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Post by bigmartin on Aug 12, 2024 15:46:43 GMT
Busy day yesterday, so a bit lazier today. Sitting in the shade watching the dog patrol around the gardens. Earlier, there was a sparrow enjoying the fat balls and the dog (a little Yorkie) was up on the table on her hind legs with her front legs against one of the posts of the pergola barking at it like mad. The sparrow realised she couldn't reach that far and just carried on. Then the dog took her mind of what she was doing, moved her front legs and fell forwards off the edge of the table. Luckily, she landed OK, gave a "what happened there?" look and bounded back onto the table. The sparrow still ignored her!
Now been trying to organise some invites to send/hand out for my 70th birthday "at home" late next month. I think it worked after 2 texts from PayPal to confirm I actually was trying to pay for them.
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Post by crissdee on Aug 12, 2024 18:42:28 GMT
Aaaaaand, I'm back!!!
Best weekend we have had since the club started. Biggest audiences we have had, and the shows went without any meaningful bloopers. We have been invited back, and the organiser (who does such things for a living) is keen to book us repeatedly..
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Post by jenny on Aug 12, 2024 18:46:15 GMT
Hooray! Now all you need is to have them pay you for it!
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Post by celebaelin on Aug 13, 2024 13:35:41 GMT
Not that it's really MY day in particular but today's an interesting news day:
From Liquid Water On Mars
quite a way under the surface (10-20km) but still...
To A Newly Discovered Roman Mosaic
in Wroxeter, not a staggeringly beautiful or skilled example its existence was previously unknown however.
And from A Pay-off To A Dodgy But As Yet Conviction-free CofE Canon
To The First Court Appearance Of The Romanian Vagrant Accused of Stabbing An 11 Year Old Girl 8 Times in Leicester Square Yesterday
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Post by bigmartin on Aug 13, 2024 18:37:29 GMT
Nice day volunteering and got home to Texan s-in-l saying "you missed all the fun". She was sitting up to my garden table working on a bit of needlework when there was a sound like a cannon firing in 40 Acres just beyond the houses opposite. This was followed by another 3 explosions and a big pall of smoke. Turns out the contractors were cutting back the long grass in the big field to prepare for Network Rail needing to get to a bit of a landslip in the embankment of the London - S. Wales line that borders 40 Acres. One of their tractors suddenly caught fire and the bangs were the tyres exploding. Luckily the driver managed to bail out of the side away from the fire, but the tractor was blazing in a minute or two. A passer-by rang the fire brigade and they were on the job in about 15 minutes, so the field full of long, dry grass didn't go up.
Little Brother and I took the excuse of giving the dog her evening walk to have a nose and a chat to the contractors. They plan to borrow a trailer and haul the wreck off tomorrow. Whilst we were chatting, the dog took advantage of us not watching and being on a really long extendable lead to nose down a little gully in the bank of the stream that separates 40 Acres from the railway bank area. She emerged caked in sticky and slimy mud from nose to tail. We got a bit of a telling off from s-in-l for allowing her to get so filthy!
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Post by jenny on Aug 13, 2024 21:04:09 GMT
I had lunch with a friend, preceded by a visit to the Salvation Army store where I found a brand new L L Bean shirt for $3.99. Lunch at the restaurant and then we went back to her house and watched a movie. She is a major movie buff and very knowledgeable about them, so always fun to watch a movie with. Now I'm home and I have put dinner in the oven so all is well here.
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Post by crissdee on Aug 14, 2024 9:33:09 GMT
A couple of odd things resulting from my morning crosswords.
1. One answer was "adventitious", which apart from being a word I had never encountered before, also does not appear to mean what the clue suggested. The clue was "coming from outside", while my dictionary defined it as "appearing unexpectedly or accidently" which is not really the same thing imho.
2. The clue was "prodigal". Now that is a word I had heard in the usual context, but never really knew the meaning. I had always assumed it was something like "long awaited" but apparently it means "wasteful". On looking in the aforementioned dictionary, I found it nestled in with "prodigy" and "prodigious", and it occurred to me that, while those three words must have a common root, there is no real commonality in their current usage or meanings...
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Post by amanda on Aug 14, 2024 10:29:12 GMT
I know it from the Bible as the Prodigal son, being the one who goes away, then returns and is the one who gets all the wealth.
There is also 'child prodigy' as in the sense of an extraordinary musical genius or similar.
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Post by suze on Aug 14, 2024 13:08:57 GMT
Etymologically, prodigious does mean like a prodigy. These words derive from the Latin prodigium, an omen.
