Pharyngula::I'm torn between lusting for one and deploring the waste of perfectly good cephalopods

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Monday, January 03, 2005

I'm torn between lusting for one and deploring the waste of perfectly good cephalopods

PZ Myers • 14 Comments

Armed with a high-pressure hose and a bucket of octopi, hundreds of protestors in this Mediterranean town pelted a McDonalds restaurant due to open this week with the slimy seafood.
Between 300 and 500 people gathered on the banks of the Sete canal, across from the fast-food outlet, playing music and yelling anti-junk-food slogans across the water, as police barred them from reaching the restaurant itself.
Aiming the hose across the water, they catapulted fresh octopi -- a local delicacy, known here as the "pouffre" -- towards the town's first McDonalds, which had been set to open on Saturday.

I can't imagine being in this situation—it's a truly cosmic dilemma. On the one hand, a whole bucket of octopuses…and on the other, an octopus cannon. Yeesh.

Maybe if there were two buckets, one for me to keep and the other to use as ammunition…

(via Apostropher)

Trackback url: http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/1767/ELOmiiRI/

Comments:

#12365: Mrs Tilton — 01/03 at 07:44 AM
I hope at least that the ~~octopi~~ ~~octopodes~~ ~~octopuses~~ animals were dead at the time!

Not a complete waste, though. When it comes to eating, I have generally found that octo... that these animals tend to be tough. Now, if it had been squid they were lobbing at the Golden Arches...

#12367: — 01/03 at 08:15 AM
A good name for this outlet could now be "McDoctopus" Will polpi be on the menu I wonder?

Pericles

#12368: — 01/03 at 08:27 AM
Sète is famous for its pickled fish. Maybe they are keeping the heavy artillery for the final assault.

#12375: Janice in GA — 01/03 at 09:27 AM
I gotta say that the notion of an octopus cannon really makes me smile. Except, of course, for the poor cephalopods involved.

#12384: — 01/03 at 11:12 AM
Uh, muzzle velocity? Cyclic rate? Muzzle energy? Accuracy ("minute-of-beek"?) Mean diviation?

#12406: — 01/03 at 03:24 PM
Richard --

Muzzle velocity is probably the same as the water velocity. Cyclic rate is as-many-octopodes-as-you-can-stuff-in-a-hose-in-a-minute rounds per minute. Muzzle energy is 1/2(mass of an octopus)(muzzle velocity)^2... and if it isn't, it should be. Accuracy is... good lord, man, it's seafood coming out of a hose! How accurate do you expect it to be? Mean deviation is useless. Use standard deviation.

*Sigh* I guess us Red Wings fans will have to learn to accept that Detroit is no longer the cephalopod-flinging capital of the world...

#12419: — 01/03 at 09:43 PM
Aaron, you're my hero! Reason in the face of irrationality! Security is returned to my world.

#12430: Republic of Palau — 01/04 at 03:53 AM
I blogged this too: for me the conflict was between support for the anticaps and for the poor octopus. Mind you, I wouldn't mind a pickled herring cannon, there's enough of them around here in NL atm. Herring would make such a satisfying splat at high velocity.

#12444: — 01/04 at 11:01 AM
Now, if we could get some sort of vanes into the interior of the hose, would the spiralling of the water stream get some gyroscopic stabilizing effect on the 'pods....oh wait, no, then their little tenticles would fly out like a slimey Black Talon round, grabbing at the air, ruining the sectional density and bleeding off velocity. Better stick with a smoothbore.

Aaron, we're talkin' serious 'podistics here. We fire, I mean squirt, groups of octupii at say, the plate glass window of the McDonalds, then measure the pattern, do it again and again until we can say, "Hold my beer, uh, our best group was 186cm at 50m range, but groups averaged 205cm, with an extreme spread of 235cm. Naw, get me a fresh one from the cooler."

#12477: Cam — 01/04 at 02:49 PM
Mrs. Tilton reminds me:

Behold the noble octopus:
his plural is confounding us.
Ask an ordinary guy
and likely he'll say "octopi",
while in the academic line
it's "octopodes" they opine.
But I declare for "octopuses",
and if you don't, you all are wusses.

As it happens, a friend's father did build a herring cannon, complete with little herring tubes. Never shot herring out of it, though.

#12478: PZ Myers — 01/04 at 03:01 PM
That cannon sounds a little excessive. I would think something smaller and simpler and safer -- say, like a potato gun, a bit of pvc pipe and hairspray, with fish as ammo -- would be better.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#12479: — 01/04 at 03:02 PM
All these years I thought the phrase was "un-erring shot", and now it turns out it referring to un-squirted herring cannon. Of all the....

#12489: — 01/04 at 05:49 PM
Yarrr! Aim across their bow, and charge the cannon with shrimpnel!

#12656: Republic of Palau — 01/06 at 03:51 PM
Anyone know how to get the herring cannon on my Amazon wishlist?

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Monday, January 03, 2005

I'm torn between lusting for one and deploring the waste of perfectly good cephalopods

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