30 2022 - Population 8 billion

June 6 2022 - Ideal vs iDEAL!

 

Ideal used to be something that was a model of perfection, excellence and beauty.  Now it is iDEAL - some domain name for something related to buying things. It is an e-commerce payment system used in the Netherlands.   I seem to be fascinated by the transformation of words from meaning something into being products.  Once Redbubble took down one of my photos of a Dahlia saying it conflicted with a Disney trademark.  It might have been the word enchanted.  I wonder if we might get to a point of not being able to write freely in public.   At least with this transformation, there's a distinction based on lower and upper case. "iDEAL is an online payment system that circumvents the need for the Dutch to have credit cards. Instead of inputting your card information, paying with iDEAL takes you directly to your personal online banking website where you transfer the money directly to the business owner." And we think we know why the Dutch don't want to use credit cards - cost of the card and cost of credit interest. I suspect it is that Dutch concern over money.   Here's the answer they give: "Let’s start by taking a look at the Dutch word for debt: schuld. Schuld is a word that has a second meaning: guilt. That’s right. Because the Dutch still hold some characteristics from their time as a primarily Calvinist society they believe in only taking what they need." Grimsby is home to many Dutch who arrived after the war. So my opinion is based anecdotal and individual observation.  I found a website that wanted me to know the generalized answer to What is Dutch mentality?  The website is  aboutthenetherlands.com  "The Dutch are known to be very direct and opinionated, generally happy, realistic, punctual, and greedy. Besides, the Dutch really like to split bills, have an early dinner, and they love to complain." "Even though every person is unique, Dutch people seem to have common behavioral patterns that stand out. It is not for nothing that there is a famous dutch saying that when directly translated says: When you act 'normal' your behavior is crazy enough." The website is the work of Leon van den Berg who describes himself as a Dutchman, extremely proud of the beautiful country in which he lives. Lilycrest Gardens is abundant and beautiful this year and there may even be some first blooms - particularly if Brian has one of the earliest lilies - Enchantment.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

July 17 2021 - the PhDs in the Darwin Awards

 

I found a number of Darwin Award "Survivors" or "Members" with PhDs.  That is absolutely ironic as Doctor of Philosophy means "love of wisdom" from the original Greek.  Consider that 50% of PhDs have faculty positions so are in charge of creating intelligence and wisdom in the next generation.  So irony seems appropriate for people with PhDs carrying out activities that result in Darwin Awards. Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honour, so the stories are written humorously. Each story has a catchy headline/name to identify it. There is a 2006 comedy film, The Darwin Awards, written and directed by Finn Taylor.  It was based on the website and many of the Darwin Awards stories. I do think that the story below would be an excellent candidate for a movie - The Crazy Darwin-bound Professor.  This one is an unconfirmed entry.  This is the World's Best At-Risk Survivor. Let an amused daughter tell you about her sire. (2009) This weekend was the final straw. Being an extremely cost-conscious person, Dad decided that putting half a can of varnish in the toaster oven to liquefy it was the cheapest approach. You guessed it--the stuff caught fire! I found him in front of the flaming oven contemplating picking up the can with his bare hands. Two-foot flames were shooting out of it, causing me to utter a line spoken far too many times in our house: <I>"What in God's name were you thinking?"</I> Father's attempts at Darwin Fame have included: 1) Tipping a small boat on Cayuga Lake while fishing, almost drowning my brother and himself. At the time, I thought Mom was being too hard on him when she said it was his own fault that he was in the hospital. I have since revised my judgment. 2) Removing a branch from a locust tree by climbing a ladder with a running chainsaw. The branch was not tied off properly, so it fell onto a shed roof that he was trying to avoid. 3) Rolling a lawn tractor on top of himself by mowing a roadside ditch at a steep angle, resulting in a broken rib--and poison ivy for me, because I spent ten minutes thrashing around in the vegetation while we tried to roll the tractor off Dad. Again. 4) Fourth but not last, lighting a fire in a basement trash burner that was not connected to an exhaust pipe. The fire department loves us. 5) Wandering off to watch the evening news after starting some water to boil in an aluminum dutch oven. Note that the Merck Index lists the melting point of aluminum as 660 degrees C. When Mom discovered the situation, the pot walls were glowing bright red, the bottom was melted out, and the kitchen wall was smoking. 6) Testing the efficacy of old Nitroglycerin tablets by swallowing three at once to see if they still worked. I did say he was cheap, er, cost conscious. The EMS came to the rescue because his blood pressure had dropped to an undesirable level and he was passed out at the kitchen table. Mere minutes before, he was planning a drive to the donut shop. Thank God he didn't make it to the car before his blood pressure dropped! He may not yet have used up nine lives, but my father, the PhD, appears to have a running start on Darwin infamy. Taken from the Darwin Awards here:  https://darwinawards.com/stupid/stupid2009-14.html About the Author Could there be more from his daughter?   I found her identify on a repeat of the entry on another site:  (Thank Stephanie Schaaf for sharing her eccentric father with us.) I subsequently found Stephanie at Cornell University in Ithaca.  This makes sense as Cayuga Lake is one of the Finger Lakes in upper New York State.  Sadly, I found both her and her father's obituaries.  Her father was Herbert M. Schaaf.  Of course, there is no mention of his escapades or of Stephanie's coverage of them. Today's image comes from Brian's garden in Toronto.  It is filled with Day Lilies, and this is one of his own hybrids.

