Sep 19 2024 - Canadian Awkward Moments

 

I expect there is a through-line between politeness and awkward moments.  There are lots of awkward moments for Canadians on the internet.   Canadian have enough awkward moments that there's a CBC article detailing Canadian and U.S. leaders from 1965 to 2019.  Wouldn't you conclude that's a long history of not getting along.  Here's the relationship to politeness.   Before he became prime minister, Lester B. (Mike) Pearson was a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957. But when he made a speech accepting a similar prize, the World Peace Award, from Philadelphia's Temple University in 1965, the reaction from his U.S. counterpart was anything but peaceful. "You pissed on my rug!" Lyndon B. Johnson told Pearson, as retold by journalist Lawrence Martin in his 1982 book, The Presidents and the Prime Ministers.   Here's a moment of  cultural differences: "Martin's book told another story. An enraged Johnson lit into Pearson on an outdoor terrace after lunch at the Presidential retreat Camp David the day after his speech. As two aides and the Canadian ambassador looked on through a window, Johnson grabbed Pearson by the shirt collar, twisted it, and lifted the Canadian by the neck." And then Trudeau and Nixon: ...a telephone conversation Nixon had with Trudeau would be recorded in the Oval Office, along with pejorative remarks about the prime minister that the U.S. president made to staff ahead of the call. Trudeau would later quip that he had been called "worse things by better people." Good to know that our world leaders have the distinction of being like the rest of us.

A nice country road on a railroad layout. A nice country road on a railroad layout.

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Oct 6 2022 - Most Unique

 

How many variations of unique are there?  Given the definition says "being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else,"  my expectation is none. There are no adjectives to the adjective.  I just saw Bing use the phrase "most unique", so got to wondering how far down the evolutionary path we've gone with this word.  "Truly unique shows up in Collins Dictionary - "You use truly to emphasize that something has all the features or qualities of a particular thing, or is the case to the fullest possible extent.   This is a turn of phrase that is seen in newspaper reporting.  All the examples come from news articles.   There are lots of occurrences of Truly Unique - Disc Golf, a Gift Shop, laser-engraving business,  pasta, beauty boutique.   Unique is a synonym to distinctive, so could something be truly distinctive?  Distinctive's definition -"clearly marking a person or a thing as different from others.  It turns out that there is no "truly distinctive" in Collins Dictionary.  Instead, there is highly distinctive in Collins Dictionary.   Again the examples cited come from news articles. And you can find the two used together - I guess it brings extra emphasis -  "A unique and highly distinctive sofa."   How do you catch a unique rabbit? Unique up on it. How do you catch a tame one? Tame way. Unique up on it. I met a girl named Unique today. She has a twin sister.

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Feb 18 2022 - In History Today

 

It is time for the good news website and they story that attracted attention is this one about a family of cats that lives in a model railroad in a restaurant.   When you look at the picture below, you would not be a pleased model railroader to see this story.  "At one Osaka restaurant nearly done in by the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a band of non-marauding “Catzillas” that stepped in to save the day. Naoki Teraoka’s miniature-railway-themed restaurant was doing well until the pandemic struck. Like many others in the industry, as patronage dwindled, there wasn’t much he could do. Things got so bad the restauranteur was actually thinking of closing his doors—until an unlikely hero in the form of a stray kitten turned things around. Even in the midst of financial turmoil, Teraoka didn’t have the heart to turn away the sickly kitten he’d noticed hanging around the restaurant. He and his family decided to adopt the baby cat they named Simba—only to realize Simba was part of a package deal. This was followed by her mother and siblings.   The cats began making themselves at home amidst the restaurant’s perfectly scaled model train dioramas. Though diminutive in real life, the kitties towered over the miniature landscapes looking very much like something out of a movie." The story takes a turn - while the model trains remained an attraction, Teraoka transformed the place into a cat sanctuary where patrons could interact with stray cats as they dined - and even adopt them.  The restaurant grew in popularity and expanded operations.  Happy conclusion to the pandemic tragedy. The full story is HERE.   Would the cat be eating the grass, swatting the horses, and prowling down the tracks?  You get to decide Good News Cat Story or Bad Mews for the Model Railroad Story!

