The Ig Nobel Prizes

You might have read about them in the paper today, but obviously there is only one source that you can trust on a topic like this: your faithful Fred and Fred. If ever something was right up our alley, it’s the Ig Nobel Prizes.

In case you missed it: the Ig Nobel Prizes (a pun on ignoble and Nobel) are awarded each year in October for ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. The stated aim of the prizes is to ‘first make people laugh, and then make them think’.

Yesterday the 21st award ceremony took place at Harvard University, and a Leuven professor was on the receiving end. Indeed, Luk Warlop, together with a number of colleagues, received the prize for demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things – but worse decisions about other kinds of things – when they have a strong urge to urinate.

Funny, innit? And it gets even better if you remember that the Ig Nobel Prizes are almost always presented (by genuine Nobel laureates, by the way!) to actual researchers who have been labouring for years on extraordinarily difficult, but seemingly trivial or absurd topics. Just imagine what some academics apply themselves to. Here’s a small sample of the prizes over the years:

• Literature (1995): David B. Busch and James R. Starling, for their research report, ‘Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World’s Literature’. The citations include reports of, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweller’s saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.
• Chemistry (1998): Jacques Benveniste, for his homeopathic discovery that not only does water have memory, but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet.
• Physics (2000): Andre Geim and Michael Berry, for using magnets to levitate a frog. Geim later shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for his research on graphene, the first time anyone has been awarded both the Ig Nobel and (real) Nobel Prizes.
• Physics (2001): David Schmidt, for his partial explanation of the shower-curtain effect: a shower curtain tends to billow inwards while a shower is being taken.
• Biology (2003): C.W. Moeliker, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
• Economics (2005): Gauri Nanda, for inventing Clocky, an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday.
• Mathematics (2006): Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes, for calculating the number of photographs that must be taken to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed.
• Medicine (2010): Simon Rietveld, for discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller coaster ride.

Now say for yourself: surely it’s any academics dream to receive an Ig Nobel Prize one day? Therefore we from Fred and Fred are already hard at work for next year’s edition. Just imagine the possibilities…

• Cosmology (2012): Fred and Fred, for proving the possibility that parallel universes exist in which even numbers cannot be divided by 2.
• Linguistics (2012): Fred and Fred, for their study ‘Fly, Feel and Fall’, a list of 1,000 words which become very funny when pronounced with a Japanese accent (which turns every f into an h and every l into an r).
• Marketing (2012): Fred and Fred, for definitively disproving that cleaning products which feature animals (ducks, frogs, bears, etcetera) clean better than those which do not.
• Philosophy (2012): Fred and Fred, for (the title of) their paper ‘Does Existentialism Really Exist?’.
• Sports Science (2012): Fred and Fred, for discovering the constant h, representing the relation between the size of the ball and the size of the hole (basketball, snooker, golf, …).
• Medicine (2012): Fred and Fred, for their decennia-long research ‘Is it really impossible to lick your own elbow?’.
• Communication (2012): Fred and Fred, for talking for a whole night about the infinite monkey theorem, which states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Fingers crossed!

PhD peculiarities

Last Sunday Fred came over to my place and we had a healthy discussion about stuff only Freds can have discussions about. The matter at hand was Latin alliteration and assonance and its relation to independent and conditional probability. But rest assured, I won’t bother you with the details…

However, at some point in the conversation a strange fait divers came up, which I am sad to say I can’t recall anymore. What I do remember is that I could proudly refer Fred to the passage in my PhD thesis where said fait divers was mentioned. Which reminded me how much strange stuff there actually is in my PhD! For a thesis about one year (1598) of a humanist's correspondence, there sure is a lot of unexpected information in there. Only recently, for instance, I told my friend E. about the fact the Romans collected taxes on pee (the urinae vectigal) as it could be used in the leather industry…

Indeed, this is only one titbit of the gazillion strange little pieces of information contained in the 911 pages of PhD I worked on from 2003 to 2009 (yes, I had no life then, thank you). As I was able to do so by your hard-earned tax-euros, I thought it only fair to give you a small sample of such PhD peculiarities.

My PhD will inform you about:

1. The precise name of the Roman gladiator who fought wearing a helmet without any openings for the eyes and who therefore competed completely blind (Andabata).
2. The way the 1598 peace talks between the Spanish and the French at Vervins almost didn’t start because of a row about the exact formation in which the different diplomats would be seated during the negotiations.
3. The different sources and opinions about the life span of the Phoenix, the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes (500 or 1000 years depending on whether you believe the Greek or the Roman tradition).
4. The title of a book in which you can check what the weather was like in the Low Countries (Belgium and The Netherlands) from 1000 AD to the year 2000 (J. Buisman, Duizend jaar weer, wind en water in de Lage Landen, Franeker, 2000).
5. The fact that the Greeks seem to have been more afraid of the sea than the Romans. (If you don't believe me, see De Saint-Denis, Le Rôle de la Mer dans la Poésie Latine, pp. 300-302).
6. The differential diagnosis (yes you know this term from House MD) for an oedema (which can be caused by anything from small bruises to serious infections, heart failure, nefrotic syndrome (kidney failure) or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (cancer of the lymphatic system).
7. The fact that Spa water was already sold in bottles in 1598.
8. The mathematical problem of the quadratura circuli, the challenge of constructing a square with the same area as a given circle by using only a finite number of steps with compass and straightedge (it took people until 1882 to realise that it’s actually impossible).
9. Who brought the tulip to Europe, who popularized its cultivation, and when the Dutch tulpomania reached its zenith (Augerius Busbecquius, Carolus Clusius and the 1630s)
10. The phrase: “Can I have another gin-tonic?” in Modern Greek (και άλλο τζιν τόνικ)
11. A lengthy discussion of the correct surname of Thomas Rhediger (Rhedigerus, Redingerus, Rehdiger, Rudinger, Rudiger, Rüdiger, Rediger, Redinger or Rehdiger?)
12. The fact that horridula virtus (‘the hard virtue’) is a strange expression because the adjective horridulus is usually employed in Latin in connection with nipples.
13. That Pliny the Elder knows a plant that will give you difficulties peeing, which is strangely called chamaeleon (see Plin., hist. nat., 22, 18, 21)
14. Some considerations on why the Persian imperial messengers called Peichi (Peykān-i Hāsṣṣa) could have carried a small axe and a flask of perfume with them (perhaps the perfume was a gift, emergency payment or just good manners when they had travelled for miles on end to deliver the message?)
15. That the 41st abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Liessies near Avesnes was a naughty man because he drank and partied at the monastery.