June 26 2021 - Writing History

 

History is always written wrong and needs to be rewritten ~George Santayana What do you imagine Canada's history timeline should be?  I found the timeline taught when I was in school at dummies.com. By Will Ferguson Part of  Canadian History For Dummies Cheat Sheet  Canadian history is a lot of fun. There are heroes and villains, tragedies and triumphs, great battles and sudden betrayals, loyal refugees and long struggles for social justice. The interpretation of Canadian history may vary – radically, at times – but there are still core events from our past that every Canadian should know. Brush up on your Canadian history with the following timeline of important events. 30,000–10,000 BC Prehistoric hunters cross over into Canada from Asia circa 1000 AD Leif Ericsson leads a Viking expedition to the New World 1451 The Iroquois Confederacy is formed (aka Haudenosaunee) and so on for lots of rows and row of colonist events. Yes - Ferguson's history is about the colonization and then confederation of Canada.  It is so selective that the question immediately arises:  What are  all the events that took place and who are all the people that lived here? So I found a Canadian history timeline about Indigenous peoples HERE.  The Canadian Encyclopedia presents a storyline that covers the indigenous peoples and events. Here are samples: NOVEMBER 30, -1 ARCHEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES  Evidence of Human Occupation in North America Irrefutable archeological evidence of human occupation in the northern half of North America, including in the Tanana River Valley (Alaska), Haida Gwaii (British Columbia), Vermilion Lakes (Alberta), and Debert (Nova Scotia).   JANUARY 01, 1450 INDIGENOUS PEOPLES  Haudenosaunee Confederacy Try Resolving Disputes in Lower Great Lakes Region The Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Iroquois League), organized by Dekanahwideh (the Peacemaker) and Hiawatha, tries to provide a peaceful and equitable means to resolve disputes among member nations in the lower Great Lakes region JANUARY 01, 1493 LAW  “Doctrine of Discovery” is Decreed The papal bull Inter Caetera — the “Doctrine of Discovery” — is decreed a year after Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to America. Made without consulting Indigenous populations nor with any recognition of their rights, it is the means by which Europeans claim legal title to the “new world.” What draws me in is the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee Confederacy referenced in both history timelines.  I looked it up in Wikipedia - it has an extensive entry on the Iroquois Confederacy.  But I can see that there are two different storylines about Canada's events of the past.  And who writes these? Is the Wikipedia entry on the Iroquois another storyline from the colonist point of view? What might be the story from the Indigenous point of view?   I guess it is time to start somewhere  - at Raven Reads with Canadian History Books by Indigenous Authors.  It is HERE. It is time to find out what the Canadian storyline is.   Lilycrest Gardens blossom period has begun.  Here are two from the field yesterday.

