I've had plenty of tough cases. One was the letter 'e'. In denial but wouldn't admit it.
Personal Blogs
Say what you like about self-isolation, but at least you know where you are with it.
I always wanted to be in a Gregorian choir. But I never got the chance.
Joke from Jeff Esworthy, picture from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1038066
One way or another we all know Luigi Boccherini's 'Celebrated Minuet'. It's one of most famous classical tunes of all time. A Google search for 'Boccherini minuet' throws up plenty of hits for it.
But; for a very long time I never even considered what else Boccherini might have written. Like Pachebel's Canon, this piece seemed a singular achievement, a one-off, a kind of outlier in an otherwise unspectacular body of work.
Guess what: that was plain wrong. I'm far from alone in underestimating Boccherini, but in the last few years the talent of this composer has become far better recognised. The excellent classic music service WKSU played some pieces of his recently, and I saw what I was missing.
At home tonight we listened to Boccherini during dinner, and it was lovely.
Can anyone think why 23 is an INTERESTING NUMBER ... from any point of view?
There must be many possible answers. Interest is what we have as an individual but want to share with others.
Smneooe rinemded me rtlenecy of the qtuie aihntssonig fact taht as long as you keep the frsit and lsat letrets of each word in the rhigt pcale you can mldude up the ltertes in the mldide of the wdors and the wolhe thing wlil still be pfrlceety easy to usnrnedatd I wtore a prrogam to try this out and here is the rulest of a tset run. You sluhod esialy be albe to follow waht the mgsaese was
(My program can't handle punctuation properly yet but I can sort that out)
Not all sentences are equal though, here's one I tried to make harder
Riadsnonmig ieionrtr lrettes aftcefs cioepmnehrson mmiianlly cotiigvne scietsints dveiscor
There is a really interesting article about all this here. It discusses the origin of the meme and then goes on to consider things like what the underlying mechanisms might be, whether reading is slowed, what sort of sentences might affected more and which less by jumbling interior letters in the words, whether some permuation of the intrerior letters make more difference than others and so on. An interesting read, though I haven't finsihed digesting it!
Q. What kind of street only lets you weigh things once?
A. A one-weigh street!
My brother and his wife have been looking after some underweight hedgehogs. I thought you might like to see these night photos of Benny, who has been brought up to a suitable weight and is now ready to retun to the wild.
Benny is keen to go
Benny heads off into the wild
"I though I heard the bell, it must be my fiancée", said Tom adoringly.
When I was about 9 or 10 years old two of my favourite books were The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After, by Alexandre Dumas. Oh how I longed to be one of the musketeers! But one book I never read, not sure why, was The Count of Monte Christo.
By chance tonight I came across a quote from that book and I felt that it was in some way appropriate to the extraordinary situation we find ourselves in.
“... the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.”
If you haven't seen the following before you may enjoy thinking about it. It's something I remembered from way back.
Three friends eat in a restaurant. The bill is £30, so everyone puts in £10. However the manager realises the bill should only have been £25, so he asks the waiter to give back £5. Each diner puts a pound back in their pocket and they give the remaining £2 to the waiter as a tip.
The diners have now paid £9 each, which comes to 3 x £9 = £27. With the £2 tip that makes £29. Where has the remaining £1 gone?
Knock-knock!
Who’s there?
Open up!
What’s the magic word?
Police.
After some days
The committee was near consensus
On how to respond to the invasion
Just then the aliens broke in
And vaporised everyone.
Forsythia is out in my garden.
This flower, which originated in the East, grows wild near where I live, a relic of what was once a thriving local industry. Farmers cultivated it and sent the cut blossoms up to Town on the fast train, so that Londoners could have flowers on the table at Easter. All that has gone long ago, but the plant hangs on in the hedgerows.
...another famous literary recluse, Henry Thoreau, a second self-cabin-builder. But time has run out. Search on his name, and find his famous aphorism, "Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify."
This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.