Phew! And still the papers are saying that university education in Belgium needs to be of ‘more general’ interest.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a blog on Fred and Fred if there weren’t a little twist to it. Of the aforementioned fifteen peculiarities, one is not really mentioned in my PhD. Can you spot which one ? It’s number -1000+8371-7359 (just a calculation as a spoiler alert…). But mind you that’s only because I struck it out at the last minute. It’s still the God honest truth!

PS: if ever you would feel the need to learn more about which plants cause difficulties peeing or about Latin adjectives usually associated with boobies, you can read the full version of my PhD through this link. Enjoy!

Damnedness

• boarding your flight from London to Sydney, having to spend more or less 24 hours next to a smelly, snoring guy whose layers of body fat cross your side of the armrest, like a muffin balancing its cake'ish mass over the paper cup

• missing your favourite band's encore because you need to catch the last train back home

• a mosquito bite between two toes

• finding out you are not carrying a plastic bag when walking a dog with diarrhea

• being addressed by two purple-haired, French-speaking ladies who drew their own eyebrows, demanding you to get up and have respect for older people

• realizing you took the wrong keychain while hearing the front door close behind you

• missing the last train back home, despite your early departure from the concert hall

• arriving at the bakery together with a beautiful guy/girl, nodding your head to let him/her enter first, only to see the last 4 croissants disappear into his/her shopping bag

• running out of hot water after you shampooed your head

• seeing dark clouds gather ten minutes after you finished cleaning your car

• buying a new shirt to wear at a party and seeing someone wearing exactly the same clothes.

Quarky behaviour

Let's be honest, if this isn't our first blogpost you are reading, the word 'nerd' must already have crossed your mind. On several occasions, I guess. Not that either one of the Freds considers this to be an insult. As a matter of fact, 'writings having a touch of nerdiness' was more or less what we had in mind when we came up with the idea to start a blog. Right from the beginning.

But does anyone know what a nerd really is? My dictionary says: an unstylish, unattractive or socially inept person, slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits. I cannot speak for myself, but I can definitely say that the other Fred does not qualify as a genuine nerd if this is the definition. Don't get me wrong, he enjoys intellectual and academic pursuits, but that's it.

The thing with definitions is that they are like wedding shoes' laces: way too rigid to be useful. It might be easier to think of a list of easy questions which may help you to determine your degree of nerdiness.

Who is your idol?

Now this would definitely be my giveaway. Albert Einstein. I do have a back-up answer, every once in a while it's just easier to say Mike Patton, but my idol is a physicist. I read more books on Einstein than an average family can handle in a lifetime, I sign my emails with one of his quotes and I have at least one ex-girlfriend who will happily admit she fell in love with me the day I (successfully) explained to her what the special theory of relativity exactly says.

Why am I sharing this? Well, I guess you all saw the news this week. An international team of scientists said on Thursday they have recorded sub-atomic particles travelling faster than light. Neutrinos, to be more precise, arriving 60 nanoseconds earlier than predicted. A nanosecond, people, that is one billionth of a second. Compared to this unit of time, a blink of an eye takes ages. And yet, according to connoisseurs, this is a finding that could overturn one of Einstein's long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe.

Just in case you feel this burning desire to send Fred (or Fred) an email, with the question 'How do you feel about this discovery, that could imply that Einstein was wrong?', here's an answer: this will not affect my adoration. Fred makes mistakes too. Usually having effects lasting a wee bit longer.

Too bad they focused on neutrinos by the way. I would have loved to see my train arrive a few nanoseconds earlier than expected. Although I am not sure I would have noticed, I'd probably be blinking my eyes...

Nuts

Imagine a piece of literature. A poem perhaps. For instance:

Roses are red, violets are blue
Sugar is sweet, and so are you.

This is literature. You might not think it is very good literature, but it’s literature nonetheless. So far so good. Now for the tricky part: can you tell me why this is literature?

(the sound of a rusty rattling brain)

Some say that literature consists of texts that employ certain poetic functions of language, like alliterations, rhyme and a metre in the case of a poem. Like in Róses are réd, viólets are blúe / Súgar is swéét, and só are yoú. However, if you read in a manual of pharmacy that The main tranquilizers are benzocaine, lidocaine and novocaine, is that poetry or even literature?

Others say that literature consists of texts that tell certain stories. They’re often a story about a hero, faced with a difficulty which (s)he needs to overcome, helped by certain people and hindered by others. Think about it: if you don’t take this literally, you’ll probably be able to fit just about any book you’ve ever read into this scheme. However, can you fit Roses are red into it? And even if you think you can, what about Lewis Caroll’s famous nonsense poem Jabberwocky (1872)?

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
(…)

Still others would say that literature consists of texts that are the product of literary acts. In other words: whenever someone declares ‘This is literature!’, it is. Indeed, Roses are red… was published by someone who definitely would have called it literature. That seems to solve a lot of problems, doesn’t it, as it can account for even the most absurd forms of literature around? However, if I stand on a chair shouting ‘This is literature!’ while holding up a cell phone manual, what does that mean? I might be a performance artist (or out of my mind), but has this text, this cell phone manual, now become literature?

(the sound of people thinking "Where the hell is this going?")

Congratulations! You have just been introduced into formalist, structuralist and functionalist literary theory. Why? Well, I thought I should prove Fred wrong and show you there are even stranger people than mathematicians.

Indeed, ever since people devised an alphabet to write down literature, they have been thinking about the question What is literature? Of course this has to do with the fact that literature and the way we look at it, changes all the time. Most of you wouldn’t consider an anatomic book about the eye to be literature, but two hundred years ago people did. Most of you wouldn’t consider a song to be literature either, but two thousand years ago people did.

Literary theorists.

Will we ever solve the problem of what literature is? Absolutely not. On the other hand, I’m sure someone (perhaps it will be Fred?) will eventually know how hyperfloors in 7 dimensions behave. So you see, we’re definitely stranger, looking for answers that do not even exist…

Perhaps you’ll say this is insane, or you’re more practical and think: ‘Thanks a lot, then, Mr. Academic Asshole, for squandering my tax money!’. But ask yourself this question. Will the squirrel in Ice Age ever get the acorn? Absolutely not. But will he ever stop trying?

So you see: we might be strange, we’re not nuts!

Hyperproblems

Everyone knows what squares are, right?

Imagine you have an infinitely large kitchen. If that doesn't really make sense to you, imagine a kitchen which is larger than the largest kitchen you can think of.

And now repeat that.

Suppose also that the kitchen floor needs to be tiled, with an infinite collection of equal squares. Wait, their colours may vary. But not their size: they must all have the same area. No matter how hard you will (or - more likely - will not) try, you will always end up with a kitchen floor in which every square has at least one complete edge in common with one of its neighbours.

