Summer addiction

Cory Doctorow writes about arcades this morning on Boing Boing. It is a historical feature because, I suddenly realise, of course the advent of the games console has meant that there aren't any arcades, any more...well not around here. Although Chester, I suspect, has always been too sleepy for such things.

I remember loving arcades when really young; not the electronic games - although I trailed around Europe aged twenty in search of 'Galaxion' machines, and would watch with little attention while my three male companions got their fix - but the more old-fashioned games of penny shoves I usually encountered on sea-side piers. Perhaps they are still there. Maybe they are more long-lived than the electronic games - there is something timelessly alluring about the penny-shove.

Each time it seemed a 'certain thing'. The pennies would be teetering as deliciously as melting ice-cream. The next coin would be 'the one' to tip them all over the edge - a sure-fire winner. I'd line up the little ramp with the skill acquired over my wasted summer, wait for the ledge at the back to pull back - and let my penny roll.

It was a tense few seconds waiting to see what would happen; the timing of the rolling coin versus the movement of the shelf was everything. Sometimes it would land perfectly behind a particularly overcrowded part of the shelf, and I would watch without breathing as the shelf moved back into position. For a second or two there would be a slow-motion jostling before the coins would, once again, settle themselves - this time into a even more incredibly precarious position. But already my next coin would be at the slot waiting for its moment.

I can understand quite easily how someone could become addicted to such things; the strange satisfaction of watching one perfectly placed coin shoving the next and the next, and then the magnificent clatter of coins into the drawer below is something I recall even now. There'd be a frantic scramble to gather them all before anyone else did (one of my brothers), and then the carrying of the loot to the kiosk to be turned into something smaller and more silver. Ah, riches. It was probably much less than I'd gone in with, but it didn't matter. The sensible thing to do then, of course, would be to quit and walk away - but somehow that never happened.

Something Fishy

Well, it's been a fishy sort of day on twitter. First a tweet from @mocost (Mo Costandi) with news from the university of Washington about a fish called H psychedelica that bounces along the ocean floor using the current, odd jets of air from specially-located gills and even more impressively adapted leg-like flippers (there is a video of the fish 'walking' here) .

Then, this afternoon, a tweet from @BoingBoing with a link to a press release from Monteray Bay Aquarium Research Institute on an extraordinary fish with a transparent head.

Then, finally, a link to a short Nature paper from @NatureNews with the enticing headline: 'Fossils reveal early evidence for penetrative sex'. This too is about a fish, this time a fossil-fish which is having its anatomy re-assessed and finishes with an even better line from John Long of Monash University in Australia: '"We have an expression that humans like to get a leg over," Long says. "But these placoderms actually like to get a leg in."' There is a video here and it is really interesting.

Fossilised fish are often found in limestone nodules. Once a fossil is found the limestone around it can be dissolved away using the acid in vinegar: ethanoic acid. This old technique (discovered in the nineteen forties) has recently been developed using more dilute solutions to give a more delicate removal of the limestone. This has resulted in new detail being revealed including a mother fish with an umbilical cord and embryo attached.

It seems that this sort of 'live' reproduction must be initiated by penetrative sex, therefore when another class of fish was found to have an embryo (rather than as had been previously thought, a meal inside it) this meant that this class of fish relied on penetrative sex too. A re-examination of the fossils showed that some had the same sort of apparatus as modern day sharks - hence the expression by John Long, above.

So a very interesting day in terms of fish, but not, alas, in terms of silkworms. They are just eating...and growing.

Coincidentally, this is tonight's supper: cous cous, courgettes, mushrooms, red onions and peppers and a nice bit of...salmon (sans flipper-legs, see-through head...or anything else for that matter).