Personal Blogs

As Mother always used to say, don’t eat with your mouthful.

Have I told you this before?

It was a joke about time travel.

But you didn't laugh.

Here is a classic puzzle. I don't know its origin for sure, but I think Martin Gardiner might have published it in his long-standing Scientific American column.

I have three bags and I know one contains apples, one contains pears, and the third both apples and pears.

Each bag is labelled to say what its contents are but unfortunately the labels have got swapped round so all three are wrong.

I am allowed to choose one bag and take out a single fruit. I want to work out what the correct labelling of all the bags should be. How can I do it?

I can’t get rid of

Junk that whispers “One day”

You’ll need me again”

I’ve recently got a job rating refrigerators. That makes me a refrigerator rater.

I was pleased to see this morning that my lungwort is blooming. I only acquired it last summer and didn't know that it is an early flowering plant.

Lunwort, of which many species exist, has the Latin name pulmonaria and gets both names from the fact that it was traditionally supposed to be good for lung complaints.

The basis of this idea was the doctrine of signatures (see https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=161437 for more on this), which held that for any given disease providence has supplied a natural remedy which can be recognised by its resemblance to an organ affected by the disease. The spotted leaves of lungwort look like a diseased lung, hence the belief that it is good for lung complaints.

These jonquils are out early!

My brother Simon photographed these attractive little birds. Lapwings used to be much commoner. In England numbers have declined by 80% since 1960.

The bird is also known as the Green Plover, or Peewit from its plaintive cry. These birds nest on the ground, and the name Lapwing seems to come from the bird attracting potential predators away from its nest by dragging its wing to appear an easy target.

Would Pa eat yeast extract? No, but Ma might.