Once upon a time, not so long ago, Port Meadow in Oxford looked like this:
Now it looks like this:
Maybe, with a bit of effort, it could have been worse…
Today Oxford University’s Congregation decides what should be done about this; quite a lot of people favour taking a floor off.
Sketching Weakly wonders whether slightly more radical action could be needed.
Here is a prized artefact, the 007 Superior Quality Rubber Bands Box:
The bands inside are looking in pretty good condition and nicely striped:
I like to think of Bond (or should it be Band, James Band, Licensed to Elasticate…) seizing a few of the rubber projectiles to pling peas in the eye of Dr No or Rosa Klebb or Blofeld or whoever it is that day, perhaps with a special catapult he’d been given earlier by Q.
What it was:
What it could have been:
Why pay a person to do something when a Bot could do it instead?
Personally I like buying things from people. I reckon if nobody used the Bots they’d have to take them away.
If you find a noisy and intrusive ShopBot is getting on your nerves, here’s a handy label to keep in your bag and glue onto it:
Here is George the Lizard Thing who has been lying in a vat of water growing for most of January:
And here is Herbie’s chart of George’s growing progress:
The challenge: use this information to make a graph and determine the lizard-thing’s rate of growth.
Plotting the temporal axis looks looks problematical.
At the wonderful Natural History Museum in Oxford; these specimens were obligingly keeping still…
and these ones were being more mobile…
So which is the object which really does live in the Pitt Rivers?
It is….
the Magic Bun with Healing Powers. Here’s a picture of the bun:
I thought the bun was 78 years old, but that information isn’t on its label. How did one use it to cure a cold? Nibble it lightly? Or put under the pillow? Or just inhale its scent? (which might be difficult if you have a cold.)
There isn’t a Ghost in a Bottle at the Pitt Rivers, but there is a Witch in a Bottle. Here she is:
The label describes how it was got from an old lady living near Hove in about 1915, who said: “And they do say there be a witch in it, and if you let un out there’ll be a peck o’ trouble.”
So we’ll be leaving that one well alone then…
One of these objects actually is in a drawer at the Pitt Rivers Museum…but which one?
A small person feeling a bit trapped…but can she fit out of the bottletop?
Bonzetta, our Animals Correspondent, writes:
Want to join the Humanists, but realise you’re not human? Thinking of joining the Mammal Society, but remember that you’re a reptile? Finding it hard to join anything because you’re an amphibian? Or a fish? Or a plant? Well….join
The RestOfTheWorldists!
Yes – the rest of the World can’t talk, but someone needs to give us a voice.
Would you like a RestOfTheWorldists poster? Contact Sketching Weakly through Mini’s website here with your name and address (Subject: Poster) and we will send out posters to the first 10 who get in touch.