Oct 25 2024 - Gutenburg and Frankenstein

 

Bing has a new photo each day with a question that brings curiosity to bear.  Today's image is a beautiful mountaintop with the rising/setting sun illuminating the clouds around it with orange against the blue. Today's invitation:  "The heights of horror."  Bing has changed things, though, and there is no ability now to see the entire picture. It is blocked by their news feed, or whatever you might call it, I think news feed is overgenerous for article titles like "11 things you owned in the '00s that are now worth a small fortune." Now one is shown a tiny version (as below), that can't be expanded - attempt to expand it and instead one goes to what looks like promotions or vacation ads for the place.  Too bad, or rather Bing gone bad.

And yet, a turn of fate leads us to today's answer - Frankenstein Friday, and I take myself over to a link to Gutenberg.org and its eBook of Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley right there.   Contents start as Letters 1, 2, 3 and 4.  They are compelling.  I include the link so you can enjoy them too:  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/84/84-h/84-h.htm The letters conclude: "He then told me that he would commence his narrative the next day when I should be at leisure. This promise drew from me the warmest thanks." And then starts Chapter 1,  Frankenstein:  or, the Modern Prometheus. And wonderful that we should find ourselves enjoying this "national" day.   "Frankenstein Friday was established in 1997 by Ryan MacCloskey as a tribute to Mary Shelley and her iconic creation. Observed on the last Friday of October, this day invites enthusiasts to delve into the novel's rich themes and celebrate its lasting impact on popular culture."  Could she imagine that this would be one of the most poplar and well-known works of English literature?  Many Reddit players want to give their opinion on what makes this such a successful novel - it still sells 40,000 copies a year.   I encourage you to read the four letters and find out for yourself. Here's a picture that seems from a long time ago.  Do you remember the toilet paper factory on the QEW?  GH Wood Company "Sanitation for the Nation."  This picture was taken on that site after the building had been demolished.  The mosaic tile floor was intact, this door was there.  The entrance arch was still present.  Of course, replaced by a condo.

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Oct 10 2024 - Where will all the cows go?

 

Rethinkx tells me that food-as-software will replace the animal-agriculture system. It sounds strange, doesn't it? Maybe reminds me of Star Trek.  "Foods engineered by scientists at a molecular level will be uploaded to databases that can be accessed by food designers anywhere in the world."  And this:  "Anywhere we brew beer we will be able to produce food."  One of the promises is being able to replace our system of breeding industrial farm animals for mass-market consumption.   The prediction is that the number of cows in the U.S. will fall by 50% by 2030.  It is 2024 now - that's only 6 years away.  The numbers themselves are staggering:  In 2021, the USDA reported that there were just over 1 billion head of cattle and nearly 26 billion chickens in the world – far outnumbering humans. Can you imagine the size and scope of change? All that farm land no longer for grazing and crops to feed the grazers.   I hope the crop farmers and businesses throughout the value chain are paying attention.  Will we adapt or resist this precision fermentation approach? Will it take longer than six years.   My bet is that we will adapt as the prices will be attractive. We eat "cheese food" now.That's a combination of cheese mixed with emulsifying agents, vegetable oils, unfermented dairy ingredients, salt, food colouring, sugar. It contains 50 to 60% cheese and then the other stuff.  Pringles are reconstituted potatoes.  We think they are just fine.  They are dried potatoes, vegetable oil, germinated yellow corn flour, cornstarch, rice flower, maltodextrin, mono-and diglycerides, salt and wheat starch.  Bet you didn't know all of that.    And the most processed foods we don't worry about? chocolate and candies. potato chips and pretzels. sauces, dressings and gravies. ice cream and frozen desserts. bakery products like muffins and cakes. fast foods like French fries and burgers. frozen entrées like pasta dishes and pizzas. processed meats like sausages and deli meats. They left out cereals, sugar substitutes, coffee creamer, and margarine.  So many things are already out there. This is the back garden Japanese Maple from a few years ago.  It hasn't started to change colours yet.  This is the promise of Autumn - fantastic colours on the horizon.

