The ultimate superhero.

[Admin]

I often look in on Ian Rowland's website - the guy who wrote the excellent book The Full Facts of Cold Reading. Another shameless plug for this book, but I think it should be included in the school curriculum. We can talk about psychics/mediums etc. and what to do about them, but if it was mandatory to study this book, we wouldn’t need to worry.

He also posts some great links and humorous bits and pieces.

One of my favourites is the superhero "Arm Fall Off Boy": http://www.ianrowland.com/TheVault/AFOB1.html*

Make sure you look at page 2 too: http://www.ianrowland.com/TheVault/AFOB2.html

I really can't understand how this character never became the basis of a Hollywood blockbuster.

[Jessie]

Excellent - every Town needs a hero like that

[Eddiesilence]

Inspired by the rubbish superhero ‘Arm-Fall-Off-Boy, I went on a trawl round the net looking for other such rubbish Marvel characters, finding such terrible superheroes as Warrior Nun, Beppo the Super Monkey and The Gay Ghost.

The Green Lantern, while not being amusingly named, had a power-draining allergy similar to Superman’s antipathy to Kryptonite. However, the Lantern was not rendered useless by anything sensible such as a fictitious mineral called Lanternite; no, his reaction was produced simply by proximity to the colour yellow. How very crap.

There was also a Marvel character called ‘Black Panther.’ That’s rather unfortunate if you’re old enough to remember the murderer Donald Neilsen, who adopted the same name.

Which brings me to today’s source of childish amusement. Prompted by Ben Goldacre’s ‘Bad Science’ column in the Guardian, I arrived at this website from Bristol University:

http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm

It’s a page dedicated to silly names for molecules.

Believe it or not, there are molecules called arsole, bastardane, cummingtonite, dickite, erectone, moronic acid, traumatic acid, erotic acid, fucitol, crapinon, fukugetin, fukol, windowpane, spamol, urinate, clitorin, vaginatin, anol, welshite, constipatic acid, snoutene, apatite, bi-george, draculin, porkane, thebacon, snottites, burpalite and sillimanite.

[Admin]

And who says Chemists don't have a sense of humour?

[Jessie]

Oh I know a couple that do

"Traumatic Acid" Oh bless - quick, therapist needed :D

[Admin]

* Oh I know a couple that do*

8)


One of my favourites is Putrescine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putrescine

Yuk

[Jessie]

Delightful (she says lobbing her latest bottle of perfume in the bin - Eau de Putrescine )