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The origin is Old Norse hus-thing, “house meeting”, and referred to an assembly of the people in the household of a noble man or woman. Over time its meaning has come to mean a platform for politicians to make speeches from.
The thing element just meant assembly and survives today in the name of the Icelandic supreme parliament, the Alþingi.
Old English also had folk-moot, “folk meeting”. Here moot is the same as in the phrase “a moot point” = a point to be discussed and also found in moot hall. Folkmoot survives but mainly in historical contexts.
A delegation of villagers sought an audience with the abbot.
Reverend sir, they asked; when is the best time to plant a tree?
Ten years ago, replied the abbot.
Or sooner if possible.
Suppose someone is going to read out to you the numbers 1-100 in random order, but they will miss one out. When they have finished you will be asked which number was missed.
You have no means of recording the numbers as they are read, and although you are quite good at mental arithmetic you only have an average memory and remembering the entire list of numbers as they were read out is beyond you.
What is the best way to identify the missing number?
You have no means of recording the numbers as they are read, and although you are quite good at mental arithmetic you only have an average memory and remembering the entire list of numbers as they were read out is beyond you.
What is the best way to identify the missing number?
I neglected my allotment and finally the council took it off me. They said I’d lost the plot.
A few days ago I wrote about an elegant proof that a regular dodecahedrons has 4 diagonals that all intersect at a point other than the centre of the polygon, see https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=248909
Since then I have found a paper by Poonen and Rubenstein [1] in which they completely solve the problem of concurrent diagonals in regular polygons. They prove several interesting facts, including:
If the number of sides is odd there can never be 3 concurrent diagonals.
The smallest number of sides that allow 3 diagonals to meet at a point other than the centre is eight, for diagonals twelve sides are needed, and for 5 concurrent diagonals eighteen sides.
To get more than 5 diagonals meeting at a point other than the centre we need to go to thirty sides. The regular triacontagon has sets of 6 and 7 concurrent diagonals.
And then suprisingly it stops. No regular polygon, however many sides it has, can have eight or more diagonals intersecting at a point other than the centre.
[1] https://mathproblems123.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/ngon.pdf
This sounded like a portent of doom
“So fear the wren”.
But the speaker was actually talking about a film star.
Looks like all the graphics have disappeared.
Interesting how cliches morph into phrases totally disconnected with the original. Tonight I heard ‘Beats into a cocktail’. The speaker didn’t mean egg flip, just that A was hugely better than B.
But that’s how language changes and all power to it.
I got this message in my Celestial Mailbox
Dear Earthdweller
For maintenance reasons, the Milky Way will be unavailable for up to 10,000 Earth years from next Tuesday.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
The Galactic Team
It’s hot now and we complain.
But soon the snow will blow.
At the first flake, we’ll shiver and shake.
Wishing summer back again.
Anon
Problem 1358 at gogeometry [1] asked for a proof that in a regular 12-sided polygon the four diagonal shown all meet at a point. This is quite surprising; it\'s not hard to find threee diagonals the meet at a single point but four is rarer.
After playing arouind for a while I found a proof which was reasonably neat, but I had to use sines and cosines at one point, and I'd hoped for something simpler; and there was nothing very illuminating about my proof in any case. Stan Fulger came up with something much more insightful. Here is his beautiful answer.
It uses two well-known facts about triangles.
The altitudes of a triangle, i.e. the lines drawn from each vertex at 90° to the opposite side, meet at a point.
The angle bisectors of a triangle, i.e. the lines which divide each angle in half, meet at a point.
For example
Now for a "look and see" proof.
In the picture below three diagonals are angle bisectors in the blue triangle, so they meet at a point. Also three diagonals are altitudes of the orange triangle and therefore meet at a point. Two of the diagonals are both a bisector in one triangle and an altitude in the other. Therefore all four diagonals meet at a point.
I drew the figures above using GeoGebra classic.
[1] Geometry problem 1358 https://gogeometry.com/school-college/4/p1358-dodecagon-regular-concurrency-diagonal-infographic-classes.htm
You can marshal an argument, or you might be a marshal in a sporting event, or you might be a Field Marshal, and there are many other usages but they generally are to do with organising or leading some activity.
Where does the word descend from? Well rather amazingly it originally meant someone who looked after horses. It's from early Germanic *markhaz "horse" + *skalkaz "servant". The asterisks indicate that these words are not actually attested - we don' thave them written down anywhere, so the exact words are a guess. But the first element is like "mare" and a word "scealc" appears in Old English.
The word came to us from Norman French and the French for a farrier (a smith who shoes horses) is still "maréchal-ferrant".
To conclud, here is a rather nice quote from an early printed book, courtesey of the OED.
1474 W. Caxton tr. Game & Playe of Chesse
(1883)
iii. ii. 85
All maner of werkemen, as goldsmithes, marchallis, smithes of all forges.
Thanks also to RobWords for his excellent YouTube video on military titles.
I bought some drops for removing earwax. They contain Urea Hydrogen Peroxide...
So you are literally putting urea in your ear.
Why is Y pronounced ‘Why’?
Trivial yet extraordinary subject of theory (10)
In my garden I’ve got quite a few climbing plants.
Cultivated: Roses, Runner Beans, Sweet Potato, Nicotiana
Wild: Bindweed, Ivy, White Bryony, Blackberry
I’ve always marvelled at climbers and there’s a famous Flanders and Swann song containing the lines
The fragrant honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun,
And many other creepers do the same.
But some climb anti-clockwise, the bindweed does, for one,
Or Convolvulus, to give her proper name.…
So today I was thinking about climbers and a bit of research came up with this wonderful summary. See what you think.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/apr/13/shopping.gardens2
How do you persuade a profiterole to go away? Say choux.
Most people are just ordinary crastinators but I’m a pro.
Mind you, it’s taken 10,000 hours of putting things off to get where I am.
lachsschinken: A kind of cured, salted, smoked ham originally from Bavaria. The name derives from the German lachs + schinken = ‘salmon ham’, from the bright pink colour of the meat. I found the word from today’s Word watch in The Times and what impressed me was the consonant cluster ‘chssch’ in the middle.
If I say the best thing to do about Eeyore is ignore him, then I haven’t ignored him, have I?
I went into a marquee and hung about a bit. A bloke came up and asked me what I was doing. I said loitering within tent.
My friend Michèle videoed these cygnets playing. I didn't know they did this but as you see they are very lively and quite chaming. This is a YouTube video and if you click on it you can make it full screen in the usual way.
Knock-knock!
Who’s there?
Ash.
Ash who?
Bless you!
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