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June 5 2024 - Horses Amok Update

 

There's a good news story - the fie military horses that ran 'amok' through London, resulting in injuries and blood have all recovered.  Well, except two of them still need operations.  The others are already back to work.  They will take part in the King's birthday parade on June 15.   And the people who were tossed by the horses?  Oh, they are recovering too, and "will likely return to military service".  That's a bit vague to me.  And only one of the several articles - which all use the press release directly - mentioned a cyclist had injuries.   You can scroll through almost a dozen updates in the search list, but the "real" trending stories today seem to be these:   Acolyte Review (the latest Star Wars Movie) in the Guardian - 20K searches Next is Hasley posting a health update that she is lucky to be alive - that's 5,000 searches The number 1 rank search on Google is for YouTube at 1.3 billion searches.  One site says that monthly, there are 337 million searches for YouTube. So it could easily be well over a few billion over time.  When will a search get to be the googol number - 10 to the 100th.  That question has been asked on Quora.  There are 1.2 trillion searches a year.  The answer from Alon Amit on Quora is THIS.  His short version is "never". The London horses running amok story barely made a blip in April searches when it happened.   I found this picture of one of the Japanese Maples in the garden from a few years ago. The trees are larger now, with this beautiful red foliage.  What a background with those rainbow colours of the morning.

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Nov 25 2023 - Leave the Leaves? Yes or NO

 

Leave the Leaves?  Yes or No.  There are a few headlines on leave the leaves yes or no.  It seems a bit late to me as most people have sent them away.  They ruin the "greenscape" or the garden of conifer bushes that make for the winter sculpture garden. We've created a difficult situation with our suburban yards.  With excessive amounts of grass, we are stuck raking leaves from the lawns.   Moving leaves about and getting my leaves to stay in garden areas is a difficult circumstance.  The wind likes to move small things about.  Our entrance door is a swirly wind area that accumulates leaves and when the door is opened, they move right into the house.   The reward of leaves left in the garden occurs In the spring in the places where leaves are in nice piles,  I usually find a toad underneath.  Raking should be done carefully in the spring - there is a lot of wildlife within.   Leaves also provide winter protection for garden plants keeping the roots insulated from the changing temperatures, and then in spring they are nutrients to the garden - the way mulch is. Our idea of mulch, though, is much more uniform that all those different shapes of leaves.  We like cedar mulch with its even texture and uniform colour.  It creates artistic landscapes. I notice that there are lots of headlines about the movement to 'leave the leaves.'   I think it is a distraction - the moment before the snow headlines. Our picture today is the brilliance of locust trees in the Autumn. These locust leaves won't need any raking.  Tiny little things, they just disappear into the lawn.

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Nov 24 2023 - WaWa Classic Holiday Dinner

 

Do you recall the Japanese cult classic Christmas Dinner?  They eat Kentucky Fried Chicken as a big Christmas treat dinner.  Well, Americans eat WaWa's Thanksgiving Feast in a similar cult fashion.   WaWa is a convenience store/gas station chain in the U.S.  My friend in Pennsylvania told me about the WaWa Thanksgiving dinner yesterday and I had to look it up to find out what she meant.  Here are the Google questions: Does Wawa have turkey dinner? Our hot turkey is so customizable, you can Wawa your way! Try the Hot Turkey Gobbler Bowl with a base of mac and cheese, roasted veggies, hot turkey, and tart cranberry sauce. Or our classic gobbler hoagie! We even have hot turkey dinner plates to satisfy your hunger after 4pm. What is on a Wawa turkey gobbler? For the first time this year, Wawa began offering Thanksgiving dinner platters in addition to its Gobbler — the hoagie filled with turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce that's been a staple of Wawa's fall menu since 2008. One article says: "Search Instagram, and you'll find other Gobbler posts and the configurations its fans enjoy."  One fan wrote: "I’m partial to the cold version with some of their hot honey,” Who would guess there could be such a cult classic!

