Tetherd Cow Ahead

Tetherd Cow Ahead World Exclusive!

Well it occurred to me eventually that you don’t have to take my word for the whole Echo Of a Duck Quack debate; thanks to the wonders of modern sound techniques I can actually provide for you today, possibly for the first time ever on the internet, the quack of a duck with an echo.

So at the next office cocktail party when someone corners you over the cheese dip and expounds knowledgeably that “A duck’s quack has no echo, and no-one knows why!” you can tell them that The Cow says otherwise, and send ’em on down.

A duck quacking… – mp3 file.

A duck quacking with an echo… – mp3 file.

Of course, this now must generate the obvious question: “Can the echo of a duck’s quack start an avalanche?”

I like all the people I work with. They are a bunch of nice folks with their heads screwed on correctly for the most part. But occasionally someone, it is not clear who, will do something uncommonly daft. Like, as happened this week, pinning up on the noticeboard in the kitchen one of those pointless and inane lists that get sent to all & sundry via email by alleged ‘friends’. Needless to say, I have no friends who would dare email me this sort of thing – I have long since trained them to desist. Or I have killed them.

So, having escaped the electronic version of this kind of waffle, you can imagine my irritation in discovering an A4 sheet outlining ‘Some Interesting Facts…’ appearing on the communal corkboard.

The thing is, I really don’t want to read these interesting facts because I know from the outset that they will more likely be nonsensical crap, but, as I stand there waiting for the kettle to boil, my eye is inexorably drawn to the bullet points and I find myself reading…

♦ A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

Oh yeah. I guess. But really, WHO CARES?

♦ There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

Ho hum. I doubt it, but whatever.

♦ There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple or silver.

Yawn.

♦ A 2 X 4 is really 1½ by 3½.

Excuse me while I eviscerate myself.

♦ A duck’s quack doesn’t echo. No-one knows why.

What? I mean, WHAT? A duck’s quack doesn’t echo? I am a qualified sound technician with 25 years worth of practical experience and theoretical study that allows me to put appropriate letters after my name, but even if I was a bus conductor with a certificate in needlework I think I could spot this for the idiotic piece of utter claptrap that it is. Now hear me: a duck’s quack or anything else that is audible to the human ear will have an echo. It’s a fundamental property of acoustics. It is possible, that if a duck quacks softly, then it won’t make a loud enough sound to echo off anything, but (are you listening?) THIS HAS NOT GOT THE SLIGHTEST THING TO DO WITH DUCKS! Try getting an echo off a human whisper – same problem: not enough acoustic energy for the sound to travel somewhere, get reflected and return to your ear. There is no mystery about this. The Duck Quack Furphy is just a dumb ‘factoid’ that some nitwit smoking dried coleus leaves has, in an hallucinogenic haze deemed plausible, and, that through the weight of a million billion emails has gained the kind of weird ersatz credibility that only the internet can bestow.

(Of course, jet-setting pedants among readers of The Cow will be quick to point out that if you stand in Whispering Gallery in the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in London you can get a bit of an echo off a whisper, but I say to you: for a real treat, next time you visit St Paul’s take a duck with you.)

So, as far as I can determine this list of amazing facts can be divided into two main categories: things that are boring and things that are just plain baloney. This does not surprise me; most of the internet can be classified in that way.

Anyhoo, since I’ve been made to suffer these pearls of wisdom, so must you. Consider:

♦ The real reason ostriches stick their head in the sand is to search for water.

No it isn’t.

♦ Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

No it doesn’t.

♦ Between 1937 and 1945 Heinz produced a version of Alphabetti Spaghetti especially for the German market that consisted solely of little pasta swastikas.

No they didn’t.

♦ People say “Bless you” when you sneeze because when you sneeze, your heart stops for a milli-second.

No they don’t because no it doesn’t.

♦ The name Wendy was made up for the book “Peter Pan”. There was never a recorded Wendy before.

No it wasn’t and yes there was.

I am willing to speculate that the kind of people who circulate lists such as this one, are also the kind of people who used to flap Polaroid photographs around in the air to dispense some kind of unspecified mystical aid to the developing process. Or who strew their lawn with plastic bottles of water because they think for some unfathomable reason that this will keep dogs (cats/possums/foxes/goats/wildebeests) from defecating thereon.

I mean, really. Just where has all the critical thinking gone? In Pete World this kind of thi… oh shit! Is that the time? I’m overdue for my Past Life Therapy and my colonic irrigation, gotta run.

A Beautiful Thing

Don’t you remember that snowy December when we went to see “Singing in the Rain”? I shouldn’t have smuggled in that bottle of gin because after the film, I could barely walk. But, darling don’t you know it’s only human to want to kill a beautiful thing. When I was seven summer lasted forever. I used to chase fire flies through the woods. Tiny green lights circling warm August nights. I’d catch them inside a washed-out old jar. I dreamed of the stars with the jar by my bed, but each morning my pretty bugs were dead. We should have been dancing like lovers in a movie, but I fell and cut my head in the snow. I wanted to tell you all the ways that I loved you but, instead I got sick on the train ~ Rennie Sparks, The Handsome Family.

