My ginger sproured, so I'm going to try and grow it on the windowsill.
I looked ginger up and it turns out to have gorgeous flowers, here is a picture courtesy University of Reading.
More pictures and information here.
http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/tropical-biodiversity/2012/07/ginger/
This is one they told when my daughter was in primary school.
Why do elephants have big ears?
Because Noddy won’t pay the ransom.
This wild plant is white bryony briona alba, a member of the cucumber family. Its fruits look like tiny gourds. The name bryonia comes via Latin from Greek βρυονια but there doesn't seem to be any information about its ultimate origins.
The plant is quite poisonous and in countries where it it is an introduced species it can be highly invasive, because it is capable of growing as much as 15 cm aday. However in my garden it is fairly harmless and quite decorative.
The plant is mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon medical treatise, the Old English Leechdoms (ca.1150). There is also a rather unlikely story that Augustus Caesar wore bryony round his neck during thunderstorms to ward off lightening, see https://www.walkerland.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/The-Old-English-Herbals-Eleanour-Sinclair-Rohde.pdf
Everything there is to know about chickens, all in one place. Welcome the Hencyclopedia.
I bet on a pigeon race. No harm in a little flutter.
A Southern Marsh Orchid I photographed a couple of days ago at a local RSPB reserve. The genus name Dactylorhiza means something like 'finger-roots'.
The committee couldn’t agree how to described it. One camp favoured expressions such as “A period of 24 hours” or “86400 seconds of elapsed time”. Others argued for an astronomical definition: for example, “The time taken for the earth to rotate once about its axis” or “Approximately 1 over 365.24217 of the earth’s orbital period”.
The meeting dragged on and on. Eventually we had to call it a day.
All the kids loved the garden centre.
Except Moses.
He poured weedkiller on the roses.
For those unfamiliar with this genre of Scandi humour, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alla_barnen
if you were to say
would you marry me I’d reply (gazing into your pale
brown eyes) yes
oh YESSSS
my love my sweet my darling my honey my angel my beloved mi amore
i would, i would
would
They said, are you choking?
I said no
I’m dead serious.
"Your soft toy kept me awake all night", Tom snorted.
I didn’t used to like French pancakes. But they crept up on me.
What You See Is What You Hear
Equipment
1. Any sound recorder: phone or computer. Anything that will do the job. You need recording and playback.
2. A mirror to see your lips.
Experiment
Step 1.
Start the recorder. As distinctly as you can, and at short regular intervals, record yourself saying rhythmically, with the emphasis on the ‘B’.
‘Bat’, ‘Bat’, ‘Bat’, ‘Bat’, ‘Bat’, ‘Bat’, …
Do this for 30 seconds or so.
Step 2.
Please read through the steps below before going on.
1. Get the mirror. Look at your lips, as though you were watching the lips of a language teacher.
2. Play back the recording. If you used a smartphone switching to speaker is better than holding the phone up.
As you listen to the playback, silently mouth, rather than speak, the syllables below over and over again, lip-synching with the recording. Try to make very clear lip movements. Imagine you are speaking for an audience who are deaf and rely on lip reading to understand you.
As you mouth the syllables gaze intently at your lips in the mirror. Listen carefully to what you hear. (You’ll find you can do these three things at once quite easily.)
These are the syllables you have to mouth.
‘That Fat Bat, That Fat Bat, That Fat Bat, …’
You will almost certainly hear ‘that fat bat, that fat bat, …’, and not what you were really saying at all. When you see your lips shaping the consonants Th and F it’s impossible to hear B, whatever your ears pick up. Remember you really just said ‘bat bat bat bat bat…’ and that’s the sound reaching your ears but it’s not what you hear.
Background
This illusion is known as the McGurk effect. There is an excellent Horizon clip about it here.
Notice that it’s immaterial whether you are looking at your own lips or another person’s. Usually people watch a video like the Horizon one but as you’ve seen (or heard) seeing and hearing yourself works equally well.
Reflection
What surprises me even more is this. If I do the experiment a few times running and then only listen to the sound on its own, no lips, I still hear ‘that fat bat…’, so the effect has persistence!
The McGurk effect is all the more remarkable because we process sound quicker than vision. But what we hear – the interpretation we place on the sounds – can be delayed and modified by related visual information.
花茨ちよつけいを出す小猫哉
hana ibara chokkei wo dasu ko neko kana
poking her nose
into thorny wild roses...
kitten
From http://haikuguy.com/issa/
I went to a trade fair for honey manufacturers. Came home with loads of freebies.
This pretty little wildflower flourishes in my garden. It is a wood sorrel, also called oxalis, which in Ancient Greek was just the name of this and related plants, with nothing known further back. Sorrel is a Germanic word, connected with sour perhaps.
When we were very young we were shown the ‘two noses’ illusion by my Dad.
If you cross your fingers and touch a small object (such as the tip of your nose), there will seem to be two of whatever it is. Not being able to see the object strengthens the illusion, and because you can’t see the end of your nose very well it is a suitable tactile target. Besides, using your nose is amusing.
This illusion has been known for at least two thousand years. Aristotle wrote (Metaphysics Book 4):
“… touch says there are two objects when we cross our fingers, while sight says there is one”
It’s an example of a tactile illusion. There are a lot of optical illusions known but illusions of touch are less common.
When I was very small I thought I could literally stretch up and touch the stars.
I got a chair, but it still wasn’t enough.
Whatever you
Say about my
New plant
Astilbe
Your friend.
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