Mairlyn's Photos - June 5 2025 - Your Favourite Colour?

 

A worldwide study has revealed that blue is the most popular colour.  That's across 10 countries in four continents.  Why are there such big surveys?  Because colour influences our moods, eating habits, who we date, and more.  And the more is the world of marketing. Look at that chart!  Everything in one picture.  Well, except there's no Canada.  Oh well, who would we consider ourselves most like?  Especially these days as we steer away from the U.S.  Would it be Britain, Germany or Australia?   We're considered to have similarities with Australia - British Commonwealth, federal states, constitutional monarchies large landmasses and small population, also with open economies, strong trade ties and a focus on natural resources.  And then we're close to Britain with that shared history, Commonwealth, monarch, parliamentary systems, but we are a diverse geography and culture with an indigenous population and role in government.  Compared to Germany we are considered to be similar in terms of strong economies, generous social systems and environmental awareness.  But we have differences in culture and social customs.  Of course, Norway, Sweden and Denmark are also missing from the chart.  Maybe we're more like them. On the other hand, what is the impact?  The most popular colour is likely to be blue. It is really only when we look at the second most popular colour that the US, China and Thailand stand out as preferring green.  Poor Hong Kong, all alone with purple.     Lots of blue to be found in peeling paint and grunge.

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May 30 2025 - Spelling Bees Turn 100

 

Are Spelling Bees a U.S. phenomenon?  They turned 100 this year, or so an article says.  We can't know anymore which articles are news and fact and white are click bait headlines. So I thought this was something to check out. I find that the anniversary refers to the annual United States National Spelling Bee.   I don't remember this in public school. But then, I don't have vivd public or high school memories.  But wouldn't I remember attending a spelling bee? I don't even remember the expression spelling bee.  We had the Science Fair for maths, engineering and science.  There was the Kiwanis Festival Competition for music and the arts.  There were debating competitions.  So it is likely spelling bees were more of a minor activity in Canada. The  U.S. Spelling bee is the Scripps National Spelling Bee and participants came from U.S. and other countries.  It is very complicated now, with many rules, rounds, quarterfinals, semifinals, and so on.   Back in the early days the first place prize was either $500 0r $1000 - that's a lot in 1925.  And today?  First place gets $50,000.  I wonder if that even covers the costs involved.  There's a Spelling Bee of Canada now. It says that over 70,000 children have participated in the competition.  There are 26 regions competing.  The Canadian winner gets around  $10,000.   We older people raise an eyebrow, don't we?  The elevation of a spelling contest as a national entertainment when so many people can't spell simple words with correct grammar.     An abstract today.

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Jan 09 2025 - Cumberpunning

 

It crosses one's mind right away.  Is the name Cumberbatch "made-up" - as it seems whimsical or nonsensical.   "Why is he named Benedict Cumberbatch? Benedict is called Cumberbatch because that is his last name. His full name is Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch. He is a British actor known for his roles in films and television, notably as Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series ``Sherlock'' and as Doctor Strange in the Marvel Cinematic Universe." '"English: habitational name from Comberbach in northern Cheshire named with the Old English personal name Cumbra (originally a byname meaning 'Cumbrian') or the genitive plural of Cumbre 'Britons' + Old English bæce 'stream in a valley'." I am not alone in amusement over his name.  I found this article in the Huffpost and here  is the start of it HERE: Benedict Cumberbatch Is Sick of People Using His Name as a Cumberpun   "I love you all, and cumberbless each and every one of you. But I have to get this off my chest -- I'm just a regular cumberboy. Every morning I get up from my cumberbed, eat my cumberbreakfast, cumberbrush my teeth and head to work.  But lately It's starting to really cumberbother me how a lot of you are cumberbantering about my name. I know, I have kind of an unusual name. But it's never fun to be the cumberbutt of the joke. This is in no way a new thing. I've been cumbombarded with puns my whole life. But since I became a huge actor this trend definitely got worse."  Hop over and enjoy this wonderful satire and play on word(s).  I found another icy fingers picture and thought the blue of winter vs the blue of summer would be a good comparison.

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Nov 17 2025 - Pitfalls vs Fidget Toys

 

There are lots of pitfalls on the internet.  But the word itself - pitfall.  This sounds medieval - falling into a pit.  Perhaps a barbaric punishment.  But no - it is mid-14th century - concealed hole into which a person or animal may fall unawares.  And then another definition is added - a hidden danger or concealed source of disaster. This picture was at the bottom of the definition.   It is much more interesting than 5 pitfalls of something or other.  It says three people bought this for $8.00 in the last 24 hours - on Etsy.  Rock Head Fidget Toy - so creepy we need to find out about it.

