Home
The Great Mouse Roundup
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2316
It's warm enough outside and I've postponed it long enough. Too long, in fact, it's like I'm running a Superstore in here.
Watching the mice yesterday from the office, they're loving that chew-toy I bought them for christmas. Popping out from under the stove, two at a time - I thought there was only two....
Large mouse, small mouse climbing chew. Small mouse, medium mouse, is there only 2? medium mouse, large mouse, this just won't do....
There's a Dr. Seuss book in here somewhere....
It's hard to tell, it looks like there might be three mice, but I'm only seeing 2 at a time, the sizes appear to be different though....
And finally they come clean. Small mouse on chew, medium mouse above it, large mouse watching - a proper inter-generational family gathering. They pop in and out of the drawer, hanging down the chew with their tails when they want to get fed.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I see another mouse nonchalantly amble out from under the bookcase in the office.
Now they're taking the piss.
And so I pull out the drawer, manage to catch one mouse, the others escape. I throw him in my #3 Medalta, he shouldn't be able to jump out of that, but I've placed a collander over top just to be sure. A good thing from the sounds of it, there's a lot of fussing in there as he's trying to escape. When I've rounded them all up it'll be time to walk down to a wild area and relocate the family. Or any group of 2 or three at least, this might be a large scale job. Meanwhile I've booby trapped the apartment and baited traps....
Theory - Spontaneous Generation
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 2011
"Spontaneous Generation" is a theory first synthesized by Aristotle that explained the origins of life - arguing that life would simply appear given the right combination of (inanimate, non-living) ingredients.
While we find this laughable now, it's worth bearing in mind that this was virtually unquestioned for almost 2000 years (or only 1000 years, if you bought the New Chronology ...). And, in it's own way, it made sense. If you piled rags and oatmeal in the corner of your hut they would spontaneously produce mice. A lump of meat left out for a few days would of it's own accord create flies. And, like a good recipe, if you varied the ingredients you'd get different results. Extra oatmeal might mean more mice, keeping the meat wet would ensure the flies and maggots appeared.
So it was, in it's day, as common sensical as the notion of a heliocentric or geocentric universe.
Consider a few of the illusions we cherish as "Common Sense", and how curious they'll undoubtedly appear to future generations.
Theory - The New Chronology
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1748
I love a good theory. A good theory - however misguided - will always tell you something, if only about the author. It doesn't have to be right, even when theories are right they are only right until the next one comes along. But it might make you think in ways you hadn't thought before, question things you otherwise took for granted. With that in mind I thought I'd post a few links to some of the more interesting theories out there.
The first is one you probably haven't heard of - devised by a Russian of the name of Nikolai Morozov and expounded by Anatoly Fomenko it argues that we have measured the duration of history all wrong. In essence, it's only been roughly a thousand years since the time of Christ, and many of the antiquities and monuments of Classical Architecture are only a few hundreds of years old. Various devices are used to explain this, one of the more compelling of which is argument that "single events from other time periods that have been recorded multiple times from different perspectives, and thus mistaken for different events occurring at different times."
Note that the theories principal adherents tend to be mathematicians, or people somehow involved in the mathematical sciences. Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess champion, is one such adherent.
Link: The New Chronology
Mice in my walls
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2272
They're still here. In the rubbish, they don't even quiet themselves when I'm near. I'm just one of the gang. I think of picking up the trash bag and just taking it out, there would be one less to deal with, but then I think of the widowed mouse-spouse weeping somewhere in the cupboards and a litter of mouse orphans wondering when, why mommy or daddy isn't coming home . ...
I can't do it.
And it's too cold outside.
There's one in the wall beside my computer, behind an old printing tray I use as a curio box. It rustles and chews incessantly. And in my bedroom, somewhere, I can hear it, but I can't see it or find it, somewhere down in the vents.
But they all come through the kitchen. To the rubbish. I need an aquarium so I can begin the round-up, start the big mouse collection.
Page 853 of 886