Prodigal is not directly related, and derives from the Latin verb prodigere, to waste. Just to confuse you, Messrs Oxford assert the existence of a word prodigial (note the extra <i>). It is not in common use, but it means prodigious, not prodigal.
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Post by RLDavies on Aug 14, 2024 13:35:13 GMT
The Prodigal Son in the Bible story asked for his inheritance in advance, went off and blew it all, then came back and was welcomed home. We tend to focus on the "going away and coming back" part, but the point of the story is about him wasting his money.
I know "adventitious" as a medical term, where it does mean "coming from an external source" -- that is, not normal to the body. It's mainly used in the context of abnormal sounds in the lungs, like wheezing and crackling.
How my day's going so far... I was up working till 8:30 or 9 am, crashed out. Woke up about 1:30 or 2 pm and was fully intending to go back to sleep when I remembered a very large food delivery was coming today! Checked e-mails and it was slated to arrive between 2:30 and 4:30, which generally means much nearer the 2:30 end of that time block. Blasted out of bed, threw on some clothes, had about two bites of breakfast, and sure enough, here he is at 2:45. Glad I remembered!
The food order was especially huge because it included a lot of drinks for this warm weather, and also because Approved Food was selling some fancy Christmas chocolate hampers (regular price about £28, AF price £5) which I intend to send to my editors as Christmas presents this year. Delighted to see that each one is already packed in its own shipping box!
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Post by tetsabb on Aug 14, 2024 18:30:13 GMT
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Post by jenny on Aug 14, 2024 20:10:13 GMT
I went and had a haircut this morning, which is always nice because my hairdresser, Marty (imagine that said with a Boston accent) is an Irishman from Boston. He and his ex-wife used to work with the Miss Universe pageant in the 90s and he has lots of (scurrilous) Trump stories. He's also a great reader so we have good conversations about books as well. And he gives me a good haircut, so he's worth every penny I pay him.
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Post by crissdee on Aug 15, 2024 12:35:10 GMT
Yesterday, I broke one of my own long-standing rules, and I paid actual money for a bottle of water. I was "spitting feathers" and it was all that was available nearby, and it was only 10p a bottle, so I didn't feel too bad, but the reason it was only 10p a bottle was what I found puzzling.
It was "out of date".
It was water that was somehow considered to be at risk of having "gone off".
Now I realise that standing water can go stagnant after a while, but this is water that has gone through a bottling plant and has been sealed into a sterile bottle, under strict hygiene conditions. It is not going to "go off" in any meaningful time period. And here's the kicker. I just inspected the second bottle that I bought and didn't drink. It has no date on it whatsoever. How did they determine that it was "out of date" in the first place, even if the concept made the slightest bit of sense?
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Post by efros on Aug 15, 2024 13:32:34 GMT
There can be leaching of materials from the container into the water if it is stored for lengthy periods of time. These are thought not to have a great effect healthwise but they can alter the taste of the water.
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Post by jenny on Aug 15, 2024 15:24:16 GMT
I used up the very last bit of a packet of tapioca the other day (nursery tastes I know but Woodsman and I both like tapioca pudding). I served it with sliced fresh peaches and a drizzle of maple syrup on top and it was delicious. When I went to throw the empty pack away I saw that the expiration date on it was 2013. It must have come with us when we moved house. No apparent ill effects.
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Post by efros on Aug 15, 2024 16:57:12 GMT
There is a standard shelf life applied to chemicals in schools here, and the timespan is usually 2 years. Quite simply, this is ridiculous for most chemicals. I have marble chips that should have been thrown out 2 years after purchase, I figured they've been around for several millenia a few more years ain't going to matter.
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Post by suze on Aug 15, 2024 17:17:23 GMT
Today was A level Results Day. I am expected to attend school on this day, although it's never been entirely clear whether I get paid for it.
This year's results were "supposed" to be less good than last year's, because transitional relief for Covid has now ended. That was indeed the case in Northern Ireland, but in England they were actually better. The reason for that is not yet known - it's usually Cambridge University that gets asked to investigate these things, and it will take them a few months - but it may just be that this year's was a "clever cohort". (The numbers taking A levels are large enough that "clever cohorts" shouldn't really occur, but a Cambridge analysis a decade or so ago really did conclude that results less good than usual were down to a "thick cohort".)