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Nov 11 2023 - Electric Vehicle Insurance

 

Do you remember when I posted the future projections of elector vehicle costs? It showed dramatic drops in prices. The predictions are that EVs will constitute a majority of passenger cars sales by 2030 in the US. The expectation is also that ownership will start rejecting a majority.   So the article on expected EV insurance rates was a surprise.  Higher-than-average rates are the norm now.  It turns out that their parts are more expensive to repair and replace.  The average cost to replace an EV battery ranges from $4,500 to nearly $18,000. The chart is one article shows that a Testa costs over $1,000 to repair compared to a Toyota Prius at just over $400.  And Teslas seem to get in a lot of accidents.  At least they aren't on the most stolen list. "Electric cars tend to be more expensive when it comes to average insurance costs as well, though it varies by a vehicle’s make, model, and year. The national average cost of full-coverage car insurance in 2023 is $2,024 per year. Coverage costs for the electric vehicles on this list are higher than the national average by anywhere from 10% to 135%."  (A US source which tells us that people in the US pay less for insurance and a lot of things). The Globe and Mail article gave an indication of much higher rates for EVs - now known as BEVs.  The article had this story:  "When Samuel Lessard decided to replace his Ram pickup with an electric equivalent, he determined the new Ford F-150 Lightning was just about the perfect vehicle." Then he found out about his insurance:  “[Insurance rates] went up. The first year they were twice as high as the Ram,” he says. “For the second year of Lightning ownership, I had another increase of $700.” "Mr. Lessard admits the Ford is newer and more expensive than the Ram, which also affects premiums, but he says to have his initial rates more than double and then go up again the following year seems excessive."  And Mr. Lessard's conclusions:  “Considering that [the F-150 Lightning] is less expensive to run, has better handling, less noise, more comfort and more power, insurance premiums are secondary to me,” he says. Satisfaction.

Some colours are great this year - especially Maple trees.  Other colours didn't happen.  Our trim-colour beech did not have golden bronze leaves like last year in this picture.  Brown and withered this year. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Nov 8 2023 - X is now on the spot

 

It has been quite a while since Twitter rebranded to X.  That was July.  Yesterday the change of name showed up on my Mailchimp template which you can see below. It is called X, formerly known as Twitter at the request of Elon Musk. After the first reference, the stylebook permits a writer to simply call the service as "X" or "the X platform".  It is from the font "Special Alphabets 4" from Monotype's Special Alphabets font family.  X is Elon Musk's favourite letter.  And the name X has great sentimental value. It was one of his previous companies - was merged with Confinit ywhich was then rebranded to become PayPal.  He subsequently purchased X.com from PayPal, and that was the reason cited - the name had "great sentimental value" to him.  Various faces of the platform, formerly accessible via usernames like @TwitterSupport or @TwitterSports, now go by handles like @Support.   Will X remain?  It is expected that it will be sued over copyright.  There are 900 active trademark registrations in the U.S. for the letter X. The most problematic for Musk is Microsoft and Meta have active trademarks for X.  It turns out to be a crowded space.

It seemed to take a while for Mailchimp to change to the new logo and name. I am expecting frosty leaves in the next little while.  Here's a Japanese Maple from a few years ago.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Oct 14 2023 - Edgar Cayce

 

As we lead up to Halloween, the paranormal seems to be a topic of interest.   What about Edgar Evans Cayce and his prophecies and predictions along with his readings on the ancient past.   He's been gone a long time but his influence is certainly still present - his holistic health work is practiced today.  One can go to the Edgar Cayce Holistic Health Database.  He is considered the initiator of the holistic movement.  And then there are all the "readings".  The predictions that are considered to have come true include the stock market crash of 1929, World War II, the pole shift (north and south), the sect called the Essenes which were proven through the Dead Sea Scrolls found after his death.  Isn't it so tantalizing.  The chamber of records below the Sphinx, near Giza remains a mystery - even after many activities in recent decades to uncover it.  These are what makes the paranormal not normal.  Some things true and other things off the mark.  A puzzle to investigate. There are likely paranormal spirit hunt "experiences" to enjoy for Halloween.  We missed the 2023 Halifax Paranormal Symposium - that was October 7th.  Too bad we missed it: "This year, the theme for the symposium is: real paranormal case files, studies, and personal experiences. Previous attendees have said that our events are “eye opening”. Will we get some intense fall colour here in Niagara?  It doesn't look like it yet.