Can you see that?

Either your kitchen floor ends up looking like a chessboard (see the picture above) – in which every square only shares complete edges, one with each of the neighbouring tiles – or it ends up like a kind of deranged chessboard, in which every row is slightly translated with respect to the neighbouring rows. Which still means that every square has two complete edges in common with its neighbours.

The upshot is that these are the only possibilities. Any other arrangement will have 'holes', which cannot be filled up with the tiles at your disposal, as they're all equally big. Think of the kitchen floor: if you try anything different from what I just described, you'll have to start breaking and cutting tiles, to fit them into the holes you created.

(the sound of a rusty rattling brain)

You still here?

Good.

Infinitely large kitchens: way too much dishes to be washed, an infinitely large cupboard underneath the kitchen sink – most likely housing an infinite collection of plastic bags – and a huge fridge.

Bigger than any fridge you can think of.

Suppose this fridge needs to be filled with an infinite amount of identical cubes. Yes, you may put different things in these boxes and they may have different colours, but they must have equal measures. Do you see it coming? No matter how hard you try, you will always end up with a configuration in which every cube has at least one complete square in common with one of its neighbours.

Either they are perfectly stacked, so that each cube shares its six squares with the neighbouring boxes (up, down, left, right, in front and behind), or you start messing around with the layers of boxes. At worst, each cube has only two squares in common with direct neighbours in one direction. Can you still picture that?

(the sound of people thinking "Where the hell is this going?")

Proceed with caution now, as this is the point where a stretched mind might end up being a strained one. Because you can repeat this idea in any dimension. 'Hypercubes?', you're asking. Yups. Hypercubes.

I will introduce you to the secrets and delights of higher-dimensional objects in a future post. As for today – and the sake of not making this post (or your coffee break) too long – you'll have to believe my word: you can define the analogue of squares and cubes in 17 dimensions. Or 85, if that suits you better. And infinitely large 17-dimensional kitchen floors need to be tiled too. The only difference however, is that hyperfloor tilings in 17 dimensions behave rather peculiarly: 17-dimensional tiles can be rearranged in such a way that each of these tiles has absolutely zero “complete sides” in common with its neighbours. Only pieces of "sides".

An abstract sense of freedom, envied by squares and cubes.

In case you're having a hard time trying to picture this: don't. It's impossible for our human brain to actually picture this, unless you're willing to trust your mathematical abstraction skills.

The weirdest thing of all, is the following: the tiling property which holds for squares and cubes holds in dimensions 4, 5 and 6 too. It does not hold in any dimension bigger than or equal to 8. Which leaves one case, right? Well, the case of 7 dimensions is still a highly non-trivial mathematical problem. People still don't know how hyperfloors in 7 dimensions behave.

(all together now)

Who cares?

Mathematicians.

Yes, they are strange people.

Never content with partial answers, always looking for problems which may or may not be in need of a solution, unable to rest before all details are completely comprehended, categorized and classified. And even if they succeed, that merely brings them back to square one.

Cube one.

Hypercube one.

You get the picture...

LinkedIn: Share a secret

A few days ago I had something I wanted to say. Badly. Fortunately for me, I have a forum to do so, which is, of course, the little corner of the Internet you are currently looking at. So as usual I started typing away during my commute and before long I had finished the piece. I devised a title for it (it was to be called All the world’s a stage), it tied in with previous subjects (for instance, the idea of hyperreality) and it was about something most people could relate to. So from an objective point of view there was nothing wrong with the blog entry. Still, for some reason it felt wrong to post it. And after long deliberation I decided to do something I had never done before: I decided to self-censor and not publish the piece. At the time I didn’t quite know why, but today I suddenly figured it out.

It came to me when I was thinking about the very first sentence of this piece (yes, please have a second look at it). While typing it, I hesitated for a moment between the verbs say or tell. Which made me realise that I should not have written 'I had something I wanted to say', but 'There was something I wanted to tell someone'. Indeed, there’s a big difference.

The problem was that I didn’t have the nerve to tell the person in question. I still don’t. So I was faced with an impasse: I couldn’t say it on our blog and I couldn’t tell it in person. Which basically comes down to having a secret. Usually people define a secret as something you shouldn’t tell anyone. But think about it, isn’t the worst secret the kind you can’t tell anyone?

Luckily there is a solution. During one of my nocturnal wanderings along virtual shores, I came across this site: http://coloresque.net/secrets/. It’s actually a virtual art project called Share a secret, which consists of a very simple premise. The site offers you a text box, through which you can share whatever secret you like. You won’t get a response and it’s completely anonymous. The only condition, the site states, is that you tell something that’s true.

Try it. (And be truthful.) I did it, and there’s something quite remarkable about it.

What, you may ask? I won’t tell you. As I learned from this experience, some things are best left, indeed, a secret.

In the unlikely event of...

• ... having to buy a laptop for a one-armed man, buy a Mac.

He might want to avoid Ctr+Alt+Del.

• ... bumping into a giant squirrel, wearing fancy head phones and enthousiastically nodding its head, ask him what he's listening to.

You might want to check that record out.

• ... facing someone who is telling you not to run away from your problems, ask him the following question:

“What if my problem is that I can't leave things behind?”

• ... seeing a Chinese man with the word 'friend' or 'love' tatooed on his arm in stylish Times New Roman, ask him whether he knows what it means.

He might have been drunk.

• ... waking up as a cartoon character, don't start running straight ahead when a tree is falling in your direction.

Step aside.

• ... meeting someone asking you whether you sometimes feel the urge to answer questions with unfinished sentences, tell him you don't.

He might be confused.

• ... sitting next to a polar bear on the airplane, ask him whether he enjoys watching television series.

He might have seen LOST too.

• ... dropping a hamster on the floor, tread lightly.

He may have the colour of your carpet.

• ... falling, face upwards.

You may still see the stars.

Quotes from the book (6)

I guess I have several strange habits. Like enjoying beans in tomato sauce straight from the tin at any hour of the day, or the need to pace around and talk to myself whenever I need to think really hard about something. Another one which continues to surprise people (and hopefully is not a sign of my culinary cruelty or imminent insanity), is this: every year I re-read a book.

The fact that I already know what’s going to happen, doesn’t bother me one bit. On the contrary, I find there’s a kind of quiet solace in the safety of such an enterprise. Besides, I happen to particularly like books without a real story. I really do. Preferably bulky novels that speak about … well, nothing much at all, actually. Like Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which takes 607 pages to tell how an unemployed man discovers a strange well in his garden. I’m sure that to many people this might seem an exquisite form of torture, but not to me. Truth be told: I’ve always liked words better than stories. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never really managed to write one myself?

