Your Wikipedia find of the week

[Kim]

"Mackerel are superb swimmers."

They're fish, ffs. If they weren't superb swimmers, they'd be complete failures at being fish.

Reminds me of early-year parenthood, where people were obsessed with trivia like what age the toots started walking.

"Ooh, he's walking already, at 10 months! Such a clever little toot!"
"<panic> Our little  toot is not walking at 11 months! Wail!"

What a load of tosh.
How many parents sit around look at their 18-yr olds oaves and nattering:

"Ohh, look how well he walks! I bet he was walking at 10 months!"

I suppose they tend to lose interest in developmental milestones once the masturbation begins.

Parents, that is, not mackerel.



(A cursory google reveals a substantial body of research on the swimming performance of various fish species, often accompanied by amusing images of fish being installed in complicated test apparatus, and some nasty looking mathematics.  However I was unable to find an overall league table^[1].)


_{[1] Penguins, while undeniably crap at being birds, are pretty good at swimming while being Not Fish, so I reckon any fish that's less good at swimming than a penguin is crap at being a fish.}

[Feanor]

We need fish races.

Do we need to normalise the data for the fish size?
Is that even a factor?

I CBA googling, but it's probably been done.

[Mr Larrington]

Either:

God designed fish to be good at swimming

Or:

Fish that are crap at swimming get et before they can breed.

Discuss¹






























1: Actually, don't bother

[Peter]

OK

[rogerzilla]

Norman Lloyd, who played Mr Nolan, the disciplinarian headmaster from Dead Poets Society, is now 102 and is Hollywood's oldest working actor.

[mrcharly-YHT]

"Mackerel are superb swimmers."

They're fish, ffs. If they weren't superb swimmers, they'd be complete failures at being fish.

Reminds me of early-year parenthood, where people were obsessed with trivia like what age the toots started walking.

"Ooh, he's walking already, at 10 months! Such a clever little toot!"
"<panic> Our little  toot is not walking at 11 months! Wail!"

What a load of tosh.
How many parents sit around look at their 18-yr olds oaves and nattering:

"Ohh, look how well he walks! I bet he was walking at 10 months!"

I think plenty of parents look at their 18-year-old oaves and mutter "pick your bloody feet up, you can't even walk properly".

[Legs]

"Mackerel are superb swimmers."

They're fish, ffs. If they weren't superb swimmers, they'd be complete failures at being fish.

Reminds me of early-year parenthood, where people were obsessed with trivia like what age the toots started walking.

"Ooh, he's walking already, at 10 months! Such a clever little toot!"
"<panic> Our little  toot is not walking at 11 months! Wail!"

What a load of tosh.
How many parents sit around look at their 18-yr olds oaves and nattering:

"Ohh, look how well he walks! I bet he was walking at 10 months!"

I don't want to rain on your parade, but parents taking close interest in whether or not their children are hitting developmental milestones is important.  Our 3-y-o didn't walk until 18 months, but while many sniffily dismissed this with the "how many 18 year-olds do you see not walking?" line, we could tell that something was amiss and Andrew was subsequently diagnosed with hypermobility in his knees and ankles.  With orthotics, he now walks just as well as any his age.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I don't want to rain on your parade, but parents taking close interest in whether or not their children are hitting developmental milestones is important.  Our 3-y-o didn't walk until 18 months, but while many sniffily dismissed this with the "how many 18 year-olds do you see not walking?" line, we could tell that something was amiss and Andrew was subsequently diagnosed with hypermobility in his knees and ankles.  With orthotics, he now walks just as well as any his age.

Another anecdote: I limped. My mother was worried, doctor dismissed it as "He is attention seeking". She went to another doctor's surgery (30 miles away). I had Perthes disease, no head of femur left. It took 4 years of treatment to recover and  I'm lucky to be walking now and it is only due to that treatment that I'm able to walk today.

[ian]

_{[1] Penguins, while undeniably crap at being birds, are pretty good at swimming while being Not Fish, so I reckon any fish that's less good at swimming than a penguin is crap at being a fish.}

And seahorses, for that matter, are crap at being horses. This is why there are no scuba cowboys despite their being sea cows.

