Jump in

I forgot to say, I saw this this week, a new news story about someone jumping into the enclosure of a dangerous animal at some zoo or some such. And then all-too-late realising that it wasn’t a very bright thing to do.

I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that on reading this story, my initial thoughts were that a) We hadn’t had a decent one of these incidents for a while, and b) Good that the polar bears get a look in on this sort of action. Most folk tend to unimaginatively go for the lion enclosure, so good for this week’s nutter recognising the fearsomely destructive power of the polar bear. If in fact enterting the polar bear pit was indeed an intentionally self-destructive act, as these folk always seem shocked and terrified when the massive bloody predators whose territory they’re invading come and attack them.

I’m not really ashamed that I feel no concern whatsoever for the jumper, as it does strike me that once you’ve jumped into a tiger’s cage, no one on the planet’s going to sympathise with you.

Throw yourself off a bridge, and people’ll pity your wretched circumstances. Toss yourself under a train and people are horrified at the thought of what could have driven you to do it. Leap into the lion’s den, however, and everyone will roll their eyes and call you a bloody idiot forever.

I think maybe because these people never seem like they’re trying to kill themselves. Especially judging by the aforementioned shock they display when Simba turns out to be not so cuddly after all.

Anyway, in conclusion, well done to the lady in question for letting the polar bears have a slice of nutter-attracting action. Idiot.

Th’internet giveth and th’internet taketh away. th.

The internet used to be a glorious goldmine of trivia and irrelevance, magnificently random factitude and that.

Upon its arrival and subsequent global acceptance, the whole world was blessed with endless colourful nuggets of knowledge without context or reason, none of which ever made a blind iota of difference to our lives other than offering us peculiar titbits to regale each other with in the pub or place of profession. They were interesting wee bits of brainfood, and nothing else mattered.

But with the rise of Wikipedia and other such malarkey, it’s actually becoming a portal for random fact checking, rather than just random fact-dispensal. It’s depressingly easy to actually check up on the most obtusely perculiar subjects, to dismiss the credibility of one of these joyfully whimsical little footnotes with a simple flutter of keystrokes.

Rather than simply loving the randomness of a fact, or at the very least spending an entertaining but ultimately irrelevant few moments debating the credence of somebody’s new slip of trivia, you can now immediately grind them into the dirt with a casual google and destroy the pleasure of an ultimately harmless particular bit of chatter forever.

Brain coral: sushi for zombies

Of course, it’s always been possible to look things up, but the facts were much more run-of-the-mill and general, and reference sites tended to just offer up the same basic overview of nature and history as the encyclopedia britannica. There was nothing too peculiar, certainly not from a source that you’d actually hold any sway by. The oddest fact you always found was that there was a type of coral living off in the ocean somewhere, shaped like, and named after, the brain.

Now there’s so many more qualified people filling up with world-wide web with informed knowledge about overwhelmingly diverse and unusual topics, and worse, they’re starting to actually reference these little myths and murmurs, expelling them at will.

In some cases, there’s something to be said for the practise: sites like snopes, among other things, do a great job of explaining why you shouldn’t be sending on all those worthless charity chain e-mails to people who you believe still call you a friend. And in most cases, their exposing of myths and falsehoods is so well researched, you can briefly amuse yourself reading the stories of their origins. Likewise, the TV show Mythbusters puts theories to the test in such an entertaining way that you don’t begrudge the loss of the odd snippet in the slightest.

But I think there’s still something to be said for preserving the bits of information that have no bearing on our lives beyond entertainment, even if they are utter poppycock. I mean, who’s being hurt by this apparent misinformation? In coversation last week, myself and a colleague both came out with the notion that polar bears cover their noses with one paw in order to more effectively blend in with their snowy surroundings and so successfully sneak up on their prey.

One sceptic googled it.

From here: ‘One of the most persistent myths about the polar bear is that a hunting bear will cover its black nose while lying in wait for a seal.’

uh oh.

‘ Canadian biologist Ian Stirling has spent several thousand hours watching polar bears hunt. He has never seen one hide its nose, nor have other scientists.’

Boo. Perfectly lovely bit of trivia gone forever.

So I’m suggesting a new rule. If you’re going to write a website, in which you expel some wonderously innocent trivial titbit, you’re going to have to come up with something else to replace it.

So, say you denounce polar bears’ nasal cloaking device, I want you to tell me that Shakespeare invented twister. If Disney’s head ain’t frozen, then you’d better say that everyone in his version of ‘Robin Hood’ was voiced by the same two people. If you prove that Eskimos don’t have sixty-five words for ‘snow’ I want to know that Armadillos were sacred to red indians, and they believed they were a sign to ‘roll with the punches’. Tell me that spiders don’t really crawl into your mouth when you’re asleep and… well, actually I don’t mind that one not being true.