Optics

When a ray of light travels from one medium to another the beam is bent, and some of the light is reflected back by the surface. As the angle of the beam changes, more and more light is reflected back until an angle where none of the light makes it thought the surface.

These bits of basic optics tend not to have much effect on people's everyday lives. If you're an angler you probably know that the fish can only see out of the water above them, and that you can hide from them below a sort of shiny horizon. If you drive, then you most likely have a little toggle on the bottom of the rear view mirror which changes its angle. When you flick the toggle you start to use the front face of the glass as the reflecting surface, rather than the mirrored back.

For me, a poor grasp of optics had a much more immediate and humiliating effect. Last week I was walking past a large inner-city housing development when one of my friends told me that I had curry on my face. I took my (large, foppish) handkerchief from my pocket, moistened its corner, pursed my lips and leant towards what I thought was a reflective surface. It turned out that it was in fact a window, and that I was staring into somebody's living room. It contained furniture, decorations, and a young woman behind an ironing board staring back at me in horror and disbelief.

Richard "Total Internal Reflection" B

Birmingham

This weekend I went to Birmingham to help a band. I did some driving, carried some gear, but for most of the weekend I was a very expensive spare-gooseberry. There was a young and fresh-faced support band "Nerve Centre" playing their own material who were quite interesting. Unfortunately their front-man lost the ability to sing into the front of his microphone as soon as the song required any tricky guitar playing. They finished on a very good (and to my mind surprisingly clean) punk song called "List of things (I'd do to Kim Kardashian before I'd follow her on twitter)". They also did a brilliant hard-rock version of "Fight for your right to party". If they had learned it that weekend as a tribute to M.C. A's death, then it was absolutely spectacular.

There's a couple of incidents and snippets of conversation that will stay with me:

• The six of us were given three twin rooms, and it seemed so likely that one of the musicians was going to want to entertain a female member of the audience in his room that nobody wanted to share with him. We found the bar's stock of drinking straws and cut one of them down. The bass player literally drew the short straw to figuratively draw the short straw and share a room with the band's boy-slut.
•  In a tribute to health and safety concerns, we decided that it would be my job to clamber up on a wobbly drum stool and take down the backdrop because I'd drunk 6 or 7 pints by then, and everybody else was virtually sober.
•  When I was talking too loudly in public about what I'd seen for sale in a supermarket, the guitarist quietly saying to me "Richard, can you just stop shouting 'cock-ring' ?"
•  The drunk and opinionated singer listening to the DJ and furiously telling me "THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE FOR NOT OWNING 'OGDEN'S NUT GONE FLAKE'".

Richard "Roadie" B

The Medium is the Message

Communications and media students, and prissy know-it-alls often triumphantly say "The medium IS the message". Sun Microsystems built their advertising identity on this nonsensical phrase during the dot com boom. You can tell it's nonsense because the medium and the message are distinct, they even have different names to make it easier to tell that they're not the same thing.

Having said all that, I have to admit that there was an occasion at the weekend where the message had hidden components that weren't evident in the words of the message. I was on a boys only drinking expedition, and one of the participants had had to leave his 12 year old daughter at home by herself so that he could join us for a quick pint. "It's OK" he said, "She's very sensible for her age, and we've got neighbours who are.... next door." Neighbours are always next door, the sentence by itself is pleonastic and redundant, but we all understood (after we'd finished laughing at him) that the neighbours were helpful, trustworthy, and at home.

It reminds me of a question that a friend of a friend once asked. We were discussing dimly remembered childrens' TV, and "Sooty and Sweep" in particular. She asked "Was Matthew Corbet one of the two Ronnies?"

Richard "Persistent heavy showers" B

The Big Bang Theory

There has been quite a lot of talk recently about the similarities between myself and the Sheldon character on "The Big Bang Theory". This week I asked my oldest and closest friend if he really thought we were alike and he said "some weeks I can't remember if I've talked to you on the phone or if I've seen a new 'Big Bang' episode on E4".

Childhood: Sheldon was bullied and ostracized as a child. I was bullied and ostracised as a child.

College: Sheldon graduated summa cum laude, I graduated first in my department. Sheldon has a PhD and I don't.

Appearance: Sheldon is tall, gangly, and slightly effeminate. I'm tall, gangly, and slightly effeminate.

Caffeine: Sheldon is intolerant to caffeine and never drinks coffee. I'm intolerant to caffeine and drink only the tiniest amounts of tea and coffee.

