There’s been a silly trigonometric pun going around on Google+ the past week involving Bill Cosby. Having seen it enough times, I’ve decided to fight back with my own:
I would like to apologize in advance; you may now return to your regularly scheduled blog-reading.
Update: Yes, I do have some work that I really should be doing. Why do you ask? 😉
Update 2: I couldn’t resist adding this one:
Here we are again, with more Twitter #weirdscifacts!
599. Nov 02: Digits of Pi have inspired a musical sequence and a whole symphony! This comes via a tweet by @para_sight; also, @physicsman points out, “Given that Pi is non-repeating the binary version of the sequence contains every symphony in every codec in every bit rate.”
600. Nov 03: Fossilized red penguins in the Peruvian desert? It is odd enough to note that fossils of penguins have been found in a desert, but it was also determined that these penguins were red! (h/t @kimberly_gerson & @ejwillingham)
601. Nov 04: Via @blakestacey, the “tea leaf paradox“: stirring tea invariably leads to tea in middle bottom of cup! This is a wonderful example of nontrivial science typically sitting unnoticed in plain sight! One would think that the tea leaves would be pulled to the edges of the cup by centrifugal force, but as is often the case the actual physics is more complicated. (Picture via Wikipedia.)
602. Nov 05: Mathematician attempts the world’s ugliest piece of music. While we’re talking about music, it’s worth noting a mathematical attempt to produce genuinely horrible music. (Avoiding obvious Nickelback joke.) (h/t @patrickneville)
603. Nov 06: Urohidrosis: some bird species lower their body temperature by defecating on their own legs.
604. Nov 07: “Mars” “Crew” 520 day experiment ends, but 2000 attempt ended in drunken disaster! The “disaster” is referenced at the bottom of the linked article. Considering that a trip to Mars will take more than a year, experiments such as these are necessary to test human response to prolonged confinement and isolation. As is often the case, the “Twilight Zone” was way ahead of the curve on this one.
605. Nov 08: Sinister alliances: Groupers and moray eels can hunt as a team! (recent post by @edyong209)
It’s time for Weird Fiction Monday, when I post stories that I’ve written — both new and old — for the entertainment (hopefully) of my readers! As always, I note that I haven’t done extensive editing of the tales here, so don’t be surprised to find the writing a little rough.
This particular story was written in 2003. I’ll say a little more about it at the end of the post.
The Toybox
When Jennifer saw the truck pull up outside the house, she was all smiles and excitement. Daddy was home! She left her room and rushed down the stairs as fast as she was allowed, chasing her cat Snickers before her.
“Mom! Mom! He’s here!” she called out. Mom was sitting at the kitchen counter, working on her house selling, and didn’t look up when Jennifer came in. Snickers fled out through his kitty door.
“It’s about time,” Mom said, shuffling some papers. “Why don’t you go out and greet him?”
Jennifer needed no further encouragement. But when she got outside, she could see that Daddy had brought two of his friends with him — and she knew what that meant.
“Hey, my little sprout,” Daddy said, holding his arms out. Jennifer went to him, though her enthusiasm was dimmed. Daddy’s friends waited by the truck.
“Hi, Daddy.”
He held her out at arm’s length.
“Look at you — you’re sprouting more all the time. Pretty soon I’ll have to wear stilts to hug you.”
Jennifer giggled, in spite of her changing mood.
“Where’s your mother?” Daddy asked.
“Inside, working.”
Daddy swept his arm towards the door. “Well, let’s go say hi to her.”
He took Jennifer’s hand and led her towards the house. Before getting there, he turned once to his friends waiting by the truck.
“I’ll be out in a couple of minutes,” he told them.
“No worries,” one of them said. He was holding a softball.
Daddy rapped on the screen door before going inside.
“Knock, knock,” he said. Mom’s voice answered from inside the house.
“Come on in, Mark,” she said. Daddy led Jennifer back inside by her hand, and together they went into the kitchen.
“Hi Andie,” Daddy greeted her. “Look, I hate to do this to you, but I can’t stay long today –”
“Why don’t you go get the pictures you’ve been drawing to show to your father?” Mom suddenly said to Jennifer. Jennifer looked at the two of them, looking at each other, and then she nodded and went out into the hallway.
