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Why Are There Statues of Beavers on Top of This Oxford Street Shop?

londonist.com

41–46 of 46 posts

Re: Why Are There Statues of Beavers on Top of This Oxford Street Shop?

#41

Hopefully Buc-ee's doesn't decide to sue them too for trademark infringement.

Buc-ee's also owns all logos with circular yellow backgrounds in the entire world. /s

(Arch "Beaver" Aplin III is total wanker because he doesn't understand public relations or the Streisand effect in the slightest.)

Re: Why Are There Statues of Beavers on Top of This Oxford Street Shop?

#42

It's funny to me, a Canadian, that this even warrants a did-you-know article because everything about the beaver fur/hat making industry is something I learned extensively about in elementary and high school because it was like, a major driver of the European exploration and colonization and therefore significant to the history of my country. But outside of here it's just a footnote to a fashion trend.

In the Canadian bush, you'll run into people still running beaver traplines. From what I hear it's mostly for nuisance control since pelt prices are quite low. When I was talking to trappers, they seemed to imply that the government sets prices and buys them like as a cartel, but I'm not sure what the process is or if I understood correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapline#Registered_traplines

I think a lot of is that traplines are a property right that will go away if they aren't inherited. So people use them because they inherited them.

Re: Why Are There Statues of Beavers on Top of This Oxford Street Shop?

#43

The other interesting but useless fact is that silk top hats (which as the article points out supersede beaver as the fibre of choice) are no longer made - and the technique for making them is effectively lost because they need specialised looms which are also no longer made. But if you want to go somewhere super fancy like Ascot and look the part, a silk top hat is de rigueur. There are now a handful of shops that b…

It looks like silk top hats were still being made in the 60s so presumably it might still be possible to find people that worked in the factory and recover the knowledge if people really cared.

But restoring knowledge is against value extracymtivism so not worth it at all.

Re: Why Are There Statues of Beavers on Top of This Oxford Street Shop?

#44
post #38
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter once spent a bunch of time going through all the flag emojis classifying them as stars, animals, trees, religious symbols (and probably some others). We found three flags with maps. Animals were almost exclusively birds, but there was also a sheep, a pair of lions, seahorses, a lobster and a conch.

Kosovo and Cyprus... what was the third?

The Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina has a triangle on it that is meant to represent the shape of the country (roughly).

Re: Why Are There Statues of Beavers on Top of This Oxford Street Shop?

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing this discrepancy! Indeed, the "beaver as relevant tool as major driver" does actually not exist in schools in EU mainland; the chance is higher you hear about the porks brought by first European-immigrants that they used for food production because of their fast reproduction numbers. (and porks are easy to deal with, they eat everything; Once I heard someone from crime enforcement saying: "the perf…

Not that perfect. The canadian pig-farming serial killer was eventually caught. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton

thanks for the link!

Re: Why Are There Statues of Beavers on Top of This Oxford Street Shop?

#46

The other interesting but useless fact is that silk top hats (which as the article points out supersede beaver as the fibre of choice) are no longer made - and the technique for making them is effectively lost because they need specialised looms which are also no longer made. But if you want to go somewhere super fancy like Ascot and look the part, a silk top hat is de rigueur. There are now a handful of shops that b…

It looks like silk top hats were still being made in the 60s so presumably it might still be possible to find people that worked in the factory and recover the knowledge if people really cared.

Possibly but the 60s is a very long time ago now… My parents were both adept in Fortran in the 60s when they were in their twenties but now in their mid-eighties I doubt they would be much good at helping someone who wanted to problem solve anything using Fortran!
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