Shower curtain: Sheldon's shower curtain displays the Periodic Table of Elements, my shower curtain displays the Periodic Table of Elements.

Routine: Sheldon lives by a strict routine, he plays Halo on a Thursday, and does laundry on a Saturday. Other than doing my washing on a Saturday I'm completely different, I have Sci-Fi club on Wednesday, band practice on Thursday, and I do my ironing on Sunday.

OCD: Sheldon has to perform certain actions in certain ways, particularly knocking on doors and sitting on his couch. My OCD is much more mild, although I can't sleep on a Sunday night unless I've finished my ironing and had a bath, and I start all phone conversations with my friends with the words "%s it's Richard[note1]"

[note1] Yes I'm showing my age using %s as a string token. Sir, my first software job was programming in C, very similar to your vaporators in most respects.

Patronizing: Sheldon tries to educate his friends during every day conversation, but he comes across as superior and annoying. The first time my favourite ex-girlfriend split up with me, it was precisely because I was "superior and annoying".

Vocabulary: Sheldon uses technical, obscure, or archaic words to express himself. My natural phraseology is commensurately sesquipedalian.[note2]

[note 2] Last week for example I said "pro-bono" when everyone would have understood "for free", and "overcoat" when everyone else would have said "jacket".

Science Fiction: Sheldon watches a lot of science fiction, takes it seriously, and analyses the science being it. I watch and read a lot of science fiction, I take it seriously, and I particularly like "Hard Sci-Fi" where all the physics of the fictional universe matches our own. Moreover I have also already quoted Star Wars' C3P0 in this article.

Sexuality: Sheldon is completely asexual and hates being touched. I have had a handful of failed relationships and have now completely given up on them.

Transport: Sheldon can't drive, favours public transport, and enjoys train travel. I can drive and I like riding motorbikes.

Chemicals: Sheldon has a favourite amino acid, I don't, that would be ridiculous. Although I realised when I was trying to memorize the lanthanides off the shower curtain that I do have favourites[note 3].

[note 3]Lanthanum, obviously; Cerium, the oxide of which is used as a polish, and shares its name with a horse that won me £10 in a sweepstake; and Neodymium because of the magnets and loudspeakers.

As you can see, we're completely different people: I haven't got a PhD, I once had a girlfriend, and I don't like trains.

　

Richard "Dr Sheldon Cooper" B

No, she went of her own accord

There is a particular type of joke that my brother (and by association I) collect. The archetype is:

• "My wife went to the Caribbean" "Jamaica?" "No, she went of her own accord." 

Over the years we have heard or come up with:

• "My wife hurt her foot climbing a volcano" "Krakatoa?" "No she twisted her ankle"
• "I got a new dog" "Whippet?" "No I bought it"
• "I got a job in a bowling alley" "ten pin?" "No it's full time"
• "I got one of those heavy German cakes for Christmas" "Stollen?" "No I think it was paid for."

A couple of weeks ago when we were at the Royal Academy of music hearing his daughter's band compete he came up with a brand new example:

• "I spent a fortune on a piano" "Was it a grand?" "No it's an upright"

My favourite subversion of the genre is still:

• "My wife went to the Bahamas" "Jamaica?" "No, the Bahamas, like I said."

Richard "cannon and ball" B

Always Read the Question

When I first ate at ubiquitous Portuguese-themed chicken restaurant Nandos, the waitress handed me a large piece of card and said "This is a list of the food that we sell, read it and decide what you'd like to eat...." I thought at the time that it was completely superfluous advice, but this weekend I wished that I'd taken it to heart.

I had a house guest over the Easter break, and I very rudely stood her up to go and work for a band on Thursday night. However I did get paid enough to take both of us for an evening meal at Hugh Fearnley-Duckingstool's River Cottage Canteen. The meal was completely fantastic except I accidentally ordered something that I didn't like. I was hoping for some quality seafood, but I was also intrigued by the built-in pizza oven clearly visible from the dining room. As I read the menu I stopped at "Wood baked megrim sole...." which clearly ticked both the seafood and the pizza-oven boxes. The rest of the description said "...in anchovy butter". I don't like anchovies, and I don't like very fishy fish. The megrim is a big meaty white flatfish and it was cooked perfectly, but thanks to the anchovies the whole dinner was fisher than the fishiest of fish suppers[note1].

[note1] "a trout's tuppence" apparently.

Richard "Artist Security" B