She didn’t go all the way upstairs right away, though; she waited on the first flight, out of sight of the kitchen, and listened.
“Anyway,” Daddy was saying, “I really can’t stay today. The catcher caught the flu last night, and the guys really need me to fill in.”
“Jesus, Mark,” Mom said. “Can’t you spend one goddamned Sunday a month with your daughter?”
“But the guys,” Daddy protested.
“And don’t you think I need some time to myself, too?” Mom was saying, but Jennifer went to her room and didn’t listen any more.
She didn’t get her pictures, like her mom had suggested; she picked up one of her dolls, lay down on her bed, and fidgeted with the doll restlessly. A little later her bedroom door opened.
“Hey, kiddo kid,” Daddy said. Jennifer didn’t look at him, but he came over to the bed and scratched her head.
“I really can’t stay today, sprout; important stuff’s come up, and I need to go.”
“I know.”
“I brought you something, though; why don’t you come downstairs and I’ll show you.”
Jennifer allowed herself to be led back downstairs and outside. Daddy’s two friends were pulling a big, fat thing out of the back of his truck, swearing as they did so.
It was horrible.
“Jesus, Mark, what the hell is that?” Mom asked. She had come outside behind them.
“It’s a toybox,” Daddy answered.
It looked like a big frog made of wood. It was big and round and brown, with four little legs, and rough skin. It had two white little eyes that stuck out and looked like they were looking at you wherever you were.
Those of you who have been around the science and history blogosphere long enough have probably become familiar with the excellent work of John McKay, who writes both at his personal blog archy and at Mammoth Tales.
The economy has been punishing a lot of us to varying degrees, and it has been hitting John and his wife particularly hard over the past few years — they’re in rough financial straits and could use a hand to keep themselves going.
The best way to help at this time? John’s wife produces a line of high quality soaps and other scented products, under the label Howling Pig.
If you have a need of some really good soap or fragrance, please consider throwing a few dollars their way! I’m going to start out with $50 worth of soaps, and plan on getting more for the holiday season (my family doesn’t smell too good!). Also, if anyone needs a good writer in the Seattle area, please consider hiring the immensely talented John.
For those who know Bora Zivkovic, the “blogfather”, I should add that he gives Howling Pig his personal seal of approval!
For the record, I don’t consider such donations as “charity” per se; rather, it is an opportunity to show a talented writer and historian that his work and time really is valuable to me.
This is a special edition of Twitter #weirdscifacts: it is also my 1000th blog post at Skulls in the Stars!
Not sure exactly what I should do to celebrate: post your suggestions in the comments!
In the meantime, here are the facts for the week:
592. Oct 26: The world’s oldest museum? 2500 years old, built by a Babylonian princess. It is fascinating to realize that the basic display labels from this ancient museum are now museum pieces in their own right.
593. Oct 27: Barnacle penises shaped by waves! (Post by @kzelnio, h/t @jenlucpiquant)
594. Oct 28: Giant freshwater stingray of SE Asia, which lives in rivers and weighs up to 1300 lbs. (h/t @highlyanne)
595. Oct 29: Pope Sylvester II (946-1003), was accused of witchcraft — but was in fact a mathematician! In those early days, people of exceptional knowledge were often accused of witchcraft. Sylvester was the first Christian known to teach math using the Arabic numerals and zero.
596. Oct 30: Max Born (1882-1970), one of the founders of quantum mechanics, also has a famous granddaughter: Olivia Newton-John. I have personal experience with this, as my thesis advisor Emil Wolf wrote a classic optics text with Born. Wolf actually has an autographed photo of Olivia in his office, as he has met her and corresponded with her a number of times.
597. Oct 31: Did a volcanic eruption lead to the creation of “Frankenstein”? Special Halloween weird fact!!! The 1815 volcanic eruption of Tambora was the most powerful in recorded history, releasing over 100 times as much material as the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The ash cloud blanketed the atmosphere and reflected sunlight away from the Earth, leading to a global drop in temperatures. 1816 was known as “The Year Without a Summer”, with dramatically unseasonable and intemperate weather. This bad weather ruined the summer of a circle of friends vacationing in Switzerland, including Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. Trapped indoors in the gloom, the group proposed a ghost story writing contest — Shelley produced the first draft of the immortal “Frankenstein”!