This year I re-read a book that can be considered the epitome of a book without a story: John Banville’s Eclipse. Two hundred and twenty four pages about a man going back to live in the house he grew up in and reflecting on his life. Nothing of real importance happens in the meanwhile, but to quote Robert Macfarlane in The Guardian: ‘With prose like this, who needs a plot?’.

Indeed, Eclipse is an exercise in language and style. Which doesn’t mean if feels artificial. Banville writes a thick, rich and silky smooth English. Sweet to the tongue and velvety on the palate. Like dark chocolate sauce. But beware, like chocolate sauce Banville can be a bit bitter too, for his pages abound in an almost unspeakable melancholy. Indeed, Eclipse has a tragic beauty that will crush your soul. But then again, I think we need to get our soul crushed once in a while. Don’t you think?

It is late, the light is going. My mind aches from so much futile remembering. What is it I hope to retrieve? What is it I am trying to avoid? I see what was my life adrift behind me, going smaller and smaller with distance, like a city on an ice floe caught in a current, its twinkling lights, its palaces and spires and slums, all miraculously intact, all hopelessly beyond reach. Was it I who took an axe to the ice? What can I do now but stand on this crumbling promontory and watch the past as it dwindles? When I look ahead, I see nothing except empty morning, and no day, only dusk thickening into night, and, far off, something that is not to be made out, something vague, patient, biding. Is that the future, trying to speak to me here, among these shadows of the past? I do not want to hear what it might have to say.

On flowers, potatoes and chestnuts

Disclaimer

**********

It would be odd to cut the following story into pieces.

So it became a bit longer than our average writings.

**********

When I travel between Ghent and Antwerp, I usually sit close to where I put my foldable bike, carefully wedged in that cavity formed by two rows of seats. Today was no exception to this rule.

As a matter of fact, it could have been any given weekday; as soon as I sat down, I took my notebook and starting scribbling down a few research ideas.

On my head, a set of giant head phones, converting Amenra's repetitive drones into an inspiring sludge that seeped into my racing mind.

Opposite me, an older lady, donning a green park ranger's type of hat and matching boots, observing me through an old-fashioned pair of glasses, resting on the tip of her nose, hiding behind a foolish smirk.

Bleep.

She triggered my nutty people detection device.

For a moment I felt safe behind my calculations, buried underneath thick layers of sound.

'What are you doing?', she suddenly asked in an English accent that sounded as if it was still healing from a recent fracture.

I couldn't tell where she was from. Besides a forest lodge maybe.

I pretended neither seeing nor hearing her, but I realized soon enough that this approach wouldn't last.

'Excuse me,' she repeated, 'what are you doing? Are you writing a poem?'

I lifted my head phones and decided to play the business card.

'I'm working, madam. And this music inspires me. So if you excuse me, I would rather continue writing.'

'What are you working on?', she suddenly continued in West-Flemish, mistaking my polite retort for an invitation to start a conversation.

'A poem?'

'It's mathematics,' I tried, hoping that this would make her understand that I was doing serious things.

'Interesting,' she replied, and extended her arms.

'Can I have a look at that?'

I decided to give her some of my calculations. If luck was on my side, she'd immerse herself into my writings and get lost.

She stared at my handwriting, not unlike someone finishing a 10 000 piece jigsaw version of the Taj Mahal: completely puzzled out.

'This doesn't look like what I learned at school,' she concluded.

'Of course not,' I thought, 'this didn't even exist when you were at school. That's why they call it current research.'

I remained silent, aware of the fact that the people at the other side of the corridor started staring at me as if I were the oddball.

'What have we become?' she started to complain.

'Plenty of people on this train, and nobody feels like talking to me.'

Bleep.

'You have all become socially handicapped.'

I couldn't help looking up.

Her smile penetrated my bubble and made my realize that my attempts to look busy were as feeble as my excuse not to prove her wrong.

I unplugged my iPod and surrendered.

I appreciated her line of thought, and she had a point.

'Why do you need music for inspiration?', she asked, as if this was an unresolved issue.

'Why not just watch outside, for example? You're on a train!'

'It doesn't work that way,' I said. 'It's not like what I want to write down is hiding behind those daily things.'

'I bet it can be!' was her somehow inviting answer.

'Look, I will show you some of the things I am carrying to Antwerp, maybe it can trigger you to write something.'

And from her old-fashioned slightly faded hippie bag, she took a bunch of green flowers, a plastic bag containing potatoes and a brown paper bag full of chestnuts.

If she wasn't, she at least had them.

Nuts.

Bleep.

'Flowers, cooked potatoes and steamed chestnuts.'

As if that was the most natural thing to have on you.

'Erhm, and what are you going to do with that?', I addressed her now.

The stares from the other side of the corridor didn't bother me any longer.

'I am visiting friends in Antwerp whom I haven't seen for 25 years. This is a present.'

'Where do they live?', I asked, trying to imagine how I'd feel when someone were to give me these presents.

'No idea, I'll find them when I get there.'

Bleep.

She took three pictures from an old crumbled envelope.

'My biggest surprise for tonight,' she said, handing them to me.

'I found these at home, in a box in the attic,' she added.

One was a group picture, which was so blurry and out of focus that it felt as if these people should have been wearing swim suits.

'This is when the television crew visited at our village,' she explained.

It turned out 'Boeketje Vlaanderen' had once shot an episode in the place where she was born.

'This man,' pointing at a murky face in the background, 'was the groom. He's a good friend of mine.'

'And those people?', I wanted to know, showing her the other two pictures.

'Those are his parents.'

A short silence comfortably nested itself between us.

Meeting this old, somehow oddly looking lady who came all the way from Tielt to visit people she hadn't seen for 25 years - carrying a bag with what can only be described as the strangest collection of presents I'd heard from in a while - made me realize that the beauty of life lies in random collisions.

'Can I take a picture of you?', she suddenly asked me.

Had she not just shown me these pictures of the friend she was visiting and his parents, I would have said no.

I didn't.

Call it vanity, but the prospect of a picture with my faded face on it somehow felt like it might one day spark another conversation.

Flash.

'Funny,' I blurted out, 'maybe you can come to Antwerp again within 25 years.'

She looked at me sideways.

'Yes,' I continued, 'when you'll find my picture in a box in the attic. Then you can take the train to Antwerp again, and come looking for me.'

She stared at me. In an almost pitiful way.

'You don't have to look for people,' she enounced.

'You just find them.'