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Aug 19 2021 - Carl Sagan's Thoughts on the Most Asked Questions

 

Carl Sagan: “I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgements.” What would Carl Sagan say about the most asked questions in the world?   Google has lots of them and lots of information about them.   Here are the top questions: when are the nba playoffs – 5,000,000. what is my ip address – 4,090,000. where's my refund – 3,350,000. what is love – 1,830,000. how to draw – 1,500,000. where am i – 1,220,000. how many weeks in a year – 823,000. when are the early signs of pregnancy – 673,000. Google displays them equally -  from the stupid to the sublime. Are the top 3 questions hilariously mundane?  Can you imagine so many people wanting a refund? Or is it one persistent person/bot hitting the return key over and over?   Google has analysis on the "what", the "why", the "who", "when", "where", "how", and then also these: "does", "is", "can" and "are" questions.   The #1 "why" question is: "Why were cornflakes invented", followed by "why you so obsessed with me".  Just to be clear, the full question is this:  "Why were Kellogg's Corn Flakes invented and was it to stop masturbation?" Now that's quite a question!  The top "who" question is: "Who do i look like?"  followed by "who am i".  The first may refer to look-alike celebrity apps, and the second could be a Casting Crowns video or life's unanswerable question. There is a tie for "how" questions: how to draw how to make slime how to screenshot on a  mac how to tie a tie Aren't these such tidbits of entertainment, tumbling out in different shapes and sizes.  Some the province of children learning about the world, and others the rants and rages of possibly immature adults. Why scrutinize the questions?  I keep thinking they point to the decline of basic faculties.  I've been looking through Carl Sagan's words. He is quoted so much because he said so many profound things.  In relation to our most asked questions, I think they reveal his "foreboding". A year before his death, in 1995, he wrote this: I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness… And our photos today?  I had an enjoyable trip through the photo archives of St. Louis, 2010.  I thought you might enjoy some of the model railroads.

Mar 11 2021 - One Liners

 

I thought a one-liner joke was one line.  It says it is a short joke or witty remark.  Is there a shortest joke?   There is a record for the most jokes in one minute.  I found George Valentine achieved an amazing number in 2014 with 62 jokes in one minute. He was 76 years old.  His favourite short joke is "obesity cures wrinkles".  He has mastered the art of jokes that are between two and four words.  Can you imagine being this creative and inventive?  He said it was just a hobby and he didn't do this full-time. He says he's penned more than 100,000 one-liners in 64 years.  They include:  "familiarity breeds", "rowing is oarsmen", "friendly fire isn't" and "teachers have class".   But this was in his own video and doesn't count as a qualified record in the Guinness Book of Records. But another British person, Clive Greenaway, holds the Guinness world record with 26 jokes told in one minute.  One of the key rules states that the jokes told must draw a reaction or laugh from the audience.    That's a lot to me.  We'd have to be able to understand what he says, respond quickly and he's on to the next joke.  I haven't found the most famous one-liner.     Aren't these incredible trees on this railroad layout. Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Dec 15 2020 - Christmas Train

 

I was able to upload yesterday's train pictures, so we have more trains today.  there is a huge mountain side cloud passing south - when I first saw it, it seemed like mountains in the distance.  But now it is starting to swing overhead, like real clouds.  The weather forecast gives no indication of snow squalls for Grimsby,but this looks like it could be snow. There's no CP Holiday train  this year - not the Polar Express either this year.  The CP Holiday Train first began in 1999, and has since brought a lit-up locomotive across Canada and the northern U.S. to raise money, collect food and draw attention to the needs of local food banks. CP says it is replacing its train with a virtual concert.  It has raised more than $17.8 million and 4.8 million pounds of food. There are many Polar Express Trains - The Grand Canyon, Adirondack, Napa Valley, and many more.  What about Durango's?     "Because we care about your safety, this year, The Polar Express™Train Ride will look different in the following ways: The train ride itself will be shorter and will be about 35 minutes in duration but the overall event duration will be longer. The entire event will last a little over an hour. The North Pole will be located on the back lot of the depot. Santa will be seated at a distance from guests but will be available for socially distanced photos. Hot Chocolate and cookies will be served at the end of the event but not on the train. The first gift of the season (Christmas Bell) will be distributed at the end of the event. The event dances will be performed outside on the platform or on a stage. A conductor will lead the event in each car. Some of the windows in each heated coach will be open to promote the circulation of air flow." Read about it HERE. That would be amazing - to go through snow-covered mountains.

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Aug 9 2020 - And then there were Bicycle seat back rests!

 

There is a website dedicated to bicycle seats.  There are ones with back rests.  There are all kinds of seats - comfort seats, tailbone - coccyx relief seats, sport saddles, new arrivals, seat posts, and so on. The site business is located in Rexford, MT.  There are dozens of seats now available.  Arthur Garford is credited with inventing the padded bicycle seat in 1892.   The bicycle first came along in 1817.  The first verifiable claim for a useable bicycle is Baron Karl von Drais, a civil servant in Germany.  He called it the running machine.  It was two-wheeled, steerable, and human propelled.  The year before had been the Year without a Summer because of the volcanic eruption of Tambora:  Crops failed and horses died of starvation.  It was a catastrophic year, with no transportation available.  The summers came back and the bicycle stayed with us.  I found this joke amongst the top 10 bicycle jokes: Two nerds are riding along on a tandem bicycle when, suddenly, the one on the front slams on the brakes, gets off, and starts letting air out of the tires. The one on the back says: "HEY! What are you doing that for?!" The first nerd says, "My seat was too high and was hurting my butt. I wanted to lower it a bit." So the one in the back has had enough. He jumps off, loosens his own seat and spins it round to face the other direction. Now it's the first guy's turn to wonder what's going on. "What are you doing?" he asks his friend. "Look, mate," says the rider in the back, "if you're going to do stupid stuff like that, I'm going home!!" This scene comes from last year's train convention  - with its airplane in the sky and got out the handy Skylum software.

