I never heard of thole except as the thing you put t'wood in.
Isochrone is a bit advanced for me. I have some odd ideas about time. best kept to myself I think, lest people get to thinking I'm odd. Sometimes I convince myself that it doesn't exist at all - we are in a constant 'present' - and sometimes I think its rate of passing varies - going faster as we get older. Tell me about it.
Actually there was some evidence to support that yesterday, from a scientist who had found a brain chemical which triggers the hippocampus less, when we are bored, thus making time seem to slow down. I presume the opposite happens when we are having fun?
Nice to have somewhere to write this nonsense, and have it 'peer reviewed' by a select few friends.
Born to be mild Sapere Aude Ego Lego Preferred pronouns - Thou, Thee, Thy, Thine My non-working days are Monday - Sunday
For those of you who didn't look it up: Isochrone. noun. A line, as on a map, connecting all points having some property simultaneously, as in having the same delay in receiving a radio signal from a given source or requiring the same time to be reached by available transportation from a given centre.
It came to my attention when applying for EEC funding for Ellenroad and the ride times turned out to be the best in Europe. We did't get the funding....
It is not nonsense David, or if it is, include me in the club. I have read enough of the science to know that time can be bent by gravity and there are some real puzzles if you read Einstein and Dawkins. I don't really understand it but every time someone mentions the Doppler Effect it gets me going! (Think of the milliseconds shaved off (or added to!) my lifespan by millions of miles on the road. It makes my head hurt. (Then there is the bullet fired on the speeding train... and the fact I once took a flight from Perth to Los Angeles and arrived an hour before I set off the previous day, don't bother explaining it to me!) (And don't attempt the flight either, it's a killer! Do two overnights, one in Sydney and one in Hawaii.)
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
I've often thought that time doesn't really exist and what we perceive as time is actually movement. Our concept of time developed from the movement of planets and stars and their effects, such as the earth's seasons and tides. Now we can create a concept of `time' by looking at the vibration of atoms - but that's still movement. If all movement in the universe stopped there would be no time. But if we then observed a single particle changed its location from A to B in space dimensions we'd assume it had moved and that `time' must have passed. Remember, `time was created so that everything wouldn't be in the same place at once'.
Nullius in verba: On the word of no one (Motto of the Royal Society)
Two days ago I met a word that was new to me in a magazine, then yesterday, guess what, I saw it again in a book. Machicolation.
Wikipedia defines it thus: `A machicolation (French: mâchicoulis) is a floor opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement, through which stones or other material, such as boiling water or boiling cooking oil, could be dropped on attackers at the base of a defensive wall.' LINK
Nullius in verba: On the word of no one (Motto of the Royal Society)
And what is not mentioned in the article is that if not above an entrance it could just as well have been a way of constructing a privy without a weakening shaft in the wall. (Think Blarney Stone.....)
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Watching a Alice Roberts TV programme where she visited several archaeological sites. Each time there was a map shown with the name of the town. The one in Wiltshire showed the main town as named `Sailsbury'!
Nullius in verba: On the word of no one (Motto of the Royal Society)
Picked up from my Mother in Law Louise and her sisters, Sally uses it of course. That side of the family hail from around Brough so possibly Cumberland, Westmorland or Higher Dales. I had never heard it until I bumped into the Abramic lot courtesy of my good lady.
When I was a child I always called weighing scales 'nebbins'. Nobody knew where that one came from but I still like it.... Please start using it and help it enter the language!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
I used the term skittish today to describe the ponies when I go to get them from the field on a wet and windy day. It's a common enough word but quite unusual, I wonder where it comes from?
I had a furtle.... "skittish (adj.)
early 15c., "very lively, frivolous," perhaps from Scandinavian base *skyt- (stem of Old Norse skjota "to shoot, launch, move quickly"), from PIE root *skeud- "to shoot, chase, throw." Sense of "shy, nervous, apt to run" first recorded c. 1500, of horses. Related: Skittishly; skittishness"
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Heard by chance this morning on R4, the name Raven stems from 'ravenous'. However, it may not be that simple! raven (n.) Old English hræfn (Mercian), hrefn; hræfn (Northumbrian, West Saxon), from Proto-Germanic *khrabanaz (source also of Old Norse hrafn, Danish ravn, Dutch raaf, Old High German hraban, German Rabe "raven," Old English hroc "rook"), from PIE root *ker- (2), imitative of harsh sounds (source also of Latin crepare "to creak, clatter," cornix "crow," corvus "raven;" Greek korax "raven," korōnē "crow;" Old Church Slavonic kruku "raven;" Lithuanian krauklys "crow").
Raven mythology shows considerable homogeneity throughout the whole area [northern regions of the northern hemisphere] in spite of differences in detail. The Raven peeps forth from the mists of time and the thickets of mythology, as a bird of slaughter, a storm bird, a sun and fire bird, a messenger, an oracular figure and a craftsman or culture hero. [Edward A. Armstrong, "The Folklore of Birds," 1958]
Old English also used hræmn, hremm. The raven standard was the flag of the Danish Vikings. The Quran connects the raven with Cain's murder of Abel; but in Christianity the bird plays a positive role in the stories of St. Benedict, St. Paul the Hermit, St. Vincent, etc. It was anciently believed to live to great old age, but the ancients also believed it wanting in parental care. The vikings, like Noah, were said to have used the raven to discover land. "When uncertain of their course they let one loose, and steered the vessel in his track, deeming that the land lay in the direction of his flight; if he returned to the ship, it was supposed to be at a distance" [Charles Swainson, "The Folk Lore and Provincial Names of British Birds," London, 1886].
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
No sex Stanley? Oh sorry North Sex
Don't get yourself in a tizzy over it Stanley.
Tizzy first used 1935, origin unknown, meaning - highly exited and distracted state of mind.
I know I'm in my own little world, but it's OK... they know me here.
I've just finished a book called Billy Brown, I'll Tell Your Mother . It's set in the years just following WW2, in it they mention that children drank a soft drink called Tiser.
Here tis...
Manchester's drinking 880 pints of Albert Schloss tank ___.jpg
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I know I'm in my own little world, but it's OK... they know me here.
My favourite soft drink name is Irnbru, all babies in Scotland are weaned on the stuff!
Now there's a funny word, 'wean'. wean (v.) "train (an infant or animal) to forego suckling," c. 1200, from Old English wenian "to accustom, habituate," from Proto-Germanic *wanjan (source also of Old Norse venja, Dutch wennen, Old High German giwennan, German gewöhnen "to accustom"), from PIE *won-eyo-, causative form of root *wen- (1) "to desire, strive for."
The sense of "accustom a child to not suckling from the breast" in Old English generally was expressed by gewenian or awenian, which has a sense of "unaccustom" (compare German abgewöhnen, entwöhnen "to wean," literally "to unaccustom"). The modern word might be one of these with the prefix worn off, or it might be wenian in a specialized sense of "accustom to a new diet." Figurative extension to any pursuit or habit is from 1520s.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
