Be a hoopy frood today

We read each other when we meet.  Eye-gaze-trackers show that our glance flicks over key areas of the body of people we encounter: face-hands-genitals. Women also check out the shoes! Blokes don't give a hoot about shoes - for them it's all hooters. I have two pairs of shoes. a) some Hi-tec hiking boots worn until worn out: I'm on the 4th pair since they faithfully carried me from Portugal to France via Santiago in 2004 and b) black leather, slightly too small, interview/funeral/wedding lace-ups which I inherited from my father when he died in 2001. I guess I'm scoped as a climbing nut by women I meet.  Blokes, gay and straight, do check out the package of other blokes they meet - everyone in the room needs to know who is the alpha male: it avoids unnecessary blood-shed.

Here's another thing that I picked up from TYWKIWDBI this week: we spend a chunk of our lives sniffing our own hands and we do this more often shortly after we have shaken hands with someone SLYT.  This behaviour is modified according to whether the hand shaken belongs to someone of the same or opposite sex. Same sex and you're 2x more likely to sniff your own left hand (for reassurance?). Opposite sex and you're 2x more likely to sniff the right hand (to check that dude out?). This study, carried out in the Weizmann Institute in Israel, cries out for a further investigation of how gay-people react wrt opposite/same sex.

This is all by way of preparing you for the day ahead.  It's Towel Day, which has been celebrated for the last 15 years on 25th May: a respectful 2 weeks after Douglas Adams died on 11th March 2001. If you like being part of a movement check out towelday.org. WTF is this all about? It's all blown up from a trope in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy describing how useful a towel is when travelling through the further reaches of the Universe: " . . . wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you)".  By their towels ye shall know them.  I know that several of our 4th Year students at The Institute are h2g2 fans and today half of them are making their research project presentations.  I've made a batch of my famous flapjacks for the tea-break.  I'll put the tin on a respectfully folded towel and see if anyone checks out my shoes.

And I almost forgot: 

So long and thanks for all the fish.