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Richard Walker

What’s the score?

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 4 Oct 2022, 22:01

Narwhals 1 - Humans ?

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Richard Walker

Suppertime and the liver is queasy

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Had a Beef Wellington the other night. Bitterly disappointed. It was as tough as old boots.

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Richard Walker

New blog post

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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Solzhenitsyn, based on his experiences in a Soviet forced labour camp in the 1950s. 

The most chilling quote so far

“Prisoners are not allowed clocks”.

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The Wanderer

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Richard Walker

My heart leaps up...

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My heart leaps up when I behold 
   A rainbow in the sky.



A friend captured this view from the top of Cat Bells at 09:27 this morning.
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Richard Walker

Disaster

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Edited by Richard Walker, Saturday, 1 Oct 2022, 22:41

Disaster’s bound to strike

Sooner or

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Richard Walker

An X goes into a bar joke

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A pelican goes into a bar and says, Can I pay for last night? The barman looks at him and says, You’ve got a massive bill.

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Richard Walker

Hangover wisdom

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A bad hangover leaves you confused the next day but a worse one lasts until the daze after tomorrow.

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Richard Walker

A fun thing to try

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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 29 Sept 2022, 14:58

Seated in a chair, raise your right foot from the ground and start moving it in a clockwise circle. While continuing to move your right foot, extend your right for finger and draw a figure 6 in the air. What happens? 

See here for a YouTube video about this surprising effect.

It appears on lots of web sites, often under the title 'How smart is your right foot?' but I hadn't come across it before.

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Richard Walker

One Liner

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I’m reading a book about blotting paper. Very absorbing.

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Richard Walker

Floral probabilities

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I’ve just bought 12 baby polyanthus plants via Amazon. When they flower they will be an assortment of 6 colours and I’m assuming there will be 2 plants of each colour. But at the moment they all look pretty much the same.

I’m planning to give 4 plants to a friend. Given we will be picking the 4 at random…

What is the probability that my friend will receive 4 plants all different colours?

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Richard Walker

What is this?

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 4 Oct 2022, 00:35


It’s very beautiful and resembles frost crystals, or perhaps some kind of mineral formation (although I suppose ice is a mineral, thinking about it). But what you see here is a fungus, the ‘urchin earthfan). My brother took the photograph.

There’s a good article about this fungus here

https://www.first-nature.com/fungi/thelephora-penicillata.php



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Richard Walker

Colour joke

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What colour leaves you in the dark? Light blew.

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Richard Walker

Paying through the nose - true story

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Tonight when I paid my bar bill I held the card reader to my right nostril, and my Apple Watch to the left. Everything went through. So I literally paid through the nose.

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Richard Walker

One liner

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New TV series about falconry. Britain’s got talons.


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Colour joke

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What colour leaves you abandoned on a desert island?

Maroon.

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Richard Walker

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 11 Sept 2022, 14:45

"By their very nature bureaucracies have no conscience, no memory, and no mind."

I've been trying to remember this quote. I found it striking when first told it but I'd partly forgotten it so it's taken a while to track down. It’s by the American anthropologist Edward T. Hall, although I still can’t find where he wrote or said it


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Richard Walker

Paranoid Poem

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Am I right or am I wrong?
You can only fight it for so long.
Eventually you can betcha,
The System will getcha.
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Richard Walker

Miracle Berries

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I read today in the New Scientist about “Miracle Berries”, seen below. Eat one and for twenty minutes or so sour things will taste sweet. Isn’t that remarkable?


A link to the NS article is below, and there is also information on Wikipedia.

Naturally I want to grow some and the seeds are on their way.


https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/30202824/SEI_120900398.jpg?width=800


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Richard Walker

The Heralds Of Autumn

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Richard Walker

Word Of The Day - Hustings

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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday, 31 Aug 2022, 23:33

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.

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Richard Walker

When To Plant A Tree - A Kōan

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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.


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Richard Walker

Hundred NumbersPuzzle

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 28 Aug 2022, 10:46
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?
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Richard Walker

One Liner

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I neglected my allotment and finally the council took it off me. They said I’d lost the plot.
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Richard Walker

More on diagonals of regular polygons

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 21 Aug 2022, 11:34

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

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