Mostly Toast

Last month Professor Kimberley and her dedicated team focused on biscuit science. This month, as a logical progression, we raise our glasses and toast the science of toast (sorry, but it just had to be done). Thanks go to Michael Swan for providing us with the initial study some years back which answered the burning (sorry, once again) question of ‘Why, when you drop a piece of toast does it always land butter side down?’ (for notes on ‘cultural specificity’ and ‘breakfast’ see the next column). Apparently, it’s not just Murphy’s law, there are serious physics and gravity type things involved. Anyway, moving rapidly on….in June a graduate art student in the UK broke the world record for how high a piece of toast could fly from a pop-up toaster (2.6 metres, might have been higher if the ceiling hadn’t got in the way). To quote Freddie Yauner (who did the toast popping) via the BBC “The popping element of a toaster is totally unnecessary”. Which leads us to some deeper philosophical queries like “What was Wittgenstein’s perspective on toast?”. We could also cite life-coaching mantras such as “Bread, the hippy way, hang loose and act natural, don’t bake unless you want to be a cake” (but this is probably just surreal). Though, what is the point of toast, actually?

We initially thought we could take this whole thing one step further, hypothesising that cross-cultural differences in breakfast foods might go some way towards explaining the disparity in divorce rates between the UK and Greece. Scientific study: ‘Comparisons of family stress caused by properly buttered toast (traditional British breakfast food, involving care and attention on the part of the butterer) landing butter side down on carpet or cat versus spinach pie (traditional Greek breakfast food, possibly involving less care and attention if pie bought from bakery) landing wrong side down at breakfast time’ (and there is a ‘right side up’ to a spinach pie). However, we then realized that we had forgotten about the ‘lovingly made yoghurt in ceramic pot’ (also traditional Greek breakfast food) which clearly would have a dramatic impact on carpet or cat if landing wrong side down. Then we thought about weather. It’s hotter here on Crete, so far fewer carpets and indoor cats…. The thing you could do, (though ethically unsound — CHILDREN: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME) is to set up a controlled study in a neutral country (like Switzerland), get Greek and British families to fling yoghurt at each other and see what happens.

Herons and Hamsters

Our next ‘isn’t science wonderful and aren’t people weird?’ piece comes from this story that we found a few weeks ago. A really kind hearted (but possibly ill-advised?) wildlife guide in the UK has just taught an orphaned heron to fly by using an unusual form of demonstration process. Gary Zammitt, who is a guide at a wildlife centre in Cornwall, rescued the baby heron after its parents were killed in a storm. He named the heron ‘Dude’, then shortly thereafter realized that the bird would need to know how to fly. So, how, as a human do you teach a heron how to fly? Well Gary started by running beside Dude, flapping his arms, squawking a lot and mimicking ‘taking off’. He apparently compared the process to ‘teaching a child how to ride a bicycle’. Dude has now been given his own aviary and is unlikely to be released into the wild, as he now ‘thinks he’s human’. Now maybe it’s just me, but I actually see some issues with making the judgement that a heron who has been imitating a human imitating a heron ‘thinks he’s human’….

Another animal magic story that caught our attention recently was about a runaway hamster. The hamster was taken into custody after handing himself in to a police station in Gloucestershire. The hamster, who wandered into Cheltenham Road East Police Station is not believed to committed any offence, but at the time of writing had been locked up in protective custody in a nearby animal shelter in the hope that his owners would come and bail him out (and by the way, for those of you who don’t know this already, the Greek for hamster is χάμστερ)

And whilst we’re on the subject of crime, we have just read the sad story of a chef in New York who has recently been arrested for stealing lobster tails by stuffing them down his trousers and hiding them in bandages wrapped round his legs.