OU blog

Personal Blogs

Richard Walker

Electors

Visible to anyone in the world

Suppose inhabitants of Diss in Norfolk UK had been left without voting rights, as a result of some historical mix-up, and this anomaly was corrected. Then they’d be Diss-enfranchised. Hmm.


Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Response To W.H.Davies

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Richard Walker, Monday, 30 Nov 2020, 02:22

Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

Me

I often have the time to sit and muse,
Especially when I’ve had a lot of booze.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Epsom Downs

Visible to anyone in the world

There actually is a place called Epsom Downs. Think about it.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Onliner ant joke

Visible to anyone in the world

We hear a lot about soldier ants. But what about noncombatants?

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Genius

Visible to anyone in the world

The famous American inventor Thomas Edison said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% persperation. He never gave up.

For example he invented the heavy bulb, a total failure.

So he moved on to invent the light bulb, which did a lot better.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Another crossword clue

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 29 Nov 2020, 01:24

Died at sea from backing hidden word? (7)

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jan Pinfield, Monday, 30 Nov 2020, 07:58)
Share post
Richard Walker

Clever crossword clue

Visible to anyone in the world

Responsive device when a person is out (11)

See comments for solution.

Permalink 3 comments (latest comment by Richard Walker, Saturday, 28 Nov 2020, 23:21)
Share post
Richard Walker

Stir Rating

Visible to anyone in the world

Please rate this porridge, on a scale of 1-5 stirs.

🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Richard Walker, Monday, 30 Nov 2020, 00:05)
Share post
Richard Walker

Playground Joke

Visible to anyone in the world

What Came Before Toucans?

Onecans!

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Help Needed

Visible to anyone in the world

I couldn't think of a word meaning the same as kayak. Canoe?

Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Judith McLean, Saturday, 28 Nov 2020, 16:57)
Share post
Richard Walker

One Liner

Visible to anyone in the world

My policy about sweeping away cobwebs is put it off until the last possible moment. I call it Dust in Time.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Enunciation

Visible to anyone in the world

It’s hard for singers of classical music to sing so listeners can pick up the words.

They are usually expected to sing in several languages not their first, and even native speakers of the language the performance is in often struggle to understand the singer.

Following on from the Berkeley research described a post or so back, maybe subtitles ahead of each phrase would help people pick out the words.

 


Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Storm Precautions

Visible to anyone in the world
Experts say Seniors who walk with a stick should avoid extreme weather and reach home quickly. Learn more about our assistive technology at hurry-cane.com
Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Pop-outs

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 27 Nov 2020, 21:52
In this experiment you will hear snippets of garbled speech that are almost impossible to understand. After each snippet has played you will hear the undistorted version, and immediately hear the garbled version a second time. Amazingly, you can now understand what you couldn't make out at all just a few seconds ago!

Click on the link below to start the experiment.

Try the garbled speech experiment yourself


Researchers have found that when this experiment is carried out with subjects who have electrode on the suface of their brains, the garbled speech evokes little electrical activity the first time round, but after the subject has been told what the words are the garbled speech produces a similar pattern to the clear speech. They have now "tuned in" and can hear what they couldn't before. More about this fascinating effect can be found here.
Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Earworm

Visible to anyone in the world

I'm currently suffering from an earworm. An earworm is a snatch of music that you can't get out of your head. In my case it's "The clouds will soon roll by", sung in 1932 by Elsie Carlisle, with Ambrose and his orchestra.

Somewhere the sun is shining
So, honey, don't you cry
We'll find a silver lining
The clouds will soon roll by…

This keeps popping into my head at odd moments throughout the day. I'm familiar with it from the sound track to the BBC series Pennies from Heaven but I haven't listened to it for ages. Why I should suddenly think of it now I don't know. Maybe the optimism of it appeals to me.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

Two Daffinitions

Visible to anyone in the world

Paradox: Two dogs.

Orthodoxy: Look at all those dogs!

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

One Liner

Visible to anyone in the world

My friend replaced his chandelier with a ceiling fan. I never looked at him in the same light again.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

One Liner

Visible to anyone in the world

Is graffiti doomed? The writing’s on the wall.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

mindlessness haiku

Visible to anyone in the world

Spell-checker claimed

No word mindlessness exists

Wrong, see OED.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

One Liner

Visible to anyone in the world

I read today open-minded people have a different perception of reality. Oh no we don't.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

One Liner

Visible to anyone in the world

I come from a family of comedians. For example, my Mum and Dad, Mr and Mrs Kerr, decided to name me Joe.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

A Quick Geometric Problem

Visible to anyone in the world

Michael Penn put this up on his YouTube channel earlier today, and it is indeed an elegant little problem. Here it is


Michael Penn solves this using congruent triangles, the angle sum of a triangle (180 °) and angles on a straight line (180 °). ι is always 60 °, whatever the length of AD and CE. It's not that obvious and I was quite surprised.

However thinking about it later, I saw we can solve the problem using symmetry and the solution is super-nice. Here's how - just add a third line.



Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

When we were very young

Visible to anyone in the world
When I was in infant school they taught us to read. The phonetic method was used (I see in hindsight), so “can” is “c” for cat, “a” for apple, and “n” for night, and there you have it. It doesn’t work very well, but it’s a good start.
 
There we were, two dozen or so, and we are reading Janet and John out loud. “L-o-o-k J-a-n-e-t s-a-y-s J-o-h-n”. It doesn’t totally work but if you listen to yourself, you can work out most words. The story helps a lot of course. 

Our teacher offered a gold star to the first person in the class who could read silently. I’m not a gold star person personally, and I was bored by it all. So to pass the time I stopped speaking and just pretended to be reading.

Wow big mistake! Up comes Teacher who says “Oh look class, Richard can read silently”. On the spot or what? From that time I couldn’t read out loud without being exposed as a fraud, and I more or less instantly found out I’d been able to read silently all along.

I’ve no idea what reminded me of this.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

A Reason for Optimism

Visible to anyone in the world


Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Richard Walker

At The Races

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 20 Nov 2020, 22:13

Just been watching an Egg and Spoon race. Very surprised the Spoon didn’t win.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

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.

Total visits to this blog: 2456875