I got off at the railway station in Berchem. Me, and my foldable bike.

Amenra was blasting through my head phones again and I thought about this old lady's words.

She was right.

The flower, the potatoes and the chestnuts had triggered me...

LinkedIn: the Uncyclopedia

One of the most useful websites out there - and I often wonder exactly where that is - must be Wikipedia. It's actually so useful that I am using it at this very moment to look up a bunch of information about Wikipedia itself. That's what they call a strange loop by the way, self-reference for the win! But despite the obvious advantages of having access to this free, web-based encyclopedia, there are obviously also a few disadvantages.

Being a teacher at university for example, I am too often confronted with students quoting Wikipedia as the only source they consulted, confusing what they've read on the web with sound arguments or scientific facts. I'm not saying I blame them for that, growing up in an age in which the word 'library' is associated to a folder on your laptop rather than a place where they hide all the books (the latter is not my joke by the way, big up yourself if you know who said this) must have its consequences, but I wish people would at least realize that Wikipedia does not necessarily tell you the truth...

So, just in case you're one of my (future) students reading this: you will be deducted points if you quote Wikipedia in either a paper or an exam answer. On the other hand, there are points to be gained by quoting passages from the Uncyclopedia. For those of you who have never heard of this website, I give you the Wikipedia entry on the Uncyclopedia. Or what is the other way round?

Wikipedia ("the 'free' encyclopedia") is a website that parodies Uncyclopedia. It was founded in 2001, when it began its noble goal of spreading the world's misinformation in the most inconspicuous way possible. For this reason, academic experts strongly urge students not to cite Wikipedia. Originally written exclusively in Klingon, the project currently spans all the known languages of history. The English version has over twelve million pages, most of them capitalization redirects.

Only one vehicle for article humor is employed at Wikipedia: actual information. However, much of the behind-the-scenes aspects of Uncyclopedia are also parodied, from the abundance of maintenance templates to the system for rating articles. Like Uncyclopedia, Wikipedia has guidelines regarding what is and is not acceptable content, and these guidelines have become exceedingly long and complex as a parody of Uncyclopedia's comparatively simple rules. The site has gained media attention due to its articles on places, people, and painfully obscure pop culture.

Have fun.

Awesomeness

• buying a bag of pistachio nuts which can all be opened without breaking your nail or biting your tongue
• being able to peel the skin of an apple in one twirling bit
• seeing fluffy rabbits in a city park
• sending a text message to someone containing everything you wanted to share, including the appropriate number of kisses, and noticing that you used the exact number of characters for one message
• getting a friend's keychain because he asks you to get something from upstairs while he will be waiting in the car, putting the keys in your pocket, arriving at the door having forgotten which of the many keys it was, and opening the door with the first key you're trying
• boiling a random amount of pasta and noticing that you had just enough
• waking up, turning the radio on and hearing your favourite tune
• feeling hungry and finding an unopened yet completely forgotten bag of chips in the cupboard
• buying a book and hearing the girl behind the counter say: "This is my favourite book, enjoy it!"
• getting a message from someone you haven't seen for a very long time, realizing that you dreamt about him/her the night before
• meeting people on the street who are singing out loud
• seeing your backpack as the first one hitting the airport conveyor belt.

Wear sunscreen

(for M, J, L, E & D)

Life is far from easy. We all know that. Some days are bad, some days are worse. I don’t know why, but lately it seems that wherever I look, there’s trouble and heartache. Especially heartache. If Life is a Ship, then there’s definitely a storm blowing. And all around me friends are getting hit by the deck harder than a drunken sailor…

As a friend I try to listen and I try to help. With a glass of wine, a cup of coffee, or some honest advice. But it’s not easy. After all, advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

You might recognize these words. They’re from a 1997 column by Mary Schmich in which she gave her version of a Guide to Life for Graduates. You probably know the musical adaptation by Baz Luhrmann better. It’s called Wear Sunscreen. (In fact, it's called Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen), but no one says that)

I have always been a big fan of Schmich’s column (and Luhrmann's song). Sure, it’s a piece of comedy, but it’s also excellent advice – from ‘Wear sunscreen’ over ‘Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone’ to ‘Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours’. It’s really splendid advice and I frequently re-read it when going through a rough patch of life.

Years ago I also followed the one piece of advice from Schmich’s column that didn’t get into Luhrman’s song: the part where she encourages anyone over 26 to try and write their own Guide for Life. Here’s an updated version of it. If it doesn’t help, it probably won’t hurt either.

Think. Trust your instincts. Be honest, not naive. Work out. Read. Write. Don’t be afraid. Speak out in public. Try harder. Have faith. Help others. Take care of yourself. Don’t accept sweets from strangers. Respect nature. Use your head, but follow your heart. Nobody said it was going to be easy. Cry, and don’t you dare apologize for it. Get what you need, not what you want. Smoke once: quit forever. Hold your charm. Math is neither boring, nor useless. Talk to people. Listen too. Expect disappointments. Health is everything. Don’t make plans for the future: do stuff now. Alcohol is not a philosophy. Be patient. Let it go. Use good grammar. Mind the pedestrian. Read the small print. Never ignore anything. Believe in love, not in romance. Be a man about it. Your body has a soul too. Ask for help. Courage is not foolishness. Compassion is not weakness. Imagining people naked helps. Breathe. A broken heart does heal. Don’t overestimate logics. Steer clear of the drunk barber. Forgive. Be polite. Love dolphins. After all, what kind of a person doesn’t love dolphins? Be kind to children. Do the right thing. Remember. Be prepared. Keep focused. Dream. And above all, ask yourself: does it make me happy?

Of course, at the end of it, I have to repeat Mary Schmich’s one caveat.

If you succeed in doing this, please tell me how.

If trees could speak...

Whenever I need to think really hard about something, be it personal or professional, I always feel the urge to go sit under a tree. Must be some kind of Newtonian reflex. Weighing options, contemplating possibilities and trying to come up with some kind of solution, the idea of doing this under a robust tree - leaning against its solid stem, maybe even talking out loud - has something very appealing to me.

Yesterday, this sparked the following thought: if trees could speak, wouldn't they be fantastic story-tellers? I mean, many a secret of upmost historical impact must have been shared under a silent oak, many a revolution must have been started in a regular forest, many a love must have been declared under a blossoming fruit tree.

Trees must have a talent for telling stories!

