The BBC reported that the wobbly lines defining the cycle-path at the edge of the road in a small New Forest village were due to:
"a crease in the plans confused a worker who read 4.8m as 4.3m… …a "misinterpretation" of the road width had led to the lines weaving in much further than they intended. "
Wobbly Wendy
The BBC Reports that the Catholic Church in the UK is:
"launching a recruitment campaign that will use beermats in pubs and posters on the London Underground to promote the priesthood."
The proportion of Priests to Laity in the UK is good realative to other countries. But, the trend is towards a decline:
"We still have the third or fourth best ratio of Catholic priests to Catholic population in the world… " For example, comaprision with Brazil shows there is one "…priest for every 850 Catholics in the UK, compared to one for every 20,000 in Brazil"
"Ninety-nine percent of the church is the laity, they pay for everything."
The role of women in the Catholic Church in England and Wales is not clear from thir Catholic Organisation website. The Statistics are out of date and the only reference to female engagement with the Church is by counting members of convents. An earlier report by the BBC quotes Erin Pizzey the founder of the international women’s refuge movement commenting on the Vatican letter to Bishops "On the collaboration of men and women in the Church and the World.":
"I don’t think the Catholic Church – whose own priests and bishops cannot marry – is in a position to make such statements… …"It is one of the most emotionally illiterate organisations I know, and they need to put their own house in order first."
Quote from the CultFigurine:
More than 80 percent of the nearly 30,000 Catholics in lay paid parish ministry in the United States are female. They pastor priestless parishes. They serve as directors of religious education and family ministers. Seventy percent of the members of the National Association of Catholic Chaplains are women, too; they work in hospitals, hospices, universities and prisons"
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opbon194265631may19,0,4043636.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Charlotte, NC #15
In the Andrew Jackson State park we saw this Anole Lizard. I’ve never seen one before. It was about 10 inches long from nose to tail.
A beautiful tree, abundant on the west-coasts in Washington State. Locally referred to as the Madrona tree. I’ve attached 3 photographs below. The Seattle district of “Magnolia” is reportedly named after an entry in Captain Vancouver’s ships’ log where, from a distance, he mistook the Madronas for Magnolias.
The Government of British Columbia Ministry of Forest refer to the tree as:
“Arbutus is the only native broadleaf evergreen tree in Canada. Another common name is madrone, a Spanish word for the strawberry tree, of which arbutus is a close relative. The Scottish botanist Archibald Menzies first collected specimens in 1792 and described it as the oriental strawberry tree.”
A US ‘animal lovers’ website refers to it as:
“Arbutus, genus of small trees and shrubs of the heath family, including the madrona tree (Arbutus menziesii) of California and Oregon, and the strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) of Europe. In the eastern United States a closely related genus is called trailing arbutus. Arbutus menziesii is broadleaf evergreen tree, up to 30 metres tall, usually with a crooked or leaning trunk that divides into several twisting upright branches and an irregularly rounded crown.â€
An Irish botanical website makes references to the “shrubs’ in ancient history:
“the fruit was known to the ancients, but according to Pliny (who gave the tree the name of Arbutus) was not held in much esteem, as the name implies (un ede=one 1 eat), the fruits being considered so unpalatable, that no one tasting them for the first time would be tempted to repeat the experiment. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that at one time the fruit was an article of diet with the ancients. Horace praises the tree for its shade and Ovid for its loads of ‘blushing fruit.’ Virgil recommends the young shoots as winter food for goats and for basket-work.â€
This comment piqued my interest:
“When eaten in quantities this fruit is said to be narcotic, and the wine made from it in Spain has the same property.â€
Wendy Fancies-a-drop-of-madrona-fruit-wine
The Guardian describes Happy Slapping as:
“a youth craze in which groups of teenagers armed with camera phones slap or mug unsuspecting children or passersby while capturing the attacks on 3g technology”
“In most cases the worst that happens is a minor scratch or a bruised ego,” she said.
“What the people behind these attacks have to understand is that technically they are committing an assault. And if they then upload the images on to the internet or a phone system they could be prosecuted for harassment.”
Earlier this year, schools in Lewisham, south London, and St Albans banned camera phones because of worries that the fad was leading to an increase in playground bullying.
The Mobile Technology Website suggests that ‘Tango’ advertisement series is part of the inspiration for this behaviour.