Was the volcano really responsible, even indirectly, for the creation of “Frankenstein”? It’s impossible to say for certain, but the case in favor is reasonable. (h/t @MGhydro)
598. Nov 01: A life-saving medical procedure: fecal transplants! It sounds bizarre, and the news reporters in the accompanying video were, in my opinion, rather obnoxious the patient; nevertheless, it is remarkable how effective such a transplant is! (h/t @canislatrans)
This Halloween, I thought I would start a new semi-regular feature: Weird Fiction Monday! I’ve been a long-time author of weird fiction, and thought I would start posting some of my old and new writing as a motivation to write more. Stories are not meticulously edited, so don’t yell at me for not-quite-right grammar and odd phrasings.
This particular story was written in 2001, not too long after I defended my Ph.D. In fact, it is almost exactly the ten-year anniversary of its writing. It is also the closest I’ve been to being published in Weird Tales! I was actually asked to provide a rewrite of the story, but I didn’t have the will back then to make the story as concise as it needed to be.
They Always Preregister, and They Never Miss a Class
They are all around him, watching him. Thousands of them, maybe more. Their eyes stare at him unblinkingly, hungrily, intently.
They are silent. Waiting for him to move, eagerly. He can hear his own rapid breathing. The light in his eyes nearly blinds him.
An object is being dragged to him, solemnly, carefully. He knows he must act, but he cannot. His mind returns, again and again, to the events of five days before, which led him directly to the place he stands now.
If you’ve followed this blog for any period of time, you know I’m a big fan of the writings of Richard Marsh (1857-1915). I’ve reviewed a number of his works on this blog, and Valancourt Books has been doing a genuine service to the literary world in reprinting his Victorian and Edwardian era novels.
For those unfamiliar, Richard Marsh was roughly the Stephen King of his day, producing a number of wildly popular novels and short stories of mystery and horror. His breakthrough novel, The Beetle: A Mystery (1897), even outsold Bram Stoker’s Dracula for a time! A story part mystery, part horror, and part romance novel, The Beetle was a good indicator of Marsh’s range of writing interests.
These same interests appear in Between the Dark and the Daylight (1902), the most recent of Marsh’s books reprinted by Valancourt:
The volume collects twelve of Marsh’s short stories, ranging from the light and humorous to the horrific. These are not Marsh’s best works — The Seen and the Unseen, Both Sides of the Veil, and especially Curios contain better — but they are entertaining and showcase his versatility as a writer.
It’s that time of week again for Twitter #weirdscifacts!
585. Oct 19: Thanks to Georg Cantor, we know that some infinities are bigger than others! The concept of “infinity” is a tricky business and very non-intuitive, in large part simply because none of us have any experience with infinity in our lives. Cantor was the first to point out the unusual observation that the infinite set of real numbers is infinitely larger than the set of positive integers (1,2,3,…). Cantor’s proof of this has been a lightning rod for mathematical cranks, who are constantly trying to prove him wrong (and failing).
586. Oct 20: Biologist Élie Metchnikoff (1845-1916) drank sour milk every day; he believed lactic acid prolongs life. This is another case for the file of “intelligent scientists can still believe silly things”.
587. Oct 21: Female monkeys indulge in synchronised sex. Wha? Why, you ask? To thwart the alpha males, and allow every male a chance at reproductive success. (h/t to @prancingpapio)
588. Oct 22: Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of UK, was trained as a chemist. Science is probably one of the last things that comes to mind when thinking of Thatcher, but she not only trained in chemistry but worked under the eventual Nobel Prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin.
589. Oct 23: The unconventional anthropology of the Etoro, favoring homosexuality over hetero. (Warning: somewhat graphic descriptions at the link!) Tip o’ the hat to @mjrobbins.
590. Oct 24: Science buzz of the day: deep-sea giant (4-inch) “amoeba”! It’s not technically an amoeba, but it is a single-celled organism that is comparable in size to a person’s hand! We tend to think of single-celled creatures as being necessarily small, but this is clearly not the case. (The movie “The Blob” may one day turn out to be a documentary!)