And then again, there is definitely more to say about this: having a curious personality myself, not being afraid to get immersed into something completely different – I'd be the first one to participate in a workshop 'entertaining Irish mountain goats with homemade Polynesian percussion instruments' - the sentence “You must have a talent for this” is no stranger to me. Despite the fact that I do seem to be slightly better than average in most activities I'm willing to give a shot – reaching that particular level which sets you apart from complete novices might be some unrecognized talent of mine - I somehow think that people saying this haven't found their own talents (yet). Because I genuinely believe that we all have at least one thing that makes us special. Although I'm not saying it has to be useful...

Let us take Roy Sullivan for example, an American from Virginia (1912-1983) who worked as a U.S. Park Ranger. Between 1942 and 1977, this man was struck by lightning on seven different occasions and survived all of them. That is pretty amazing, don't you think? I sometimes wonder how he must have felt, a few days before his own birth, when he was queuing at the Talent Desk for Soon-To-Be Babies.

- Next!

- Good morning, my name will be Roy Sullivan, I am supposed to be born on February the 7'th, in Greene County, Virginia.

- Ah, yes, Mister Sullivan! Welcome. Pick a card from this box please.

(unfolds a paper and gives the lady behind the counter an incredulous look)

- Is there a problem sir?

- I don't get it, my card says 'human lightning rod'.

- Congratulations! You just pulled out one of few bonus cards: you'll be sent to earth with a combo-talent.

- (opening up) A combo-talent? Interesting.

- Yes, first of all, you'll be able to survive lightning impact.

- (slightly disappointed) Ah. Hm. Okay. And the other one?

- Well, erhm... you will have a talent for attracting lightning too.

That the Board for New Talent Proposals gets away with 'being able to chase lightning away' makes perfect sense to me. Someone with this talent would definitely be able to find a well-paid job as permanent resident on top of a tropical skyscraper. I suppose I'd even accept the proposal to saddle someone up with the talent 'being able to deflect lightning so that it always crashes into your nearest neighbour'. I mean, put this guy next to the other one on the tropical rooftop, add a decent sound-system and a cocktail bar and you have all ingredients for a memorable party with a flashy laser effect. But a talent for 'attracting lightning'? Come on guys, was this the first thing you came up with on a Monday morning, or the last thing on a Friday evening? That's not a talent, that's a burden.

I bet trees in Virginia are talented story-tellers. Horror stories, that is. About this fearsome park ranger that could have you killed in a second, merely by sheltering under your canopy.

There’s a word for it

If you know anything, anything at all, about me, you’ll know that I like words. Which is quite the understatement. Oh how I veritably venerate verbiage, lavishly love language and wantonly worship words! I’ll tell you a secret: whenever I meet a new word I particularly like, I repeat it over and over to myself, sometimes even giggling rather foolishly. Oh how I want to eat the Latin ruminare (what cows do with their food)! How I rage and rumble and ravage when I taste the Flemish rulokte (‘wild’) on my tongue! Or how I get misty-eyed when I read the French larmoyant (‘to cry for’). To me, many words feel like what they mean. Conversely, some words feel like the opposite of what they mean, like linoleum, which should have been the name of a pleasant Mediterranean seaport, as one of my word heroes L.P. Wilkinson once observed, not the rather unpleasant floor covering. And so every word tells a story to me. Which has been a blessing, because it's probably the sole reason I'm not living in a cardboard box today!

But why am I telling you the presumably bleeding obvious? Well, some time ago a few of you told me you were happy that I introduced you to the word meteo sensitive (i.e. your temper follows the weather). To be exact, my friend W. mentioned it to me first a while ago, so I shouldn’t claim credit. However, this reminded me of a few other words that you might not know but find funny or deem interesting. Fred himself used one in his very first blog: retrotort, and so I thought I’d teach you some more just in case you have to spice up a boring dinner party (Caution: Fred and Fred will not be held accountable should anyone use these in a frantic attempt to keep the conversation going on a date. The results could be unforeseeably disastrous.)

(1) Backronym

We all know an acronym, right? It’s a word that’s actually not a word but a compilation of the first letters of a phrase, like radar which was coined in the 1940s from ra(dio) d(etection) a(nd) r(anging). Well, a backronym is the opposite of that. A word which people think is an acronym, or make into one, but really isn’t. A good example is SOS. I always thought SOS was short for Save Our Souls. Turns out that’s not how it originated. The army just wanted a simple Morse code for a distress signal, so they chose …---…, which spells S O S by chance, not because it’s short for something. Alternatively, a backronym can also be used to (somewhat corny) comic effect. Like when you’re fed up with your old Ford-car and tell a friend Ford actually stands for Fix Or Repair Daily.

(2) Complisult

Another good one is a complisult, which is a compliment and an insult mixed together, like in the sentence “That’s such a nice dress. It does wonders for your figure” or “You’re smarter than I thought!”. At first it looks like a compliment, but in fact when you think about it, it’s more like an insult. Sometimes you can leave the insult part elliptically, like in the famous “Do you think she’s pretty? - She has a wonderful personality.”.

If you’d like to know more unusual but fun words that fit into this category of There’s a word for it, you can check out the homonymous (there’s another one!) book for sale on Amazon! And if you’re still not convinced why you should like words, have a look at what Stephen Fry has to say about it, typecast in the craftiest of kinetic typographies:

Word.

Pod-heads (2)

[Press play]

[Read]

Why is it, that guessing exactly when a certain event took place in the past is so hard to do? I'm pretty sure that a majority of the people didn't realize, until this week - unless Planet Media's news rays couldn't penetrate the thick layer of clouds around your head - that 9/11 happened already 10 years ago. I heard some people say it felt like it happened only yesterday, whereas others dated it back more than a decade ago.

Does this mean that people tend to forget the answers to what will ultimately become obvious pub quiz questions, or merely that Time itself behaves in strange ways - resolutely trying to prevent its very Soul from being captured by mundane concepts such as seconds, days and years?

I don't know the answer to the questions above - I can't even remember when I started thinking about them - but I do know that there are things defying both the (lack of) power of our brain and the somehow unpredictable grip of time on our lives.

Timeless things.

Like music.

I guess we all have our own list of classics, don't we? The kind of tracks we can keep listening to, never getting bored with them. Our best friends in the record collection, with whom we share moments, good and bad. Songs that make us close our eyes and realize that sometimes it doesn't matter that we don't know when things happened.

Only that they happened...

In the head!

Fred's blogpost about dolphins from a few days ago triggered my brain too: it made me think of what I believe to be one of the most brilliant stand-up comedians out there, although you might be more familiar with Ricky Gervais as the guy from the office. The office, not yours. Unless our blog's cybertendrils reach further than we thought: in that case, can you please say hi to Ricky?