June 8 2021 - Middle Name X

 

When I worked for Imperial Oil, everyone was deemed to have a middle name.  This was in relation to print-out identification.  The "header" would have the person's name in large letters - first name, middle initial and last name. These big format perforated print-outs would be separated and then sorted alphabetically.   Likely they were concerned about distinguishing between people with the same name. There were two fellows in IT in Imperial with the same name.  And what if one of them didn't have a middle name?  When a person didn't have a middle name, it was designated X.  So whenever I see an X as the middle initial I am intrigued.   Who has a name starting with X?  Lots of people from lots of places do.  The easy one is Xavier.  There's even a variant of this name Xzavier.  Now I consider that strange.   But then there's Xaver - the German form, and Xavior, an English rare form, and Xaviera the feminine form of Xavier.  And the diminutive form?  Xavi- that's Catalan.  There are 21,711 people in the U.S. with the first name Xavier.  It is the 1318th most popular first name.  It is trending towards popularity as shown by babnameshub.com.  There are lots of baby name websites. So back to names starting with X, the list I looked through had 79 names starting with X.  This name has intrigue and mystery to me as the place originals were unknown to me, including Asturian, Hmong, and Galician.   I wonder if there is anywhere that still has a "need" for a designated middle initial.  Certainly the latest addition to the Royal Family has a middle name - Diana.  And the first name?  Lilibet or Lili for short. Lots of history in those names. Lilycrest Gardens this week - it looks wonderful this year.

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July 11 2020 - Exotic Canada

Canada and exotic do not intersect in my mind.  The definition is 'originating in or characteristic of a distant foreign country, unusual and exciting because of coming (or seeming to come) from far away, especially a tropical country'  Exotic came into use in the 16th century — from Latin and Greek words for "foreign," which came, in turn, from exo-, meaning "outside." By the 17th century it was also being used to describe things that are striking or unusual.  Sounds like European expeditions traveling to tropical regions not explored before.  That's what the Wikipedia timeline looks like.   Aren't we exotic to others particularly with our winters and snow?   There are exotic winter destinations:  For example, CNBC has an article on the top 5 - but they have  chosen Sweden's IceHotel over ours. The list is HERE.   Whistler shows up in other lists.  And isn't Niagara Falls considered a great exotic winter destination with its ice formations?   I wonder all this now in the middle of the extreme heat wave - it seems nostalgic.   Here's Brian's winning image from last year's Lily Show.  The show would be this weekend this year.  This seems nostalgic too.    Nostalgia is a topic of many articles during the Pandemic.  Today there's a headline in the Globe and Mail - what we will find nostalgic about the Pandemic.  I've never heard either of my parents reminisce nostalgically of the Great Depression.  Their stories were of misery and  hardship. This speaks to how well off our society currently is - that we may look back at this time with positive memories.  And then David Berry's story is more about how the brain works than about our social circumstances. Enjoy Brian's favourite results of his hybridizing work.