591. Oct 25: Meet the tiny bumblebee bat: 2g, and only about an inch long! Our impressions of the “normal” size of creatures can often be way off, as the giant “amoeba” of the last fact demonstrates. On the other end of the scale, most of us would probably think of mammals as being no smaller than a mouse. The bumblebee bat, however, is essentially the size of a human finger-joint! (via @ejwillingham and @scifri)
It is time again for my yearly dose of creepy and classic horror stories for some chilling Halloween reading! You can also read my previous editions: 2007, 2008, 2009, and my 2010 post on the true story of the “Lady of the Lake“.
“Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”, M.R. James. One of the best stories by perhaps the greatest ghost story author of all time! A man finds an ancient whistle whilst walking a beach in England. When he blows it on a whim, he awakens a particularly bizarre and unconventional horror.
Negotium Perambulans, E.F. Benson. A man returns to his childhood home, an isolated fishing village in West Cornwall. The old church in town still contains painted wooden panels that depict evildoers being consumed by an inhuman creature. An old acquaintance of the man now lives in town next door to the church, and keeps his house lights burning as bright as possible when darkness falls…
Afterward, Edith Wharton. “Is there a ghost at Lyng?” His rejoinder had made Alida laugh again, and it was then that she had flung back tantalizingly: “Oh, there is one, of course, but you’ll never know it.”
The Whistling Room, William Hope Hodgson. Hodgson’s classic supernatural investigator Carnacki investigates an Irish castle that contains a room that mysteriously whistles without cause. What starts as an annoyance builds to an otherwordly menace that threatens to consume Carnacki utterly.
The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe. One of my favorite horror stories of all time! While the horrible Red Death plagues the countryside, Prince Prospero throws a lavish and decadent party within his sealed castle. No amount of wealth can truly stave off death’s grasp, however. This story has one of the greatest closing lines in all of horror fiction.
The Seed From the Sepulchre, Clark Ashton Smith. A friend and correspondent of Lovecraft’s, Smith wrote both poetry and highly poetic stories with the logic of nightmares. In The Seed From the Sepulchre, a pair of treasure hunters who venture to a lost burial site in the jungle find no treasure but only a horrific death.
Time for Twitter #weirdscifacts! I found a few minutes at the Frontiers in Optics meeting to get the post up.
578. Oct 12: Via @DiscoverMag, Fish have been jumping on land for 150 million yrs & hiding it from the fossil record. You might think that the flopping of a fish out of water is a simple act of desperation, but some species have used it as a genuine motion technique to escape water-bound predators. Because this motion doesn’t leave tell-tale footprints, it wouldn’t appear in the fossil record, but has probably gone on for quite some time.
579. Oct 13: Check out Cox’s 1760s-era clock powered by atmospheric pressure and later related clocks. (Also, check out the Beverly Clock, which hasn’t been rewound since 1864!) Such devices were originally thought to be true perpetual motion machines, but they in fact draw in energy from the atmosphere.
579a. Bonus #weirdscifacts via @plutoniumpage: The cheeseburger cook who witnessed the first atomic bomb explosion. How cool is this? Due to his position as the cook for the nuclear engineers, he was tipped off to see one of the most significant and frightening events in history.
580. Oct 14: Did you know there’s a technical term, “petrichor“, for the smell after it rains? (h/t @discoveryplace)
581. Oct 15: Champollion (1790-1832), first translator of heiroglyphics, had mastered 12 languages by age 16 & given an academic talk. (Champollion was also an assistant professor by age 19.) Champollion isn’t the first young prodigy we’ve discussed in these facts, but his mastery of languages is mind-boggling.
582. Oct 16: The world’s longest continuously running experiment: the pitch drop experiment (84 yrs!). There’s some controversy in calling it the “world’s longest continuously running experiment”, even though certified by Guinness: at least two biology-related experiments have been in existence far longer! There is the Park Grass experiment, which has been running for 155 years, (h/t @BobOHara) and there is the Beal seed viability experiment, which has been running for 132 years (h/t @Glethnohistory)!
583. Oct 17: The blobfish. Enough said. This fish is odd in both its appearance and its manner of buoyancy.
584. Oct 18: Islamic biologist al-Jahiz (781-869) allegedly died when books in his library toppled and crushed him. Like many stories from that early era, it is possible that the story is a legend; however, it does seem to be widely accepted.
The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas. 
Skulls in the Stars 