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Sep 26 2023 - Autumn in the Air

 

I could never have predicted that Autumn in the Air would become the realm of Starbucks' Spiced Pumpkin Lattes.  Would you have guessed this?  What does Autumn bring to the air?  The smell of leaves, trees, and plants dying and rotting.  It is that slightly sharp, sweet smell. Unless you are under a Katsura tree and it is a strong sugary, sweet vanilla smell.   One article quotes an expert saying that the smell of leaves decaying is "a bit like chlorine or the exhaust of a dryer vent."  That's distinctive - we can give it a test in the next few weeks. What the cooler temperatures bring is a sense of "fresher" to us.  It makes the scent of decay stand out more clearly.  That's the specific and special smell of Fall.  That's it. There is much research on scent - it is a large component of the beauty industry.  But not here on the internet, where breezy, short, not much information "articles" hold the day.  Or autumn air fresheners tell you they are out of stock.  But persistence has led to an interesting person in the field of scent. Norwegian artist, chemist and smell scientist Sissel Tolaas was commissioned by the US’s Smithsonian Design Museum in 2016 to create a smell inspired by New York’s Central Park. So she did.  She has her own archive of smells.  Fascinated by humans’ complicated and often highly emotional relationship with the world of smell, she has even devised a “nose language” or “vocabulary of olfaction” that she calls Nasalo. It is based on an archive of more than 7,000 smells and 2,500 scent molecules that Tolaas has collected over the last 20 years. Housed in a lab in the artist’s Berlin studio, these are kept in hermetically sealed glass jars and aluminium boxes. Examples include everything from the smell of concrete and dusty brick to old graveyards, money and wet football.  Here's an article about her HERE.  And another more in-depth article HERE.  Wouldn't that be amazing to be able to experience all of these and distinguish them - the way we  do taste.  Smell has been left to chance for us. Here are some big-leaf Magnolia leaves.  These came from Longwood a number of years ago.  I will have to check out their smell this year - there's a garden nearby with a tree.

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Aug 21 2023 - A Billion Dollar Workplace

 

What company would you work for to go to a 1 billion dollar office each day?  You'd work for Novartis in Basel, Switzerland.  Or maybe Apple with its $5 (or perhaps 6) billion Cupertino campus, or its Austin campus at $1 billion.  Or Apple in North Carolina, and so on.   Uber, that company that won't pay its driver employees as employees will spend $1 billion for two San Francisco buildings.   Disney cancelled its $1 billion campus in Florida.  It was to serve 2,000 employees.  That doesn't seem like enough employees to spend that much money.  Is that $500,000 per employee?  What would you have wanted if you had the choice? I would have preferred the money.  But then I didn't work for a tech giant, thinking I was changing the world.  And don't forget, no one is asking them what they prefer. Are the employees who work in these opulent palaces the "Princes of Industry"?  Or perhaps Dukes and Earls? Something in the royalty range, at least. It must be.  There must be a pull towards prestige.  Do they make significantly more wages than other people so that they don't have anger over the disparity between their home circumstances and their work environment?  Would that be the big draw - to get people to stay at work because it is a beautiful physical environment, great restaurants and food. Who wants to go home? Do employees value these surroundings as a key benefit?  This article doesn't mention the workplace environment in the top 10 Apple benefits.  They value health and wellness benefits, vacation and time off (the article says between 15 to 20 days per year - Ha ha!), parental leave, commuting, gym credit, stock purchase program, tuition and self improvement, retirement.   That outlier, Uber, has articles on how much its employees hate the corporate culture.  That palace is for the King's Court to revel in rather than for those dukes and earls below- that's the likely story there. And definitely Uber has the medieval sense of peasants out slogging in the fields.  These are some of my questions on the current state of capitalism.  Do we live with a capitalist system that's not much changed since it started?  Is there an uplift in circumstances of enough of the first world's population - to keep us complicit and celebrating capitalism.  Is that the scenario?   The headlines say that sort of thing:  "The magnificent progress achieved by capitalism". Today's image is another in the Leaves Series.