There's more - a fidget slug and bowl - no Rock head there.  "These fidget slugs are super cute and super wiggly! They make a slight sound when you move their plastic joints. Each fidget slug is rainbow and may have slight variations in the color of its joints and head. Slugs are 7.5 inches and weigh 8.8 grams." In fact there are a lot more toys like this.   "Fidget toys have surged in popularity not just as trendy gadgets, but also as essential tools that cater to a variety of needs. At their core, these toys are designed to help individuals channel restless energy, improve concentration, and reduce anxiety. "For many, the repetitive motion or tactile stimulation of a fidget toy can serve as a grounding mechanism, helping them stay present in the moment. This is particularly beneficial for children and adults with conditions like ADHD, where maintaining focus can be a challenge." There are all kinds - the fidget marble maze, fidget poppers, fidget spinner, fidget chair band, wobble cushion - a new version of worry beads which have existed for a long time.   And the success?   "The study suggests that while fidget toys might help reduce symptoms of hyperactivity when first introduced, this behavioral effect fades as the novelty wears off. And this relatively small behavioral benefit is outweighed by the devices' significant detrimental effects on attention." Sounds like a Christmas Day present.  Keep everyone busy for a few hours. Here's a new colour rendition of the pretty Sweet Autumn Clematis seed heads in Autumn.

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Nov 14 2024 - Play Nice

 

"Play nice" is an idiom applied to children - to not cause trouble, to play without arguing and share toys. It is a parental expression.  If said to adults, it implies they are being childish.   Adults generally are not told to "play nice."   So what did Trump and Biden do in the Oval Office?  The Independent says they "played nice."   Isn't that a loaded expression!  Was this referring to their age of behaviour or that they are adults being childish.  Both interpretations are scathing.  And then that was the part the press saw - the greetings lasted a few minutes. One headline says 29 seconds.   There were two more hours with the two in the Oval Office.   That wouldn't have been "play" where they were to be having fun.  That would have been "work."  Here's a chart on children's play.  Children around 4 would be told to "play nice"  when you interpret this chart. And looking at the chart, doesn't "Play" now seems elusive?  This looks like learning and growing stages.  Babies making movements with their arms, doesn't seem like play to me.  Especially a 3 month old.  Oh well, it seems like play is even more elusive to me.  And given that the word is used in so many things now - sports games, intellectual games, online games, music - it is everywhere.

Another blue water wave image today.

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Aug 29 2024 - Robert F. Kennedy Jr's dead worm in his brain

 

How did I miss this May 2024 news item?   It is so weird and strange, who would believe it? Robert F. Kennedy revealed that he had a dead tapeworm in his brain.  That occurred in 2012 and recently covered in the news in May 2024.  "A worm... got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died." These words..."They were spoken by a U.S. presidential candidate. According to a 2012 deposition, uncovered and reviewed by The New York Times, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he sought medical attention after experiencing mental fogginess and memory loss. Eventually, he said, a doctor helped him determine a brain abnormality found on a scan was caused by a worm. He now tells The Times he has recovered with no long lasting consequences." Doctors initially suspected that he had a brain tumor, but it turned out to be a parasite infection – specifically, a pork tapeworm larva lodged in his brain. Pork tapeworms don't eat brain tissue, but they do absorb its nutrients.  There are unpleasant details about the disease.  The summarizing paragraph of the article does a great job summing things up: " It’s all pretty grisly, if you don’t fancy a worm setting up camp in your brain"  Read all about it HERE.  I wonder which part of the brain was affected. Kennedy's anti-vaccine stance, and his spreading of false or misleading information on vaccines has been called out by many fact-checkers and scientists.  I've wondered if he is missing some basic logic sense.  Maybe he is.  Could this get any weirder?  Yes it can. The BBC site with an article on RFK Jr his this as the bottom article: "Scrutiny over claims RFJ Jr cut off dead wale's head"  The article is HERE.   Here's a gorgeous blue - it is an abstract of water waves.