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June 22 2020 - The Whispering Gallery

A whispering gallery is usually a circular, hemispherical, elliptical or ellipsoidal enclosure, often beneath a dome or a vault, in which whispers can be heard clearly in other parts of the gallery. Such galleries can also be set up using two parabolic dishes. Sometimes the phenomenon is detected in caves.   Today the structures with these properties are famous as destinations to experience the phenomenon.  They include the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, the U.S. Capital Building in Washington, the Whispering Arch in Gorlitz, Germany.  Here's the description for St. Paul's Cathedral and Grand Central Station: St. Paul's Cathedral in London is considered one of the most famous whispering galleries.  The architect was Christopher Wren, and it is said he didn't design the balcony for its acoustic properties.  In the late 1870s, the British Physicist Lord Rayleigh experiments proved the existence of 'whispering gallery waves' that travel along a curvilinear path.  Grand Central Station in New York City has a herringbone-tiled roof arching outside the Grand Central Oyster Bar that has a whispering gallery.  Rather than transmitting the whispers horizontally, sounds waves shoot up one of the four corners, along the arched surface of the ceiling, and back down the pillar on the opposite side. Travelers passing through Grand Central will know they’ve found the right spot when they see what looks like tourists talking to themselves in the corners. Find more Whispering Galleries described HERE. Our pictures today are the result of wonderful railroad modelling work.

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June 14 2020 - What makes the Lake turn pink?

They aren't sure what makes the lake turn pink, but famous Lonar Lake has turned pink this week.  They think it may be: increased salinity in the water, the presence of algae or a combination of both.  The lake is 500 kilometres east of Mumbai, India.  The video and story are HERE.  It is an impact crater lake, caused by a meteor hitting the earth about 50,000 years ago. The water in the lake is both saline and alkaline, according to Wikipedia.  The Lonar salts are derived from an unknown source in the bed of the lake. And the lake has two distinct regions that do not mix - an outer neutral and an inner alkaline.  Each has its own flora and fauna.  The lake appears green for most of the year.  You can go to the Wikipedia site, and see the lake green and then pink.  The link is HERE.  When I looked at the link, it said  "travel/2020". Can travel be a normal subject term anymore?  It has changed significantly in just a few months.  Now travel topics are about restrictions on flights and travel advisories from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.  A Wall Street Journal's article outlines how difficult "vacation travel" is right now and it does say that some countries are allowing in residents of neighbouring nations, creating a "tourism bubble."  There's an urgency to be able to reopen for tourists. That's because $2.9 trillion U.S. is at stake globally.  Did you know that the city and special administrative region of Macau (in China) generated the highest share of GDP through direct travel and tourism of any economy worldwide at just over 50%?  It is largely based on casino gaming and tourism.  My interest in travel and tourism is garden tourism.  And our picture today was taken at Butchard Gardens last September.  With the addition of one of the dramatic Skylum skies, a section of the garden with its composition of the plants and trees takes on a sense of drama.  Our second picture of a model railroad has its own drama - there's a strange skull collection in the bottom left.  I wonder what the railroad story is there.

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Speaking Naturally

"Are you one of the 6,000 people in the world who speaks Chalcatongo Mixtec? Congratulations! You speak the world’s weirdest language. That’s what Tyler Schnoebelen and the researchers at Idibon, a natural language processing company, found when they statistically compared 239 languages to see how like or unlike they were to one another." That's from an article HERE - it describes the findings of the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) ... "a large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars) by a team of 55 authors. WALS Online is a publication of the  Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.  Can you imagine ranking all the languages to decide which are the most 'difficult'.  WALS evaluates 2,676 languages in terms of 192 linguistic features. We are fascinated by the most weird.  There are languages that are the "least weird"- these include Cantonese, Hungarian, Chamorro, and Imbabura Quechua. And where does English stand in terms of weird?  It is ranked 33 out of 239 languages, so is determined by WALS to be weird, with more than 80% of its features being uncommon in other languages.  That explains the hundreds and hundreds of great grammar jokes.  But I've chosen just one: An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative." A voice from the back of the room said, "Yeah, right."  Today we have railroad pictures from the Hickory convention. I like the first picture showing the scale of the Sundance layout.

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