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Aug 20 2023 - Summer Songs

 

There are definitely songs that make us think of summer.  And the second half of the 20th century brought us a lot of them.  There are a quite a few lists that tell us the favourites.  I picked out these: (Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding Under the Boardwalk by the Drifters Summer in the City  by the Lovin’ Spoonful  Summertime by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong California Girls by the The Beach Boys The Summer Wind by Wayne Newton  There are more, lots more.  Every genre has them. There are classical music summertime songs. They all seem to have "summer" in the name, like Vivaldi's Summer. Summer is the great season.  It deserves all this musical attention. It makes me realize that with the rise of radio, popular and jazz music has come to define a society's experience of summer, not just a person's.  That "collective unconscious" has been growing.  Do we know what that signifies?  Not me.  It seems a mystery. Today we have some summer leaves.

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Aug 18 2023 - CNE Food

 

When did the CNE become the hot spot for strange food combinations?  This year there's quite a line-up covered extensively by blogTO HERE  "Choose from dill pickle fries, pickle cotton candy, and peanut butter pickle dogs; Fruity Pebble-topped mini pancakes and deep fried cheese curds covered in the cereal; and pink champagne mac and cheese, pink stuffed chimney cones, pink dragon fruit fluffy pancakes, pink pina colada sauce-covered nachos and an extra pink strawberry milkshake full of extravagant fixings. Continuing on the sensational side, there are also Korean fried frog legs, a whopping four-pound taco that is hard to carry with two hands, a burger with watermelon slices for buns, foot-long fries, bacon-wrapped chicken wings, a Krispy Kreme blueberry chicken sandwich, peanut butter jelly corn on the cob and street corn lemonade. The stars of this year's foods will definitely include the deep fried pizza slices from Pizza Pizza, which come in three varieties: classic, buffalo sauce, and hot honey-pickle-creamy garlic-Doritos. Another is the cheeseburger and street corn soft serve cones from So Cute Ice Cream, which is the same company behind the ketchup and mustard-flavoured desserts last year. If you can stomach them, the cheeseburger option comes with a pickle and pretzel in a cheese-coated waffle cone, while the street corn flavour includes lime, cotija cheese and chili seasoning on top." Do you want to see pictures of this weird stuff?  Here's the National Post coverage with pictures HERE.  I didn't find any history of the  CNE's weird food - it doesn't compete with a roller coaster or a ferris wheel, I guess.   Here's another watercolour image - this one of leaf pressings.

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Aug 3 2023 - Index Fingers

 

What is it about the index finger?  Why do I use it for so much?  Pointing, pressing, pinching, so many activities it is involved in. It is known as forefinger, first finger, second finger, pointer finger, trigger finger and so on.  We use it so much because it is the most dextrous and sensitive finger of the hand.  Index finger means pointing finger, so that's a lot of activity - identifying an item, person, place or object.  Babies begin pointing to communicate, so it is instinctive.  I wondered about that.  And it is considered to be one basis for the development of human language.   Of course there is that famous The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, 1512 that cemented the Index Finger into history. Index Finger jokes don't seem to be very entertaining.  Here's the example: Jimmy goes to the doctor and says, "Doctor, wherever I touch, it hurts." The doctor asks, "What do you mean?"   Jimmy says, "When I touch my shoulder, it really hurts. When I touch my knee it hurts! When I touch my forehead, it really, really hurts." Jimmy was diagnosed with a broken index finger later that day. And that's the best one... And then I found this picture and it seems a wonderful moment for the Index Finger.  What do you think?   Here we are with a bit of dew on blades of grass.

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