Mairlyn's PHotos - Nov 24 2025 - Rocket Launching

 

Is rocket building still popular?  I don’t remember building rockets in science class, but maybe rocket clubs came along after public school.  They would have been available to boys in the 1960s.   Today there are lots of toy rockets by Estes.  Beginner rockets are ones you easily assemble, they are colourful and ready-to-fly. They cost under $20 to over $150 for a Blast-Off Birthday party pack.  I guess there are 12 packs because once you start, you probably want to launch a few. The age group for stomp rockets is 6 and older.  The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory has an instruction set for rocket launching.  The paper rocket instructions, the Stomp rocket launcher (a PVC-pipe launcher which is teacher-built), altitude tracker, and data sheets, clipboards, a long measuring tape, and so on. Are you interested in the stomp rocket launcher?  It includes 2-litre soda bottles and duct tape. As the name suggests, students stomp on the body of the bottle to launch the rocket.  The NASA instructions include placing a basketball in the landing zone and have the students imagine that the ball is Mars.  Here’s the full set of instructions HERE.  It says that stomp rockets can launch quite high, up to 200 feet.  It seems to me that the altitude tracking methods are the most complicated part of the activity, having to use a protractor for the manual calculations. This is the simplest form of amateur rocketry. One can move on rocket motors and fuels, and on to significant sizes.  We’re coming up to Christmas train season.  This one is at Allan Gardens in Toronto.

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Marilyn's Photos - Oct 10 2025 - Collecting and Hoarding

 

If you get into the Guinness Book of Records, does it make whatever you are collecting seem legitimate? There’s a headline of a 22-year-old comic book fan from Indiana has a Guinness World record for her collection of 2,318 items related to the Joker.   The picture of her shows a very neat display of stuff.  And isn’t it stuff! Action figures tall and small, little bottles, toys, bicycles, shoes, all manner of stuff.  The video shows her with her collection HERE,  To get a Guinness Record, she had to measure and document each item and five expert witnesses had to oversee the process. That means she’s gone a step towards archivist, librarian and archeologist work.  But then it is hard to guess - she says her collection is always growing and she’s inspired to collect more.  She plans on trying to turn her collection into a museum.   The extreme neatness of the collection must be a major distinction compared to the disorder known as hoarding.  She’s out pursuing more items for her collection while a hoarder can’t seem to let things go and get rid of things.  Her’s is an organized collection whereas hoarding is most often a large group of  unrelated or marginally related objects, piled together.  I don’t expect it costs much to hoard.  There isn’t an outlay of money.   At the other end of the spectrum, the collector is likely investing quite a bit in the rare and unusual things that go into the collection.  The value of a Joker comic is one of those things:  “The Joker #1” from 2019 is valued at $2,760 in near-mint condition. There’s a Joker Comic Book Price Guide available. There’s a lot of  sites offering to help value Joker items. There must be a lot of collectors out there. And our picture today?  Out of the archives from our railroad trip to Maine.

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Marilyn's Photos - Sep 8 2025 - Ken Dryden's Famous Picture

 

There was discussion of Ken Dryden's career and most famous picture on the CBC radio the other day.  Which is this picture?  There are so many fantastic shots of him.   I finally fount it.  It isn't any of these.

Here it is finally and the text that brings it to life: "It is the image that personified him. The image of a man so confident and composed that he could relax as chaos whirled all around him. In this image, he is Ken Dryden: the thinker. In this image, he is also Ken Dryden: the admirer of what he considered the greatest show on ice, which he reviewed thoroughly in what might be the most captivating sports book ever penned, “The Game.” And a model railroad picture today. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Marilyn's Photos - Sep 2 2025 - When does Autumn Start in Placebo land?