As is usual on this occasion, I delivered a talk about the Clearing process to such girls as required it. This time, that included two girls who had not been intending to go to university, but have done better than they expected and now want to. The expected number of girls in this category is about one third, and it has never been two before! One of them has already found herself a place at university. (Mostly because - as I don't "officially" know - she made an on spec approach to that uni a couple of weeks ago. That's not really allowed, but some admissions tutors tend to think that a student who gets off her arse before she absolutely has to deserves some credit for it.)
The other has been allowed to have my mobile number, on pain of a cruel and unusual punishment if she gives it to anyone else.
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Post by bigmartin on Aug 15, 2024 17:21:02 GMT
Busy day at work. The clicker showed 522 visitors in the house. Possibly a few more as the number was 512 when I passed it to my colleague just after 3.30 and was the same number when she gave it back to me 20 minutes later when I let her leave early to head off for a long weekend in Dorset, despite me seeing several people come in.
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pdr
Posted
Supremecy
Posts: 110
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Post by pdr on Aug 15, 2024 17:38:10 GMT
The expected number of girls in this category is about one third Do you mean that the normal expectation is that one girl will be trisected with one of the three resulting body-parts applying for clearing, or do you mean one girl was undecided to the extend of being 66/33 against applying? PDR |
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Post by efros on Aug 15, 2024 21:04:18 GMT
Got a bill this morning for the wife's emergency appendectomy. $41,000, of which we pay about $260. CT Scan was $3500. That isn't all, there are more bills to come, thankfully we won't be paying too much.
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Post by suze on Aug 15, 2024 21:59:11 GMT
The expected number of girls in this category is about one third Do you mean that the normal expectation is that one girl will be trisected with one of the three resulting body-parts applying for clearing, or do you mean one girl was undecided to the extend of being 66/33 against applying? PDR
I haven't had to trisect anyone yet! Mind you, one of the two girls concerned stands 6' 2" in flat shoes and it would be fair to describe her as "strapping". Why yes, she does play rugby. One third of her would probably be more than half a Swot, should universities ever start accepting fractional applications.
I have never previously felt the need to apply formal mathematics to this, but it's usually been about one girl every three years who has done this thing. If we assume that it is thus a Poisson distribution with λ = 1/3 - and TGH is tolerably happy with that assumption - then the probability of two girls doing it at once is 0.04. (Anyone who understands the last sentence will know how to do that calculation, so I shall not set it out in detail.) That's once in twenty five years, so I'm not particularly expecting it to happen again in my time.
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pdr
Posted
Supremecy
Posts: 110
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Post by pdr on Aug 16, 2024 7:43:37 GMT
Do you mean that the normal expectation is that one girl will be trisected with one of the three resulting body-parts applying for clearing, or do you mean one girl was undecided to the extend of being 66/33 against applying? PDR
I haven't had to trisect anyone yet! Mind you, one of the two girls concerned stands 6' 2" in flat shoes and it would be fair to describe her as "strapping". Why yes, she does play rugby. One third of her would probably be more than half a Swot, should universities ever start accepting fractional applications.
I have never previously felt the need to apply formal mathematics to this, but it's usually been about one girl every three years who has done this thing. If we assume that it is thus a Poisson distribution with λ = 1/3 - and TGH is tolerably happy with that assumption - then the probability of two girls doing it at once is 0.04. (Anyone who understands the last sentence will know how to do that calculation, so I shall not set it out in detail.) That's once in twenty five years, so I'm not particularly expecting it to happen again in my time.
Love it! but... [mode=pedent] I'm not sure this scenario meets the basic assumptions of the Poisson model - I suspect the arising rate is too low to consider the mean to be sufficiently constant, but more to the point I suspect the events may lack independence in that one student changing her mind could discuss it with her buddies in the cohort which could cause them to reconsider. Did these two girls know each other? I suspect this scenario would be better modelled using a Weibull or hybrid Weibull-Duane approach might fit it better as these work with smaller quantities (arising rates) better than Poisson and are less corrupted by non-independence in the arisings. That approach would at least predict a characteristic rate with an associated "goodness" parameter (ie a number suggesting whether the predicted correlation is strong or weak). [/mode] But that might be taking it a bit too far given the analysis effort needed, so perhaps we should revert to the trisection option to save scarce resources... PDR |
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pdr
Posted
Supremecy
Posts: 110
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Post by pdr on Aug 16, 2024 7:47:07 GMT
Got a bill this morning for the wife's emergency appendectomy. $41,000, of which we pay about $260. CT Scan was $3500. That isn't all, there are more bills to come, thankfully we won't be paying too much. A few years ago Firstborn was taken into A&E for an emergency appendectomy. We had to cover an outrageous total of £18 for hospital car parking to visit her during her 3-day stay. Ah, the horrendous burden of socialised medicine...  PDR |
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Post by amanda on Aug 16, 2024 8:51:32 GMT
Day at the religious library today, a focus on book processing since there were so many catalogued.
