A New Football Season, A New Blog…

A new football season starts on Saturday and to celebrate I have started a new blog. A Man City blog. I hope some of you football fan’s will enjoy it, even if you don’ necessarily support Manchester city. There aren’t that many of us .

www.feedingthegoat.co.uk

A Trip to Monkey Forest, Staffordshire…

We took a trip to Monkey Forest in Staffordshire today, a free walk around a 60 acre forest amongst free roaming Barbary Macaque monkeys. With the heat of the day came huge numbers of people and the queue to get in was longer than I was expecting, but it was a good day out. Managed to get a few photos (below) and it was nice to be roaming around with the Simians rather than watching them in a zoo.

Spring Sunset

Saw this sunset out of the window and managed to grab my camera and tripod quickly and take a few shots before it got too dark. The image isn’t quite sharp which is frustrating but I still like it. I’m hopefully going to try and take more photos, as I’m really enjoying the whole post production tweaking.

Ron Atkinson must be desperate…

Ever since he was fired from ITV for his racist remarks towards Marcel Desailly that were caught off camera, football pundit Ron Atkinson has struggled to find work. Times must be getting really hard as I noticed ‘Big Ron’ Atkinson on Noel Edmunds game show, ‘deal or no deal’ this week. He must be desperate.

Probability: The Birthday Problem…

Thats probably a title guaranteed to make readers close down their browsers or frantically hit the back button, but this is interesting – honest. Here’s the question. How many people would need to be in a room, for it to be more likely than less likely that two of them share a birthday?

The answer may surprise you. It’s 23.

Here’s how to work it out. It’s actually easier to work out the probabilities that the people don’t share a birthday. So, when there are two people in the room, the probability that they don’t share the same birthday is 364/365, (or 0.99726) In other words, almost certain.

When the third person enters, the probability that the three don’t share the birthday is (364/365) x (363/365) = 0.9918. Still very very likely.

If we carry on in this way, adding one person to the room at a time, the probabilities work out as shown below (i’ve missed out the calculations in middle to save time, but you should be able to see the pattern by now.)
4th person – (364/365) x (363/365) x (362/365) = 0.9836

5th person – (364/365) x (363/365) x (362/365) x (361/365) = 0.9729

22nd person – (364/365) x (363/365) x (362/365) x (361/365) x (360/365) x (359/365) x (358/365) x (357/365) x (356/365) x (355/365) x (354/365) x (353/365) x (352/365) x (351/365) x (350/365) x (349/365) x (348/365) x (347/365) x (346/365) x (345/365) x (344/365) = 0.5243 – we’re nearly there, thank god for Google calculator

23rd person – (364/365) x (363/365) x (362/365) x (361/365) x (360/365) x (359/365) x (358/365) x (357/365) x (356/365) x (355/365) x (354/365) x (353/365) x (352/365) x (351/365) x (350/365) x (349/365) x (348/365) x (347/365) x (346/365) x (345/365) x (344/365) x (343/365) = 0.4927

There we are, the probability has dropped below 0.5 for the first time, so this is the point where it is more likely than less likely that two people share a birthday. Told you it was interesting….ish.

A nice fact about the distance from the Earths crust to its core…

Here’s a great little fact-oid that I read yesterday in Bill Brysons excellent science book, “A Short History of Nearly Everything“

Did you know that if you dug a well that extended from the crust of the Earth, straight down into the centre of the Earth (and obviously extracted all the rock and magma from the well-shaft) and dropped a brick into the well, it would take 45 mintes for the brick to reach the centre.

I think that this is a huge amount of time and really demonstrates the sheer massiveness of the Earth but nearly everyone I’ve told this fact to so far seems to think that it’s a surprisingly short length of time and were expecting the answer to be in days or weeks (one person even said they thought it would take a year!). What do you think…?

