in front of the black-and-white TV screen and watch the grainy images of Armstrong & Aldrin step out onto the moon surface.

Choose your fence

If you had to choose between these two fences.... I know I'd choose the Surfboard fence over the Mole Carcass fence

Abandonment

Remember this house?

Remember Cameron Frye? He's Ferris Bueller's best friend.... this is Cameron Frye's house in the film

Never write a book on a risk in the absence of any evidence

This is a comment from Bob Park, a renowned physicist from the US.  Never has a truer word been spoken. Probably similar to saying "don't comment on something you know nothing about".

This quote was from a discussion regarding the health risks of mobile phones..... so far there is no well conducted research that indicates a risk from mobile phone useage.

My mantra whenever someone says something startling or counter-intuitive is "show me the evidence".  So with mobile phone useage and health risks, I say- show me the evidence, and I mean rigorous scientific evidence, not dodgy hocus-pocus.

My favourite toilet sign!

Not something I've really thought much about... thanks to Improbable Research

On Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise

May 3rd, 2011

Scientists know a bit more about contagious yawning – one of science’s utter mysteries – than they did a year ago, thanks to a study called No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise,Geochelone carbonaria. The study’s authors say their experiments, conducted with seven tortoises, might help eliminate some of the many competing theories as to why humans yawn when they see other humans yawn.
Writing in the journal Current Zoology, Anna Wilkinson [pictured here], Isabella Mand and Ludwig Huber of the University of Vienna, Austria, and Natalie Sebanz of Radboud University in the Netherlands, explain…
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.

Pendulum - it looks like they have minds of their own

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVkdfJ9PkRQ&feature=player_embedded

Flash Mob - Bondi Beach, Sydney

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao4DkbGbxl0&feature=player_embedded Wish I was there!!!

He wasn't armed....

Ok he wasn't armed, but his compound was heavily fortified and guarded, so... I'm guessing he might have a firearm somewhere handy.  I suppose they could have waited to see what he did next... not sure there needs to be an etiquette for this...

Music for the iPod

http://youtu.be/j_i0KxjtDH4 Modest Mouse - Dashboard (2007)

http://youtu.be/TXpBbayjfOY Paul Dempsey - Ramona was a Waitress (Faux Pas Remix).  Former singer of Something for Kate. I like this version much better than the original

http://youtu.be/w2n-7K0Ef6Y British Sea Power - Waving Flags

http://youtu.be/tSuIrgjUlcc OMD - History of Modern (Part 1)... sounds just like the old days...ahhh

Room with a view

We had a picnic on the weekend and my cousin was showing me pictures of the view from his office window - about thirty stories up showing a phenomenal view over the downtown area and across the bay, sunset etc.  I told him I don't have a picture of the view out of my office window for the simple reason: my view consists of a sequence of grassy knolls, muddy tracks & bits of strewn detritus, the remainder of a tip on which the hospital I work on was built.

Apparently we can't build higher than two stories or the hospital will sink a la the Tower of Pisa.  But the one good sight, is the occasional kangaroo who bounces around, looking slightly confused.

Cryptic

Apropos of nothing I completed the Cryptic Crossword today - I need to be in a state of mind-environment equilibrium to solve the whole puzzle so it most have been a good day... eg

21 Down: Put some type of clasp on sore areas as a means of support (7)

Think about it.... or look closely at the clue!

Two great songs

http://youtu.be/8nTFjVm9sTQ House of Cards - Radiohead... I can't explain this, but this song makes me feel like I'm drinking a cocktail in a bar in the 60s!

http://youtu.be/-G4zRwcmY9o Maxi Priest - Close to You

Nosama

In the old days you could go and see someone getting hung, drawn & quartered... pity we missed out on the show

Great street art!

Looks much better upside down!