Geronimo’s Hairy Carpet

Dan recently wrote a post in which he tried to convey the magnitude of a trillion dollars. It’s an almost unimaginable amount of money and is in danger of sounding like an almost trivial, throwaway number; like it’s just one step up from a billion. To understand just how much money it is, it needs converting into a visual – abstract or otherwise. If you were to stack it up on pallets in $100 bills, for example, it would look like this.

Alternatively, imagine that a Native American chief collected scalp after scalp with the intention of attaining a trillion human hairs to make himself a nice carpet for his tepee. Given that the average number of hairs on the human head is around 115,000* he’d have to lop the dermises off 8,695,652 paleface craniums.

Taking the human head as roughly spherical with an approximate 13cm radius and calculating the surface area (using the formula 4πR2) and dividing by three, we’re able to determine the approximate coverage of the flap of hairy skin our chief’s bloodthirsty braves might remove (though subsequent stretching might add a little extra). Each scalp would give us an area of around 708cm2, or 26.5 x 26.5cm.

The square root of 8,695,652 is 2948.83, and multiplying this by the dimensions above gives us our final figure: a patchwork of human axminster containing a trillion human hairs would measure approximately 0.8 kilometres square. More than enough for the big chief’s wigwam, and almost certainly enough to provide a smashing underfoot experience for his whole village, even without underlay.

Bringing things up-to-date, the traditional method of imagining surface area is to use a common denominator of football pitches. Given that the average football pitch is 100m x 50m, with Geronimo’s carpet, you’d have enough for around 121 pitches. That’s the whole of the Premier League, Championship, Leagues 1 & 2 and Conference (though sadly, not Conferences North and South who’d have to stick with grass).

Given that 8.5m (the amount of scalps needed) is approximately the population of Greater London, in theory, if everyone had hair, there would be just enough in the capital to cover the pitches of the English leagues. However, this doesn’t account for baldies who constitute around 25% of the population to varying degrees. Just across the channel however, the population of Paris is around 10.5m which more or less allows for the chrome-dome contingent. Not that I’m advocating the widespread maiming of the denizens of France’s capital to re-turf the football pitches of England in any way.

It would be quite groovy though.

* Fair hair is finer with around 140,000 peppering the heads of blondies, while redheads only have about 90,000. If you were to embark on such an undertaking and wanted something that was softer (and arguably more sightly) underfoot, you’d be well-advised to avoid the gingers.

Singular Characters

It seems there’s a much under-exploited gimmick by the celebrity fraternity in the adoption of single character names. The only ones I can think of are H from Steps, E from Eels and Mr T (who is often affectionately referred to as a casual “T”, as if “Mr T” wasn’t abbreviation enough). Then there’s always fictional characters like M and Q from James Bond. Zorro also had a single letter moniker which he’d casually slash onto doors as his calling card.

Punctuation marks have been used as signatures, notably, The Riddler from Batman, and famously, Prince had a symbol representing his name (but that doesn’t really count cos it was made up, plus he’s a pretentious little wanker).

Surprisingly though, the vast majority of single letter names are still available. This would make autograph signings much easier as many letters/names could be achieved with a single swipe of a pen. They’re also instantly memorable, can be copied by schoolchildren (to be gouged into desks or marker-penned across rucksacks) and guest appearances on Sesame Street would be inevitable.

If I was a celebrity, I’d choose U. No reason.

Removes Limescale, Skidmarks And All Traces Of Irony

What on earth’s happened to Mr Muscle lately? His depiction in the new advert is a bit of a sad departure from its predecessors.

There was something quirky though comfortingly British about a nerdy, badly-dressed middle-aged superhero cleaning a toilet with undoubtedly sub-super powers. You got the impression that he shared a house with his mum, drank weak lemon squash and routinely cried himself to sleep in a bedroom plastered with yellowing Star Wars wallpaper – the donning of an ill-fitting costume being the only release from days filled with ridicule and drudgery. Still, you knew where you were with him

However, all trace of irony has now been removed with his recent reinvention. He’s been transformed from an emaciated geek with NHS specs to an individual of rippling Schwarzennegarian musculature, a jaw you could stack books on and thighs of an overtly thunderous nature. As if this wasn’t indicative enough of an all-conquering hero, he’s also been given an American accent. (As an aside, I can’t help but notice that Barry ‘Cillit Bang’ Scott has calmed down a bit lately. Maybe the two are connected.)

Despite being beefed-up bigstyle though, I don’t think I’d like the new Mr Muscle wielding my loo brush, even though he’d be well-equipped to administer a bit more purchase to shift the more stubborn traces of excrement. Bring back the skinny fella. I wouldn’t even mind if he missed a couple of skidders.