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Enery The VIII

What inspired Herman's Hermits in the 1960's to sing "I am Henry the VIII, I am" on the Ed Sullivan Show? This is a 1910 British music hall song. There is an original recording of the music hall star Harry Champion singing it in 1911.  It is a delightful celebration of the British character - history, satire, and fun combined.  What inspired them was the pop hit that British star Joe Brown had in 1961.  They followed in 1965.  The song got Herman's Hermits to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  Who did they knock from number one?  "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones.   Isn't that a telling statement of the diversity of popular music in the 1960's. There are numerous versions of the spelling - Henery, Henry, Enery, etc. and there are more verses than this.  Herman's Hermits are known for the one verse version. 'm 'Enery the Eighth, I am, 'Enery the Eighth I am, I am! I got married to the widow next door, She's been married seven times before And every one was an 'Enery She wouldn't have a Willie nor a Sam I'm her eighth old man named 'Enery 'Enery the Eighth, I am! The British music hall performers produced thousands of songs.  Between 1900 and 1910 a single publishing company, Francis, Day and Hunter, published between forty and fifty British music hall songs each month. Most of them were comic in nature - the notables are at Wikipedia HERE. I remember that the tradition was taken up by the Goon Show with Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe developing titles such as "I'm Walking Backwards For Christmas" "Tales of Men's Shirts" and on on. So our picture today is a good distraction.  There's nothing like a bit of Lilycrest Garden's lily images on a snow day. The snow came to Grimsby in the evening yesterday. It 'skirted' around us during the day and bestowed a snowfall record on Toronto.  It closed down Toronto and surrounding areas. The weather network this morning says that the overachieving snowfall is not giving up just yet.

Penicillin Day

Today is the anniversary of Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin, in 1928. "Antibiotics" have been known for centuries - the ancient Egyptians had the practice of applying a poutine of moldy bread to infected wounds.  So what did Fleming do that distinguished him as the discoverer? He systematically investigated the rare strain of Penicillium notatum found in his lab.  AND he published his findings in 1929.  He had "only a passing reference to penicillin's potential therapeutic benefits" but that publication was the deciding factor. The work that followed dwarfs his contribution - both the amount of work and the scientific discoveries and advancements needed.  The key scientists that made this happen were Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.  They isolated it and purified it - during the initial wartime period when work was difficult.  They grew the mold in all kinds of culture vessels - milk churns, food tins, baths, etc. The scientist who wasn't acknowledged for his contribution was Norman Heatley. He and Edward Abraham were involved in creating the methods to extract penicillin using various techniques, and then removing impurities. The milestone case came along - a 43-year old policeman had scratched the side of his mouth while pruning roses, and developed a life-threatening infection - penicillin was injected and he made a remarkable recovery.  BUT - supplies ran out, and he died a few days later. The scientific challenge was to create supplies to fulfill treatment and to complete extensive clinical trials.  This increase in production was done in the U.S. There were numerous discoveries -  for example, the substitution of lactose for the sucrose used by the Oxford team in their culture medium.  Soon a global search was underway for better penicillin producing strains.  Soil samples were sent to the lab from around the world. The most productive strain came from a moldy cantaloupe at a Peoria fruit market. Norman Heatley stayed in Peoria to help the staff get the penicillin work started and Howard Florey visited various pharmaceutical companies to try to interest them in the drug.  They were convinced to work on creating enough penicillin to treat patients. There were many hurdles in production.  They succeeded. By 1949, the annual production of penicillin in the United States was 133,229 billion units, and the price had dropped from twenty dollars per 100,000 units in 1943 to less than ten cents.  Here is what PBS writer Dr. Howard Markel says about the award: "Ironically, Fleming did little work on penicillin after his initial observations in 1928. Beginning in 1941, after news reporters began to cover the early trials of the antibiotic on people, the unprepossessing and gentle Fleming was lionized as the discoverer of penicillin. And much to the quiet consternation of Florey, the Oxford group’s contributions were virtually ignored. That problem was partially corrected in 1945, when Fleming, Florey, and Chain — but not Heatley — were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In his acceptance speech, Fleming presciently warned that the overuse of penicillin might lead to bacterial resistance. In 1990, Oxford made up for the Nobel committee’s oversight by awarding Heatley the first honorary doctorate of medicine in its 800-year history. Maybe this September 28, as we celebrate Alexander Fleming’s great accomplishment, we will recall that penicillin also required the midwifery of Florey, Chain and Heatley, as well as an army of laboratory workers." The American Chemical Society and Royal Society of Chemistry designated the Discovery and Development of Penicillin an International Historic Chemical Landmark on November 19, 1999, at the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum in London, UK. The plaque commemorating the event reads: "In 1928, at St. Mary's Hospital, London, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. This discovery led to the introduction of antibiotics that greatly reduced the number of deaths from infection. Howard W. Florey, at the University of Oxford working with Ernst B. Chain, Norman G. Heatley and Edward P. Abraham, successfully took penicillin from the laboratory to the clinic as a medical treatment in 1941. The large-scale development of penicillin was undertaken in the United States of America during the 1939-1945 World War, led by scientists and engineers at the Northern Regional Research Laboratory of the US Department of Agriculture, Abbott Laboratories, Lederle Laboratories, Merck & Co., Inc., Chas. Pfizer & Co. Inc., and E.R. Squibb & Sons. The discovery and development of penicillin was a milestone in twentieth century pharmaceutical chemistry." Our picture today - a group of lily hybrids in Brian's Lilycrest hybridizing field.