 

Somehow we generally agree that Autumn starts September 1st.  My theory is the school year where we live which always starts the day after Labour Day.  Do we think the same thing about Winter?  I switch over to the solstice start - it goes with Christmas somehow.   I think I get confused with Spring and have a double celebration - both March 1st and then the equinox.  And the start of summer?  It's the astronomical system and  the solstice.  Then as Fall approaches what happens? I think of "back to school' and it is Autumn on September 1st.  I am validated by the drop in temperatures. So my seasons follow a path of a self-fulling prophecy.  Maybe that seems like a relatively good thing, if you think of the placebo effect - where one's medical circumstances improve without receiving the real medication, but an inactive one, aptly named a sugar pill.  Sstudies show over and over that even when we're told it is a placebo pill, we improve. there is also the nocebo effect where a negative outcome occurs due to a belief that the intervention will cause harm - again with no active ingredient involved, it happens.  There are hundreds of articles on the placebo effect.  That must mean there are hundreds of jokes:   What idiot decided to call it “randomized clinical trial with placebo” And not “trick or treatment” I’m addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn’t matter. I went to see The Cure in concert last weekend. Halfway through the show, a cover band called Placebo took their place on stage. I enjoyed both performances equally. This joke includes placebos, and seems outstanding to me. Reasons the idiot couldn't kill himself. He couldn't find the tailpipe on his Tesla. He jumped in front of a model train. The bullets wouldn't fit in the squirt gun. He overdosed on placebo pills. He jumped off a low bridge. He stuck a plastic fork in an outlet. He doused himself in diesel and tried to light it. He leaped into an animal cage at the petting zoo. Jumping in front of this model train ...how would that work?

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Marilyn's Photos - July 25 2025 - Blone Hair Huge Black Eyebrows

 

Blonde hair, huge black eyebrows.  What is that about? Don't you look at something and see it as though it is the first time you've seen this?  And then wonder what it is? "A bushy brow renaissance" is an expression in a Vogue article on blonde hair, black eyebrows. And: "The distinct contrast of light and dark renders caterpillar-like arches even more expressive, providing a delicate face with a high-impact frame." Did it start with Eva Peron or earlier than that?  Evita the perennial musical made it even more popular and gave it persistence as various stars mimickws the startling look.  And who stands out among them? Madonna is the notable one. "To get the look of Perón, Madonna sported wigs, prosthetic teeth, and contacts to get her character's look just right. When doing press for "Evita," Madonna channeled Perón's demure late '40s and early '50s looks. She attended the film's Los Angeles premiere wearing a red floral hat with a veil designed by Givenchy. Madonna's throwback glamor was so marketable that her looks in the film inspired retailers to jump on the glamor bandwagon. Bloomingdale's opened "Evita" boutiques and Estée Lauder sold "The Face of Evita" makeup pallets." Along the way, I saw this article on Madonna and her many "looks" as she matured and aged - she's now 68.  Here's another "for the first time" experience:  What a shocking set of images - to see them one after the other - HERE - the Evolution of Madonna's face.  Remember the recent obituary of the woman who had the most facial surgery? That's what one of the last picturea of Madonna looks like. And the final picture returns to something almost acceptable with her at the Met Gala where she's in a shiny white men's suit with her boyfriend, Akeem Morris, who is 29 .  And it all starts with blonde hair and bushy black eyebrows.

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Marilyn's Photos - July 17 2025 - Whilst

 

What do you think of the word "whilst"?  Or do you think about it?  Cathal Kelly started his column with this word today.  That's in the Sports section.  It is about The Open.  It isn't about the British Open.  Or The British Open.  It is about The Open.  So much said with upper case and no adjectives - the point of his article.  Whilst is getting hard to find in the search engine controlled by Google's AI, so I went onto Duck A Go Go even though it also has an AI search component that prefaces all retrievals with its "answer."   The story goes that while and whilst mean the same when we use them as conjunctions. They both mean ‘during the time that something else happens’, or ‘in contrast with something else’.  And the obvious: While is much more common than whilst, and whilst sounds more formal: From writing explained.org: Whilst is an old word. It originates from Middle English, and like many words from this era, was first used in the 14th century. Whilst is common in formal British English, but in American English, you rarely see this word, even in the most formal occasion. Whilst and while are two spellings of the same word, which can be used as a conjunction or an adverb. It means at the same time or whereas. The article by Cathal Kelly in today's globe is:  "At The British Open, establishing linguistic supremacy is the name of the game." I sought out more quotes from Kelly, as he is very humorous in his sports writing. I found this one from his book:  “(Umbert Eco) told a story about his library, which contained ten thousand volumes. (Someone) asked if he’d read all of them... « Of course I haven’t read them all. If I had, why would I keep them? » That line hit me like a lighting bolt. That was the purpose of life. Not accumulating knowledge, or rounding out an area of expertise or building a collection. But recognizing that for some people who come to it early and without being forced, LIFE IS A LONG SEARCH FOR THE NEXT GREAT BOOK.” ― Cathal Kelly, Boy Wonders: A memoir