The Cow Instructs: Go to the Handsome Family’s site and buy their music. [Link]

Bartolomeo Mecánico has taken the trouble to make an archive of road signs that compare interpretations of Men At Work, Children Crossing and Falling Rocks throughout the world. [Link]

Be sure to visit the Boulder Count page which shows a statistical distribution of the numbers of boulders that appear on Falling Rocks signs in different countries.

Bartolomeo, you are hereby inducted into the Tetherd Cow Ahead Society of Treasured Humans as the inaugural member.

Three cheers for Bartolomeo!

I just visited the blog of rock singer and Renaissance Man Mr David Byrne (because I think he is an interesting person, and has insightful opinions) and had a bit of a revelation. Mr Byrne has a blog, is an interesting person and has insightful opinions, but he just doesn’t get the concept of blogging. Oh, I know, the headline says “Don’t Call It a Blog” but I’m sorry Mr Byrne, calling it a ‘Journal’ is just attempting to weasel out of being lumped in with the hoi polloi – it’s a blog by any other name.

Except for one significant difference. At first glance it looks like pretty much any other blog you might stumble across in your explorations of the blogosphere. But hey, what’s this? He doesn’t allow readers to comment on his posts!

Let’s think about that for a moment. The nature of a blog is at least slightly interactive. You post a thought, people read it, and if they feel like it, they leave a pearl of wisdom or a few pellets of scat. They leave their alias, which is a link that can be followed back to their own blog so that you, in turn, can read and comment upon their pontifications. They mark their territory in the blogosphere. These are the basic rules that any blogger knows. Disallowing any comment on your pronouncements is the blogging equivalent of hanging out a sign that says “No Riff Raff”.

I was reading down Mr Byrne’s latest post when I noticed the absence of a Comments field and I had the eerie and almost corporeal feeling of a door being slammed in my face. I had to stop and think about why I felt so put out. I didn’t even intend to post a comment.

What I believe has happened is that Mr Byrne has failed to understand the concept of community that blogging, by tacit agreement, encompasses. There’re no rules, of course, you can do anything you want on the net, but there are understandings in the cyberworld, just as in RL you understand that it’s bad manners to fart in an elevator or park in the disabled bay at the supermarket.

When I realised that Mr Byrne did not care about my, or any other reader’s, opinion, I completely lost interest in what he had to say. If I want that kind of experience, I have many books to choose from.

By contrast, Mr David Brin, a person who is at least as erudite and well known as Mr Byrne, has a blog where he makes commentary on all manner of worthy subjects, and cultivates a thriving culture of opinion, humour and insight. Mr Brin also participates in the comments from time to time, making his blog not only entertaining and informative, but a kind of living dialogue. I believe that this is what blogging is about.

Mr Byrne may indeed have many profound and wonderful things to say, but in my opinion he suffers from an excess of hubris. We are no longer living in the world where a Creative Person speaks, and the Great Unwashed throw flowers in obeisence. A Lofty ‘Journal’ he may have, but he lives in poverty without a blog.

UPDATE: Neil Gaiman’s doing it too. C’mon chaps, you look like pretentious prats. Tsk.

This flyer from my letterbox today.

Oh dear. Where does one start? The Ye Olde English font? (Oh, you know, it’s way back whenever, when writing was, like, all flowery an’ that…) The most unappealing image of a pizza you could possibly make (the onion still looks raw for crying out loud)? The fact that one of the most moving images in the history of human creation, the act of God and Adam poised reaching out to one another but not ever touching, is being used to sell pizza? (Maybe the idea is that God and Adam have just freshly tossed the salami and onions from on high?)

Or should we focus upon that little phrase, squeezed in almost as an afterthought: the taste of art?

Could it be that we are meant to infer that Michelangelo’s Café will create for you the Sistine Chapel Ceiling of pizzas? God help us all.

Perhaps I’m being unfair? Righty-ho, I will rise to the challenge and take it upon myself to personally assess the alleged magnificence of Michelangelo’s pizzas, with a dutiful and comprehensive report back here on The Cow in due course. That should keep everyone glued to my blog for a few days.

In the meantime, let us ponder the taste of art. I’m offering these suggestions for business opportunities for aspiring restaurateurs-cum-artists, along with tips for promotional material:

★Picasso’s (Tapas – flyer features ‘Guernica’ and a dish of paella)
★Pollock’s (Diner – flyer with ‘Blue Poles’ & plate of scrambled eggs)
★Degas’ (Creperie – flyer: ballet dancers & Crepes Suzette)
★Duchamp’s (Noodles – flyer: pic of a urinal & plate of sardines)
★Mondrian’s (Waffle House. No brainer…)
★Hirst’s (Steakhouse – cowhide flyer w. pic of jar of formaldehyde)
★Monet’s (Bagels – ‘Poppies’ + poppyseed bagel)
★Calder’s (Mobile Meal Delivery Service)
★Warhol’s Soup Kitchen…

Oh I tire. Over to you, dear readers…