Hooyah! Mission accomplished

Yesterday we looked at the Guinness records about roofs.  Today, in celebration of the rescue of the cave-bound Thailand boys, we look at underground records.   We were there for that record too. It was August 2010 and 33 miners were trapped underground in Chile for 69 days.   But how about this record?  It would be on a lighter note (!): The deepest concert underground was at 1271 m (4,169 ft 11 in) below sea level at Pyhäsalmi Mine Oy, Pyhäjärvi, Finland and was performed by Agonizer (Finland) on 4 August 2007. My Google search goes off-course with a fascinating title: 20 Guinness World Record-breaking destinations to visit around the world.  1.  The largest railway station by number of platforms is New York City's Grand Central Terminal. 2. World's narrowest Street - Germany's Spreuerhofstrasse street. Located in Reutlingen, the thin street is only a foot wide at its narrowest point. ... World's Oldest Restaurant:  You can still dine at the world's oldest restaurant - Restaurante Botín - located in Madrid, Spain. Created in 1725, it still maintains its original 18th-century interiors and firewood oven today. Then Google results return to the topic in a bizarre headline:  "A man who has been buried alive in a pub garden for more than three months has broken the record for the length of time spent in a wooden box underground". Geoff Smith, 37, beat the European record of 101 days - set by his mother - at midnight on Monday. Could you make these stories up?  His mother did it when he was seven years old. "He did it at 37, and it has been his ambition to go and bury himself in a box". Back above ground, it is Lilycrest blooming time.

Good Feelings

Yesterday CTV published an article on excuses for skipping royal weddings.   "You may have a genuine excuse to miss attending a wedding, but some excuses may be more unusual than others. Disputes over honeymoon plans, unexploded bombs and elections have all been used to get guests off the hook from attending royal weddings and CTVNews.ca has rounded up some of the more memorable excuses."  Most of these relate to the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, but some go further back... King Carl XVI Gustaf declined the 2011 wedding as it was his birthday the day after the nuptials. Rugby stars Brian O'Driscoll and Richie McCaw both turned down 2011 invitations to prepare for the Rugby World Cup. The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk said 'no' to attending Prince William's 2011 wedding due to the announcement of their separation nd divorce. The King and Queen of Jordan declined due to the Arab Spring protests in their country. The Crown Prince and Princess of Japan had an earthquake and tsunami n Tohoku in 2011. Stephen Harper refused an invitation as the federal election was held three days after the celebration.   Feuding and snubs Other times, political disputes can get in the way of enjoying a celebration. Such was the case for the King and Queen of Spain during Prince Charles and Diana's wedding in 1981. Disputes over the royal couple's planned honeymoon – which started with a cruise originating from Gibraltar – led to a snub from Spanish royalty. Spain claims the island of Gibraltar and politicians called the decision to visit the island "inopportune and gratuitous." It was a similar story for the presidents of Greece, Republic of Ireland and Malta after they received their invites to Prince Charles’ first wedding. The president of Greece spurned an invite after former Greek king Constantine was invited as a friend of the royal couple. The president of Malta gave a more personal reason when declining the invite, citing "pending issues with Britain related to World War II, unexploded bombs on the island and sunken ships in the water.” Then-Irish president Patrick Hillery said ‘no’ to attending due to "other commitments," which sources told The Associated Press was related to two hunger-striking Irish Republican Army prisoners near death in Northern Ireland. Our pictures today show all kinds of lilies.