Game On

I must confess to having a weakness for computer games and my thumbs can occasionally be seen waggling across the front of a PSP of an evening. I don’t own many games, but I’ve realised that for some reason a disproportionate amount of these require me to adopt the persona of a small mammal such as Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, Sly Raccoon (then there’s the variants of Ratchet & Clank: Locked & Loaded, Daxter etc.)

While Sly Raccoon is obviously a raccoon and Crash Bandicoot is obviously a bandicoot, Daxter – according to the accompanying notes – is an ‘otsel’ (a biologically impossible hybrid of an otter and a weasel) and Ratchet is some kind of space-travelling creature, clearly based on a small weaselly/ottery/bandicooty/raccoony type mammal. There seems to be a proliferation of these games which I have such a penchant for, which is a bit puzzling.

Another favourite, and not dissimilar game, is Ray-Man, who doesn’t really resemble an animal of any sort, but embarks on similar adventures in a cutesy platform cartoon land. The first time this game was suggested to me I mis-heard it as Rainman, which I remember thinking was the worst idea for a computer game ever. It’s difficult to imagine what a game about an autistic savant would entail. Counting probably. In that sense it’s probably not dissimilar to that that Brain Training rubbish that Ronan Keating and Captain Jean-Luc Picard are always telling me to buy, which looks about as entertaining as watching grass grow. Give me small mammalian cosmonauts any day.

Teatotal

I gave up coffee last week. I would say it was the longest week of my life, but that’s not strictly true as without the benefit of caffeine coursing around my bloodstream, I spent most of it asleep, which made the time between giving it up and resuming it again mercifully short.

Its temporary replacement (which was more down to a [probably misplaced] belief that it did me good rather than because it tasted nice) was herbal tea. This came in a variety of hippieish flavours, which sounded more like an explosion in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s garden than any palatable, or even drinkable beverage.

One cup and one teabag is all you need. After a few minutes soaking, the lucky drinker is rewarded with unspectacular brew which looks like the sort of water you find in the toilet when a stubbornly unflushable turd, produced by the previous visitor, has been allowed to steep for several hours.

My main problem with it though, is not its appearance; it’s the fact that although it smells really flavoursome, it tastes like weak squash (the sort of squash that old ladies used to make you when you were a kid). Despite your nostrils being assaulted by the tangy odour of echinacea and elderflower, the taste is pretty much that of water. It promises so much and then completely fails to deliver.

Also, as well as being almost entirely devoid of taste, the absence of a glop of cold milk (which is such an integral part of other hot beverages) means it’s delivered lipwards at temperatures approaching that of the surface of the sun, causing the drinker to look like a post-surgical Leslie Ash by the end of the day.

Apparently, it takes two weeks for caffeine to leave the system of a regular coffee drinker. My self-imposed one-week sentence was up on Saturday and I’m back on the good stuff. What’s more, I’m awake enough to appreciate it.

Heston Services

Is it me, or is the gimmick with Heston Blumenthal wearing a bit thin now? Yes, yes, yes… he’s a ground-breaking chef who turns snails into porridge, uses liquid nitrogen in a mad-professor type way and pushes the culinary envelope (I’ve never understood that metaphor – why do envelopes need to be pushed?) further than any balding bespectacled chef has done before, but it’s starting to border on sensationalism.

In his show on telly the other night, he recreated Victorian feasts like mock turtle soup (real turtles are extremely expensive and ever-so-slightly endangered), deep-fried insects, and an Absinthe jelly with dildos embedded in it like some deviant Desperate Dan cow pie.

Strangely, as the credits rolled, the announcer announced (as is common with most announcements at the end of cookery shows), that all recipes were available on the Channel 4 website.

Somehow I don’t think many mums will be recreating Heston’s dishes in the little kitchens of their semi-detacheds up and down the land. Or maybe I’ll be proved wrong and the sales of vibrators will increase tenfold, like when Delia started cooking with eggs a few years ago and their sales subsequently rocketed.

Also, call me repressed and overtly English, but I think I’d find the presence of a sex aid in my dessert a little disconcerting.

“Err… sorry Mum, but I’ll just have mine with ice cream thanks.”

Every Cloud...

More gloomy news today as ITN announced that they’re the latest to feel the bite of the economic downturn. They’’ll shortly be making around 400 staff redundant in Leeds and London, with further cutbacks in programming (the production on many regular shows, such as Heartbeat, has already ceased).

The lack of advertising revenue in recent months which funds the organisation has resulted in the need to reduce its programme budget by a substantial £65m, and it’s feared there are more job losses to come in other ITN offices around the country.

Still, good news about Heartbeat though.