I am aware of the fact that this blog is probably nothing more than your daily dose of dorky diversion at work - wedged between more important things to do, and this is very likely putting serious restrictions on the amount of time you are willing to spend on a blogpost - be it reading, deciphering or dropping a comment in the box - but I do recommend you to stay here for at least another 6 minutes, because the following passage is one heck of a way to kickstart your weekend with a smile across your face... Enjoy!

LinkedIn: Someecards

Today I have the pleasure of announcing the youngest brainchild of Fred and Fred’s making: LinkedIn. From now on, LinkedIn will figure as a semi-regular category of blogs in which we want to present some of our favourite Internet links. Some will be funny (or what your regular Fred considers funny), some will be serious - all in good Freddian tradition…

The first feature of LinkedIn is the truly side-splitting Someecards.com. I don’t know why but in the early days of the Internet (I’m talking late 1990s when most people got hooked up) sending e-cards used to be much more popular that nowadays. Nerry a birthday would go by without you receiving a link in your e-mail referring to some shitty bmp-picture with a corny message. Because most of the sites that provided such cards were pretty bad (some even offered teeth-grinding gifs of singing Santas or babbling bears), I eventually started browsing the web to see if there really wasn’t anything genuinely funny to be found.

And sure enough, I hit Someecards.com. The site is basically a big collection of funny cards, grouped into categories of anniversary, birthday, get well, thinking of you, and so forth. However, the cards themselves are anything but traditional. You could say their humour is like the Little Britain of e-cards, drawn in a style that will remind a Belgian audience of Humo-cartoonist Jeroom. In fact, many of these cards aren’t particularly suitable to be actually sent, although some can provide excellent material to surprise your friends or relatives. You’ll see.

As a matter of fact, I’ll show you. Since reviews of sites are pointless without having a look at the real deal, I’ve chosen twenty of my personal favourites (in no particular order) for you to check out. Enjoy!





















Someecards.com has been around for quite a while now and it’s a pity that no one seems to know them. So here’s your chance! You can follow them on Facebook and Twitter, and the site even allows you to upload your own e-card by typing a text on loads of empty pictures in their typical style. So fly, fly, my pretties, and spread your wings of comedy!

... that's the question!

In a recent article in the newspaper, I read that some people tend to believe that dolphins have quite a good notion about the meaning of 'death'. They are not the only animals showing emotions when a member of their group dies - elephants, chimps and gorilla's can also exhibit behaviour which looks like mourning - but apparently the reaction of dolphins is rather profound. At least that's what Joan Gonzalvo, a dolphin specialist working in a research institute in Milano, claims.

Somehow, this article made me think of something I have read a few years ago: together with human beings, dolphins are the only creatures that can have sex for pleasure. Now this raises at least a few questions. First of all, and most obviously: is it true? As a matter of fait divers, I couldn't care less. The answer is either yes or no. Black or white. Heads or tails.

What I find more interesting is the following question: who conjectured this, and why? Seriously, being an academic myself, I am no stranger to coming up with silly questions - or what seems like a silly question to the outer world. Has Mongolia ever won the Paralympics, for example? But the thing is that my own curiosity is usually triggered by something. Inspiration doesn't come for free - especially not when, as is often the case, it is to be found in a glass of alchol. So this leads me right back to the aforementioned question: who came up with the idea that dolphins might be the only animals having sex for pleasure, and why?

Either the Fish Porn Departement does not only have an extensive selection of cod mating classics (this is what comedians describe as a call-back) but also caters for dolphin lovers ('Flipper and the Blowhole', anyone?), or this person was engaged in sexual intercourse with a Delphinidae family member and got compliments afterwards. Which is not some sick twist of my mind, by the way. Check the following page in case that crossed yours...

The most interesting question however, is the following: how do you (dis)prove that claim? Think about it: how can you verify whether dolphins really are the only animals enjoying the act of procreation? There's only one way to do that, right? Testing all other animals.

Which, in a moment of pure insight, lead me to the obvious answer to questions 2 and 3.

The only guy that could have concluded this, was Noah.

Yups, Noah from the Bible story.

The one about his Ark.

Or, as I would call it, his Love Boat...

JLo

Okay, I’ll be honest: I feel like being a bit dramatic today. So I thought I’d do some complaining for you. Nerd-like complaining involving difficult words, sure, but still, complaining. You know, just in case your day hadn’t been annoying already, I thought I’d happily share two of my own frustrations, both concerning matters of the media.

(1) I have to admit I’m a sucker for bad TV. I liked Big Brother until it grew old (halfway the second season), I liked Idol and I still like Survivor (called Expeditie Robinson in Belgium), so yesterday I thought I’d give another show a try. This one has been around for quite a while, but I never watched it from beginning to end, and since yesterday was the first episode, now was my chance. The show is called Farmers Looking for a Wife, and recently they added or a Man to that, because they’ve had female farmers on. The show’s premise is actually not that bad: it’s a dating show for farmers, who understandably haven’t got much time for a social life. Which leads to toe-cringingly awkward situations of course… All fun and games so far, until somewhere in the latter part of the show. After a short speed date with the various candidates the farmers had to pick three and send the rest home. After each selection the camera then showed the losers’ walk of shame. Five or six women or men - understandbly not the best in either the looks or the brains department - walking back to their cars, heavily upset for being rejected and all of a sudden even more aware of the camera in their faces. Now I’m not so naive to suppose the producers of this show have the farmers’ or the suitors’ best interests at heart. I know it’s TV and I know TV doesn’t show people’s real stories, it uses people to show scripted stories. But this was TV kicking people when they’re down, and even I could taste the dirt of its boot. Is it really true that most people will only feel pity for the contenders in this scene and not hostility towards the makers of the show? Because that’s the only way a shot like that can ever work. That’s cynical.

(2) I’ve been hearing this radio ad for some Brussels university lately and it’s driving me up the walls. If I remember well, it starts off with some sounds from nature and a documentaryesque voice whispering: “We find ourselves in the habitat of the studentus Brusellus…” The rest of the ad I don’t remember because I get so f*ing worked up about studentus Brusellus! It’s pig-Latin, or, for the Flemish among you, Jommeke-Latin. Just take any word and put -us at the end and it’ll be Latin! But for crying out loud, in an ad for a school? Really? You couldn’t be bothered to ask someone with an inkling of Latin to come up with studens Bruxellensis, which isn’t quite correct, but acceptable and still recognizable? Of course, the ad is supposed to be funny, but clearly the joke is in the grotesque circularity of the scene, a scientist describes a scientist (the student) in a scientific way. A bit like when Charlie Chaplin participated in a Charlie Chaplin-lookalike contest. So for the scene to work the scientific element is crucial and has to be believable. It doesn’t have to be correct, but believable. Like when you know the starship in Star Wars doesn’t actually work, but it looks like it works. The thing is, for many people, studentus Brusellus is not believable. In comparison, none of the Latin in the Harry Potter spells is correct, but for those who do notice, they also notice it is consistent (in its errors), which makes it a kind of code. And codes appeal to our sense for secrets and mystery, which not only preserves the dramatic illusion in a movie about a wizard, but even strengthens it! So, all things considered, why be sloppy, use bad Latin and risk losing the attention of anyone who knows a little of Rome’s language? It kills the dramatic illusion of the joke… unless, of course, correct vocabulary itself is a joke to the Brussels university in question. Which I suppose it is.

