Dec 11 2020 - Listen to the Piano

 

Remember the Good News Network website.  They have a story on a piano made of living plants.  It uses flora as biological antennas that perceive changes in frequency when touched.  This is translated into voltage.  The voltage is transformed into sound and activates the input of current from the electrical network into the circuit.  The result is a show of light and music.   Doesn't this sound like a high school science project that turned into a start-up company now worth millions? The ‘green piano’ was launched in August in Spain’s Ibiza Biotechnological Botanical Centre.   You can listen to it HERE. They are playing Greensleeves.  You can find out more about the Ibiza Botanical Technology centre HERE. It is an arboretum with aloe vera plants and aloe vera products, along with scientific discovery areas.  Their website calls the piano a "vegetable piano". Let's have some fantasy today for our picture - nothing like a Disney castle.

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Boxed Up

Boxes. Part of our everyday storage and movement of stuff. Ubiquitous for us.  But today,  it is the tie to the Christmas Box that makes this of interest. There isn't much in the way of history of the box available on search engines.  The first date is 100 BC in China during the Han dynasty, and then in 105 AD - that a paper-making industry was established, and started producing paper, and subsequently cardboard boxes. The first commercial paperboard box came into being in England in 1817 and in the same year in Germany. The key is that they were made from a single sheet of card.  Perhaps before that there were card boxes made of several parts.  There are no descriptions of the the boxes or reference to storage boxes in past times. What were Christmas boxes before then made of? Would it be wood, tin, or a woven basket?  The term is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary for December 19, 1663.   And where have we North Americans taken the Christmas box?  To the land of Christmas Lunch Box Jokes - the perfect easy thing to throw in your kids' lunch boxes if they aren't already excited about Christmas.  Examples below. Why didn't Rudolph get a good report card? Because he went down in history! What are Christmas trees to bad at sewing? They are always dropping their needles. Where do you find reindeer? It depends on where you left them. The news competing with Boxing Day history is the asteroid that went whizzing past at 27,500 miles per hour and about 4.5 million miles from our planet early this morning. And there's the last solar eclipse of 2019 on December 26th only to be seen in parts of Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa and Australia. Our picture comes from our trip to Vienna and France in 2005.  I think this is Beynac castle - with its castle carved into the cliff.

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What is a Castle for?

When we think of castles, we mostly think of Europe - France, Germany, and England where palaces, fortresses and monasteries were 'fortified'  to keep out invaders and intruders over hundreds and thousands of years. Kingston's best known castle is the Bodlt Castle.  It is in the 1000 Islands. I snapped this castle as we drove by it.  It is the Collins Bay Penitentiary and is nicknamed 'Disneyland North'.  It seems an unusual architecture for a penitentiary.  We typically think of Banff Springs, the Supreme Court and Chateau Frontenac for this chateau style - such prestigious places to visit and stay.  Here's the prison's wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collins_Bay_Institution