Surprise

Given how many days have elapsed since my last post, it may come as a surprise to some of my readers that I have posted at all. That, however, is not the reason for the title of this post.

While reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – a book, by the way, which I thoroughly recommend – I came across the following passage:

A capacity for surprise is an essential aspect of our mental life, and surprise itself is the most sensitive indication of how we understand our world and what we expect from it.

...which has certain parallels with the quote in my sidebar:

The only appropriate state of the mind is surprise.

Speaking of surprises, I was in North Bengal recently, attending a friend's wedding. My friend had kindly arranged for a car to ferry us between the wedding venue and the guest house where we were staying, some 30 km away. The road connecting the two towns ran through the Buxa Tiger Reserve.

The driver who was taking us back to our guest house on the first night was very enthusiastic about showing us some wildlife. He took the more forested road even though, at that time of night, he was not really supposed to. When we were passing a river, he stopped the car and made us get out and listen for the sound of the 'topke shaap' (a snake which I had never heard of before). As it happens, the topke snakes were quiet that night.

As we drove on, he was saying it was too bad we weren't staying in the area much longer. If we travelled this road regularly for a couple of weeks, he said, there was a good chance we would see a wild elephant. Suddenly, he stopped mid-sentence and brought the car to a halt. We wondered if we had again entered topke snake territory, but no. Not even 30 metres away, our headlights picked out an elephant quietly crossing the road and disappearing into the jungle.

Real Estate Taboo

Taboo (for those who have not played) is a party game where you have to communicate a random word to your teammates, but without using certain other 'taboo' words.

Last week I picked the word 'full', and as you might expect, 'empty' was one of the taboo words. The ensuing exchange illustrates the joys of playing Taboo with friends who are on the housing market:

me:	The opposite of vacant.
teammate:	Tenanted?

Santa Claus

A conversation I overheard while standing in a Tesco checkout queue:

Father:	Let's see what Santa Claus gets you.
Boy:	There is no Santa Claus.
Father:	Mummy spilled the beans, did she?
Boy:	Yes.
Father:	Well, as long as you don't tell your sister...
Boy:	I won't.
Father:	So. The magic has died for you. Well, it happens to everyone, in the end.

Shirley Temple apparently said, "I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."

Crossing the Bosphorus

In The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, teenaged Ed Brubeck explains to his friend Holly Sykes about Interrail:

A train pass. You pay a hundred and thirty quid and then you can travel all over Europe, for a month, for free. Second-class, but still. From the tip of Portugal to the top of Norway. Eastern-bloc countries too, Yugoslavia and places. The Berlin Wall. Istanbul. In Istanbul, there's this bridge, right. One side's in Europe and the other's in Asia. I’m going to walk across it.

Like Ed, my friend Shekhar and I once hit upon the idea of crossing the Bosphorus on foot.

Accordingly we travelled to Istanbul (by air, not Interrail), and one afternoon we found ourselves on the Asian coast of the Bosphorus, not far from the bridge. A couple of times we asked people for directions, and they all suggested we take a taksi, presumably because it was a long way. Of course our whole idea was to walk from Asia to Europe, not take a taxi, but we were nevertheless touched by their solicitude.

The last group of people we asked for directions did not speak English, but were especially vehement in recommending a taxi. When we insisted that we wanted to walk, they pointed to a nearby police car, then mimed handcuffs. It was thus that we learnt that one does not simply walk across the Bosphorus: the bridge has apparently been closed to pedestrians since the late 1970s.

Ed Brubeck made the same discovery. A few chapters later, we read a postcard from Ed to Holly:

Today I crossed the Bosphorus Bridge! You're not allowed to walk across it so I hopped between continents on a bus with schoolkids and grannies. Now I can say I've been to Asia.

The Spider Parable

Tintin readers may be familiar with Araneus diadematus: it was the spider which sat on Professor Phostle's telescope, leading him to think there was an enormous spider travelling through space.

This line made an impression on me when I read it as a kid, so although Araneus diadematus is not found in India, when I saw spiders in our house, I would often mutter to myself, "It's an Araneus diadematus! An enormous Araneus diadematus!"

Now that I am in Cambridgeshire, a beautiful specimen lives in our back garden.

She likes to spin her web across the garden gate, which unfortunately means that each time I take out my bicycle, I have no option but to tear the web down. For over a month now, I have been – reluctantly – destroying her web on an almost daily basis, but the next morning I find it has been rebuilt.

If I were Robert the Bruce, I might have drawn some sort of life lesson from this.

Dog Poo Fairy

Anti-dog-poo posters in Histon & Impington range from the cutesy to the downright draconian.

Awesome Macaques

Anasua showed me this news story about a 10-year-old who got lost in the woods while camping, and was only found after a nearly 29-hour search. The report says:

When asked what it was like to stay on the mountain overnight by himself, he replied: "It was awesome."

I like to think he used awesome not in the colloquial sense of "extremely good", but in the original sense of "extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring awe".

Speaking of awesome (extremely good) things, here is a video of Yakushima macaques we saw in the forests of Yakushima, Japan.

Astronomical Inaccuracy

A quick housekeeping announcement: you can now follow this blog via email if you are so inclined. There is a new field in the sidebar where you can enter your email address. Once your subscription is active, you will receive email notifications about new posts. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time.

Edit: No more subscribe option, sorry!

* * *

I was in London yesterday on some work, and I saw this poster on a tube station wall.

I was idly scrutinising the night sky in the poster, trying to see if I could recognise any constellations, when I noticed a curious thing. Not only is the depiction of the sky inaccurate (which alone would be bad enough, this being an advert for an observatory of all things!), it actually repeats horizontally.

You can see this clearly in the image below, where I have circled three of the asterisms* for easy identification (you have to make some allowances for the distortion caused by the camera lens and the curvature of the wall).

I think this is rather lazy design; contrast it with Randall Munroe's obsessive attention to astronomical detail.

Happy equinox, everyone!

*

An asterism is a pattern of stars smaller than a constellation, like the Big Dipper which is part of the constellation Ursa Major. It is also the name for one of my favourite typographical symbols: ⁂. You may have known these facts already; I basically inserted the footnote because the temptation to put an asterisk next to asterisms was irresistible.