Binnacle
A box or case on the deck of a ship near the helm, which supports and protects a ship’s compass.
According to the OED the current binnacle first appears after 1750, as a corruption of the earlier bittacle of which the earliest cited reference is in 1622.
Another in our series of selected links to items you may have missed. As usual in no special order …
You wouldn’t think anyone could forget they had an apartment in Paris, would you? But here are some intriguing photographs of such an apartment which was shut up at the outbreak of WWII and not touched for 70 years!
Do you really know what’s in your food? Here are a few less than savoury ingredients.
If you don’t know, how do you estimate when someone died? Insect infestations are one way, but now scientists have discovered that they can use the genes in brain cells to read the body clock — unless the person was clinically depressed.
Talking of insects, like all museums the Wallace Collection are on a bug hunt.
And so we come to talk of finding things. Archaeologists have investigated an intact Roman sewer and it’s turning out to be a bit of a gold mine.
Oh, and that takes us nicely to the bacteria in our guts. Apparently researchers have now fund that there is one specific bacterium the absence of which appears to be linked to (some instances of) obesity. Nature just gets weirder and weirder!
Who invented clothes? Such a good question that children often ask. An archaeologist approaches an answer for children to an unanswerable question.
Here’s an interesting piece on learning to accept your body and live with it from a girl who is a “plus size” model (well at a UK size 16 she’s “plus size” for the fashion industry).
And here’s another interesting post on body acceptance, this time from the land of the free. (Possibly NSFW.)
Now for some interesting photographs of the wackier parts of the English ritual year. This is not at all new, there was a book of the same some years back, but they’re nice photos.
Plants are strange. Mosses are especially strange because they make two different plants from the same set of genes just by switching one special gene.
Rob Dunn, who’s always worth reading, on how our current approach to teaching through dissections is falling into a medieval trap.
Here’s one for all you Londoners … Diamond Geezer visits Nunhead Cemetery, one of London’s “big seven”. Sounds like an interesting trip, especially on an “open day”.
Now for an interesting ethical conundrum … By definition they have no choice so should we send unborn (even unconceived) children on long space exploration journeys?
Law and Lawyers has a rant about the removal of Legal Aid in civil cases.
Finally an story of the English invading France. The BBC have gathered a few (often amusing) examples for Englishisms in modern French. Allez les rosbifs!
In honour of all my teacher friends …
Click the image for a larger view
Saturday 25 May is Towel Day.
What, I hear you exclaim, is Towel Day? Yes, that’s right it is the day on which we are encouraged to carry a towel in tribute to the late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. On 25 May 2001, two weeks after Douglas Adam’s untimely death, his fans carried a towel in his honour. And they have done so every year since.
If you’ve already read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy you’ll know the importance of your towel. If not, the book will explain why a towel is the most important item a space-travelling hitch-hiker (indeed probably any of us — just ask Linus!) can have.
Your towel is extremely practical: you can use it to keep warm, to lie on, to sleep on and to use as a mini-raft as you sail down the River Moth! Of course your towel is also a trusty companion and thus extremely important for a host of psychological reasons.
Towel Day isn’t just a day for doing the obvious: carrying a towel. There are also lots of events, all listed over on the Towel Day website at http://towelday.org/.
A few more recently encountered quotes …
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
[Sir Peter Medawar]
It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
[GH Hardy]
It is not wrong to question things … The fact that you’re asking questions shows that you’re five levels of wisdom above the idiot who’s objecting to you asking the questions.
[Josh Tolley]
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colourful life imaginable.
[Robert Pattinson]
High level concepts such as intentions, meanings, thoughts, and so on, which we associate only with minds, must have had evolutionary precursors in a more or less gradual sequence. The problem is that we do not have a clear concept of what the simplest “intention”, “meaning”, or “thought”” might look like. This is because psychology has traditionally been defined by only highly evolved “mental” activity, so that even though we study brains at the cellular or even molecular levels, there is the tacit belief that no real psychology can exist at a simple level.
[Howard Pattee, “Cell Psychology: An Evolutionary Approach to the Symbol-Matter Problem” (1982 paper) in Pattee & Rączaszek-Leonardi (eds), Laws, Language and Life (2013)]
After we invented software we could see that we were surrounded by software. DNA is a universal programming language and biology can be thought of as software archaeology – looking at very old, very complicated software.
[Gregory Chaitin, mathematician]
Cat. (noun) A small domesticated carnivorous mammal (Felis catus), with soft fur, a short snout, and retractile claws. Thought to be entirely solar powered.
[unknown]
Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
[Robert Heinlein]
Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.
[Fran Lebowitz]
Saturday 25 May is the start of English Wine Week, which runs until Sunday 2 June.
Wine has been produced in this country since the time of the Romans, and possibly even earlier. And there are still over 400 wineries in the UK — an astonishing number for a country which isn’t supposed to be able to grow grapes.
We all know that a glass or two from a lovely bottle of wine can put the special touch to an evening with friends or family, whether at home or at a nice restaurant. And I know from experience English wine is as good as any in the world, although not made in such large volumes — there are even English champagne-type wines.
Over recent years it has become easier to find English wine, with many vintners and supermarkets stocking it, although their ranges are often still limited. But it is well worth seeking out and Waitrose are apparently one of the few big retailers championing the cause.
There are a lot of English Wine Week events across the country; they’re all listed, along with more information at www.englishwineproducers.co.uk/news/events/?eww=1 and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/EnglishWineWeek2013.
Each week when I choose my weekly photograph I try to do it at random from those I’ve posted over the years on Flickr. This week the dice fell on a crazy self-portrait I did some years ago when I was doing a self-portrait a week project.
Click the image for a larger view on Flickr
Hockneylated & 13 Artists
Self-portrait; January 2009
The 13 artists referred to are given in the original caption:
This week’s self-portrait: 52 Weeks 46/52 (2009 week 02).
I think the time has come to do another 13 things, so here are 13 painters I admire:
1. David Hockney
2. Nicolas Poussin
3. MC Escher
4. Leonardo da Vinci
5. Hans Holbein
6. Albrecht Durer
7. Eric Gill
8. Willem van de Velde the Younger
9. My mother
10. Rembrandt
11. Mark Boxer
12. Osbert Lancaster
13. Pieter Bruegel the Elder
As every year Wednesday 22 May is World Goth Day — a day where the goth scene gets to celebrate its own being, and an opportunity to make its presence known to the rest of the world.
While it’s true that most goths prefer night time World Goth Day lets them parade the black look proudly in the sunlight!
Goths are often met with criticism and fear. But despite their dress, they’re just like everyone else and judging someone based on the way they look means missing out on getting to know some great people. Consequently because of the stigma attached to being a goth, many have struggled to get friends and family to accept them as they are.
World Goth Day is the day they come out in the light to proudly proclaim their way to the rest of the world, and to show us some of the fun things we’re missing.
And there’s lots more information over at http://worldgothday.com/.
Here’s another that I encountered meandering the interweb. It’s something good to try to live up to.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.
Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good.
Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
I met these two on the intertube this morning …
