Superior Scribbler Award

Well I'll be bejiggered, it turns out that I'm made of win. I've been given a Superior Scribbler award by Sondra Stinglash at callithumper blogspot. This is particularly funkalicious due to my only recently shattered viginity in this medium.

She said; "Very Top Five because his writing is so damn smart it makes me jealous."

How jolly nice. My writing is very smart though; I use Latin and shiz all over this domum. And big words, like 'loquacious'. I used loquacious just the other day in an actual conversation, as if it was a normal, quotidian word.

Anyway, this award now requires of me that I pass on this accolade, pyramid-scheme-like, to five more blogtastic bloggers in the bloge (That's like globe (it's even an anagram), synonomous with the more usual blogosphere). I like to think it's pronounced blogé. Fabulously, I specialise in doing lists of five. Hence the name; Very Top Five Blog. So this couldn't be further up my street.

Not including my actual-friends-from-real-life's blogs due to my shameless partisanity (a word?), here are five blogs that I really quite like, in either reverse/increasing/no/pyramidal order as you see fit to interpret:

Be Patient I Am Getting To The Point For her posts which manage to be perceptive, personal and often very funny all at the same time. And she likes cats, which is aces with me.

Cinema Obsessed for her posts on all aspects of cinema, with relentless updating. And the fabby quotable quotes. I can vouch for their quotablity.

Julochka I have always felt rather well disposed towards Julochka and her blog ever since she was the first person to leave a comment on one of my posts. Her blog is a mix of beautiful photographs and brilliant text to go along with them.

Sotto Voce More super duper photgraphs here! And she featured a poem on her blog a few days ago that I've been thinking about ever since. It's always jolly to be affected.

The Audacity of an Optimistic Pessimist is training for a marathon, and her blog is a journal of how that's going; a very funny journal, with the running theme (gettit?) that she is on a quest to get fit for the NYC marathon giving everything a nice zing.

Here are the award rules:

• Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
• Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
• Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.
• Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
• Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

Very Top Five... Clever things mammals have evolved

Nature is great at inventing things because it has the time to tinker. Millions of years of evolution have gone into improving the best and scrapping the worst bits of creatures in an endless search for perfection. (Alternatively, God did it. And he’s jolly clever, by all accounts, so proponents of evolutionary theory and creationism are in agreement, at least on this; Creatures are very well suited for purpose.)

So what makes a great product of evolution? Firstly, usefulness is paramount. Often a good idea will be repeated in many creatures, while others are so unique to one animal that it automatically gains an upper hand. Also, when you get right down to it, it’s very important that the mammal feels cool about itself. For example, the streamlined cheetah’s body is cool, whereas the two-in-one anus/genitalia of the duck billed platypus (while undoubtedly an efficient invention) is definitely not. (Are platypussies even mammals? Who can say? Well, biologists, obviously. And anyone who can be bothered looking it up.)

With these criteria in mind; the best of Nature’s mammalian inventions:

5. Ears, Common Pipistrelle Bat

Ears could be considered quite anatomically simple when compared to the other sense organs but are just as functional and provide a wealth of sensory information, making them all the more elegant in their design. Hearing allows an animal to process a wealth of information about its environment which is vital for survival.

Insectivorous Bats like the Pipistrelle get the most out of their ears. These are so sensitive that they act as sonar sensor, meaning the bat can squeak and listen to the echo to build up a 3D picture of its environment - and consequently zero in on insects in total darkness. And the insects are totally all like bzzzzzz OMGWTFWASTHATLOL!ARgh…

4. Eyesight, Tarsiers.

Mammalian eyesight is pretty good all round, in both small and large animals, and in predators and prey species alike. Tigers need good eyesight to catch llamas or whatever, and llamas need good eyesight to catch those sneaky tigers red handed. Or preferably before they get red handed, of course.

As for Tarsiers, think of a hand-sized ET with fur, and you’re close enough. Tarsiers have huge eyes, which are actually bigger than their brains. (If that doesn’t sound all that big, imagine what human eyes would look like if they were same size as our brains. Exactly.)

And they need them, because they live in the jungle and only come out at night. This necessitates something extraordinary to put them beyond the competition; else they’re going to get face-slammed by the razor claws of screaming jungly death.

3. Circulation system, blue whale

The circulation system of the vertebrates is a superb system of intra-bodily transport, and is a marvel of engineering, complete with valves, pressurised pipelines and the great central pumping station of the heart. Beats the man-made pipe system of any city you’d care to mention.

This complicated system is most impressive in the largest vertebrate, the blue whale, complete with a heart the size of a car and arteries big enough for a human to slide through. Not that you’d want to, as you’d drown in blood (if the pressure didn’t kill you first. Which it would.)

2. Nose, Grizzly Bear.

Like animals which rely on their ears, animals which rely on their noses obtain a massive wealth of information about their surroundings which is vital to their survival. A good nose is an advanced chemical identification laboratory, and these are still far, far more acute than any chemical or physical man-made equivalents. So there, science.

Bears noses have about seven times as many receptors as bloodhounds do, which in turn have one hundred million times more than us puny humans.

This is one of the many reasons that you shouldn’t get into a smell-off with a bear, another being that bears often fail to understand the rules, and if they feel pressured or stressed, they may try to eat your face.

1. Brain, Human

Oh yes, we win! Hell’s yeah!

The brain in any animal is the literal (hah!) nerve centre, controlling movement, biological process, instinct and thought, and whether spread throughout the body (as in insects) or in a central position in the head (as in vertebrates), the brain is totally, irreplaceably vital to the creature’s operation.

In a few tens of thousands of years (An instant compared to the planet’s long history and short even to the ordinary rate of evolution) the human race has reached a pre-eminent position of dominance over all other animals. We even ride some of them around; that’s how much we pwn them.

