Marklyn's Photos - May 4th 2025 - Long Ago

 

It does seem like a long time ago and far, far away. It was a spontaneous greeting with the release of the 1977 movie.  It appeared in a British political ad in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher won the election to be prime minister on May 4th.   I don't think we saw the film on May 25th its release date, but we saw it within a few weeks.  It was as line-up movie, as were most good movies in Toronto at the time.   Should we look up star wars actors who are still alive or actors who have died.  I don't know - some of the actors show up on both lists.  But that's how long ago and far away the original movie seems to be.   Such a delightful time for movies, it seems now. What a shock yesterday when I went to this cherry tree on Niagara Street in St. Catharines and it has finished flowering.  The hot weather last week has demised a lot of orchards' blossoms.  There were a few blossoms on the tree, so I still got an image or two.  And of course, I have a decade's worth of images to draw on.

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Mar 29 2025 - Spring Cleaning? Yuk!

 

there are a lot of articles on spring cleaning.  How to get started is the most common.  Who wants to "get started" on cleaning?  It would have to be tied to a religious festival, don't you think?  Making things ready for the big event.  With Christians it would be Easter. Some articles say the original festival was the Iranian Nowruz, the Persian new year, which falls on the first day of spring.   And how does it relate to Christianity? There's lots of occurrences of the word "unclean" in the Bible, but I don't see any of them relating to "house unclean."    I hadn't realized how much emphasis there was on using unclean as a euphemism for sin or similar things - eg. a state of impurity or moral corruption.  These things need cleansing or purification.  So is unclean a euphemism? Typically it is meant to be an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or unpleasant. What is the oldest euphemism?  Bruin: A euphemism for "bear" used in Northern Europe, where people feared naming bears directly.  Cemetery: Originally a euphemism for "graveyard," meaning "dormitory" or "sleeping place".  Dis-ease: A polite way to say someone was sick, now a mainstream word for "sick".  I expect there is a national euphemism day in which we speak in silly expressions.

This is one of my favourite pictures - it is the weeping cherry tree on Niagara St. at the heritage Vineland Research building.  Some years it is brighter pink than others and with the clear blue skies that day, the colours were the best I've ever taken pictures of.  I drove past last week - it won't be blooming for a few weeks. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

April 21 2023 - SpaceX Explodes

 

Four minutes after leaving ground, the uncrewed SpaceX rocket exploded.  The explosion may have been due to the flight termination system being activated.  There was a previous cautioned that the chances of success were low. The employees at SpaceX cheered even after the rocket disintegrated.   "Unlike Nasa, which attempts to avoid risk, SpaceX has a record of showing a willingness to have test flights explode, with Musk saying the private venture benefits from understanding what goes wrong. SpaceX built its own spaceport, named Starbase, on the Gulf of Mexico in Boca Chica, Texas, to launch its rockets. Several other Starships are already in production for future tests." Musk wants humans to become an "interplanetary species".   This is one of the cherry trees at the Royal Botanical Gardens - the picture is from a few years ago.  What a lot of blossoms! Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Apr 15 2023 - High Park Vancouver

 

Bing's main page picture is of ancient cherry blossom trees and it says Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival but the picture it  shows says High Park.  Our Toronto High Park Cherry Blossoms should be blooming soon - we can go to highparknaturecentre.com HERE to get the current status and it is called Stage 3 right now.   The "blossom florets are deep pink and the buds extending out.  So that means not yet - likely 12 days away. But who knows with such war m weather.  It will be a vehicle-free blooming experience - so you can imagine the grid lock around the park this year.  It is quite contentious that there are plans to reduce vehicular lanes and parking. Here are the blossom stages: Stage One: Green Colour in Buds: Cherry blossoms emerge before the leaves on the tree. The first sign of their impending arrival are fat, round green buds on the branches of the tree. Stage Two: Florets Visible: About 14 days before peak bloom, the buds swell and the florets (small flowers) start to become visible. Stage Three: Extension of Florets: Approximately 12 days before peak bloom, the florets (deep pink at this stage) start to extend out of the buds. Stage Four: Peduncle Elongation: 6-10 days before peak bloom, the peduncles (flower stems) get longer and the individual blossoms can be clearly seen. Blossoms are very vulnerable to frost at this stage. Stage Five: Fluffy White: 4-6 days before peak bloom, the fluffy white Sakura blossoms begin to open. Each flower opens at different times. Stage Six: Peak Bloom: “Peak bloom” starts when at least 70% of the blossoms are open. Once open, flowers last from 4-10 days, depending on weather conditions. Cool, calm weather can extend the bloom period, while warm, unsettled weather can shorten it. Let's head out to our own vast weeping cherry tree on Niagara Street just north of Carlton, across from Laura Secord High School.  We'll do the stage assessment - maybe in bloom.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