I told you I was going to be a bit of a drama queen today. Primarily a Latin drama queen, it turned out. Yes, go back to the title, enjoy your Aha-Erlebnis and be amazed by my powers. Always the drama... Sigh.

2011: a space oddity

Pizza marketing wars have now officially reached a point of cosmic proportions - pardon me the pun - as Domino's Japanese branch announced its plans to open the first pizza restaurant on the moon. Just in case you have some weird synonym in mind the existence of which I am not aware of, we are talking about the celestial body rotating our planet. The moon, as we say.

It all started in 2001, when the enemies from Pizza Hut delivered a pizza to astronauts orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station (ISS). Not just any pizza of course: the creation of the world's first pizza in outer space was the product of an intense - and, let me guess, rather expensive - collaboration between Pizza Hut and Russian food scientists. A quote from the official report: "before final certification for consumption was given, the vacuum-sealed Pizza Hut pizza had to undergo rigorous stabilized thermal conditions to determine freshness-stay and life span." Sounds like someone lost the first 3496 pages of the Priority List for Global Problems Humanity is Facing.

You might still remember Domino's first counterblow, from December 2010, when they announced their plan to pay the winner of a contest ¥2.5 million (more or less €​23000) for one lousy hour of delivering pizza's. One small job for man, one giant leap for his paycheck.

Today it seems that this was only the first step towards pizza craziness: Tomohide Matsunaga, a spokesman for Domino's, revealed the company's ambition to build a pizza dome on our only natural satellite because they anticipate there will be many people living on the moon: astronauts who are working there, wealthy Dutch tourists and migrant workers distributing pizza flyers. The company added they even expect to be able to offer delivery services. Which kept me wondering to where exactly that would be? Because unless Russian scooter scientists are working on a new kind of vehicle, I wouldn't expect the delivery to be made within half an hour...

In retrospect, I regret not being a part of the Domino think-tank, as I did have a few more bright ideas for the future. Or would you call an ice-cream parlor in the Sahara, a vending machine selling short black hairpieces in China or a night shop in Pakistan a bit too far-fetched?

Ambergris

When it comes to food, some people have 'strange habits'. How else would you describe the fact that there are nutcases out there, willing to pay a shitload of money for ambergris? For those of you who are not (yet) familiar with this culinary delight, let me first ask you a simple question: how does ambergris sound to you?

French?

Erhm, let me see, Sherlock.

Yes.

Ridiculously obvious associations: plus one.

But my point here, is that the word itself already sounds delicious doesn't it? Imagine this: “ambergris shavings on a seaweed cracker floating in Chinese lily flower broth”. Sounds delicious to me. Or how about “roasted ambergris flakes in a foamy Belgian white chocolate milkshake”? Sounds even better. In case of an emergeny, I would even settle for a late-night home delivery pizza with ambergris sauce. That sounds a bit sick indeed, but once you're ready to order this you are probably too drunk to realize that anyway.

The thing is – and let's be honest, it should be the only thing you are ever willing to give the French credit for: no matter what you are planning to serve for dinner on a first date, just give it a fancy French name and you are bound to get laid. So when I first read about the endless possibilities of ambergris in the kitchen, I was already envisioning myself in hot, steamy, mind- and other spongy-matter-blowing sex scenes.

Until I found out that ambergris is basically – and I kid you not – vomit from a sperm whale. Feel free to make your own jokes about Moby Dick at this point... Vomit from a sperm whale: that means at least two words I did not want to read in combination with 'one spoonful per person'. Just in case you're still interested, let me share a few technical details with you. First of all, ambergris starts off as a white fatty substance with a strong fecal smell. This could be me being a bit picky, but anything that even remotely matches the description of bird poo, is excluded from my menu. Okay? Secondly – and this shit is really getting better – the white fatty substance is supposed to age a few years in the ocean. I assume that you're all familiar with the following experience: you open the fridge, a not too-familiar-looking jar in the back somehow grasps your attention and upon closer inspection you notice that its shelf life ended when it was still okay to wear a mullet.

A few years ago, that is.

At that point we all have the same reflex, right?

We put the jar back in the fridge.

So when I'm having a romantic stroll along a moonlit tropical beach, holding hands with a beautiful woman who just had a delicious French-sounding dinner, and I bump into a smelly white ball that looks like it has been ageing for a few years, I tend to let it be. Or push it back into the sea, at most. Under no circumstance however, would I feel inclined to take it home with me and start experimenting with it in the kitchen. Especially not when you know that, as a result of the ageing process, the precursor of ambergris acquires its typical crusty, waxy texture and animalic odour. Not very surprisingly, of course. I grew up with my grandparents, so this is firsthand knowledge: everything becomes waxy and crusty when you leave it unattended for a few years.

Oddly enough – as in 'how the fuck is this possible' – ambergris can cost around thousands of dollars for a small lump. If these sperm whales weren't the big monstrously huge animals they are, the first thing I'd buy in the morning is a fish tank. A fish tank, and a sperm whale. And even if I would have to feed it rare cask strength single malt whisky's: I would not stop before owning an intoxicated sperm whale.

- “Yes Moby, daddy loves you.”

Petting it, all day long.

- “And now puke, goddamnit. PUKE!”

Thousands of dollars!

For a lump of vomit from a big fat mammal with a head that takes up one third of its total body length: sounds like a few Americans may consider a fruitful job change. You can only hope that these ambergris-buying flapheads have the decency to send a postcard to the undernourished part of our world, next time they go to the Bahamas to buy their salty balls.

“Dear friend,

I've just spent your country's Gross National Product on a bucket of exclusive French-sounding stuff.

PS: enjoy your weekly bowl of rice!”

I guess this is the point where the posh ambergris-lovers start raising their subtly trimmed eyebrows.

- Rice? William, what is rice?

- Well, Asquith, do you remember that city trip in Tokyo, when you wanted to try sushi?

- Of course I do!

- Well, it's the white stuff underneath the fish.

- Aha, you mean 'le riz'?