Today’s times reports that Blair backs a Ban on wearing ‘baseball caps’ and ‘hoodies’ within Britian largest indoor shopping center – to stop youths hiding their identity while happy slapping…
I’ll certainly be ducking next time someone in the UK points their Camera phone at me…
Wendy
I recently read a description of something that I recognized as ‘Hot Desking”. It was summrised by the auther as using a “Hotspot”. “Hotspots” are normally advertised as places where you could get wireless internet connectivity for your Hand-held device (phone, pda). The description I’d read didn’t require wireless internet connectivity. Not a ‘hotspot’ as I understood it.
I then realized that I had not heard the phrase “Hot-Desking” since I arrived in the US. I searched the internet for the term to see what the search results implied. Sure enough, most of the web-sites were addressed with .co.uk at the end. This site describes the term: http://www.worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-hot1.htm
Excerpt:
The name may derive from hot bunking, the name given to the sharing of sleeping space by sailors on watch in wartime, when as one went on watch another took his place.
I’ve inferred that the ‘hot’ probably comes from the likelihood that the bunk was still physically warm (hot?) when you got in it at the end of your watch from the body that just left the bunk to go on watch…. a pleasant (?) sensual experience.
This alone seemed weak evidence to determine if the phrase is UK (maybe, Europe) centric. I wandered into the office of a pretty young UK boy and asked him “what would you think of if I said Hot-desking?” He described the term as I understood it. I then wandered into the office of a pretty young US boy and asked him the same question.
He blushed, paused, then said “it depends what mood I’m in“. After I’d finished laughing and commenting on what a great answer that was, he said that he had no idea, he’d never heard the phrase before. I was impressed that he had risked a ”personnel’ violation (e.g. sexual harassment) by flirting with me. Flirting at work seems much more rare in the US than the UK. I took this as confirmation that the US do not use Hot-desking as a term. I then wandered into another colleagues office, described Hot-Desking and asked her if there was a word for it. She said, “yes, Hoteling”
I concluded that Hot-Desking (UK) = Hoteling (US)
Personally I prefer the phrase with the sensual undertones and double entendre… …what can I say…
Wendy with hot-desk and so much more
The MG Rover group (Rover) crawls to it’s death in April 2005. It represented the remnants of the UK’s home grown mass production car industry.
The short story is that it was gradually asset stripped by BMW and the ‘Phoenix 4′ for over a decade with questions about management competency and organisational culture.
The Long(bridge) story reads more like a Greek (Hollywood?) Epic. It moves from the UK car industry as a cottage industry through mergers to Nationalization and beyond! It covers political turmoil with the demise of Unions, evolution of ‘New Labour’ and differing government involvements in this industry. The SWP (extreme) socialists blame the ineffectiveness of Unions and Labour government for Rovers demise. There are international players (Honda) and big money wheeling and dealing buy-outs (BMW), sell-outs (BMW) and government inquiry’s. Throw in somequestionable accounting practices and an infamous controversial home-grown team “Phoenix 4” who bought the company for £10 from BMW in 2000. Add an impending pension scandal for the estimated 6,000 employees at the company, impacting even more dealerships. The impending pension scandal ensures the story will stay live for years to come. Where-as the Warkwickshire county cricket team will probably have to return their cars gained from a sponsorship deal in the near future.
The BBC reports: “An estimated 15,000-20,000 jobs in the area are supported by business from Longbridge.” Apparently there is little left of value. Even the name “Rover” was licensed from the German company BMW.
There are lots of potential hero’s and bad guys, often the same guys… …while the Local Longbridge employees are undoubtedly the worst impacted victims.
Jeremy Clarkson, provides his epitaph, uniquely in all the summaries, based on the quality of the recently produced cars.
Wendy
About 4mm of a loose thread on the neckline of a jumper was waving itself at me this morning.
Did I do the sensible thing and take the jumper of, get a needle and sew the thread end back into to jumper? NO!
I pulled it.
There is something so ‘pullable’ about a thread hanging out of a seam on your clothes. Its like gravity, its attractive. I’ve done this before.
I should know better.
The speed and ease with which the neckline of my jumper detached itself from the body was astounding. With one jerk I had produced a 2 inch long gash.
Then I decided to shift the blame to the technology rather than my ”let’s just pull this" instinct.
Why do modern sewing-machines produce stitch patterns that can be undone with one pull?