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May 6 2022 - It's legal in California - May the Fourth!

 

There's a time and date website with the "Fun Holidays on May 6" - Surprisingly, after yesterday taking a look at pants, they say that No Pants Day is one of today's holidays.  Is that a don't wear anything over your underwear day?  I can't tell at all. We just passed the milestone of May the Fourth Be With You Day.  In the news, California became the first governing body to officially recognize May 4 as Star Wars Day.  There were many U.S. festivals that made the news this week.  On the other hand, perhaps it is when Disney bought Lucas Films that the promotional possibilities of this phrase took flight.  It became a big day at Disney parks.  There's $14 million in tax revenue each year to Anaheim. Reader's Digest claims that it was the Tory party in England that launched the pun on May 4 1070 with a newspaper ad that said: “May the Fourth be with you, Maggie. Congratulations.” Reader's Digest attributes Newsweek with the original story.  Reader's Digest says it crossed into mainstream pop culture in the early 2000s. The first big organized event was the Toronto Underground Cinema in 2011, with screenings of the movies and a celebrity judged costume contest.  Look at the Niagara cherry tree closely with me.  Do you see the cocoon/chrysalis?  The pictures of butterflies on weeping cherry trees shows Swallowtails. Edith Smith seems to be the photographer of Swallowtails, and this could easily be such a chrysalis when I look at her photographs.  Hers are of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.  Have you seen butterflies yet?  I've seen cabbage butterflies and something mid-size with brown colourings.  Does anyone know the early spring butterflies? Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

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April 19 2021 - The Wikipedia Crew

 

Wikipedia articles are typically updated regularly.   "While you read this, Wikipedia develops at a rate of over 1.9 edits every second, performed by editors from all over the world. Currently, the English Wikipedia includes 6,284,151 articles and it averages 595 new articles per day. This amount of data can be analysed in many ways. The best way to get an idea of the bigger picture is with statistics." A chart shows quality vs importance.  I understand importance, sort of: - top, high, mid, low, and ???.   When it comes to Quality, there's an entire entry to describe it:  "The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team for assessing how close we are to a distribution-quality article on a particular topic. The system is based on a letter scheme which reflects principally how factually complete the article is, though language quality and layout are also factors. Once an article reaches the  A-Class, it is considered "complete", although edits will continue to be made.  The quality assessments are mainly performed by participants in WikiProjects, who tag talk pages of articles. These tags are then collected by a bot, which generates output such as a log and statistics. For more information, see Using the bot. (Note that when more than one WikiProject has rated an article, the bot will take the best rating as the rating of the overall article.) The WP:1.0 team is now setting up to use a second bot to select articles, based on the assessments performed by WikiProjects. For quality there are two levels, GA (Good Article) and FA (Featured Article). They are assessments made by independent editors, rather than by WikiProjects. GAs are generally reviewed by a single editor, and FA by a panel.  Here's the link to the quality grading scheme HERE.  It goes on at length, so I moved on to something more humorous - Wikipedia jokes - they seem to be written for those who work on Wikipedia content as I don't think most of them are funny.  Then I found the link to one of the humours essays, and found the titles alone to be hilarious.  Here is one of the first essays written and its introduction: Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense "We need a page where bad jokes and other deleted nonsense can rest in peace. So, here it is! [I'm half tempted to suggest keeping the jokes inline with the pages, as they must sort of give the encyclopedia some lively colour. But I do know it'd just get carried away and turn into an encyclopedia of silliness, so look forward to frequent updates of this page.  ;-)] — BryceHarrington" Here's the Royal Botanical Gardens cherry trees in 2015. Isn't it amazing that there are so many blossoms that there isn't any sky! Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 15 2020 - Team Solo Sports vs Drive-Thru Zoo

