Nov 30 2023 - A Cannibal Solar Storm

 

What might a cannibal solar storm be?  It is called a "Cannibal CME" in the Weather Network article. It results in a colourful aurora.   The article is about a G3 geomagnetic storm overnight Thursday into Friday.  You can read the scientific explanation HERE.  Why is it called a cannibal? The CME sparked by Tuesday's solar flare could catch up to a few other CMEs out ahead of it, potentially combining into a “cannibal” CME that could produce a G3 geomagnetic storm, SpaceWeather.com said. When the headline initially popped up and disappeared, I read it as a cannibal snowstorm.  That's a different story altogether.  The Donner Party is the story that comes up.  This occurred in 1846 when a part of migrants travelled across the U.S. to California and got stuck in a snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada mountains.   When food ran out, some members of the group reportedly resorted to cannibalism of those already dead. Their journey started on July 31st. They reached the Sierra Foothills in October.  Donner Lake is where camp was made. They endured an eight day continuous snowstorm.  Over the winter, various groups left, and people remaining died of starvation/malnutrition. Some were rescued in February.  At the end of the ordeal there were 42 dead and 47 survivors.  The story of cannibalism was well-known through the stories and accounts of the members of the rescue parties .  In 2010 researchers looked for human bones as physical evidence of the story.  But none were found.  An interesting cautionary tale for those travelling to the West.    If only the journey were so straight-forward as this trail.

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Oct 25 2023 - What is snake oil?

 

The expression "snake oil" seems familiar from movies and television.  I wonder if that's the case, or just the thoughts of things past.   Oxford English Dictionary defines snake oil as "a quack remedy or panacea." The 1800s saw thousands of Chinese workers arriving in the United States as indentured laborers to work on the Transcontinental Railroad. Among the items the Chinese railroad workers brought with them to the States were various medicines — including snake oil. Made from the oil of the Chinese water snake, which is rich in the omega-3 acids that help reduce inflammation, snake oil in its original form really was effective, especially when used to treat arthritis and bursitis.The story goes that the Chinese workers began sharing the oil with some American counterparts, who marveled at the effects. Without Chinese water snakes handy in the American West, many healers began using rattlesnakes to make their own versions. The entrepreneur Clark Stanley, known as The Rattlesnake King, claimed he had learned about the healing power of rattlesnake oil from Hopi medicine men. Rattlesnakes oil wasn't effective, so there it was - a fraud. And did I seem to remember snake oil from Western films?  Yes, Wikipedia says it was a popular trope in Western films.

Blossoms line this walkway. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

July 5 2023 - Fashion Alert - More than just sleeves too long

 

I haven't looked at fashion trends for a while, and took a look at Vogue's trends for Spring 2023 - what people would be wearing now.   I don't see a correlation between Vogue and real life.  There's some kind of relationship between the prices in the Vogue article and what is on the racks at our retail stores but I haven't guessed it.  What got me by surprise was the numerous excessive length-of-sleeve tops.  One might think this is a good thing for older women with arms no longer fashionably show-worthy.  This is the opposite results - where overlong sleeves "turn a person into a child".  There is much made about long sleeves looking childish. Humorous childish long sleeve t-shirts are witness to this.  And then headlines asking how to solve a three year old who refuses to wear long sleeves. Here's what this fashion magazine.com article says of the style: "Though they hint at destitution, excessive sleeves also convey its opposite, which is the hands-free existence of the ultra-leisured class. The very well heeled have never opened their own doors or carried their own shopping bags, so what does it matter if they cannot? But there is a more pernicious and, dare I say, even sinister interpretation of the trend for those who do use their hands on occasion: It hobbles the wearer. Oversized clothes and sleeves turn a person into a child. One burrows into clothes that are too big; one hides in them. Long sleeves conceal multitudes from the public eye: a knife, a con artist’s ace of spades, a self-harmer’s scars. And prolonged sleeves, which are buckled together like a straitjacket, signify helplessness—the utmost loss of control." These are the thoughts of fashion critics.  Let's turn to psychologists.  The good therapy.orgarticle on the link between clothing choices and emotional states is HERE.  Their study found that there is a strong link between clothing and mood state.  There's a lot made of jeans being an indication of a negative mood. “The study mentions that happy clothes include well-cut, figure-enhancing items made from bright and beautiful fabrics,” Heathman said. If I apply that to the fashion industry, I would conclude that its social and mental state is one of depression and anxiety. Fashion models appear to be younger than adults - teenagers who look sullen and pouty.  The clothing styles are wild and strange - perhaps like cartoons, animated movies and computer games.   Or perhaps the fashion industry manifests the current social state.  Dress scholars Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Eicher find that dress is one of the main ways to send social signals - what we wear shows our identity. It could be that our fashion industry is signalling that there are serious social problems.  While the Atlantic has weighed saying that fashion has abandoned human taste, perhaps it isn't that simple. What got me wondering about all of this were the images in Grazia  -  some of the sleeves reach the ground and some of the outfits don't seem to be "clothes." You can click through then slide show by clicking at the first image HERE.   But then I've extracted a few for you here.  The long sleeves are particularly obviously long.    Here's a nice walk in the woods. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Beb 10 2023 - Pausers and Fillers

