insert witty title here

Happy birthday to me


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Perhaps it's time to update the old adage: "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!"

Tumbledry Baby

An Australian man has been charged with causing bodily harm after he put a 13-month-old baby in a tumble dryer when she spilt a drink on herself.

Samuel Siddall, 21, was left in charge of his girlfriend's baby while she went to the gym for an hour, police said.

She returned to find the baby had suffered serious burns. Doctors notified police because of the suspicious nature of her injuries.

They expect the baby to make a full recovery and leave hospital this week.

"The injuries are horrific and in my years of being a police officer I have not seen or heard of this type of injury before," police detective Deb Newman told reporters.

"The person we allege has done the act has stated that he has put the child into a clothes tumble dryer, closed the door and turned it on for a couple of minutes," she said.

Police said the child suffered serious burns to both feet and her left hand as well as bruising to her face and back.

Mr Siddall, 21, was released on bail and told to reappear in court in June. He was also forbidden to contact the child's mother.

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A Memorial weekend blast

SEATTLE - Three men are in the hospital with serious injuries after a fireworks accident Thursday.

Investigators say the victims were part of a group of 10 or 12 construction workers having a barbeque at the KOA campground off Highway 12 in Lewis County.

One of the men came over to the campfire and showed off a powerful firework that was about 5 inches long and an inch thick. Another man tossed it into the fire, but it failed to light, so he reached in to the fire to retrieve it, police say.

A family member told KOMO 4 News another man tried to stop him from grabbing in, and in the process, the device went off.

Police say those two men lost their hand in the explosion, and suffered other head and facial injuries. They were both airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Both men were said to be in their early 40s.

A third man who was walking nearby was also suffered head injuries and possibly an eye fracture. He was taken to Centralia Providence Hospital.

Investigators believe the two men had been drinking.

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If

owl
fowl
cowl
scowl
and
growl
all sound the same, then

what's up with bowl?


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One Fat Dog

Sessa, a 5-year-old Sheltie, was discovered by Phoenix Police during a call to a home. She was so fat, she couldn't move. Officials say she was stuck to the floor in her own filth.

"When she came into us, she was about 75 pounds," said Alexis Boyle, spokesperson for the Arizona Humane Society. "That's about two and a half, almost three times what her normal weight should be."
The dog's owners admitted to feeding her beer and donuts. It's not a crime in Arizona to overfeed an animal, but Boyle says it's still wrong.

"It's one thing if you like to eat beer and donuts and make yourself that way, but it's really not fair to her, because that wasn't her choice," Boyle said.

Sessa can barely walk, so the Humane Society sought out a different way for her to exercise. She's doing aquatic therapy with Jeffrey Flocker, a rehab specialist at Canine Physical Rehabilitation of the Southwest....

...Sessa may need to exercise and eat well for a year, before she drops all her unwanted pounds. Boyle says the dog is a cautionary tale, for other pet owners who feed their animals "people food."

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Love Potion # 9?

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

PEORIA - Police are testing a mysterious brown powder that a Peoria man discovered his wife sprinkling on his food Sunday which he feared to be poison.

Bobby Irvin, 41, called police about 5:30 p.m. Sunday to report his wife, Rose Irvin, 46, is possibly poisoning him. He said he walked into the kitchen and spotted his wife sprinkling a powder on a sandwich that his mother had bought him earlier that day. He repeatedly asked her what the powder was, but she refused to say, reports said.

They briefly struggled, and he grabbed the baggie of powder from her and then called his parents for advice. They told him to call police.

Bobby Irvin told the responding officer that his wife had been acting deviously lately and they were going through a rough patch in their marriage.

Rose Irvin admitted to sprinkling the powder on both her and her husband's food and believes it to be a harmless mix of minerals, though she doesn't know exactly what it was. She said she bought the powder through the mail from a psychic doctor in Virginia to try to improve their marital problems. The doctor told her she couldn't tell her husband about the powder because if he knew it would not work.

Police took the powder as evidence and advised Bobby Irvin that if he felt unsafe he should prepare his own food and possibly find another place to live.

I suspect that at least part of their martial problems stems from the fact that she's dumb enough to buy a mail-order "magic powder" from a "psychic doctor"...


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Albert Camus said, "After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books." It's a sound ideal and one most people should embrace. Especially this woman:

A northwest suburban high school board member seeks to ban seven books from classroom use because she thinks the profanity, depiction of graphic sex, and drug and abortion references in the literature are inappropriate for teenagers.

Leslie Pinney admits she only read passages of the controversial selections, including Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Toni Morrison's Beloved, which were on the American Library Association's 100 most challenged books list between 1990 and 2000.

But Pinney said perusing the questionable parts of the books made it clear they weren't suitable for children and should be taken off Township High School District 214's proposed required reading list next year. The district is based in Arlington Heights.

Pinney was particularly offended by the explicit tales of masturbation and teen sex in Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The popular novel, often described as a modern-day Catcher in the Rye, was among the ALA's top 10 most challenged books two years ago.

"We talk about the steady diet of trans fat and sugar, and we know the result is obesity and diabetes. But what are we feeding the minds of our students? They're getting a steady diet of foul language, violence and sexuality outside the classroom by the media. But when it comes to the classroom, isn't there something of a higher level to feed the minds of our children?" Pinney asked.

Other books Pinney wants replaced are The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien; The Awakening by Kate Chopin; Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, and Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World.

Many of the texts have been used in the district's six main high schools before and were reviewed by the department heads before the lists were sent to the board for consideration.

"These aren't books someone just picked out of a bookstore one Saturday morning and said, 'Hey let's put them on the reading list.' These are books that have gone through the process and were selected for their educational value," Board President William Dussling said.

Dussling is willing to listen to Pinney's concerns when the board meets Thursday, but he doubts the books will be removed from the curriculum. The district has an "opt out" policy if parents don't want students to participate in an activity or read a certain book, he said.

There were 404 challenges or written requests to have a book removed from a school or library filed with the ALA last year. There were 11 challenges in Illinois in 2005, compared with 10 the year before, spokeswoman Larra Clark said.

Personally, I agree with Voltaire: Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too


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What's the point of having a dog if you're too damn lazy to take it for a walk?

Around the corner from my place, there's a woman who stands in her front doorway every morning and lets her dog out into the yard on one of those retractable leashes. The dog reaches the end it its tether and pees against a bush, whereupon the woman reels Fido in like she's landing a marlin.

Then there are the clowns who drive to a parking lot, let their dog out on a leash and then proceed to drive their dog for a walk. Heaven forbid they get off their fat asses and actually walk around the block or simply stand in a field and throw a stick for ol' Sparky.

With a little poetic justice, these arseholes will end up in an old folks home, getting wheeled into the sunroom by some uncaring nurse who couldn't really give a shit if they're enjoying life or not.


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Here's a handy way to identify idiots:

Step One: get a haircut

Step Two: wait for people to comment

Intelligent people will do one of three things: they will compliment you on your haircut; they will criticize your haircut, or; they will not comment at all on your haircut.

Idiots on the other hand, will always exclaim "You cut your hair!".

no shit Sherlock, I was there when it happened.


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Do you know what you never see anymore? people playing mumbletypeg


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Slappy Mother's Day?

Instead of a gift, flowers or even a card, two Jersey City teens gave their mom a beating on Mother's Day, according to Jersey City police.

The 14-and 15-year-old brothers were arrested for simple assault Sunday after sending their mother to the Jersey City Medical Center for treatment of cuts and bruises, Sgt. Edgar Martinez said...

...The 31-year-old Van Horne Street mom said her sons attacked her about 11 a.m. because she refused to give them cash to buy expensive clothes, Martinez said.
"They didn't even say 'Happy Mother's Day' that morning," she said sadly.

"We were sitting there watching TV and they started asking me for $100 sneakers, jeans," she said inside her apartment yesterday. "When I said no, they started cursing me, telling me they hated me. Then they 'mushed' me into that wall."

The boys then punched and kicked her, chasing her and continuing the attack even after she fled into the hallway, she said. The beating stopped when a concerned neighbor called police and the boys fled.

Later that afternoon, they came back to the apartment and tried to kick down the apartment door. Police then arrived and arrested them, taking them to the Hudson County Youth House in Secaucus.

She said police offered to release the boys and return them to her custody, but she refused to take them in, saying she has to protect her 5-year-old son from them.
"I'm too scared for my baby," she said. "They're my kids, why did they hit me? I tried to buy them nice things, Nike, Timberlands, but I'm a single mother."

The mom said her oldest son, a freshman at Lincoln High School, punched her in the mouth a month ago and gave her a black eye after another argument over expensive clothing.

She said the father of all three boys is in prison for aggravated assault for beating her, as well as drug charges.

Peter Herbst, director of the Hudson County Child Abuse Center, said the family is living in "an atmosphere of violence."

"To beat up one who's weaker than you - for the dad, it was mom, for the kids, it's mom," Herbst said. "If you are a boy who sees your father beat up mother for not doing 'the right thing,' then if mom doesn't do 'the right thing' for you, the rationality is 'Why not? That's what Dad did.'"

The teens are now staying with their father's sister, who said she hopes to take custody of them.

"They didn't punch her, they just pushed her," the aunt said. "She didn't give them anything. They didn't have their own TV, nice clothes."

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Last night I attended my daughter's graduation from the DARE program, which is offered in Britsh Columbia's school system.

The ceremony was quite elaborate (presumably to reinforce to the kids the importance of resisting drugs & alcohol) and went on for two hours but, it was well worth it. Ex1 and I sat at the same table and chatted about the three kids. I can't speak for her, but I look at her now and cannot really picture myself married to her.


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Favorites...

Do you have a favorite type (or a couple) of music? A favorite singer? Or musical group? my musical tastes are...eclectic

What is your favorite fast food restaurant? How often do you eat there? What's your favorite restaurant for casual dining? Favorite special occasion restaurant? I have no favorite fast food restaurant - they're all just slop bins. The restaurant I most often want to return to is the Bar-B-Barn in Montreal.

Do you remember what your favorite childhood books were? how far back are we talking about here? Green Eggs and Ham enthralled me when I was four. I was big into the Hardy Boys in my pre-teens.

Do you have a favorite movie? Actor? Actress? Comedy? Drama? I have many favorite movies: 1900, Seven Beauties, Blade Runner, Les Uns et Les Autres, The Opening of Misty Beethoven and Subway to name a few...

What's your favorite alcoholic beverage? I don't really have one - I'm not much of a drinker.

What meal would you eat most often if you could? Do you have a favorite "fancy" meal? I'd have an appetizer of calamari and escargot, a main course of boiled Maine lobster and three pounds of fresh blueberries for dessert

What is your favorite snack food? Dessert? What's your favorite ice cream flavor? These are my favorite snack food but they are unavailable on the West Coast. Anyone sending me a crate of them will garner my unending devotion. We already covered dessert and I'm gonna go with mint choclate chip for my ice cream flavour.

Do you have a favorite and least favorite day of the week? Why do you feel that way? My favorite day of the week is Thursday. I'm not sure why.

What is your favorite time of day? Yes, bedtime

What's your favorite candy bar? I don't think I have one

What is your favorite ethnic cuisine? nothing specific comes to mind, but the spicier the better!


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There are so many disturbing things within this news item that I'm at a loss about where to begin commenting.


Babies having babies...

A girl is to become Britain's youngest mother after becoming pregnant at 11.
The girl smokes 20 cigarettes a day despite being eight months' pregnant. She conceived aged 11 when she lost her virginity to a boy of 15 on a drunken night out with friends....

...Her 34-year-old mother, who gave birth to her youngest child eight months ago, said she was 'proud' of her daughter.

She will be 12 years and 8 months when she has the child next month. Jenny Teague, Britain's youngest mother until now, was a month older when she gave birth in 1997.
The youngster, who lives near Edinburgh, says looking after her younger brothers has prepared her for motherhood.

But the girl admits she "panics and cries" when babies are unwell and does not feel able to bathe them.

The mother-to-be, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had unprotected sex with the teenage boy, who also cannot be identified, while drunk last August.

'Excited'

She told the Sun: "I didn't think I'd get pregnant because it was my first time. But I'm really excited and looking forward to being a mum.

"I can't wait to take the baby swimming and out for walks in the pram. I think I'll be able to cope as I've had lots of practice looking after my brothers.

"I know how to feed a baby its bottle and I can change nappies. But I panic and cry if they're sick and I don't like giving them a bath because I'm a bit frightened.
"It's good to know I'll have my mum here to help me if I need her."

Concerned she might be pregnant, the girl visited a GP three times but tests proved negative. She learned the truth after buying a home-testing kit from a supermarket.
After the device displayed two blue lines, indicating she was pregnant, she pleaded with a female relative to break the news to her mother. The girl, who has been suspended from her first year of secondary school for fighting, said: "I was paranoid about what my mum was going to say and just frightened about being pregnant too.

"I knew straight away that I couldn't have an abortion because that's something I don't believe in.

"I was upset and so was my mum, especially as she'd just had my wee brother. We had a big argument and I ended up locking myself in my room and running away to a friend's.

"It was really hard but it's brought me and my mum closer, which is good. I knew my mum would stand by me no matter what, but I told her straight away I was going to keep the baby.
"The social worker suggested I got rid of it but I'd never do that."

Smoking at nine

The girl, who has shoulder-length dark hair, began smoking at nine and started drinking tonic wine and vodka cocktails at ten. She claimed her cigarette habit was not harming the health of her unborn child.

She said: "I can give up smoking at any time, but I don't find it affects my pregnancy."

The girl, whose parents split up several years ago, said she would like a baby boy - and may call him Leo.

She is currently being educated at a local community centre but knows she must return to school.

She told the Sun: "My mum has said she will look after the baby so I can go to school. I don't know what I want to do with my life when I leave. I used to want to be a nursery nurse, but now I'm not so sure."

'Proud of my daughter'

Her mum said: "I'm not ashamed of my daughter at all - in fact, I'm proud of her for keeping the baby.

"I know she's worried what other people will say but she can walk out there with her head held high.

"At first I wasn't too happy about becoming a gran. But now I'm used to the idea.

I'm really looking forward to having another baby in the house."

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A few mornings each week, I go to the gym for some cardio before work. While there, my sense of wonder never seems to fade, as I watch an assortment of people interact with the cardio machines.

I say interact because what they's doing can't be described as "exercise". To my mind, exercise involves some sort of moderately vigourous effort that exceeds your normal activity level. And if you can casually read a magazine while you're exercising, then it ain't exercise that you're doing. And if you can read a magazine and carry on an animated conversation in your normal voice, then stop screwing around, get off the damn machine and let someone who wants to exercise, use it.

In my observations, I've noticed that gym-goers seem to fall into one of four groups:

the people who are there to socialize
the people who come for the magazines
the people who simply want to be noticed
and lastly, the people who are there to exercise

The socializers will spend two hours at the gym, but only do 15 minutes worth of exercise. The rest of the time they're prancing around, happily chatting with anyone about anything. The readers will show up all bedecked out in their gym gear - complete with gloves, then park their asses on a machine and then read a six-month old issue of O for 20 minutes. If asked if someone else can use the machine, they'll reply "I'm almost done". The attention whores all wear the same kind of outfits: tight shirts and short shorts. They choose exercises that alternatively display either cleavage or bootie and they all wear the same "oh-I'm-so-tired-of-being-stared-at-like-a-piece-of-meat" look on their face. Heaven forbid they show up in something loose and comfortable that incidently hides their T & A. The last group is the smallest of the four and what sets them apart is the fact that they're sweating.

Because exercise involves some sort of moderately vigourous effort.


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After the death of some person (even many years after) you will often hear someone refer to the deceased by saying, "I get the feeling he's up there now, smiling down on us."

First of all, it's extremely doubtful that there's any "up there" to smile down from. It's poetic, and I guess it's comforting. But it probably doesn't exist. Besides, if a person did somehow survive death in a non-physical form, he would be far too busy with other things to be smiling down on people.

And why is it that we never hear that someone is "smiling up at us". I suppose it doesn't occur to people that a loved one might be in hell. And in that case the person in question probably wouldn't be smiling. More likely, he'd be screaming. "I get the feeling he's down there now, screaming up at us."

People just refuse to be realistic.

~ George Carlin "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?"


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karma in action:

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) - A man who pleaded guilty to lobbing a homemade bomb at his girlfriend said he was actually aiming for a beaver dam. In the end, he was the only person injured, and he now faces 10 months in prison as well.

Otis Cecil Wilkins, 45, pleaded guilty Wednesday to assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 300 days in jail. He had been charged with attempted first-degree murder.

According to sheriff's deputies, Wilkins had threatened the ex-girlfriend, then threw the bottle bomb at her car as she drove into her yard in Rougemont, about 30 miles north of Raleigh. Witnesses said the bomb exploded in "a large fireball," and then rolled back toward Wilkins, igniting his shorts.

Public Defender Lawrence Campbell said Wilkins' target was a beaver dam that blocked a waterway, and that the bomb was ignited by ash from his cigarette that fell onto the fuse.

Wilkins spent more than a week at a hospital burn center.

"I ain't no terrorist," he was quoted as saying in a law enforcement report from the incident last year. "It was just a little bit of black powder. It was just a little boom thing."

Wilkins pleaded guilty to three assault counts, one for his ex-girlfriend and two for other people nearby, including the woman's 3-year-old granddaughter. Prosecutor Mitchell Garrell said he pursued a plea-bargain because the ex-girlfriend was uncooperative.

Happy Friday y'all

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Well the ridiculously painful inner ear infection that sent me to ER at 2 this morning wasn't fun, but I did get a lovely shot of morphine out of it


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I'm not sure if this really qualifies as news but...

Contentment is underrated

...From all across the UK, 1001 people were asked by pollsters GfK NOP what happiness meant for them. Unlike other surveys, people did not have to choose their answer from a list someone had already prepared. Instead, they could describe what happiness meant to them in their own words, without relying on already preconceived categories. And what the opinion poll revealed intriguingly was rather different from what many psychologists tell us about happiness.

Happiness in lay terms emerged in six different forms: relationships, contentment, security and money, health, transcendence and fulfilment.

The first one, relationships - sharing life with loved ones, such as partners, friends, family, children, grandchildren and even pets - was not exactly unexpected.

Research consistently finds that supportive social connections are fundamental to feeling good. In our opinion poll, 73% of people mentioned relationships as the only or one of their definitions of happiness. So there was a pretty good agreement here.

What was interesting, however, is that 56% of the respondents equated happiness with contentment. This is something psychology does not talk about much. The magic happiness formula that positive psychologists use is: pleasure + engagement + meaning = happiness. However, there is no space in this formula for contentment. Does it mean that we are missing something?

Let us have a look at what contentment means first. According to dictionary, contentment is accepting things as they are. Another interpretation is mental or emotional satisfaction and foremost, a peace of mind.

But what does it mean to have a peace of mind? Is it about not worrying? Is it about not arguing? Is it about having everything you want or actually not wanting? Is it about clear conscience? "For me, happiness is about personal tranquillity", "Happiness is going to sleep peacefully and waking up the next day", "Being at peace with the way things are going", "Happiness is when you are ok inside about where you are and who you are", "Taking the dog for a walk". These are not quotations from a book, but what ordinary people think.

So for most of us, contentment is a mixture of these things, but what do they have in common?

What they have in common, it seems, is not fighting yourself. You are content when the different parts of yourself make friends with each other. Discontent, on the other hand, is the result of a discrepancy between what you want and what you get. However, nobody can have everything they want. A rich person may not have youth and a young person may not have money. And even one who is both rich and young, may be not as carefree as a hermit. So does it mean that we can not be content?

Fortunately not. The trick is that what really matters is what is going on the inside rather than the outside.

In other words, what we want depends on us, rather than the situation, so by changing our perspective we can affect our level of contentment as much, if not more, as we could do by changing the situation.

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A friend of mine is considering becoming a roller derby girl. We were chatting on the telephone about a possible nom de guerre for her and checked out the US Rollergirls website as there is a list of registered players there and good inspiration for a name. Amongst the ones that stood out were:

Busty Thrustalot

Fisti Cuffs

Justin Cydre

Reyna Terror

Sybil Disobedience and

Trauma Queen


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it's stories like these that make me an advocate for adult licensing. In other words, you should have to pass a test in order to be considered a legal adult. If you fail the test, they immediately take you out back and have you sterilized so you can't make more stupid people.

Man tried to alter fingerprints with skin from feet

A Jamaica man was sentenced to 13 months in prison for surgically replacing his fingerprints in an attempt to enter the United States illegally.

Marc Terrance George, 41, was sentenced Thursday after pleading guilty in federal court here Feb. 27 to illegal entry after deportation.

Authorities said George had replaced his fingerprints with skin from his feet.

While attempting to come through the port of entry in Nogales, Ariz., U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers noticed George's fingers.

George will be deported following his prison time.

But first, authorities said George will be extradited to New Jersey to face charges of money laundering

Man accused of DUI - on lawnmower

VERMILION, Ohio - Police said a drunken man drove a lawnmower to a store about a mile from his house. They arrested him on his way home.

Dondi Bowles, 50, was arrested Friday night as he drove the mower on a sidewalk.

Police said a breath test showed that Bowles' blood alcohol level was 0.144 percent, nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

It was his third DUI arrest in six months, they said.

The lawnmower was towed.

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A Canadian-themed news article for your Friday:

Now Hiring: Tim Hortons - Khandahar

Forget the best way to brew the freshest coffee — the first batch of trainees hoping to work at a Tim Hortons outlet in Afghanistan are learning about how to handle a potential nuclear or biological attack.

About 70 people are undergoing training at Canadian Forces Base Kingston for 41 jobs at a Tim Hortons trailer on the Kandahar airfield.

The Canadian Forces Personnel Support Agency, the morale and welfare arm of the Canadian Forces, will operate the outlet, which is set to open at the end of May.
Candidates are learning about land mines, hostage situations, nuclear and biological attacks and medicine in developing countries.

If chosen, they'll be offered a six-month contract in Afghanistan.

In early March, Tim Hortons announced it would be opening a Kandahar branch of the popular coffee-and-doughnut chain. Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan had lobbied for the move for weeks.

The 2,300 Canadian soldiers around Kandahar can line up at the converted trailer for a familiar taste of home: timbits, cookies and double-doubles.

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I have returned from my voyage and I want to thank Laura for graciously guest-blogging in my absence. In my years of blogging, it was my first experiment with having a guest blogger. Perhaps this is something I should do more often..if you'd be interested in guest-blogging for me sometime, drop me a line.

On my little trip, I stayed at one of those generic-brand chain hotels that have some sort of descriptor for relaxation in their name (sleep, rest, comfort, holiday, etc) and while this place was unremarkable in its mediocrity, it did stand out in one particular way.

When I first walked through the door after checking in, this is how the room looked:

















it brought to mind that old joke "the room's cheap but you have to make your bed". Somewhat bemused, I took the furniture off the beds and put it where I thought it likely belonged.

I was tempted to restack it back onto the beds when I checked out, but decided that the chambermaid would not be as amused as I was.


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Hello, My name is Laura and I've been invited to guest-blog today while Chris is away from a computer.

His suggestion was to write about what I know and I know plants and gardening. I'm a garden writer by profession. The most intriguing part of my job, when researching plants for my books, is the history of plant name derivation, historical medicinal usage and nomenclature.

Since the majority of Chris' readers are of the female persuasion, I thought you may find this interesting, being that most of my readership are women as well. Whether you know a little or alot about plants or gardening, this is bound to make you giggle. It pertains to Columbines or the genus Aquilegia, so if you're unsure what the flower looks like, google it in images and it'll all make sense.

The following passage is from one of my favorite books, Canadian Garden Words by Bill Casselman. If you're into gardening at all, this book should be on your next
gift wishlist.

Word Lore for Aquilegia or Columbine:

"The silliest and most spurious etymology hovers about the word columbine. Now check out this real doozie. Columba is the Latin word for dove. And, yes, columbinus is the adjective meaning 'of or like a dove or pigeon.'Fine.