Breakthrough Listening

Mysterious radio signals are from outer space, say scientists.  These short bursts are bright flashes of radio waves and last for only a few milliseconds.  They've been happening since 2007, and there's one that has a repeating nature - it is FRB 121102. The FRB is an acronym for fast radio bursts.  They are coming from a distant dwarf galaxy.   The Breakthrough Listen initiative began observing FRB121102 in August 2017, and have come to the conclusion:  "As far as the FRB121102 goes, I don't think there is any slight possibility that [the pulses] are from an extraterrestrial intelligence," Vishal Gajjar, a scientist with Breakthrough Listen, said yesterday (Jan. 10) during a news conference at the 231st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C." Another investigation is 'Oumuamua - our first interstellar visitor.  It is an asteroid with a weird, elongated shape. It may be 400 meters long.  It was first detected in mid-October.  "A search for signals that may be of artificial origin has begun, but despite the impressive computational power of the Breakthrough Listen computing cluster at Green Bank, the large data volumes mean that this will take some time to complete," Breakthrough Listen representatives said in the same statement. Who is Breakthrough Listen?  The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)  got a $100 million boost in July 2015 when investor Yuri Milner and physicist Stephen Hawking announced the initiative called Breakthrough Listen. There is a lot of news and information on the space.com website. It shows Astronomer Frank Drake's equation to estimate the number of intelligent, communicating civilizations currently living in the galaxy. N: The total number of communicating technological civilizations in the galaxy equals R: Formation rate of life-friendly stars, times fp: Fraction of those stars with planets, times ne: Average number of life-friendly planets per solar system, times fl: Fraction of those planets where life evolves, times fi: Fraction of those planets where intelligence evolves, times fc: Fraction of those planets where interstellar-communication-worthy civilizations evolve, times Lc: Length of time those civilizations remain detectable from Earth The current estimate of the number of communicating technological civilizations in this galaxy is between 2 civilizations and 280 million civilizations. You can check out more at space.com

What's in a name like Borborygmi?

I was wondering about naming theory - that is proper names.  However, the field is Descriptivist theory and is way too complicated for a Sunday morning. Onomastics sounds more interesting - it is the study of the origin, history and use of proper names.  The article I retrieved from  mentalfloss.com  is about the proper names for common bodily functions.   Who would have guessed these words exist? 1. BORBORYGMI Derived originally from an onomatopoeic Greek word, a borborygmus is a rumbling in the stomach or bowels. Borborygmi are produced as the contents of the intestines are pushed along by waves of muscle contractions called peristalsis, although trapped gas from digested food or swallowed air can also cause your borborygmi to become noisier than normal. Bonus fact: Queasy stomach rumbles were called wambles in Tudor English, and you’d be wamble-cropped if you weren’t feeling well. 2. CACHINNATION A study in 2013 found that when people laugh, it's only because they've found something funny about 20 percent of the time. The rest of the time, we use laughter as a means of signaling things like agreement, affection, ease, and nostalgia that we evolved long before communication through language was possible. And a fit of spontaneous, uproarious, unrestrained laughter is called cachinnation. 3. CICATRIZATION Cicatrization is the formation of a cicatrix, or a scar. More generally, it refers to any of the healing and sealing processes that help a wound to mend, including the formation of a scab. The article has seventeen expressions. I realized that there is a lot of medical terminology to be learned when training to be a medical doctor.  There are a lot of expressions to learn - no wonder medical training takes so long. There are related searches at the bottom of a search.  I enjoyed this one:  'another name for hiccups' as I'd seen it in the Mentalfloss article. Here's my Halloween version of our Fusion Lily.