Model layouts and contest entries from narrow gauge conventions past. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Mar 17 2025 - Noises Off

 

Noise and sound are similar.  The big difference is that noise is considered unwanted or unpleasant sound.  This has come to my attention recently with the loud music in the gym at the Y.  Music is an important component of exercise - it sets the tempo with the beats per minute.  Kenny, the Total Fit instructor was telling me all the BPMs for the various types of exercise - cycle fit, muscle fit, cardio, etc.   It is the loudness factor that has my attention.  That's where the sound heads into noise territory for me. So I got a decibel app to find out if things were really loud or if I had hearing sensitivities. The conclusion is that the sound is loud in the gym.  The app says that over 80 decibels is concerning. It got me thinking about all the kinds of sound there are - and let's just look at the sounds that the human body makes.  I found a picture chart for some of them.  Is drool a sound?   The article covers well over 100 of these sorts of things - it is HERE.   We can make a lot of sounds, so there's likely a subsequent chart for which are unpleasant. If drool is a sound, I vote that drool is unpleasant.

And then the human voice can produce 500 different consonant sounds and 200 vowel sounds.  Take English, it uses only 24 consonant themes and 15 vowel phonemes.   I seem to think that we take most of this for granted.  We have geared our education towards the thinking end of things and mostly ignore sound except for music. The Guinness Book of Records has the longest continuous held note (more than 2 minutes), the loudest scream, the lowest vocal note by a female.The loudest burp (109 decibels) compares to the loudest snore, which is not quite as loud at 93 decibels.   There we are again, back to measuring the decibels of sounds.

This is a HDR rendering - you can see the Photomatix imprint - I was trialling it yesterday after deciding that I would like more HDR images.  Some time ago Photomatix got lost from my Photoshop plugins with an upgrade. I was using another software plugin to do HDR type images.  But that plug in is now gone too, so Photomatix needs to get reinstalled.   The result is a happy engineer at Strasburg showcasing the grime on his overalls!   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 17 2025 - The Snow Storm Finishes

 

The winter storm finished, and so has its place in all the news feeds. This file is no longer being updated is the news now.   The last update from the Toronto Star was 7:00pm with TTC Streecar delays after tracks were blocked with vehicles.  Which one?  Of course - the 504 King - it had no service near Roncesvalles at Queen Street West.  Even the TTC stopped subway service along the subway lines yesterday.   CTV has an update or two today - there's still no subway service between Bloor-Yonge and Eglinton stations.  With the storm in Niagara concluding yesterday, the weather news has turned to Niagara Falls with them assuring visitors that the streets will be plowed.  However, just popped up for Niagara Falls is a forecast of more flurries later today.  And as I look outside with the sun shinning, there is snow in the sky.  Looking at the radar, these are the "streamers" - lake-effect snow in narrow bands coming off of Lake Huron.  It is very pretty to look at.  Millie is  a bit confused with the snow in the back yard being higher than she is.   To keep us entertained, there's a story of a "Cake Bandit" - an opossum in Nebraska that has eaten an entire Costco cake and  had to be hospitalized.  I guess the owner had put it outside on the back porch. The opossum helped herself - I would assume the problem was that it was chocolate and being from Costco, was probably the size of a small children's swimming pool.   There are lots of Reddit entries on what are the dimensions of Costco's bar cakes and how much does a Costco chocolate mousse cake weigh - one answer claimed it was almost 5 pounds.  That's probably the size of the opossum. You can find out every massive Costco dessert, ranked by size.  That's at the Eat This, Not That site HERE.   You can even take a look at the Chocolate Mousse cake.  Enjoy.

Wish Gerry Happy Birthday today!   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca