The Human Condition is Solved!

The expression "the Human Condition" has been with us a long time.  Religions have definitive beliefs about the human condition.  Philosophers have provided perspectives, authors have written eloquently about it.  Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage" is the poetic masterpiece on the seven stages of living. There is a humancondition.com website.  Jeremy Griffith is an Australian biologist who has presented an explanation of the human condition in his 2016 book, FREEDOM:  The End of The Human Condition.  He founded the World Transformation Movement in the 1980's.  His thesis is that humans act angrily because of a battle between instinct and intellect.  The summary of his book is dramatic: The fastest growing realization everywhere is that humanity can't go on the way it is going. Indeed, the great fear is we are entering endgame where we appear to have lost the race between self-destruction and self-discovery the race to find the psychologically relieving understanding of our good and evil-afflicted human condition.  One can read a review of it HERE.   There is a next generation of writing.  In the New Atlantis article Artificial Intelligence and Human Nature, the article starts with: "The cutting edge of modern science and technology has moved, in its aim, beyond the relief of man’s estate to the elimination of human beings." So the human condition would conclude. In the google search world, things fall apart very quickly for relevant articles.  "What is the Human Condition" goes to the website homeandgardenideas.com - an answer that would seem targeted to my interests.  Then there is the human condition at Amazon, at Habitat for Humanity, or the tour dates and concerts of the group "This Human Condition".  There are many art events on this topic. And there's the 2018 online catalog available for rock auto.com as a result of searching on the human condition.   The state of Wisteria this year is less than ideal.  With our cool then warm temperatures, the leaves and flowers are out at the same time, reducing the impact of the purple clusters.

From Soup to Nuts

"From Soup to Nuts" came into my mind.  Maybe someone said it last night at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Horticultural Society meeting.  These are great garden meetings - many people, many projects, much discussion.  It is as though I've been transported decades back in a time machine when gardens were vital to the social fabric of a town.  An example is their multi-year project is to plant daffodils for cancer in special gardens in town.  There are 100,000 daffodils ready to bloom.  The ceremony is this Sunday at 1:00pm. Back to "Soup to Nuts": This phrase stuck in my mind and I started to ponder it.  I know it is a metaphor for 'from beginning to end'.  We still serve soup as a first course.  But nuts?  The latter part of the 20th century did not have nuts as a dessert course.  What cookbooks have anything on the "nuts" course? Some of the references say 'desserts with nuts in them'.  If something is to have such a clear meaning, it should be universally understood.  I was still questioning desserts of nuts from the descriptions I read. I decided the plausible answer is at the site straightdope.com: Origin: For centuries, any foods served at the beginning or end of a meal stood for the entire thing: the start and finish and everything in between. This expression was “from eggs to apples” and “from pottage to cheese.” In the United States in the middle of the 20th century, the expression developed into “from soup to nuts.” At many meals, soup is often the first course and a dessert with nuts is sometimes the last. The expression does not have to refer to only to meals, however. It could be the selection of goods for sale or classes offered. ... According to most of the British authors I read, the last course of a meal is port and nuts. But only for the men, I believe. I think the women had to go sequester themselves elsewhere and drink coffee or something until the men got tired of drinking port and joined them. Which of course begs the question, how did *that* get started? At any rate this is a British custom, and “from soup to nuts” is an American idiom. But still it seems clear that in some form or another nuts were considered the last course in a good meal, while soup was the first. And I think that covers this one from soup to nuts. This is their warning at the bottom of the column.  It is a delight in itself: "STAFF REPORTS ARE WRITTEN BY THE STRAIGHT DOPE SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD, CECIL'S ONLINE AUXILIARY. THOUGH THE SDSAB DOES ITS BEST, THESE COLUMNS ARE EDITED BY ED ZOTTI, NOT CECIL, SO ACCURACYWISE YOU'D BETTER KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED." Today's picture is Wisteria.  I checked this one around the corner from me.  Many wisteria in Niagara are grown as small shrubs, like this one.  It is a mystery flower - there are no flower buds as though no wisteria will bloom.  And then - POP - plump little buds will appear.  We're in such a late spring, it may be a few weeks away.

A Dog's Breakfast

How did a dog's breakfast get such a bad reputation? in the 1937 Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, the expression is listed as "a mess."  It is suggested that this dates from before the time of canned dog food when a dog's breakfast consisted of dinner leftovers from the night before.  This should not be confused with "a dog's dinner" which means the opposite and is normally expressed as "all dressed up like a dog's dinner" and sarcastically means over-dressed or showy.  This comes from makingheadsortailsofidioms.com where the list of expressions is quite fun.  More on the dog's dinner from a New York Times article ON LANGUAGE: Dog's Breakfast: "Why have you got those roses in your hair?" asked a character in "Touch Wood," a 1934 novel by C. L. Anthony. "You look like the dog's dinner ." This expression was defined by the Oxford English Dictionary Supplement as "dressed or arranged in an ostentatiously smart or flashy manner," probably derived from the 1871 usage "to put on the dog ."   And lest we forget, the New York Times examines the well-worn expression - 'dog-eared.' I found this picture of Dezi on a spring search under the wisteria.  Is it for a dog's breakfast or a dog's dinner?

