Showing posts with label #marilyncornwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #marilyncornwell. Show all posts

Sunday, April 27, 2025

April 27 2025 - Hold a Plank

 

In my youth - and consider that decades - it never occurred to me to "hold a plank."  We had more cultural and intellectual pursuits to measure.  

Today, though, the Hold a Plank headline says - based on your age - so they've come to get people like me.  On the other hand, I am more attracted to how long to boil an egg which volunteers itself as one is typing. 

So the answer?  It is 10 to 30 seconds. And what's the maximum? 

Experts note that after 2 minutes, you’ve reached the maximum benefits that the plank can give you. If you can hold it for 2 minutes straight without wavering, you’re building muscles and burning calories to reach your fitness goals."

And then it wants you to do 1 to 56 reps every day.  That's for "us."  And what about "them?" Here's what "Them" has accomplished:

"The longest time in an abdominal plank position (male) is 9 hours 38 minutes 47 seconds, achieved by Josef Šálek (Czech Republic also known as Czechia) in Pilsen, Czech Republic, on 20 May 2023."

For a woman it is 4 hours 30 minutes, 11 seconds by a 59-year-old.  The big gap seems to me to be more motivation than capability.  I don't envision nearly as many women worrying about a six-pack.  What do you think?

Flowering season has started.  Not these blossoms, though. This is later orchard season. Isn't that such a nostalgic picture?  With the orchard added leaning against the tree.

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Friday, March 29, 2024

Mar 29 2024 - Chocolate Crisis

 

We are short 374,000 tons this season, way up from a shortfall of 74,000 tons last season.  Chocolate prices have tripled.  West Africa is having the problem.  Ghana, specifically.  There is a virus that kills the trees.  Illegal mining pollutes the water and kills the trees.  But mostly the virus.  Some headlines call this a "chocolate meltdown."  The hope is Latin American countries will be able to step up production.  That will help Easter stay afloat.

But what about a crisis that could happen daily?  That's the banana pandemic.  We only eat one variety of the thousands of bananas that grow - the Cavendish banana.  Every single Cavendish banana grown is a clone so they aren't adapting to conditions or becoming resistant to viruses.  Panama disease is a fusarium wilt, and just a few spores can lead the way to blighting an entire plantation.  

Could it be possible that we will be eating something that looks and tastes like banana but is artificial?  There's a long way to go to get artificial banana flavours that taste like bananas.  Isoamyl acetate has been criticized widely for not tasting like bananas.  Or it tastes like a banana that we don't normally eat, given we only eat Cavendish.  

Science Daily says the day will come (that was in 2008) when scientists will fine tune enzymes responsible for flavours in fruits and vegetables.   I guess there should be hope on this one too.  Or we'll be eating all colours and textures of bananas - sort of like the many carrots that are available again.

Look up "Can we simulate bananas" and you get a lot of video games  - roblox banana simulator, simulation of giant banana orbiting the earth, turning people into bananas, and banana (pet simulator).  

Is there a possible best banana joke in the world?  There certainly are claims for the best banana bread recipes in the world. Maybe the headline is the joke:  "45 banana jokes to get your whole bunch laughing" or "25 banana jokes for a bunch of laughs"  

Q - What do you call the period of time between slipping on a banana and landing on your butt? 
A - A bananosecond 

 


We won't see a display like this one again at the Niagara Showcase greenhouse.  All that forcing of bulbs and probably not a long-lived display.   The last few years have seen the showcase greenhouse closed most of the winter and open in May.  

This year, it is back to festivals all through the seasons. When I went a few weeks ago, the orchids on the white twig trees were artificial. Despite that  it was very beautiful.  That was part of a Cyclamen show and the replacement plants are all real for the orchid show on now.  I got my seasonal parking pass - it was a bit shocking last month to pay $25 for an hour's visit to the greenhouse.

 
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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Mar 28 2024 - Easter hits

 

What about Easter music? From Christian ballads and rock anthems to gospel masterpieces.  A breezy headline to get you to listen to a playlist for Easter that completely misses the mark of the greatest choral work of all time. 

The Bach St. Matthew Passion is considered to be the greatest choral work ever written.  Some say of the entire "Western canon".  The other is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.  

And how was the St. Matthew Passion received?  ... too hard, too long, too demanding, too operatic for Lutheran sensitivities. Not religious enough, too theatrical.  Don't play that again, please.

Here's an interesting quote from an article on the work:

"It took him one year to write the St. Matthew Passion, and it was performed only twice in his lifetime. It’s humbling to think I’ve listened to it more often than Bach himself.”

Here's what Bach wrote as an explanation for why he though his music was so good:

"My music is better because I work harder. Anyone who works as hard as me will write music that is just as good."

 Bach's birthday is coming up - March 31st. Or it might be that it has passed - March 31st. There are two dates listed in biographies.  Beside each is  O.S. or N.S. - old style vs new style - that's when the calendars changed from Julian to Gregorian. 

 


here's another of the Koi pictures.
 
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Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Mar 27 - How the Eggs Got into Easter

 

I have forgotten how eggs got into the Easter tradition or maybe I didn't really look into it. This comes from wikipedia and seems an astonishing sort of origin: 

"The use of eggs as favors or treats at Easter originated when they were prohibited during Lent. A common practice in England in the medieval period was for children to go door-to-door begging for eggs on the Saturday before Lent began. People handed out eggs as special treats for children prior to their fast."

What about chocolate and Easter?  

"At that time, it was customary to save eggs until the end of the fast, and some eggs were also decorated. The chocolate egg appeared in the 18th century, when the idea of emptying eggs and filling them with chocolate was introduced as a way of marking the end of the fast." 

According to Wikipedia chocolate eggs first appeared at the court of Louis XIV in Versailles, and chocolate eggs were produced in 1725 in France and continued thereafter.

The big moment of the big chocolate egg is a highlight of Easter.  It is either British Chocolatier J.S. Fry & Sons or Cadbury who created the first modern chocolate Easter egg.  Definitely Cadbury is known for the  invention of machinery that made pure cocoa butter that could be moulded.  Most reports of when chocolate came to Easter dwell on this moment  - in 1875 Cadbury released their first line off chocolate Easter eggs - the hollow ones.  They were filled with sugared almonds.

So I guess the story of Easter and chocolate is that it got into Easter through eggs.  The egg story is the complicated one to me.  Many legends and religious myths are part of this tradition.
 


I found some pictures of Koi in the Lightroom database, and have been editing them to showcase the Koi. 
 
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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Mar 26 2024 - Is Smart Stupid?

 

Marina asked me how "smart" compared to "stupid".  It definitely compares with stupid in the retrievals - dictionaries range from around 50 to up to 1000 synonyms, etc. Tthat big number is the power thesaurus so not sure how many there really are.  And remember smart is an adjective and a verb - to smart - i.e. sting, burn, hurt, etc. 

 This is word very comparable to stupid in that it is used a lot today - smart phone, smart chips, smart shopping - smart is a handy word to use.  It gives status to a product. It has become a term for fast, simple, intuitive, connected.  So products are getting smart like we are. 

Is artificial intelligence more than "smart?"  There's a promise of reasoning, making decisions and solving problems.  That's how humans want to be - that's smart.  So how intelligent and smart will artificial intelligence be? to answer that look to the new expression-  "super intelligent".  Ouch for human intelligence.  And go check out super smart - only a small percentage of humans fit that category.  The expression outperforms smart in the Good Books Ngram Viewer whereas super stupid has a much lower score than the others. 

It takes us to the place  in the dictionary where everything now starts with"super" and "hyper."  Where supersmart has synonyms like ultra smart, hyperintelligent and so on.  

Smart and stupid have similar entries in the google Books Ngram Viewer.  Here's the link to the Google Books Ngram Viewer 

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=smart

Here's our Google Books Ngram Viewer rating for smart:



The spring flowers are popping back out with the improved weather - here's a pretty spring pansy.
 
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Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Apr 5 2023 - Rethinking Cheese

 

"Where previous plant-based meats and cheeses have been made from plant materials manipulated to resemble animal products, molecular farming uses plants as a “machine” to produce actual animal proteins."

And one of the hard parts of reproducing cheese is that distinctive stretchiness and meltiness. 

“Plants, in particular soybeans, are very efficient at making proteins,” says Richani. And they’re flexible: by modifying a plant’s protein-encoding RNA, scientists can direct it to produce any kind of protein desirable. This can include casein, the main dairy protein found in milk that gives cheese its unique properties. Once plants expressing the casein produce seeds, the protein can be harvested, and then combined with plant fats and minerals in a cheesemaking process.

Then there will be competition for the already available nut-based "cheeses" that are advertised to have the meltiness qualities. One of the luxury alternative cheese brands is SriMu.  Look at the reviews of their products:

"Founder Julie Piatt makes the Rolls Royce standard of dairy-free cheeses. It’s luxury at its most delicious. This isn’t everyday cheese—it’s an indulgence, and it’s meant to be savored. ... most of her sales are based on a subscription box service online (she ships nationwide). The flavors are intense—this is not your American-style mild cheddar—they hit you in the face and evolve as the cheese melts in your mouth. Varieties include brie (Elder), smoked gouda (Gold Alchemy), blue (Spire), camembert (Bertie), gorgonzola (Dolce Vita), red pepper cheese ball (Bonfire), and fresh mozzarella (Cloud 9). Just be warned: it’s easy to get hooked on the life of luxury cheese."

This is so amazing - to be able to create the texture and appearance of cheese with whatever flavour combinations you want.  This is food wizardry. 

This is the website HERE.   There's a location in Canada - Teas 'N' Cheese in Port Stanley.  But a mere 2 hour drive for an alternative-dairy cheese.  Or we can order online with delivery to Canada.



One of Longwood's great gardens is the Wisteria Garden.  These are vines trained as trees  in a Japanese style.
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