Science

Resumed reading 'Uncle Tungsten' by Sacks after something of a gap, the book now having been part read since August 26th (see the other place).

It is an interesting read, but what has most struck me over the past week is the huge difference between a moderately clever person (myself) and a seriously clever person (Sacks). OK, so as a teenager I had a chemistry set and played around with it. My father allowed me to play with his rather grand microscope. I went to a school where I had a good chemistry teacher. But I was a midget compared with Sacks who, at the same sort of age, was busily conducting all kinds of quite serious home chemistry experiments, experiments which these days would probably result in the social workers removing him from the family home because of the risk of his being badly injured if he were allowed to stay. For a while, for example, he was keen on growing exotic trees by planting sticks of zinc in solutions of, for example, silver salts, following here, it seems in the footsteps of medieval alchemists. Then he got keen on the colour of the flame with which elements burnt, from which he moved off into spectroscopy. I vaguely remember thinking it would be fun to have such a thing - but unlike Sacks never made the leap to actually having one.

At one point he discovers the periodic table and is enthralled at the way that this deceptively simple table brings order and cohesion to the elements which make up our world. It is not just a random scatter of elements, it is a system of elements. I was rather taken aback to discover that the vast majority of elements are metals, say nearly 100 of the total of 120. There are really not many elements like carbon and sulfur. And furthermore, hydrogen appears to count as a metal, albeit a generally gaseous one. I shall have to have a little poke around and see if I can get myself a periodic table to hang on my wall.

In the meantime I have been prompted to do a bit of alchemy of my own.

Take four pages from a celebrity chef cookbook. Four sides typeface, two sides black and white photograph, two sides colour photograph. Shred more or less down to dust using one of those two way paper shredders. Tip into a tea cup and add enough malt vinegar to cover. Place on one side, stirring occasionally.

Take five pounds of potatoes and peel, preferably rather coarsely using one of those ancient potato peelers where the blade is whipped onto the handle with twine. Tip the peelings onto the compost heap and wait for the slugs to arrive. In reasonably warm weather this might take between 36 and 48 hours. You will then have a random mess of green and brown slugs more or less covering the peelings.

At dusk, sprinkle the marinade over the whole. Come back the following morning and, lo and behold, the slugs, both the green and the brown, will have aligned themselves on a north-south axis. It seems that there is something about celebrity chef detritus which sensitises slugs to the earth's magnetic field. Hence the alignment. But it does not work with black slugs. For them you need to use a lady celebrity chef cookbook. Wonders never cease!

PS: sorry to read over breakfast of the latest incursion of central government into the affairs of local government.  It seems that no less a personage than the Secretary for Communities, Communists and other Dumb Animals is having a rant about the failure of certain local authorities to collect orange wheelie bins at what he believes to the be appropriate frequency. If they don't get their act together he is going to make further deductions from their block grant. You might think that local government, trying to make a fist of cutting their budgets by 25% or whatever it is (you try cutting your household budget by that kind of amount) is perhaps best placed to make the best judgement between, for example an extra collection of orange wheelie bins and closing another yet youth drop in center. But oh no, the Secretary knows best. The Secretary needs something to propel him into a television studio lest we forget who he (or she) is. Sad how intelligent people of all parties solemnly swear to stop meddling with local government when in opposition, but go smartly into reverse as soon as they are in power.