The Day Before the Day Before

I noticed this year that there are names for the days leading up to Christmas and to New Years.  I don't remember hearing this expression so often before - 'the eve of Christmas Eve'. We're approaching 'the eve of New Year's Eve'. There are a few celebrations to mark this day and make for more fun in the lead up to the New Year.  'Eve of the Eve 2016' is a Chicago fundraiser. Nokomis East in Minneapolis has a 'Night before New Year's Eve' party for the family.  Vancouver has an Annual Fake New Years Eve the night before "Nye". Here's someone who has thought of these sorts of things.  William Powers writes: "...get through one more day 'n that'll lead to tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow like today's the day before yesterday's tomorrow's tomorrow and that was the day before the day the day before's tomorrow." I usually wait till winter to process the wisteria pictures.  Then the the screen is an explosion of floral exuberance in contrast to the minimalist snowscape outside.  I got to a few this week, so can celebrate the Wisteria Collection as part of the year in review.

Bubbling Up

A search with Guinness Records in the terms will retrieve all sorts of things.  weareteachers.com has 11 Creative Ways to Use Guinness World Records' titles to teach math.  A search on creative teaching ideas for math includes many interesting approaches - like making a recipe for slime, using matchbox cars, using cheerios to practice multiplication, playing math bingo.  Guinness is appealing to the sense of wonder that children have.   Whatever search terms I've been using lately has been retrieving bubble records. I took a look at this topic. I found a site dedicated to word bubble records - most people in a bubble, largest free-floating soap bubble, people simultaneously blowing bubbles, largest bubble wall, biggest bubble, and so on. The master of bubbles is Fan Yang - Canadian bubble artist. He holds 16 world records in the field of bubbles.  He has done television and corporate performances all over the world, and produces a show, the Gazillion Bubble Showin New York City.   If you google 'fan yang bubble pictures' you will be astonished with what's been created.  There's a good article on him by the huffington post. I don't have any bubble pictures yet - today's picture shows the wisteria blooming at the Pierce Dupont house in Longwood Gardens.

How Many Bees Are There?

As the hostas bloom, I start to look at the bees that are collecting nectar.  I want to cut the hosta flowers because they don't match my colour scheme.  However, there are so many bees that I give in and only cut the most straggly flowers. These bees are on wisteria - if only a hosta could be this beautiful.  These look like bumble bees to me - I don't really know how to identify bees.  Like most people I take them for granted.  I find out there are fifty species of bumble bees in North America.  They live in colonies, headed by a queen who is the main egg-layer.  I found a site where a bee had been identified - pink 38 - and her movements tracked for a summer. Solitary bees make up the largest percent of the bee population.  I have a solitary bee house that needs to get up - their nests are in hollow reeds or twigs, so it is an easy nest to make.   There are 20,000 different species of bees in the world, and there are 6.5 billion bees - I guess we will have to share as there are over 7 billion people - so less than a bee for every person.  Plant some hostas and you will get more than your fair share.

Longwood Wisteria

Sometimes I find that I've taken pictures of the same scene without realizing it.  With Longwood's wisteria, I enjoy taking the pictures of wisteria every time we visit.  These wisteria are trained as trees so the flowers are easily viewed and smelled.  They aren't high above on a pergola out of reach.   These two pictures have been processed with the Georgia O'Keefe filter in the Topaz Labs Impressions software.  The wiggly, liquid lines and soft focus of the filter match the misty day and emphasize the vertical lines of the wisteria

Wishing for Wisteria

Wisteria has captured the imagination for many years.  The oldest wisteria is 144 years old and is in Japan.  It is located in Ashikaga Flower Park and here's the link for the amazing pictures.  If you are interested in the biggest wisteria, it is in Sierra Madre California and here's a youtube video of it. It takes up an acre.  Lucky Californians as it says its blooming period is 5 weeks.  Ours in Niagara is very short - 2 weeks on average, and then the leaves take over and the blooms fade. We are lucky in Niagara. There are many wisteria - often trained as shrubs.  The bottom picture is a shrub version at the corner of my street.  The top two pictures are of the White House in Jordan, about 100 feet long - from end to end, and then it goes around the fence as well, so a lot of wisteria to enjoy.

Time's Up

It is now Daylight Savings Time.  It brings to mind  our expressions and idioms that describe time. The Wikipedia Time Philosophy Section brings us this introduction: Two distinct viewpoints on time divide many prominent philosophers. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time. An opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of actually existing dimension that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead an intellectual concept (together with space and number) that enables humans to sequence and compare events. This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, holds that space and time "do not exist in and of themselves, but ... are the product of the way we represent things", because we can know objects only as they appear to us. Here are a few of the expressions/idioms from The Free Dictionary's Time entry: (a) quarter of (a given hour in time) (someone) puts (his/her) trousers on one leg at a time (just like ever a (ticking) time bomb a devil of a time A good time was had by all a hard time a legend in( one's) own time a matter of time a question of time a race against time A stitch in time a week is a long time in politics a whale of a (good) time about time against the clock against time ahead of one's time ahead of time all in good time all the time all the time in the world any time appear at some time arrange for some time arrive on the stroke of some time at a set time at a time at no time at one time at one time or another at present at some time sharp at that point at the appointed time at the present time

Searching for Facts...

