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

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.

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

Looks like all the graphics have disappeared.

I got this message in my Celestial Mailbox

You can marshal an argument, or you might be a marshal in a sporting event, or you might be a Field Marshal, and there are many other usages but they generally are to do with organising or leading some activity.

Where does the word descend from? Well rather amazingly it originally meant someone who looked after horses. It's from early Germanic *markhaz "horse" + *skalkaz "servant". The asterisks indicate that these words are not actually attested - we don' thave them written down anywhere, so the exact words are a guess. But the first element is like "mare" and a word "scealc" appears in Old English.

The word came to us from Norman French and the French for a farrier (a smith who shoes horses) is still "maréchal-ferrant".

To conclud, here is a rather nice quote from an early printed book, courtesey of the OED.

1474   W. Caxton tr. Game & Playe of Chesse (1883) iii. ii. 85   All maner of werkemen, as goldsmithes, marchallis, smithes of all forges.

Thanks also to RobWords for his excellent YouTube video on military titles.

Why is Y pronounced ‘Why’?

In my garden I’ve got quite a few climbing plants.

Cultivated: Roses, Runner Beans, Sweet Potato, Nicotiana

Wild: Bindweed, Ivy, White Bryony, Blackberry

I’ve always marvelled at climbers and there’s a famous Flanders and Swann song containing the lines

The fragrant honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun, 
And many other creepers do the same. 
But some climb anti-clockwise, the bindweed does, for one, 
Or Convolvulus, to give her proper name.…

So today I was thinking about climbers and a bit of research came up with this wonderful summary. See what you think.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/apr/13/shopping.gardens2

Most people are just ordinary crastinators but I’m a pro.

Mind you, it’s taken 10,000 hours of putting things off to get where I am.

If I say the best thing to do about Eeyore is ignore him, then I haven’t ignored him, have I?