eam sports at a distance can start soon.  Which are those sports? There's an article already for that.  Of course, we think of tennis. Then there's solo running, cycling and walking.  Fencing!  And beloved golf - the courses are set to open next week. Don't forget there's gymnastics.  We could join the circus now.   And what about this drive-through experience? The Toronto Zoo plans to reopen with drive-through experience.  That would be perfect as a giraffe was born this week - and there's nothing as cute as a baby giraffe.  Cute pictures are HERE. “The pre-booked driving route would allow guests to see the Zoo’s animals from the comfort and safety of their own vehicle along a 3.4 kilometres route,” the zoo said in a statement. They are also fund-raising to feed the animals - last month they raised over $500,000 - enough to cover six months worth of food for the 5,000 animals.  The animals have been getting bored, and the zoo has taken to entertaining them in special ways - taking the llamas for a walk, giving the hyena a bubble bath, and the penguins a field trip.  You can see these at #ClosedButCaring. There are posts from zoos all over the place (and a few other places using the hashtag.) Pictures fro the spring garden today - with the weeping cherry and the Japanese spirea bush.

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Organoids

I got to wondering about the the decades ahead. I thought I would skip 2020 predictions today and check out the ones for 2030.   I found a massive list - 236 predictions - from Quantumrun.com, a Canadian organization. One of the areas with predictions is genetics and their growing impact by 2030.  An article tells me: "the drop in sequencing costs is shifting DNA testing out of the research lab and into mainstream medical practice. Population-based sequencing projects in more than a dozen countries, including the US, are expected to produce 60 million genomes by 2025. By 2030, China hopes to add another 100 million from its own precision medicine initiative." Another 'popular news' article poses the question:  "Have you had your genome sequenced?  If you asked this question five years ago, people would have thought you were crazy. Today, genome sequencing is already for sale in supermarkets. It costs under $600 and takes less than a week for an individual to have his or her genome sequenced, and can even be ordered online." I went looking for a more specific topic and here is what I chose:  Organoids. Organoids are tiny, self-organized three-dimensional tissue cultures that are derived from stem cells. Such cultures can be crafted to replicate much of the complexity of an organ, or to express selected aspects of it like producing only certain types of cells... This way of culturing tissues will give scientists a detailed view of how organs form and grow, providing them with new insights on human development and disease as well as giving them the opportunity to see how drugs interact with these “mini-organs”, potentially revolutionizing the field of drug discovery and opening new approaches to regenerative medicine. More on this research and the impact on drug practices and medical uses to regenerate and replace human organ tissue in the future described HERE Today's photo continues with sky replacement activities - this is the cosmos sky in the background of spring cherry blossoms.

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Polar Vortex on a Polar Coaster

I am compelled to look at the official weather forecast for this winter.  That's because Polar Vortex is in the title.  What about the Polar Coaster that was predicted just a few weeks ago.  Add to that - Global News tells us to brace for Game of Snows, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac. With this many catchy titles, I wonder what the  Weather Channel's official forecast looks like.  Let's check it out. It is visually very compelling: The weather map is brilliant colours - a big deep blue circle in the middle of the country, a light blue circle that surrounds it which includes Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton and For McMurray, a third green circle, and finally two red circles.  You can imagine that red is above normal for average temperatures.  Then there are charts for snowfall/precipitation.   Their headline on the Polar Vortex is to get ready for a classic Canadian winter.  That sounds like we have a polar vortex every year. The Great Lakes  are a concern. Why is that?  Water levels are well above normal - so there would be flooding in spring if there is a cold and snowing winter. The overall map shows a pattern or warmer temperatures all along the North American west coast, and below normal in the majority of the east and central portions of North America.   You can see the Weather Network maps HERE.   I expect it to be a cold winter when I compare this year's snow in mid-November with last year. Here's a picture from last year at the same time.  We can look to the promise of spring below - the weeping cherry tree on Niagara Street, in St. Catharines.

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