Things I've learnt #8,482

Parker blue ball-point refills leak in the washing machine.
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Happy Pi Day!

Today, March 14th, is International pi Day. pi being the Greek symbol for the highly irrational number that comes when you divide a circle's circumference by its diameter. It starts with a 3 and a decimal point and then disappears over the horizon.

Pi = 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 more

Hence the day: 3/14 is how some parts of the world think March 14th is written.

A piece of trivia: if I convert "LEE" to digits, it becomes "120505". This sequence of numbers appears in the string of pi at position 1,733,630 counting from the first digit after the decimal point. The 3. is not counted.

However, doing the same with my full name gets the following response: The string 12050511051414050425 did not occur in the first 200,000,000 digits of pi.

Does that make me unique?

Or just irrational?
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Crash and Burn Gardening

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I haven't felt like posting for a few days. Gardening blues perhaps. Things are getting dryer and crunchier. More high temperatures on the way with Saturday supposed to be 43°C again.

I feel a bit like Sophie, in the movie Sophie's Choice, having to chose which her children to save.

Hindenburg trivia: Apparently the meals on the airship did not include garlic because garlic gas was included with the hydrogen so that they could smell a leak.

The crepe suzettes were a bad idea too.
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A birthday, of sorts.

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Some trivia for you: today I am 20,000 days old.

But the real trivia is this: On the day I was married, I was 10,000 days old.

It wasn't planned that way, it just happened.

And, no, I do not plan a cake with 20,000 candles!

As I anticipated hist event for over a year, I had actually planned a family dinner of some sort. But Martin is in Malaysia at present and the boys gave us tickets to go and see The Taming of the Shrew in the Botanical Gardens that (by chance) are for tonight. So, rescheduling. What's a day or two in 20,000?

Maybe a nice dinner tomorrow for day 20,001.

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You're excited, I can tell.

Sometime during the week I passed the 1,000 posts for the four combined blogs.

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Tulips from...?

When we arrived home there was a tulip flowering in our front garden. OK, nothing too special about that except we have been away and I have no idea who planted it or when.

True, it could have been me any number of years ago, it is a bulb after all. But I was of the impression that tulips need a cold winter to set the flower or some such. Melbourne does not get cold winters, not by tulip standards at least. You get flowers from tulip bulbs the first year you plant them and then never again.

So I went searching info and certainly the experts seem to agree that cold is needed for a tulip to flower. Some go so far as recommending that you store your bulbs in the fridge over winter. (An aside: once at work, in my incarnation as a food chemist, I was presented with a bag of 'onions' that hospitalised a guy who ate them. They were daffodil bulbs.)

As is often the case when you go looking for information, I found more than I had expected.

A quick association test (it's the psychologist in me):

Strawberries and ...
Abbott and ...
Heaven and ...
Tulips and ...

That's alright, I am not marking the papers.

The surprise to me is that tulips originate in Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. The Dutch just have a good marketting system.

Just for good measure, the word tulip originates from a Turkish word meaning turban.

There you go.
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Equal time

Having poked fun at the Floridapudlians, it is only fair that I come clean with Australia's odd laws:

A life sentence is 25 years.

Children may not purchase cigarettes, but they may smoke them.

You may never leave your car keys in an unattended vehicle.

It is illegal to roam the streets wearing black clothes, felt shoes and black shoe polish on your face as these items are the tools of a cat burgular.

It is illegal to walk on the right hand side of a footpath.

Under Australian Communications Authority (ACA) regulations, a modem can’t pick up on the first ring.

Taxi cabs are required to carry a bale of hay in the trunk.

Bars are required to stable, water and feed the horses of their patrons.

The legal age for straight sex is 16, unless the person is in the care/custody of the older person, in which case it is 18.

Only licensed electricians may change a light bulb.

It is illegal to wear hot pink pants after midday Sunday.

You must have a neck to knee swimsuit in order to swim at Brighton Beach.

Until the Port Arthur Killings it was legal to own an AK-47 but not legal to be gay.

Lawmakers are proposing a new law that will not allow anyone to come closer than 100 meters from a dead whale’s carcass.

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I must confess that I thought a few of these had been removed from the statutes.

Want to see how your state or country stacks up? Have a look here.

Forbidden Love

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Believe it or not, the above postcard is an advertisement for orange juice. It was one of a range of free postcards available in a rack at our local cinema. The back of the card says:

Original Fact: In Florida, it is illegal to be intimate with a porcupine.