The human brain has even enabled man to understand evolution, and thus gives us the ability to appreciate our own mechanism of creation. It also provides some humans with alternative hypotheses to evolution, which can only further demonstrate the boundless creativity of our dear grey masses, regardless of which theory is the correct one.

In first place, I give you: the human brain. Does knowing that give you a warm glow? If so, that was delivered courtesy of your brain. How pleasantly fitting.

Very Top Five... Ways to name a chemical element

So you’ve discovered a new chemical element and are trying to think of a good name for it? Well, it isn’t all laughs and fun, despite what you might think of the occasional joke names like ‘Uranium’.

You might want to pick a name which says something about the properties of the element, like the greenish-yellow gas chlorine, which unsurprisingly means “greenish-yellow” in Greek. The same logic of “give-it-a-name-that-describes-what-it-is” cannot be applied to either bohrium or boron, both of which only encourage proletarian anti-chemistry sniggering.

Oh, and the general rule is to whack a classical languages suffix on the end, usually ‘–ium’ but sometimes ‘–us,’ or ‘-on’. This makes it sound instantly pompous, complicated and alien to the layman’s sensibilities, which scientists like to encourage. Otherwise you might think science was accessible, which just won’t do at all.

Anyway, there are broadly five main ways for coming up with a name for a chemical element. Let’s get elemental:

5. After a place.

There are 25 elements named after places on Earth, and this has been a popular choice particularly in recent years. This is because scientists like almost nothing better than making a big fuss over whose right it is to name a new element, so it is generally easier to try and get people on side to name it after the city, country or continent where it was discovered rather than really push that campaign to name it after your favourite 80’s pop group. For example, europium is almost certainly named after the continent and not the band.

More examples in this place names category include Ytterbium, which is named after the Swedish village Ytterby; Yttrium, named after Ytterby; Terbium, named after Ytterby; And Erbium, also named after Ytterby. It’s a popular choice. Because obviously who doesn’t first think of little Ytterby when they come to name a new element?

4. From Mythology

Is there anything a scientist loves more than lording it over the proles with his fancy know-how and learnedness? I checked; there isn’t.

So, your typical scientist, when faced with the challenge of naming something very important, will reach for his big book of difficult and old words and try to come up with an obscure little joke that his colleagues can snigger at sycophantically, ‘cos they get the reference, partnered with the internal warmth that comes from knowing that you don’t.

Hence promethium, named after Promethius, who stole fire from the gods. Because promethium glows in the dark, this is very funny and clever.

Mercury is named after the eponymous messenger of the gods. He was jolly fast, and elemental mercury, since it is a liquid at room temperature, runs. Get it?

And Tantalum, named after Tantalus, who was condemned by the gods to stand in water that would sink out of reach when he tried to drink. Now, if you also know that tantalum does not react with water, I’m sure you can start to see how hilarity may ensue.

And so it goes…

3. From deconstruction.

Just give it a name that says what the element does, or describes a fundamental property of it. Obviously put it in Greek, Latin or even Arabic (sulfra means yellow, and sulfur is yellow), otherwise people will think that chemistry is easy, which is to be actively discouraged, as was discussed above. Calling an element ‘Yellow,’ simply because it is yellow, makes you sound about five years old. So sulfur it is.

Oxygen and hydrogen were named in this way. They respectively mean ‘to beget acid’ and ‘to beget water’. Retrospectively, it is rather hilarious to notice that the science guys got it wrong, and hydrogen is actually the component common to all acids, not oxygen, so they should really be named the other way round. Woops. You dropped the ball there, science guys.

Radium is named this way too; ray, from ray as in death-ray, and –ium, meaning complicated and sciency, with a cheeky wee ‘d’ sandwiched in the middle to give it that hard vowel sound to add more badassery than it would have if it were just rayium. (Radon was named in exactly the same way (with –on as the second most sciency suffix they could come up with), and Actinium is also from the Greek word for ray, so sometimes scientists can be really unoriginal.)

2. From how it was found.

Is your classical education so lacking that your attempt to deliver classy classical allusion would surely lead to a nomen nudum? Can’t you tell your Ares from your arse?

Don’t fear, there is a simpler way to come up with a name. Just name it after the types of place it was first found, or even the apparatus you used to find it. Did you find the element in the sun? Then call it Helium, after the Greek god of the sun Helios. If you first saw it as a band of colour in a spectroscope, then name it after the colour. Was it red? Call it Rubidium. Was it Indigo? Call it Indium. Was it a pleasant sky blue? Call it Caesium. Easy peasy.

1. After a person.

11 elements are named after people (More if you count mythological people), and it is the most popular choice in these days of international scientific squabbling and backstabbing co-operation. Naming stalemates are partially resolved by different research groups simply ignoring each other and proclaiming their choice of name as loudly as possible, but everyone gets hoarse sooner or later, and universal names have to be agreed.

So for example, most everyone can agree that Einstein was a jolly good chap, and so we ended up with an element called Einsteinium, (using the old rule of add –ium for instant elementality, and just when you thought “Einstein” was as sciency a name as you could get.)

Curium is named after two people; fortunately both called Curie (Pierre and Marie).

And good old mendelevium, named after Dmitiri Mendelev, who came up with the idea of a periodic table in the first place, but had to wait ‘til after he was dead for one of the elements to be named after him, number 101. That showed some restraint on his part, I think. After all, he could easily have ‘done a Ytterby,’ and left us with a legacy of Mendeliums, Mendeleviums and Dmitriums. So thanks Mendelev, for your restraint, for your humility, and for your periodic table of elements.