Librarian and I sat opposite each other, each with label sheet, fine liner pen, glue stick and date due slips.
I also heard news that the same young woman who has been banned from the premises, was back recently, trying to break into the library by forcing a window open. She got in and was going to take the precious book of Remembrance out on display that the librarian now thinks should be in the office (that door isn't locked either so if someone does go in there, there's nothing stopping them)
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Post by crissdee on Aug 16, 2024 9:46:32 GMT
I think I just "solved" the easiest crossword clue I have ever had in a "grown up" crossword*
The clue was "DON (anag)" and as I had already established the last letter was "D", it didn't take much thinking about....
*I was going to call it an "adult" crossword, but that puts a rather different slant on it.....
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pdr
Posted
Supremecy
Posts: 110
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Post by pdr on Aug 16, 2024 10:36:23 GMT
Got a bill this morning for the wife's emergency appendectomy. $41,000, of which we pay about $260. CT Scan was $3500. That isn't all, there are more bills to come, thankfully we won't be paying too much. A few years ago Firstborn was taken into A&E for an emergency appendectomy. We had to cover an outrageous total of £18 for hospital car parking to visit her during her 3-day stay. Ah, the horrendous burden of socialised medicine... PDR The catchpa tests aren't intended to filter-out the bots; they're intended to exclude cyclists. That's why they ask you to identify the pictures containing traffic lights... PDR |
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Post by amanda on Aug 16, 2024 10:54:36 GMT
If not so funny/true, I'd laugh at that. Cyclists here ignore the lights too.
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Post by suze on Aug 16, 2024 13:19:45 GMT
More to the point I suspect the events may lack independence in that one student changing her mind could discuss it with her buddies in the cohort which could cause them to reconsider. Did these two girls know each other?
They are aware of each other's existence and know each other's names, but I don't believe thay are particular buddies.
I don't know Big Strong Lass very well. I haven't taught her since Year 8, and her A level subjects were not in my area. She is the one who decided that maybe she'd like to go to university a few weeks ago, and made an unofficial approach to a university in advance of her results. That more and better rugby is available to a woman at university than to a woman in the general population was certainly part of her thinking - although I did spend a few minutes yesterday getting her to convince me that it wasn't all of her thinking.
The other is closer to the caricature Quiet Middle Class Girl of which my school contains many instances. I did teach her for A level, and she said all along that university was not in her plans. She has surprised herself (and me, although of course I have not said so) with her A level results, and that - and possibly a bit of leaning from her mother - is what has convinced her to change her mind. I spoke to her about an hour ago, and she is now but paperwork away from a place at university. One advantage of the way we run our school is that the girls do know that if you want something, you have to do the work to get it. The ones who think "Meh, it's Friday, I'll think about Clearing next week" are those who snooze and lose.
They're both bright enough to know that you don't decide to go to university just because your mates say so, and they've both satisfied me that they're doing it for the right reasons. I'm more confident about one than the other, but I don't think either is making a big mistake. If they were, I'd have told them so.
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Post by amanda on Aug 16, 2024 23:25:39 GMT
suze wrote:
Similar to how most Australian schools work. The one I'm at has had two great careers counsellors over the years, and the current one informs parents/students that over the summer break here when results come out, she can be in contact to assist with changes if needed.
One round of university offers is released mid January, the second round a bit later/early Feb.
For those who miss out in round one, they may get round 2 and that can be as simple as the same course but a different university.
As uni here starts in March, that's plenty of time. For those going to tech colleges they start in Feb when schools go back so those students need to be a bit more prepared.
Though my father working/teaching the prac component of engineering at Melbourne University observed, some first years would muddle through that, then change course at the end of that year.
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Post by Dix on Aug 17, 2024 8:36:50 GMT
I think I just "solved" the easiest crossword clue I have ever had in a "grown up" crossword* The clue was "DON (anag)" and as I had already established the last letter was "D", it didn't take much thinking about.... *I was going to call it an "adult" crossword, but that puts a rather different slant on it..... Our local libray emails out newsletters from time to time. I can't help sniggering when I receive the adult newsletter... |
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