Why is the flower so named? Well, let's quote one edition of Webster's new International Dictionary: "from the fancied resemblance of its inverted flower to a group of five pigeons." Isn't that cute? Their teeny pigeon heads turned inward to drink at the nectar droplet in the spur of the flower.

What a load of codswallop! Just picture it. A person is walking through a meadow, notices the flower, examines it, and says, "Just like five doves turned inward to drink!" Odd. When I examine a columbine, as I so often do each morning while skipping down my garden path, I see five stegosauruses doing the macarena on a proton.

Once again, a commonsensical and cogent hypothesis exists. The Latin adjective columbinus gave rise to many female proper names in Romance languages, the most familiar being French Columbine and Italian Colombina. In the commedia dell-arte, the rollicking, improvising farce of the late Italian Renaissance, Colombina was a stock character, the mistress of Harlequin, the early days played by a hussy in outrageous jester's motley, played for laughs.

In fact, one particular joke, used even later by the French writer of comedies, Moliere, involves setting up her entrance. She is praised for her modesty, her chastity, the demure manner of her dress. Then on comes Colombina, a flirt and a tart dressed as gaudily as the company's meager resources will allow. Could this flower not have been named for her? In all European languages, it quite common to label flowers with female names and properties. This of marguerite, of maidenhair fern, or Belle Angelique et cetera.

Far-fetched? It may be useful to recall that in the Victorian Language of Flowers, the columbine was the symbol of folly, because its flower looked all loose and jangly like a jester's cap and bells. In the very exuberant vocabulary of Renaissance Italian, una colombina came to mean a woman who was one's ladylove. So the word referred to a lovely woman and was easily transferred to a lovely flower. No need at all to conjure five frumpish pigeons cooing petulance and sipping nectar."

Brings a whole new perspective to plants and gardening doesn't it? I bet if you weren't interested in plants before you are now, or you never want me to appear as a guest-blogger again. There's a chance that this is only fascinating to lil ol me. I hope it makes you look at plants differently today than you might have yesterday.

Happy gardening!


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jumping to a conclusion

A parachutist on his first jump tossed away his helmet and cut through the lines of his chute with secateurs in mid-air before plunging 3,500ft to his death in an apparent suicide.

People on the ground watched as he landed in a grass field 400 yards from the drop zone on a former Second World War airfield...

...A British Parachute Association board of inquiry will work with detectives to establish what led the 27-year-old Londoner to his death. He was said to be behaving normally before he jumped from a Nomad light aircraft that had taken off from Old Buckenham airfield, near Attleborough, Norfolk, on Saturday afternoon.

But as soon as his parachute opened automatically he removed and threw away his helmet, which had a built-in radio to speak to his instructor on the ground. He then used a pair of gardening scissors to cut the tough cords on his parachute, and died from multiple injuries on landing.

The man had paid £175 to take a beginner’s course at the UK Parachute Services training centre, based at the airfield. He learnt how to leave an aircraft, control a parachute and land safely after seven hours of training on Saturday, April 15.
Jason Thompson, the chief instructor, said that the man was not able to jump two weeks ago because the weather had worsened at the end of his training. On Saturday he returned to the centre for his first solo jump in perfect conditions.

Mr Thompson said: "here was nothing to indicate he had any problems at all. I didn't have any part in his training, but apparently he was just a normal sort of student.

"If we had been unhappy with his mental state we would not have allowed him to go up. He exited at 3,500ft and was using a static line so his parachute opened automatically within three seconds.

"His parachute deployed normally and people on the ground only realised something was wrong when he took off his helmet and discarded it. "He then cut the lines on his parachute. It is unclear what height he was at, but his parachute would have deployed at about 3,200ft. People on the ground were aware of the situation as he was doing it, but there was nothing they could do."...

...A police spokesman said: "At this time the police are not treating his death as suspicious. The coroner will begin an investigation in due course."

Using a terminal velocity of 180 feet per second, this means it took approximately 17 seconds for this guy to hit the ground. 17 seconds is a long time to reflect upon and possibly reconsider a decision. Sit still for 17 seconds and see.



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