Marilyn's Photos - June 8 & 9 2026 Singing

 

This is yesterday's post - and it didn't seem to get out of the queue so here it is today. There's an article about the oldest verified instrument - a sort of flute made of bone and ivory.  My guess, though, is that the oldest instrument would be the human voice singing - us. Singing likely predates spoken language.  It is a physical capacity for pitch control.  And we had this up to a  million years ago.  Singing looks like a complicated skill right away.  I wondered what it means when they talk about the neurological and physical architecture to sing.  The neurological architecture integrates language processing in the left hemisphere and pitch/melody control in the right hemisphere, utilizing both dorsal and ventral pathways to connect auditory perception with vocal motor execution. I had no idea that something seemingly simple, is not.   Another summary says that singing demands coordination across the prefrontal cortex (planning, decision-making), temporal lobes (auditory processing) hippocampus (memory and cerebellum (motor control).  That sounds even more involved. The brain likes singing - it triggers the release of "feel-good" brain chemicals endorphins and serotonin and lowers stress hormones.  It is a light aerobic workout as well.  In terms of medical therapeutics it can help restore lost speech for conditions like Aphasia, Parkinson's, Demential and Alzheimer's and for Autism.  It is a recovery technique for breathing and lung issues. There are so many health and therapeutic benefits that I wonder if music is more popular than sports.  Music has high engagement - over 90% of people listen to music every day so scores high on engagement, accessibility and the global scale. It is more passive than sports, which has strong, energetic emotions and participants and fans dedicating active time and attention to games.   There's some common ground - in the last 30 years music concerts have taken on the characteristics of sports games - high prices of tickets and vast crowds watching a live event in a stadium like the soon to be with us FIFA World Cup.   Think of the size of audiences:  the FIFA World Cup will be at BMO Field, currently rebranded as Toronto Stadium and holds almost 50,000 people.  That's considered intimate.  I guess so, given the largest stadium in the world in North Korea can hold between 114,000 and 150,000 people, depending on the event. At FIFA 2026, the largest event will be at the Dallas Stadium which holds 94,000 people.  There have been numbers like this for choirs singing in a single venue or stadium.  The largest choir was 121,400 people in a venue in India - I wonder what they sang.   This is the Skydome stadium which holds almost 40,000 people.

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Marilyn's Photos - June 7 2026 - Motorhomes on the Move

 

Do these motorhomes/RVs of the future look attractive to you?  They remind me of yesterday's "big lips" post.  They seem like some sort of surveillance vehicles, maybe looking for space aliens or illegal aliens. they definitely look military to me.  Other variations look like transport trucks with windows so the cargo has a view.  That's a plausible explanation as to why bananas have jumped to 99 cents a pound. It is the added transport costs. Here's one that might be part of a new sort of public transit system. Alternately, it could be an industrial vehicle that lays down pavement on the highway. What about a roing restaurant with those big double doors and large entry. The article calls it an SUV.  This one is a $5 million Rolls Royce motorhome. These pictures do not take you to articles about the vehicle, but to camping equipment sales sites. Another article says the Rolls Royce Motorhome is $2 million.  That one goes to a YouTube video on the vehicle, which looks different than this one, but doesn't look "better." These pictures do not take you to articles about the vehicle, but to camping equipment sales sites. Another article says the Rolls Royce Motorhome is $2 million.  That one goes to a YouTube video on the vehicle, which does look different than this one, but doesn't look "better." So it seems that my everyday has gotten away from me - from motorhomes wider than our actual highways to bananas at $1 a pound.   It seems so bizarre - here we are where we can't even get the trucking industry to have proper driver training and testing. And we're going to let loose our next door neighbour with one of these parked out front.   Here's my kind of truck.  This old, rusted variety is popular at the Niagara wineries.

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Marilyn's Photos - June 6 2026 - The Biggest Body Parts

 

We get a name and then it is fair game for anything.  I saw a headline where a woman has the unofficial title of "woman with the biggest lips in the world."  Her name is Andrea - it is a name of Greek origin derived from the word andreios and translates to manly, strong, courageous and warrior.  She seems to have lived those traits - she has spent over $26,000 with more than 40 rounds of lip and facial fillers.  There are quite a few operations to get to the look she wanted.  It is hard to describe how she looks now and it makes me wonder which amount spent is accurate - the $26,000 or the $50,000 .  What do you think?    There are all kinds of biggest body part records - feet, buttocks, tongue, heart, and of course penis.  There is no official record for the largest natural human lips. There is the largest lip plate (cultural) record There's the widest mouth and the largest mouth gape records - here he is with a seemingly impossible big mouth. Big lips and big mouth pictures are strange.  Who would guess someone is pleased with themselves for having these traits.    Here's my picture of a boat "bottom" done as a mirror image looking sort of similar to Andrea's big lips.

