Mathematical Biologist Humour

From Martin Nowak (via Carl Zimmer), an example of mathematical biologist humour:

A shepherd is tending his sheep, and a man comes by and says, "If I guess the correct number of your sheep, can I have one?"

The shepherd says, "Please try."

The man looks at the flock and says "Eighty-three."

The shepherd is completely amazed that he got the right number. The man picks up a sheep and starts to walk away.

The shepherd says, "Wait! If I guess your profession, can I have my sheep back?"

The man says, "Sure."

The shepherd says, "You must be a mathematical biologist."

The man says, "How did you know?"

"Because you picked up my dog."

Holiday in Guisborough

As I might have said in a previous post, I am staying a week and a half at my father's home in Guisborough. I have been out for a few walks in the hills and have taken lots of photos.  The above is a view northwards from Highcliff towards Guisborough (about 2.5km distant) and Redcar (about 11km).

Hedgehog

I went out for a walk to the local shop with Zoe earlier this evening.  On the way we passed two boys who were looking at this hedgehog.  Both of them had got out camera phones so I got out my camera too and took this picture.  The hedgehog seemed to rather small but I wouldn't know how to tell whether it was a young one or not.  Light rain had been falling for much of the afternoon and the hedgehog was probably out foraging for the slugs, snails and worms that this had brought out.

Glacial Lakes and the Formation of the English Channel

I first learned about glacial lakes by reading Roger Osborne's The Floating Egg: Episodes in the Making of Geology which includes an account of Percy Fry Kendall's paper A System of Glacier-Lakes in the Cleveland Hills (Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, volume 58, pages 471-571, 1902).  In this monumental paper, Kendall presents a mass of evidence showing that during the last Ice Age some of the valleys in the Cleveland Hills and North York Moors were blocked by ice allowing large lakes to form.

As I was familiar with the Cleveland Hills, having spent much of my youth wandering over and exploring them, I obtained a photocopy of Kendall's paper and carried it with me each day for a couple of weeks to read on the train to and from work. I also sent a copy to my father who, still living in Cleveland, was able to go out and visit many of the features mentioned by Kendall.  Here is one of my father's photo of the Hardale Slack glacial meltwater channel near Tranmire (not to be confused with Haredale near Freeborough Hill, though the latter is also in an area containing several meltwater channels):

A couple of days ago, when I first heard a fragmentary report of the discovery by Sanjeev Gupta and Jenny Collier of evidence that the English Channel was formed by a catastrophic flood, I almost immediately thought that it must be referring to the overflow from a glacial lake in the southern North Sea. When I got round to reading the press release, I found my suspicion confirmed.  But this must have been an overflow on a much greater scale than anything in the Cleveland Hills.  Not only would the lake have been filling with water from the melting ice sheet over Britain and the North Sea but the River Rhine would also have been feeding it with meltwater from the Alps.

Ravenspurgh in Shakespeare

From Shakespeare's Places, A Gazetteer and Topographical Guide to the Plays, an unpublished manuscipt by Patrick Thornhill (my maternal grandfather), dated 1983:

RAVENSPUR(GH), E. Yorkshire, was close to Spurn Head, but was long ago swept away by the current that makes southward along that clayey coastline.  It does not appear in Saxton's map of Yorkshire (1577), for by that time it had been succeeded by Kingston-upon-Hull, but in the Middle Ages it had been the gateway to the North, as Dover was to the South.  Here Bolingbroke landed from exile in 1399, to gain the support of the Percies of Northumberland and the Duke of York.  In Richard II, 2.2.296, Northumberland calls on two lords to "Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh".  At 2.2.50, Greene reports that "the banish'd Bolingbroke repeals himself,/ and with uplifted arms is safe arriv'd/ at Ravenspurgh".  At 2.2.9, Bolingbroke and Northumberland are on the way from Ravenspurgh to Berkeley when they meet Harry Percy, 2.3.31, who reports that his uncle, Worcester, has  gone to Ravenspurgh and has told Percy to follow him there, via Berkeley (q.v.).  In Henry IV Part 1, 1.3.248, Harry Percy reminds his father of this, and at 3.2.95, Bolingbroke, now Henry IV, remembers "when I from France set foot in Ravenspurgh".  At 4.3.77 again, Hotspur remembers Henry's vow "upon the naked shore at Ravenspurgh".  In Henry VI Part 3, a later king, Edward IV, likewise remembers when he "thus arriv'd, from Ravenspurgh haven before the gates of York".

Shakespeare's Ravenspurgh would appear to correspond to the Ravenser Spurn mentioned in Richard Hayton's article.