Pausers and fillers seem to be more common now than the words they are pausing between.  And there are lots of them. Google says:  Scholars have narrowed down the causes of filler words into three categories: divided attention, infrequent words, and nervousness. Each of these activities can cause an increase in verbal disfluency, thus resulting in filler words interrupting speech. Now Bing, in its "NEW" version looks like this below.  On the psychology of filler words, it says this: Filler words also appear in speech when an individual uses words that he or she uses infrequently. In the International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, Dockrell et al. state that infrequent words are a major cause of the appearance of filler words. Infrequent words are simply words that we do not use on a daily basis and are therefore somewhat foreign to our mental dictionaries. Filler words, then, appear when someone is having difficulty processing a word. This means that a person’s brain cannot locate a word, which will cause him or her to pause, frequently throwing um in its place until the word, or a synonymous word, is found and used in speech. There is lots of advice saying it's not the end of the world to use these words, and at the same time there are lots of tips of avoid them.  There isn't anything on whether they are more prevalent today.  My theory is that we live at hyper speed, so a slight pause is an invitation for an interruption to take over the conversation.  This seems to revolutionize the speed and rhythm of speech.  Who knows how we actually spoke 500 years ago? Is this a contemporary filler word on the wall?  Love! Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

 

Would you hunt for treasure?

Do you know about the Forrest Fenn Hidden Treasure?   After becoming a pilot in the Air Force in the 1960s, Fenn regularly flew his plane to Pompeii to look for artifacts, of which he found plenty. Diagnosed with kidney cancer in the 1980s, Fenn decided to hide his most beloved artifacts and give everyone clues to find his treasure, which he estimates to hold  up to $5 million worth of gold, jewelry, and other valuable artifacts.   Read the story HERE.  This is an excerpt: "Fenn was living lavishly with his wife Peggy in Santa Fe in 1988 when he received a grim diagnosis; kidney cancer. When Fenn faced what he thought was the end of his life, he began thinking about what his legacy might be.  He purchased a 12th-century Romanesque 10 by 10-inch lockbox and secretly filled it with valuable artifacts including a copy of his autobiography. Fenn planned to haul the treasure into the mountains and die beside it, but he beat cancer and the treasure sat untouched in a vault in his home — until 2010. 22 years after receiving his cancer diagnosis, Forrest Fenn launched his treasure hunt to the world.  His self-published memoir, The thrill of the Chase, contains a roadmap within a 24-stanza poem, with nine clues.   In its eight-year existence, Fenn claims that over 300,000 people have attempted to find his hidden treasure and he receives 100 emails per day from hunters attempting to solicit clues as to the treasure’s location. No one has found the treasure, and a number deaths have been attributed to it.  There are special sites for accumulating information about the clues or for ruminating on the uselessness of the chase. And then there are references to him having dementia, so the location may be lost even to him. Two monks in the Japanese Garden at Butchart.  There was a group of them on a 'school outing'.

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