One for the pedants amongst us from today’s XKCD …
ISO 8601 also defines:
There’s a full discussion of the ISO 8601 standard on Wikipedia.
OK, so let’s have another word. I’ve just finished reading Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing by Peter Silverton. Yes, it’s interesting but not deep and quite light-hearted — as one might expect. One thing he said which I didn’t know (or had long forgotten) is the origins of the word goolies. So today we bring you…
Goolies, or as the OED would have it gooly (in the singular).
Yes, in standard English it normally appears in the plural and means the testicles.
According to the OED, which hedges its bets slightly, it is “apparently of Indian origin”, like from the Hindustani golí, a bullet, ball, pill. Curiously the first referenced citation is only in 1937 — I would have expected it to be around 100 years earlier. It was certainly a word I learnt quite early in my school days, so it must have been in regular North London usage by the end of the 1950s.
Usefully(?) gooly also means a stone or pebble in Australian slang. (Well again, so the OED says.)
What is also interesting is that the OED doesn’t know the origin of the cricketing term googly (a ball which spins from leg to off when bowled by a right-arm bowler to a right-handed batsman) and which one might expect to be related to gooly. So who knows?
Anyway there’s another Indian word you know, to go along with pyjamas and bungalow.
Another instalment in our occasional series celebrating the underbelly of Britain, at least as perpetrated locally. This is the Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.
This empty shop (at one time I recall it was a double glazing showroom) is at Rayners Lane, in west London, opposite the tube station. This was a nice small local shopping area, even when I worked there almost 30 years ago. But no longer. Now it is decidedly scrofulous and decaying; populated only by Asian and Polish establishments which never seem to do any trade.
And as you’ll see that above is next to this …
Which has definitely been tidied up a bit in the last couple of years, but to me still looks pretty disreputable.
No story behind this week’s photograph, it’s just one of those things one seems.
Bollard
Lyme Regis harbour, July 2006
Mehari
An Arabian, single-humped camel, used for riding and racing. A racing dromedary.
Also a French risk analysis methodology. See Wikipedia
So here’s another attempt to catch up a bit. Here is an answer to the third of the Five Question I posed some weeks ago.
Question 3. Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?
I’m not generally proud of what I do. I do things. The right things. And I expect to. In fact I usually expect that I’ll do better than I do. And I’m not one for blowing my own trumpet. I just get on with things. So there is little to be proud of. So I find answering this rather difficult.
I suppose the things which has most surprised (and delighted) me, and hence something I am proud of, is that Noreen and I have been married for 33 years. Today that seems to be quite an achievement.
What’s even better is that we have achieved it while doing two really environmentally friendly things: no children and no car!
What about you?
Yet another in our somewhat irregular (well it is supply dependent) collection of links to items you may have missed. In some sort of random-ish order …
It seems no-one knew how owls manage to rotate their necks through almost 360 degrees. Now they do; it’s all down to some rather bizarre anatomy.
Is there economic opportunity in our current difficulties? A different take on our present predicament.
This seems like old news now, but here are a couple of reports on the “discovery” of the remains of Richard III: one from medievalists.net and a photoset from BBC News.
England is often held up as having some weird and outdated laws, but no longer. Here’s a picture report from the Telegraph of examples from around the world. I’m especially boggled by number 14.
Then again only the English would worry about the intricacies of bubble and squeak!
Over in the Land of the Free there’s been a bit of a brouhaha stirred up by actress Lena Dunham quite unashamedly appearing nude in her new show Girls. It seems that USanians aren’t perturbed specifically be the nudity (oh, yeah?) but by the fact the Dunham does not conform to the toned, tanned and (almost) anorexic look that is always pedalled as being “normal”. She is a regular girl, with normal breasts and decent-sized thighs. The is held up to be disgusting. Anyway here are three pieces of commentary dissecting the objections: How Lena Dunham Breaks the Rules of Naked TV & Why We Love Her For It; What Lena Dunham’s Nudity Says About Us and The Audacity of Lena Dunham
While we’re on the subject of brouhahas, we can’t pass on without a couple of items on the horse meat scandal. Two nicely balanced pieces about the risks and issues: first from GrrlScientist and the second from Occam’s Corner, both in the Guardian.
So here’s the latest idea to keep your marriage on the straight and narrow; write a quarterly (the reports actually say every 4 months) report for each other about a recent disagreement. Seems to me all this is going to do is to highlight the cracks in the plaster and drive a wedge into them. Sceptical? Me?
Another piece of idiocy from the Land of the Free: a report on injuries inflicted during pubic hair grooming and which entail a visit to hospital. In the words of René Artois: The monde biggles.
For some reason which passes my comprehension, London Underground are installing a labyrinth in every tube station. I like labyrinths and mazes, but I am impelled to ask: Why?
Finally, something you won’t find in every London Underground station: a public lavatory. Apparently Brighton council have decided that henceforth their public loos will be “gender neutral”, ie. unisex. And about bloody time, say I; where’s the problem. The French have been at it for years and they don’t seem to have any problem. And many offices are now making their loos unisex. Makes a lot of sense to me. But it’s different, and we don’t like change.
The last week has been just so busy, hence the total lack of postings.
I’ve been putting the quarterly Anthony Powell Society Newsletter together for the printers — although I’m not the Editor, I am the in-house production team, sub-editor etc. etc. As this is the 50th issue — something I never even dreamt of achieving — it is a larger than usual issue, so has taken more time. Why is it that proofreading — proper, detailed proofreading — always takes so long? Anyway the Newsletter should go to the printer over the weekend after a final check-through.
However the bulk of my time during the week has been taken up with writing what has turned into a 40-page report for my GP’s Practice. A couple of weeks ago we, the Patient Participation Group organised by yours truly, helped run their annual patient survey. And of course I stupidly volunteered to key and analyse the data — well I know I have the skills to do it properly. With well over 500 records of data, the keying alone was no small job. Fortunately all the hard work of calculation I had pre-coded into a spreadsheet, so the bottom line numbers dropped out quickly. But then there were over 600 comments to analyse and turn into possible actions. All of that and more has to be written into a formal report, with tables and charts and a list of actions (with some justification). And every time you look at it something else pops up which really should be included. It isn’t finished yet, but it is getting close and should be with the doctors on Monday or Tuesday.
On top of that I have been trying to take it a bit easy, so I really do get rid of this blasted UTI which came back 10 days ago. It seems to have subsided now. But it needs to stay that way.
Next week is shaping up to be busy again too. Just for starters I have a 40-page report to read, and think about!, for a meeting on Wednesday. The only problem is, I have to find it first, amongst the pile of paper on/by my desk! And there are all the other things I need to attend to which have been out aside in the last couple of weeks.
Will I get to watch the rugby this afternoon? No, probably not … As everyone always says: How did I ever find time to work?
Sorry everyone, I’ve been neglecting you again. Last week was insanely busy, made worse by the fact that had my pre-Christmas bladder infection back again. There’s lots to be done again this week, but hopefully I might get some catching up done here too.
Meanwhile I thought we’d have something to remind us that Spring is on the way, and that means summer, flowers, sunshine and (hopefully) warmth too. This is from our garden a few years back; the rose is Buff Beauty and it is supposed to be a bush, but it has gone like a beanstalk up through our silver birch tree.
Rose ‘Buff Beauty’
From our garden, 15 June 2008