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May 2 2024 - Proverbs

 

Which came first?  Proverbs as a pithy saying or the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible.  I would expect the saying came from the book as it was translated into Greek and Latin and has been around for more than a thousand years. Considered wisdom literature, this was a widespread genre throughout the ancient Near East, and shares common ground of what was considered wisdom with Egypt and Mesopotamia.   Proverbs as expressions of advice are short and generally known by people.  But have they become cliches over time - so overworked that they have lost their meaning?   So which are these?  Proverbial sayings or cliches? There are plenty more fish in the sea. Think outside the box. Grab the bull by the horns. It goes without saying. At the end of the day. I've got my plate full. Every cloud has a silver lining. There's no “I” in team. And these: Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.  The early bird gets the worm.  A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.  A stitch in time saves nine.  A penny saved is a penny earned.  A drop of honey catches more flies than a hogshead of vinegar.  Don't count your chickens before they've hatched. The second set seem less precious, don't you think?     Blue flowers abound in spring - these are grape hyacinths.

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Apr 30 2024 - Did Scrabble Woke Up or Wake Up

 

The New Scrabble is a group game to be played with friends and everyone wins or no one wins.  Like group games.  That's how they work.  It was billed as "less competitive" and "more inclusive".   What a great renewal for the beloved game.   There are lots of games like this - Castle Panic, Divided Republic, The Hobbit, Mansions of Madness, and so on.  Lots and lots.   What made Fox News go ballistic over this?  First of all, I heard the clip on CBC Radio and was shocked by the language and tone of voice.  “Scrabble is dumbing itself down for the woke,” Jeanine Pirro proclaimed on Fox News, as  “SCRABBLE FOR SNOWFLAKES”  was projected on the screen. I don't watch Fox news so am not accustomed to arrogant and dismissive "news representatives". I also want to know if there is a Fox "accent" for the hosts on the show? Because that was a strange accent that I heard. And then the word "woke" - is this an adjective used at large for negative views?   There we are, wondering how a new Scrabble game became a political issue.  It turns out that anything can be a political issue, if one works at it.    A close-up of Hyacinth flowers.

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Sep 14 2023 - Garbage Day

 

Garbage day used to be simple.  One garbage can.  Everything thrown out.  The yard waste went into the compost in the back garden.  Plastics?  What plastics?  Glass, cans and paper in the garbage.   How did it get to be that plastic is so dominant now? There was only an inkling of it in the mid-1950s when Saran Wrap came on the shelves.  Remember how it "clings like magic". It was in 1979 that plastic bags spread to North America.  In the early 1980s, all grocery stores switched to plastic bags. By the end of the 1980s, plastic bags were everywhere.  Now is is hard to escape plastic. Plastic seems to be part of every product.  We consumers didn't think about this.  It was researcher Charles Moore who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" in 1997.  It was a chance discovery. They've mapped them all now - there is the Western Garbage Patch which is closer to Japan and the Eastern Garbage Patch which is closer to southern California and Mexico. There really are 5 of them.   The trash pile in the South Pacific is estimated to be more than one million square miles in size - larger than Mexico. But they can't be seen by satellite as they are widely dispersed fingernail-sized or microscopic pieces of plastic. Some of the plastics are over 50 years old.  They could have originated from our own saran-wrap or grocery store bags from the 1970s.  Or from ships going through the Welland Canal when I was a child.  The estimate is 20% from ships. And the world map now?  How strange to have ocean maps showing the many "gyres" of plastic garbage. I got to thinking about this as the garbage trucks today will come by a few times - to pick up all those separated wastes - with the special plastics bin.  I wonder where it really goes to. Here's an abstract that seems to match the theme of the plastic "gyrating" in the ocean.

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Aug 26 2023 - Kleenex Gone

 