Why don’t they re-design the stitch patterns to prevent this? I suspect that manufacturers have no motivation to change or redesign their stitches. You pulled the thread, you broke the garment. Your options are repair or replace. Replacement is another sale ($) and repairing doesn’t cost the manufacturer anything. No loss to the manufacturers in keeping the same methods, no gain in changing them.
I wonder what the advantages are of the easily undo-able seam. Why develop it in the first place?
Wendy Spent-the-morning-darning-holes-in-seams
Today my 1995 Honda had its ‘emissions’ tested to check that they are consistent with the standards required by the county where the car is registered. A Vehicle emissions test is a necessary pre-requisite to obtaining “tabs“. Tabs are small coloured plastic labels showing a ‘date’ when they ‘expire’. They last one year. They are attached to the car license plate to indicate that Road taxes have been paid for this vehicle and it has passed an emissions test. The UK equivalent of Tabs comes in the form of an “MOT” and tax disc. Washington state does not check the road-worthiness of the car beyond the car emissions. This was a shock to me. Realizing that road vehicles are not checked for road-worthiness beyond their emissions. The MOT is a very effective way of ensuring lack of accidents due to poor car maintenance, it probably saves lives.
What’s the process like?
I think an MOT would be quite a cultural suprise to americans, both in terms of ‘time’ to get the test completed, the sheer breath of things tested, and of course – the cost!
WET – Wendy Emissions Tested
(some letters have been changed to evade MSN censorship)
“Really Simple“? I dont think so
“Syndication“? what is that when its at home?!!!!
This is what MSN Spaces Help says:
MSN Spaces enables you to syndicate (Makes specified content from your site available to others to use and display on their websites. When the syndicated content from your site is updated, the content is also updated on other sites that contain that content.) your space (A place on the Web where you can share information with others by publishing your thoughts and interests through content such as blogs, photos, and lists.) by using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) (A web protocol that allows for easy syndication of a website.) . If you syndicate your space, it can be read by an RSS news reader (A program that allows a user to read content from various RSS news feeds and blogs.) or aggregator (A program that watches for new content coming over specified RSS feeds.), which allows the people who use them to get updates to your space as soon as you publish them. When you syndicate your space, your blog, lists, photo albums, and music lists are all syndicated.
After 3 cups of tea, some serious beard-tugging and cat taunting, I think I understand the above ‘help’. Could they be saying that:
If you ‘syndicate’ your space, someone-else with a syndicate ‘reader’ or ‘aggregator’ can use it to get any updates you make to your space automatically shown on their own website! Wendy – You don’t have a syndicate reader on your space – tough shite, ha ha ha…..
The first half sounds great! Call me hallucinatory, but I wasn’t so happy about the second half of the message.
I noticed that in my settings I have allowed other people to syndicate my space. It would be very flattering if someone actually wanted to track my entries! My “statistics” (attached) show that someone has syndicated my site. Hooray! Though most of my readers come here from my MSN Messenger contact card, my email signature, and other people’s MSN Spaces.
But what do those RSS lists show? Does each of them mean that a differet RSS reader has pulled content from the entry cited? Are they all the same one that is making lots of duplicate updates? Why are they updating some of my entries from over 2 weeks ago? How many readers are there (how popular is my site)?
Like the CultFigurine mentioned – I’d like my ‘Statistics’ more accessible, I’d even like the ability to publish them on my blog – so people can see how popular my site is (not!!) on different days… I’ll have to ask MSN Feedback.
Now that I think I know what ” RSS ” is I want my Space to have a syndicate reader or agregator. That would make me come here to read as well as to write. Another thing to ask MSN Feedback
Wendy Sensored Syndicating
Today is International Dawn Chorus Day.
The Gaurdian newspaper reported that songbirds imitate mobile phone ring-tone back in 2003. Excerpt:
“Starlings have begun to imitate the ring tones of mobile phones. Researchers at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), and in Denmark, had noticed over the past year that the birds are adapting their mating calls.
Starlings, well known as mimics, are members of the same family as the mynah bird. But until now they have limited their mimicry to that of other bird songs or, in some cases, shepherds whistling at sheep dogs. “The birds incorporate the sounds because it is believed that the richer the sound, the variety of tones it has, makes the male more attractive to the female,” says a spokesperson for the RSPB. ”
The phenomena was reported in Australia in 2001: Wierd news
Nature imitates technology, technology then imitates nature. As ringtone providers include Birdsongs in their repetoire.
Wendy loves-a-story-that-spirals