A worrying fact about rats…

I read an interesting but unsettling fact today about rats. Did you know that rat’s reproduce and mulitply so quickly that in just a year and a half, two rats could have over 1 million descendants. That’s a massive family tree. They can have so many offspring as the gestation period of a rat is just 21 days and they give birth to 12 rat kittens in the average litter. Female rats come into heat approximately every five days. Horny little buggers.

We had a couple of rats living in the gaps in our walls for a liitle while and they made a terrible noise at night, fighting and scratching around. I’m glad that we got the exterminator in quickly now, it gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

A Wrestling Ring to Fit in the Entire Population of Great Britain…

Although no longer a wrestling fan (I used to be when I was younger and Ultimate Warrior, Andre the Giant, Randy Savage et all we’re still around) I recently found myself wondering, if Great Britain (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) were to host a battle royal, how big would the wrestling ring have to be to fit everyone in? Well the approximate answer is show below, along with my workings.

The population of G.B. at the last estimate in July 2007 is a total of 60′776′238 people.

I have assumed that each wrester, man woman or child, will be allocated 1 square metre of space. This allows the majority of the population plenty of room for manouvre, to perform suplex’s, powerslams and drop-kicks. Therefore the total number of square metres required is obviously 60′776′238.

Finding the square root of this figure, gives us the length of each of the sides of the ring. This works out as 7′795.91 metres per side. Dividing this figure by 1′609.344 (number of metres in a mile) gives us the dimensions of the ring in miles.

So, the ring would need to measure 4.844 miles by 4.844 miles, or thinking of it another way, the wrestling match could take place on the island of Jersey (whick measures 9 x 5 miles) with a few miles of space to spare at the ringside for any Frenchmen that would like to come over and watch. Surpisingly small, no? A couple of example images of where the ring would fit are shown below.

The next question is who would win…

My money’s on Phillip Schofield.

Krakow part 1…

No blog posts for a whole month… I’m getting lazy. Anyway, I’m going to be making a concerted effort to post much more often in March. I’ve just come back from a few days holiday in Krakow in Southern Poland. I had a lovely time and it’s a really great city. Below I’ve posted a few pics I took while I was there, some from the city centre and some from a couple of excursions we took out of the city to Oswieciem and Wieliczka. Feel free to leave any comments on the photos.

Weird things found in ears…

Following the story that came out this week about the little lad who had been partially deaf for nearly nine years, until one day the end of a cotton bud that had been stuck there all that time fell out while he was playing, I decided to do a bit of reasearch on ‘things found in ears’. I’ve compiled below my list of the ‘top 3 weird things found in ears’.

1. Spiders

In 2007, Jesse Courtney went to the doctors complaining of an earache and that he could hear a popping noise in his ear. When the doctor examined Jesse, he found a couple of spiders had made Jesse’s ear their home, and the popping sound he could hear, was the spiders dancing about on his eardrum. Jesse said, “ It was real interesting, ’cause, two spiders in my ear – what next?” Indeed…

2. A Button

This article from the New York Times in 1884 tells of the story of a 23 year old woman who visited an aurist and was, “So deaf I could hardly make her hear by shouting through a trumpet.” (What??). Once the aurist had taken a look in the womans ears and removed a great deal of wax, the doctor pulled out, “a smooth round brass button with quite a large shank to it”which had been in the ladies ear for several years. (How do you get a button stuck in your ear without realising it?) The doctor asked her, “Have you been putting something in your ear?” The lady replied, “Oh dear no, I am not so foolish as that.” Er.. it seems you are actually love

3. Peanut

This thread from the mac rumours forum describes how one forum member visited the doctors complaining of earache. The doctor examined him and flushed out a peanut. The user went on to say, “I knew when I was eating them that something wasn’t quite right, but I couldn’t put my finger on what” (I made that bit up btw ) The thread goes on to discuss other unusual items members have found about their person and apparently finding cockroaches living in ears is very common as they like the warmth.

So, the lesson ladies and gentlemen is to be vigilent with your orifices at all times…

Can anyone top these?