Gruts

I found myself using the phrase selling like hot cakes earlier this week. It suddenly occurred to me that this is a very strange expression. I have never eaten a hot cake, and I have never seen one for sale. Perhaps that's because they sell out so quickly.

Hot cakes? Pretty odd.

Jen thinks it might refer to fairy cakes (what the Americans call cup cakes), which are particularly tasty when eaten warm, fresh out of the oven. That's as maybe, but, if so, shouldn't the expression be selling like warm fairy cakes?

But even if Jen's interpretation is right, do warm fairy cakes sell particularly well these days? If they do, I've certainly never noticed. In this day and age, wouldn't it be more appropriate to say selling like iPods, or something like that?

…All of which got Fitz and me talking in the pub last night about the Fosbury Flop. Good old Dick Fosbury is one of those totally cool individuals who have had a manoeuvre named after them. His particular manoeuvre revolutionised the world of high jump. It added several inches to most people's high jumping ability. No high jumper in their right mind would be without it. Indeed, when it comes to high jumping technique, it's the only game in town—it has been a massive success.

So why's it called the Fosbury Flop?

When I comment on news stories, I have been known to look for the occasional quirky slant. But sometimes the stories are quite odd enough on their own:

Reuters: German 'Homosexual' Penguins Spark Gay Protest
A plan by a German zoo to test the sexual appetites of a group of suspected homosexual penguins has sparked outrage among gay and lesbian groups, who fear zookeepers might force them to turn straight.

…and not forgetting this one:

Guardian: Monkeys go ape for a little allure
Scientists reported last week that male rhesus monkeys will 'pay' to check out pictures of female monkey bottoms or images of socially dominant members of their species.

CNN.com: Arthur Miller dead at 89

I'm gutted: Chattanooga Choo-Choo is one of my all-time favourite tunes.

As the keeper of a Charles Darwin website, I receive occasional emails from fundamentalist Christian loonies, who inform me that evolution is "only a theory", but who don't seem to realise that the first chapter of the Book of Genesis is only a creation myth.

When it comes to explaining reality, give me a theory over a creation myth any day.

Curiously, these loonies never attempt to explain what makes them think the Genesis creation myth is so much better than any of the hundreds of others they could have chosen. I don't bother arguing with them any more, and simply refer them to my standard response.

Employing divine intervention to explain how the universe came about clearly explains nothing, in that it begs the obvious follow-up question, "So where did God come from, then?" Adhering to Occam's Razor (Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, in case you were wondering), we make fewer assumptions if we claim that the universe was created out of (and by) nothing, than claiming that God was created out of (and by) nothing and then took it into His divine head to create the universe.

The latest scientific thinking is far simpler:

New Scientist: How 3D space survived the great destruction

Why do we live in a space with only three dimensions? Because, at some time in the past, all the universes with four or more dimensions collided and destroyed each other, while our 3D space survived by slipping between collisions. Or at least, that is what a new theory claims.

Easy-peasy, you see?

It sounds like a tall tale. Can't we accept that our universe has three space dimensions and that's that? Not if you believe in string theory—physicists' best bet for a fundamental description of all particles and forces—which needs nine spatial dimensions.

Nine dimensions. Got that?

In one interpretation of string theory, called braneworld, those extra dimensions are large, perhaps even infinite, and our universe is just a 3D membrane drifting in a higher-dimensional space. However, that does not explain why our "brane" has three rather than, say, four or seven dimensions.

Now a team led by Ruth Durrer of the University of Geneva in Switzerland has an explanation. The idea is that the cosmos once included branes with up to eight dimensions, floating about at random in nine-dimensional space. In their model, this 9D space has the form of a torus, or doughnut, with each dimension circling back on itself (www.arxiv.org/hep-th/0501163).

Mmmm! Nine-dimensional doughnuts!

BBC: Prince Charles to marry Camilla

Shouldn't all us loyal royalists be getting a day off work? Better still, why not make it a week? Hurrah!

One of the many stereotypes that we Brits have of the Germans is that of sun-lounger hoggers. Apparently, when on holiday in sunny climes, they rise hours before dawn to bag all the prime locations around the hotel pool.

As a person who doesn't like lounging about in the sun, I don't see this activity as much of a problem. In fact, it sounds pretty damn sensible to me. But I have often wondered whether the stereotype was true. So, last week, when I found myself staying in a hotel in Tobago that had a number of German guests, I decided to find out.

Fortunately, the verandah outside my room overlooked the hotel's swimming pool. So I rose one morning well before dawn and found myself a good vantage point.

Within minutes, shadowy figures began to emerge from the gloom and stumble their way towards the poolside. Some of them even brought their own sun-longers, which they had presumably stashed in their rooms the night before. Those fiendish Germans! I thought to myself.

But, hold on! As my eyes gradually adjusted to the pre-dawn light, I began to recognise some of these swimming-becostumed early birds. They were British!

A lump came to my throat. Never before had I felt so proud of my countrymen. They weren't going to be beaten by the likes of Herman the German; they were going to beat Fritz at his own game.

But alas! They had fallen into the Germans' devilish trap! The sun-lounger-hogging stereotype was, it turned out, a decoy—a myth spread by the Germans themselves. For, while the British (and one plucky, little Belgian) were preparing to fight them on the beach-towels, in a manoeuvre reminiscent of the Maginot Line débâcle, the Germans had completely circumvented the pool, made an all-out assault on the breakfast room, and commandeered all the sausages.

Ruthless cunning.

Overheard in the meal queue at our hotel last week:

Jen: "What soup is it today?"
Woman guest: "Smells like pea."

Apparently, airline stewardesses aren't called airline stewardesses any more; they're cabin crew these days. Call me old-fashioned, but it just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Anyway, one of our female cabin crew had a few problems with her announcements as we travelled to Tobago the other week. As our plane was taxiing along the runway, about to take off from London Gatwick, she welcomed us on board Virgin Atlantic Flight VS51 to Grenada. A couple of hundred passengers immediately sat bolt upright and cried, "GRENADA!!!?".

At the other end of the flight, as our plane came to a hault in Grenada Tobago, she made another announcement, which included the following request:

Those of you who require wheelchair assistance, please remain seated.

Call me puerile, but this made stuff come out of my nose.