Tuesday 21 April 2015

Since when has 81 been a mile-stone?


Here in the UK, the Google logo depicts a bunch of aliens manning an underwater, mechanical Nessie, using bicycle technology to turn the propellor. Hold the cursor over it and it says, "81 years of searching for the Loch Ness monster."

Beneath that, there is an invitation to explore Loch Ness using underwater Goggle Street View, and a link to take you there. I didn't even know such a thing existed.

So I clicked on the link and pretty soon the start-point appeared on the screen, with Urquhart Castle on the nearby shore, and half of the camera lens underwater.

It works the same way as ordinary Street View, with arrows for up, down, left, right, and plus and minus for zoom. I turned the camera downward.

I didn't bother to walk the 23 miles of Loch Ness - a few feet told me that all you can see is impenetrable brown-green darkness which, funnily enough, is just how I imagined it.

This Nessie business has been saturated with humour since the very first time the monster was/was not spotted.

On the subject of things which we all know to be either true or false - or both - on which a lot of money has been spent to scientifically verify the facts, two bits of clinical research have been published today.

The first is that it is not possible to become fat without eating too much. Yes, believe it or not, this is true.

Some scientists became so fed-up with fat people going to their doctors and lying to them about not eating, that they locked them in a room and fed half of them what they needed to stay alive, and the other half what they needed to keep the other half alive as well. The scientists couldn't bring themselves to believe that these fat people - like plants - photo synthesised, and by golly they were right.

The other astounding fact is that - wait for it - babies feel pain.

For about 80 years - about the same time as they have been searching for the Loch Ness monster - everyone pretended to believe the callous doctors when they told the distraught mothers that the procedure they were about to perform on their children did not need anaesthetic.

Well now, due to very unsophisticated experiments which involve torturing babies and wiring them up to monitors (because the babies cannot yet tell them how painful it is), they now know that pain is very real for them after all. I wonder how much money this cost?


16 comments:

  1. Why is it that people always try to believe in things that don't exist? Still, without Nessie; no tourists.

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    1. I'm prepared to believe in anything myself. Innocent until proven otherwise.

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  2. Agree with your last line - it could be applied to so much that every government I have known in my now quite long life has ever done. Why is it that so-called 'super clever' people can feel quite justified in using vast sums of money on research which is unnecessary - while really important things slip through the net. The way of the world I suppose.

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  3. Hello Tom: Just the other day I was talking about babies and how having a weird poop must be so scary for them. Having to experience constipation for the first time would be horrifying.

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    1. "Get it out! It's nothing to do with me! It's an alien which has invaded my body!" - All these things were said by their mothers when they were being born. They must be used to it.

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  4. Google is searching for Nessie way over here, too.
    I vividly recall being a 3 year old in the hospital. The white coats approached with needles longer than my arm, assuring me it would hurt. Liars. I doubt they had toddler length needles and they surely did not have pain proof needles.

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    1. sigh: would not hurt. I suppose it is a summation of my entire miserable experience with measles. I wish it on no child.

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    2. I had very similar experiences with the lying bastards. I have not been to a doctor since I was about 20.

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    3. ... Because I too remember a nightmare hospital experience aged about 3 and a half.

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  5. Can plants feel pain? When my husband was in graduate school, they hooked up some plants to an electrical gadget and killed guppies next to the plant. The plants did react.

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  6. I think I'll wade that nessie pond tomorrow in my lunch break. I've seen the weird logo but didn't know what it represented.
    Research so often just proves common sense and yes a waste of money. Still it keeps someone in employment:)

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    1. But the man on the street (beginning to sound like UKIP) could have told them all this for nothing. Well, for the price of a pint anyway.

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