I was wondering the other day about facial tissues vs the brand name Kleenex. Perhaps I shouldn't bother.  Kleenex is being withdrawn from the Canadian market for "unique complexities".  I know what they mean - we all experience things that are hard to "describe" so "unique complexities" is a great expression to cover things.  Maybe that will become Kleenex's outgoing gift - a new expression to cover things that cannot be spoken of more clearly.  I hadn't thought about the issues involved in paper/facial tissues:  "It's very difficult to ship tissue economically — you are moving a lot of air and you tend to [fill] a truck well before you hit weight limits. You definitely don't want to be shipping it long distances." There's only one Kleenex factory in Canada - in Huntsville, so you can imagine that's not very efficient.  And then I had no idea that things could get really nasty in the trademark world.  We use many trademark words as though that is the actual product.  What happens is that a brand name becomes so ubiquitous that it turns into a generic term for any kind of similar product.  When it loses its trademark value and the brand owner can't distinguish itself in the market, the official term for this is genericide. One of the most famous instances of it got litigated in the 1921 case Bayer Co. v United Drug Co., in which Bayer lost its trademark for Aspirin. Since then, “aspirin” has entered the public domain.  What about things like granola?  That's an example.  Bubble wrap is another. Magic markers, ping-pong, and even realtor are more examples.  Pool Kleenex got too popular as a name for paper tissues.   They want us to know that the "decision was incredibly difficult for us to make."   CBC agrees on that and titled its headline:  "What a blow! Kleenex pulling out of Canadian consumer market". I don't have any pictures of Kleenex, but I've taken lots of pictures of torn posters in Toronto.  Here's an example.

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July 8 2023 - Past Lives

 

Some days I find fascinating topics and other days I seem to be in a swamp of junky information. Today was the swimming in the swamp day - the phrase past lives has been overtaken by a movie.  Reviews, trailerss and clips, wikipedia entries, the songs, everything. I keep thinking of the revenue that Google makes from paid retrieval listings. After three pages, the spiritual organization named Eckankar shows up.  We're now in the second set of paid-for retrievals. This is intriguing: I've never heard of this and find out it is a religious spiritual group founded in 1965 in the U.S with Harold Klemp as its community leader. Its platform is that all people are eternal spiritual beings currently existing in a physical realm.  Well, that sounds familiar for our religions.  It believes in reincarnation and karma.  Soul Travel and Hu Meditation are two of its practices.   There is a Living Master, isn't there?  The Living ECK Master, or Mahanta, is currently Sri Harold Klemp, who took on the position in 1983. The previous Mahanta was Darwin Gross, and the founder of Eckankar was Paul Twitchell.  One scrolls past all of the ECKANKAR listings and then the cult articles start.  These are things like:  "Eckankar Survivor Speaks Out."  In these articles this religion is referred to as a cult.   Do you know how many cults there are today? In the range of eleven, thirteen, fifteen, twelve and so on.   This is an interesting experience in terms of keyword searching. How things have changed in the keyword search realm.  It is fluid, not at all consistent.  Who pays to be retrieved drives what I get to see. Unless I am very specific and focused. This is my experience naming photographs, too.  Expressions and words are co-opted into commercial movies and religions with trademarks and copyrights. Take down notices pop up and I have to defend the use of words like "demure." Past lives is a common phrase related to reincarnation and has been studied scientifically for 50 years. So one would hope for something more balanced in retrievals.   I am curious, though, and find the University of Virginia - the one academic institution which undertakes reincarnation research.  They have studied 2,500 individual cases of childhood past-life memories.  The article is HERE.  It concludes with this:  "the idea that consciousness is merely a product of brain activity, like software on a computer, does not have much empirical or philosophical support."   And the best headline in my search today - a true example of irony:  "Past Lives:  Advance Screenings" Here's a Flexify manipulated image of a lily pond.  Makes me think of consciousness.  What would it look like visually? Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Apr 27 2023 - The Eight Word Warning

 

Remember yesterday's 3 word response?  "Are you okay?" That's a headline trend these days.  I find that the Queen had an eight word warning for Andrew after his catastrophic interview. I can't find them in the article.   In comparison, there are a number of sources with the headline of her one word response after reading the transcript of the interview:  "intriguing". Even the security officer involved is listed by the number of words - 10 words said to Prince Andrew after the interview:  "I think, sir, you might have to come with us." Or maybe it was four words. During a private audience, the monarch told Andrew he will no longer be known as His Royal Highness “in any official capacity” — and that he will be left to fight his lawsuit in the US as a private citizen. Another quote has it a bit longer but the word count wasn't expressed in this one: "The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties.”  What about the Queen's five word remark after giving Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Frogmore Cottage:  “I hope they respect it.”  What about two words the queen will never say because they are too common?  "lounge" and "toilet". Moving to the current Royals, there are 7 words that Queen Camilla said to King Charles after almost losing her hat.  And we can probably conclude with the nine-word dig at King Charles - I guess he would have been Prince Charles then. It was:  "Your father always does what he wants to do." Here's a pretty Longwood Gardens image of Himalayan Poppies. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca