Pork and Apple Bolognese or Bad Science

Last week I shared with you some rather horrible logical reasoning. This, as you may be aware, is known as bad science, and is governed by the following law, known as the Law of Logical Argument:

Anything is possible when you don’t know what you are talking about.

A chief example of this is the mathematical proof that 2=1, which I will demonstrate for you now.

Firstly assume that a=b. If you multiply both sides by a, you get a²=ab. Then add a² to each side and subtract 2ab to get 2(a²-ab)=a²-ab. Now dividing through by a²-ab will give you 2=1. If any of you are mathematically inclined then feel free to tell me why I get such an answer. The rest of you may marvel in my amazing ability to break Maths.

Using this fantastic flair for fuzzy logic, you can prove absolutely anything, and I intend to use it to invent hover-technology. Watch and learn.

Suppose you have a cat. First of all, aren’t you lucky, he/she is an adorable little thing! As you’re a cat owner, you will know that cats always land on their feet. This concludes the first part of our background.

Now, suppose you have a piece of buttered toast. First of all, stop right there. I know you want to eat it, but don’t. It will come in handy later. Now as you’re a buttered toast owner, you will know that by Sod’s Law a dropped piece of buttered toast will always land buttered side down when dropped on a carpet. This leads us nicely onto our final piece of set-up: suppose you have a carpet.

Now you have everything you need for hover technology. All you have to do is strap your buttered toast to the back of your cat and suspend it over the carpet. By our first claim, the cat will land on its feet. By our second, the toast will land buttered side down on the carpet.* The two of these laws will conflict with each other, and as the universe won’t know what to do you will find that your cat hovers sideways above the carpet.

You’re welcome.

* If this doesn’t work you may not have got the right amount of butter. Try adjusting this until you get it right. Also for best results, use Clover. It’s just nicer.

Sweet Potato and Bacon Risotto or (in)Frequently Asked Questions About The World

Last week I gave you what I considered to be an appropriate definition of culture. Today I am going to raise the tone a bit and ask several important questions regarding society as a whole.

Firstly, when was the last time you arrived anywhere in a giant egg?

If you hadn’t heard, the Grammy awards were on last week in America, and one of the nominees arrived in, that’s right, a GIANT EGG. I don’t think I need to tell you who it was*. If you turn up to an event in a dress made of meat, surely that isn’t going to be the end of things, and neither, I suspect, will her latest food-based stunt. Before long, I’m sure she will roll up to her hotel crouched over on a silver platter with an apple in her mouth**.

My second question is this: who you gonna call?

Consider the situation. There is something strange. This something is in your neighbourhood. If it’s not a ghost, which is something I will not get into right now, then the Ghostbusters aren’t going to be much help. You’re much better off calling the police, or better yet You’ve Been Framed. There’s £250 in that for you!

And finally, a question that we have all asked ourselves many a time:

Where did I put that thing I just had?

Everybody, to my knowledge, does this. You were holding something and about to do something with that something. But something else happened and then your something was somewhere else and you didn’t know where your something was! I can see this is going to get confusing, so let’s replace the word something with the word puppy because it is much quicker and easier to type, and everybody loves puppies*** ****.

Everybody always says “Oh, it’ll be in the last place you look”. But surely, if your puppy were in the last place you would look, then you should check that place first. But a ticket to Equatorial Guinea***** is not cheap, so this is often not feasible. And as Equatorial Guinea is the last place anybody would look for their puppy, then all the missing puppies in the world must be in Equatorial Guinea. So the only conclusion we can draw from this, and my top tip for this week, is as follows:

Equatorial Guinea is the perfect holiday spot for dog lovers.

* But for those of you who really don’t know, it was Lady Gaga.

** You heard it here first!

*** Unless you are the worlds biggest cat person, in which case you must be huge.

**** If you are allergic to bad science then leave now.

***** Formally the Republic of Equatorial Guinea******

****** Surely the last place anybody would look.

Sausages and Roast Vegetables or High Culture, Low Culture or Somewhere Inbetween?

How would you define culture? I would define it as a collection of pieces of entertainment that encourage thought and enjoyment simultaneously. Wikipedia would say Culture was a Canadian hip hop rapper and reggae artist who collaborated on a cover of Toto’s Africa. Wait, that’s not right. Forget that.

Wikipedia defines culture (or high culture) as a set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture. Personally I feel this leads to a slightly recursive definition if not for the other definition of culture – i.e. a Canadian hip hop rapper and reggae artist set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group – this refers to.

Wikipedia also gives a definition for low culture, saying it encompasses everything in society that has mass appeal. So you might ask “what is the difference?” (of course you might ask “where is the library?” but that’s not the question I’m going to answer).

The difference is that to be high culture, something must appeal greatly to a small group, and to be low culture it must just appeal to a large group. Of course you may ask “how do you define large, small and greatly?” (well actually you probably won’t – that distinction probably satisfied you and you would quite like me to shut up – but you should) but I won’t get into that for fear of losing you (please don’t leave me!).

So I think the best definition we can give of culture is the intersection of these two groups. To be culture, something should be both high culture and low culture. It should appeal greatly to a large group.

The original intention of this post was to demonstrate that video games count as culture, something I firmly believe though I know there are many who would disagree, but I felt that in order to know what was culture, I needed to know what culture was. So I will have to leave it to a later post to tell you why video games are a Canadian hip hop rapper and reggae artist.

Wait…

Roast Ham and Vegetables or Save On My Holiday

We, the very lucky of Bath University, are fortunate enough to get a week off after our first semester exams. The result of this for me was a holiday to the beautiful sunny isle of Cardiff with my girlfriend.

Our hotel room had a television in the corner, and though the Welsh-language channel was very tempting, we tended to watch Homes under the Hammer (because it’s awesome) while getting ready in the morning, which was followed every day by a program called Save My Holiday.

Funnily enough, this focused on people whose holidays needed saving. And our holiday was most certainly not one of those. In fact, it was probably one of the best holidays I’ve ever had. The hotel was in a fantastic location, equidistant from the station, the town centre and Cardiff Bay, home of the Doctor Who exhibition.

The main focus of our trip was to see Russell Howard at the Cardiff International Arena, but it became much more than that. We turned it into a 3 day stay, and went to visit Cardiff Castle and the Millennium Centre.

The castle itself was your standard motte-and-bailey, with a Norman keep (where they kept the Normans so I’m told) in the middle. The main house was gorgeous, with stunning architecture in some of the rooms, particularly the Arab Room (yes, it was really called that) with marble walls and a gold leaf ceiling. If you ever find yourself in Cardiff centre, it’s certainly worth a trip at about £5 entry, including a tour of the house and an audio guide.

Russell Howard was on good form, the highlight of his show being the moment he revealed the thong he was wearing. The Doctor Who exhibit was fantastic, right up to the moment the Cybermen tried to delete us.

Fortunately we managed to escape from the Cybermen, and moved on to the Millennium Centre, home of Torchwood, where we snapped some good photos. The bay was beautiful, despite the weather not really being great, and we took a look around to try and find a restaurant.

If you’ve ever been to Cardiff, you’ll understand when I say we were spoilt for choice. Every time we turned a corner there was another restaurant. We settled on a nice Chinese buffet called the Oriental Garden in the Red Dragon Centre, the third night in a row we had eaten out, so I was starting to get a bit full up.

It was a good trip at a great price, so if you ever want a good holiday on a tight budget, try Cardiff.