Six Things, Volume 19

Penguin | Mikiphone | London | Time | Rhythm | Pollinators

May 19, 2023

Thing 1 – Penguin

What’s most similar to a penguin – a finch or a dolphin?

This was the starting point for a study exploring the idea that basic concepts are not understood by everyone in the same way, and that this might just be at the heart of large areas of human disagreement, from climate change to the question of whether Jaffa Cakes are cakes or biscuits.

Now, if asked this question, I’d be the tedious person saying “well it depends on your definition of ‘similar’. If you mean ‘similar in physical appearance, then a dolphin, obviously, but if you mean ‘genetically similar’ then it’s the finch. Does that help?”

But that, it turns out, is at least part of the point. The study is here and here’s an excellent article explaining it rather better than I’d be able to. And the head author of the study, Celeste Kidd, talks about it in the You Are Not So Smart podcast. All very worth exploring.

Another thing that occurred to me reading the article is the subject of penguin weight.

“People disagree about things like whether penguins are heavy, presumably because they haven’t lifted a penguin.”

I would further enrage the researchers by asking whether the penguin in question was the Emperor penguin (35 kg and pictured above) or the ineffably cute Little Blue Penguin (1.3 kg). I reckon I could easily handle the latter, perhaps even slipping it into my pocket and carrying it around as a mascot.

Yes, since you ask, I am fun at parties.

Thing 2 – Mikiphone

This is a delightful thing: the Mikiphone, a portable phonograph from the 1920s.

Danny Holland explains more here.

“You pulled and pushed the thing together, connecting the recorder head and the two-part Bakelite resonator to the foldout tone arm, placed the record on the turntable’s pin, flexed your fingers, wound the handle 50 times, stuck on your 78rpm 10-inch platter and listened.”

I can’t quite work out whether I would be the hipster happily assembling the phonograph in a café and playing my jazz record on it without heed to the preferences of my fellow customers, or the annoyed man in the corner chuntering under my breath but not actually having the courage to ask them to stop playing it. Given my reaction to people playing loud music on their phones on the tube, almost certainly the latter.

Thing 3 – London

London is big. Or at least it feels big, especially when you’re contemplating the journey from Mill End Pumping Station to Coldharbour Point by public transport.

Following ‘the true size of countries’, Alastair Rae (who also produced the road map featured last week) has made a fun ‘true size of greater London’.

You can put it over the Isle of Wight.

Or Malta.

Or London, Ontario. (or, indeed, any of the 29 Londons around the world)

Or in the middle of the Pacific.

Perhaps it’s not so big after all.

Thing 4 – Time

Where does the day go? Find out here.

Frankly, this is a bit unrealistic, what with there being no option for ‘all the time, it’s welded to my hand’.

And tellingly, it doesn’t include a slider for ‘time spent fiddling around with sliders in an attempt to work out where all the time goes.’

If the time you’ve spent doing that (and, let’s face it, reading this) makes you think and fret about the way you use time, and how it seems as if you are constantly fighting a losing battle against it, this post from Oliver Burkemann might help (if you don’t have time to read it, the message is basically “you will never beat time, so stop trying to”). He also wrote this post, on creating ‘dailyish’ habits, which I’ve found enormously helpful.

Burkemann’s book, Four Thousand Weeks, is very good. Its thesis is basically “accept that you are never going to be able to do everything, and this might just enable you to do something.”

Thing 5 – Rhythm

This is the best scientific paper ever written.

Do not be put off by the words ‘scientific paper’ – just take a few minutes to read it (preferably out loud) in its glorious entirety.

Thing 6 – Pollinators

Following on from the excellent pollinators joke last week and hitting my sweet spot for information charts and pretty colours, here’s a poster by Marian Hill illustrating just some of the many pollinators in the UK. It’s not just the bees.

You can download it or buy it, and others, here.

Six Things