From Kickassfacts.com I found these items: If we lose 10 kg (22 lbs) of fat, 8.4 kg (18.5 lbs) turns into carbon dioxide which is exhaled when we breathe out, while 1.6 kg (3.5lbs) turns into water that is excreted through urine, tears and sweat. – Source There is a 30-foot tree trunk known as the “Old Man of the Lake” that has been floating vertically in Oregon’s Crater Lake for nearly 120 years. In 1938, they tracked the tree trunk’s movement and discovered that it had traveled a total distance of over 60 miles in just under 3 months. – Source In MAY 1997, an IBM supercomputer known as Deep Blue beat then chess world champion Garry Kasparov, who had once bragged he would never lose to a machine. After 15 years, it was discovered that the critical move made by Deep Blue was due to a bug in its software. – Source There are some strange and weird facts there, and I guess that's what makes them popular. http://www.kickassfacts.com/

Wisteria Starting in Niagara...

We haven't left Mother's Day yet.  We found out about Mother's Day in the US. It is very different from Mothering Day in England.  In England it is celebrated far earlier in the year.  From Wikipedia: Mothering Sunday is a holiday celebrated by Catholic and Protestant Christians in some parts of Europe. It falls on the fourth Sunday in Lent (For Orthodox Christians in Europe and elsewhere, the fourth Sunday in Lent remembers St. John of the Ladder). Secularly, it became an occasion for honouring the mothers of children and giving them presents.  During the sixteenth century, people returned to their mother church, the main church or cathedral of the area, for a service to be held on Laetare Sunday. This was either a large local church, or more often the nearest cathedral. Anyone who did this was commonly said to have gone "a-mothering", although whether this term preceded the observance of Mothering Sunday is unclear. In later times, Mothering Sunday became a day when domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother church, usually with their own mothers and other family members. It was often the only time that whole families could gather together, since on other days they were prevented by conflicting working hours, and servants were not given free days on other occasions. By the 1920s the custom of keeping Mothering Sunday had tended to lapse in Ireland and in continental Europe. In 1914, inspired by Anne Jarvis's efforts in the United States, Constance Penswick-Smith created the Mothering Sunday Movement, and in 1921 she wrote a book asking for the revival of the festival; Its widescale revival was through the influence of American and Canadian soldiers serving abroad during World War II ; the traditions of Mothering Sunday, still practised by the Church of England and Church of Ireland were merged with the newly imported traditions and celebrated in the wider Catholic and secular society. UK-based merchants saw the commercial opportunity in the holiday and relentlessly promoted it in the UK; by the 1950s, it was celebrated across all the UK. The Wisteria are showing colour on Yates Street in St. Catharines so will be blooming in the 2 weeks.

Word of the Year 2014 and Jordan Wisteria

What does this Jordan Wisteria have to do with Word of the Year 2014?

I've shown pictures of this wisteria before - it is located on the Main Street in Jordan, the historic village that is home to Cave Springs Winery and the sister hotel and restaurant On the Twenty.  I was preparing some images for a contest where the theme is pergolas and arbours, and this one came to mind.  What is an arbour compared to a pergola?   My google search reveals that an arbour (also arbor) is a "shelter of vines or branches or of latticework covered with climbing shrubs or vines" whereas a pergola is "1: arbor, trellis 2: a structure usually consisting of parallel colonnades supporting an open roof of girders and cross rafters".

Sometimes the answers aren't as straight-forward as we expect.  Whichever way we call this, it is one of the most beautiful sights and smells in Niagara in mid-May.



Which picture do you like best?  Which one to enter in the contest?  Give me your advice.

Now on to the Word of the Year 2014.  As I searched for definitions, the Word of the Year for 2014 popped up a few times. Wikipedia gives me guidance on what this is about at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_the_year

Here are three for 2014:
Oxford Dictionary:  Vape.   It is an abbreviation of vapour or vaporize and it was added to Oxford's Dictionary in August 2014.  It is a verb and means 'to inhale and exhale the vapour produced by an electronic cigarette or similar device'.

Merriam-Wesbster: Culture.  Merriam-Webster chooses the most popular word experienced by the biggest spike in lookups in a year, as in celebrity culture, company culture, pop culture, culture shocks, media culture, etc.

Dictionary.com: Exposure.  This word was chosen in reference to the Ebola virus, widespread theft of personal information, and shocking acts of violence and brutality that dominated the news.  Encapsulating those themes, Dictionary.com chose exposure.

There are so many interesting things to find out every day.  

Where the Mind Turns to in Winter

Last week was a week of winter winds and snow with chilling temperatures.  My mind turns to the beautiful flowers of spring and I found myself in Wisteria Heaven.  

This is the longest wisteria in Niagara - it's in Jordan Village and is more than 100 feet long.  This panorama was stitched together with more than 10 pictures.

One of the most famous Wisteria gardens is at Longwood, near Philadelphia PA.  The wisterias are trained into graceful trees.