(Thinks: Mmm...I'd love to know how that statute came to be put on the books.)

So, full of investigative zeal, I headed of to find out a bit more about it. I still don't know why that law is there but here are a few others that the good people of Florida need to negotiate:

Women may be fined for falling asleep under a hair dryer, as can the salon owner.

A special law prohibits unmarried women from parachuting on Sunday or she shall risk arrest, fine, and/or jailing.

If an elephant is left tied to a parking meter, the parking fee has to be paid just as it would for a vehicle.

It is illegal to sing in a public place while attired in a swimsuit.

Men may not be seen publicly in any kind of strapless gown.

Having sexual relations with a porcupine is illegal.

It is illegal to skateboard without a license.

When having sex, only the missionary position is legal.

You may not fart in a public place after 6pm.

It is considered an offense to shower naked. (Can you sing in the shower if you are wearing a swimsuit?)

You are not allowed to break more than three dishes per day, or chip the edges of more than four cups and/or saucers.

Oral sex is illegal.

You may not kiss your wife’s breasts.

Penalty for horse theft is death by hanging.

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No wonder they put GWB in office.
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Hunting the wild Haggis...

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"The Haggis Hunting Season runs from St Andrews Day (Nov 30th) to Robert Burn's birthday (Jan 25th). It is a long held tradition that the finest restaurants attempt to be amongst the first to serve a freshly caught "Haggis Nouveau" for dinner on St Andrew's Day, accompanied by a fine Beaujolais."

So says the leaflet that accompanied a ceramic Haggis Whistle that helped fill my Christmas stocking. "Traditionally used to call the Haggises (or Haggi) down from the hills at the end of the season."

So, what unusual Christmas presents did you get?

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My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare. - Mike Myers.

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Playing favourites.

In a comment to my "Five cent's worth" post below, Jujee asked for the following things:

1. My favourite past-time
Cooking a meal for appreciative guests.

2. My favourite item of clothing
A navy blue, naval jumper. Warm, well made, souvenir of working for the Navy.

3. My favourite jewellery piece
A nipple ring.

4. My favourite month
No preference at all.

5. My favourite number
Two

6. My favourite year at school
This year - honours in Psychology.

7. My favourite season
All of them. They all have their good points, I can't choose. I have to? OK, spring.

8. My favourite hair length
On my head? Neat, medium-short.

9. My favourite expression on self
Smile

10. My favourite expression on others
Smile

11. My favourite chips flavour
Plain, salted.

12. My favourite ice-cream flavour
Vanilla

13. My favourite time of day
Early morning.

14. My favourite day of the week
I'm a student, they are all the same.

15. My favourite movie genre
Non-violent, social issues, chick-flicks.


Time: 1:14pm
Date: September
Setting: My study (37°50'48.38" S, 145°05'58.87" E)
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Poor buggers!

Boneman has a fancy doo-dad on his site that lets me go off and find that there are 216 people with my name in the USA. How common!

But what caught my attention was the next little window:

Am I showing my age? I would have thought John F. Kennedy would rate in top 5 famous Kennedys in the US. No offense to Adam, George and Jimmy but I have never heard of them.

JFK, RFK and even JFK jr appear in the 'click to see 4 more' list.
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Children, don't try this at home!

Well, that was exciting!

I had been charged with the job of getting old, melted candles out of a glass holder. The sort of holder where you take a coloured tea-light candle out of its aluminium cup and put the candle on its own in the glass container so you can see the coloured wax as it burns. The time had come to clean the glasses in preparation for some new candles.

My thought was if I sat the container in some hot water the candle may release from the glass and make cleaning easy. But the quality of the glass is unknown; what if the water was too hot and it cracked the glass? Yes, I know the candles make the glass hot but it is a gradual process.

OK, thinks me, I will stand the candle in a bowl of water and microwave it. That way the water will warm slowly and all will be fine.

Did you know that the wicks of tea-candles will ignite in a microwave?

I didn't.

I do now. Very pretty it was.

On reflection I should have guessed. Many moons ago, at work, we were testing candle wicks for their lead content. Apparently some manufactures would put a thin filament of lead in the candle wick and there was concern at the time about airborne lead from burning candles. Other manufacturers used zinc. The idea was that the metal gave the wick some rigidity so it would remain upright when all the wax in the container melted.

So, there you go. Children! Don't microwave your candles!

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