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Marilyn's Photos - June 5 2026 - Names - Humans vs Dogs

 

We've consistently used human names for dogs and thing names for dogs, but we haven't always used thing names for humans.   When we were little, dogs had names like Fido, Fluffy, Scruffy, Shadow, Sandy, Rusty, Buddy, and so on.  What are dog names today?  Luna, Bella, Daisy, Max, and Willow. Those are the top names.   Back 100 years ago the most popular human names were Mary, Dorothy, Helen, Margaret and Betty along with John, Robert, William, Charles and James.  Doesn't it seem like all the men were named after the British monarchy?   Or maybe the British monarchy claimed all the good names as their own. Today the most popular baby names are Olivia, Amelia, Eliana, Sophia, Charlotte, Noah, Liam, Oliver, and Elijah. Luna and Willow are on the list too. When it comes to human names, things have changed - celestial bodies, nature elements, combining sounds to make new names.  There's a distinct need for names to be new and different. Names like Truce (means peace) for boys.  For girls the two top names are Eliana (Hebrew for spiritual weight) and Aurora, goddess of dawn. On the human side of things, research has found that a name affects and influences the owner's personality - this is called nominative determinism.  This may explain the shift in names. Our approach to dog names has shifted as well.  We know that when it comes to dogs they look at names as a cue to pay attention.  They don't have an identity experience. Here's the naming advice today: - They love vowels - that ee ending grabs a dog's attention - Two syllables allow for inflection to convey emotion - Avoid commands as names - isn't that perfect advice! Naming a dog Mo can sound like No.  And then what will you do for No? People changing their names is said to be a act of redefining identity such as breaking free from past trauma, or establishing a fresh start.  Dog experts say the same is true for dogs.  When they are adopted into a new home, it can be a positive experience for a dog to have a name change.  Here's a happy colour image for the day.

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Marilyn's Photos - June 4 2026 - Voting in America

 

One of the significant differences between the U.S. and Canada is that the U.S. is involved in a constant cycle of voting.   And in between that there are changes to how voting is done - the voting districts, voting rules... it seems unending. India turns out to have more frequent elections than the U.S. with the U.S. occurring 2nd on a list of 20 nations covered. I notice this as I receive the New York Times New Summary every day and every day has some kind of election news.  I also realized that there is a leaning in the U.S. towards all kind of voting.   This month's voting  news is the New York Times Magazine votinng on the 30 greatest living songwriters. They took a poll with 25,000 readers responding, with a complicated set-up of experts involved in the nominations. They published the names starting with what looks like an alphabetical order, and then veers off the cliff into a seeming random order.  No listing by vote count. Then the barrage of responses to the list came in. Mostly, it is about who's missing.   As for popular writers, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, Billy Joel, Tom Waits, David Byrne, Madonna, Steely Dan's living partner Donald Fagen, Jimmy Webb, James Taylor, Stevie Nicks, Patti Smith and so on.   No Broadway composers made the list.  And no mention of classical composers like John Williams.  These two categories were not mentioned as part of modern songwriting in the survey. A discussion over the definition of being American. Joni Mitchell and Neil Young are American citizens but not born in the U.S. making that the seeming reason they aren't on the list. That's despite the Times defining American as "those residing in or culturally woven into America's musical fabric."  So Bad Bunny not born in the U.S. was in and Joni Mitchell was out.  And what constitutes America - whether Canada being in North America makes it American so Canadians should have been included. Makes one cringe to realize there are many like Trump who think a country border is an idea.  There was no definition of what is America in the survey.  With all this, you can gossip/fester/mock their choices - such as Carole King ranking above Bob Dylan, followed by Stevie Wonder, then Paul Simon. It can go on a long time and reap a lot of revenue for the Times, making it worth all the effort and cost. So much voting and so much contention over the results - a very American voting story. This is one of those flexify manipulations.  I should go find the original.  I wonder what discordance might be there.

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