In other news, bats can fly faster than birds (well the fastest bat can fly faster than the fastest bird).

[caerau]

I'm always suspicious of the 'how fast they can fly' argument.


When associated with how fast peregrine falcons are for example, they seem to actually be talking about their plummeting ability - which for me is falling, not flying.  But hey ho.


Sea cucumbers are crap at being salad too.


Does a mudskipper count as a crap fish or a crap amphibian?

[SteveC]

When associated with how fast peregrine falcons are for example, they seem to actually be talking about their plummeting ability - which for me is falling, not flying.  But hey ho.

It is a powered plummet though, they don't just fall. And they can do about 70mph in level flight.

[ian]

In the level flight face-off, Tadarida brasiliensis kicks some serious feathered ass. Plus it's a bat, which is inherently cool.

I have always wondered if I could take a cage of bats on a boat and use their echolocation to really mess up some dolphin conversations. It'll be useful because we just don't know what dolphins are plotting, but I very much doubt it's good.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Does a mudskipper count as a crap fish or a crap amphibian?

Neither, a mudskipper is crap at being captain of a boat.

[caerau]

At that he's smokin' 

[mattc]

When associated with how fast peregrine falcons are for example, they seem to actually be talking about their plummeting ability - which for me is falling, not flying.  But hey ho.

It is a powered plummet though, they don't just fall. And they can do about 70mph in level flight.

we need rules, validation, corroboration.

CTT states end-points are within half-mile of start (or something). There should be an altitude clause for flying records.

And it should be on Strava, or it didn't happen.

[caerau]

I prefer MapMyFlight personally

[Mr Larrington]

In the level flight face-off, Tadarida brasiliensis kicks some serious feathered ass. Plus it's a bat, which is inherently cool.

I think that's the one PJ O'Rourke described as "looking like a colonel in the Rat Air Force".

[ian]

They remind me of Eddie Izzard.

[Jakob W]

Never mind the speed, per wiki they're sneaky feckers too - they jam rival species' echolocation calls so they can dive in and steal the prey!

[JonBuoy]

Which led me to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb

Bat bombs were an experimental World War II weapon developed by the United States. The bomb consisted of a bomb-shaped casing with over a thousand compartments, each containing a hibernating Mexican Free-tailed Bat with a small timed incendiary bomb attached. Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats which would then roost in eaves and attics in a 20-40 mile radius. The incendiaries would start fires in inaccessible places in the largely wood and paper construction of the Japanese cities that were the weapon's intended target.

[pcolbeck]

Someone has been having a laugh with my friends Wikipedia entry:

Francis has a degree in Home economics which he earned at the University of Leeds. Since graduating, Tomas has specialized in cross stitch and croshay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomas_Francis

Since he is about 20 stone and current Wale's tight end prop I do feel quite sorry for whoever it was if he finds out

[rogerzilla]

I once listed a tight-arse Catholic cow-orker's hobbies on our intranet as binge drinking and witchcraft.  That's what you get for missing the deadline to submit your cv...

[spesh]

Someone has been having a laugh with my friends Wikipedia entry:

Francis has a degree in Home economics which he earned at the University of Leeds. Since graduating, Tomas has specialized in cross stitch and croshay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomas_Francis

Since he is about 20 stone and current Wale's tight end prop I do feel quite sorry for whoever it was if he finds out

So you didn't feel up to correcting the spelling to "crochet", then?   

[pcolbeck]

Someone has been having a laugh with my friends Wikipedia entry:

Francis has a degree in Home economics which he earned at the University of Leeds. Since graduating, Tomas has specialized in cross stitch and croshay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomas_Francis

Since he is about 20 stone and current Wale's tight end prop I do feel quite sorry for whoever it was if he finds out

So you didn't feel up to correcting the spelling to "crochet", then?   

I'm keeping well away from this one. He's back at Christmas

[mrcharly-YHT]

Someone has been having a laugh with my friends Wikipedia entry:

Francis has a degree in Home economics which he earned at the University of Leeds. Since graduating, Tomas has specialized in cross stitch and croshay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomas_Francis

Since he is about 20 stone and current Wale's tight end prop I do feel quite sorry for whoever it was if he finds out

It was done by some using a mobile whilst in Bridgewater.