* The Truth About Diving
* A Mischievous Kid
* Lights in the Sky
* When Science Becomes Art
* The Good Old BBC
* Armenia
Your time starts……………
……….now
Ever since this blog started (more years ago than I care to remember), much of its content has originated with you, its Followers and casual readers. Almost since the first day, I’ve been receiving anecdotes, quotations, jokes, puzzles, questions (and answers), axioms, trivia and much else besides. And I always enjoy sifting through them, even if some of them don’t end up in the blog itself, for any one of a number of reasons!
Often mixed in with these brain-curdling injections of verbal refreshment are images; photographs, drawings, paintings, videos - or internet links to them. These are usually just as waywardly interesting as the word-based contributions you send so, once in a while, I like to devote a blogposting to them.
Let’s start with two emails sent to me by John…
THE TRUTH ABOUT DIVING
Just in case you think that competition diving is a walk in the park, take a look at these amazing pictures, taken at recent world diving championships.
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A MISCHIEVOUS KID
Click on the link below, or cut-and-paste it into your Internet Browser’s ‘Search’ box.
I love this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdiV6JHuM_E&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Thanks John.
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LIGHTS IN THE SKY
Dave Shannon has sent me this lovely picture of the Northern Lights glittering and shimmering over a teepee campsite in (I think) western Canada.
The note he sent with it says that fire rainbows are one of ‘the rarest of all naturally occurring atmospheric phenomena because the conditions which cause them coincide so very seldom. The clouds have to be cirrus, they must be at least 20,000 feet up and must contain just the right amount of crystallised ice. If sunlight then strikes the clouds at exactly 58 degrees, this is what happens...
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WHEN SCIENCE BECOMES ART
Dave also sent me this link. It’s a hypnotic demonstration that pendulums swing at differing speeds depending on how long they are.
Students at Harvard suspended 15 pendulums in a row, each one slightly longer than its neighbour, set them in motion and filmed the result.
Again, click on the (very long) link below or cut-and-paste it into your Internet Browser’s ‘Search’ box.
http://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k16940&pageid=icb.page80863&pageContentId=icb.pagecontent341734&state=maximize&view=view.do&viewParam_name=indepth.html#a_icb_pagecontent341734
It’s positively beautiful. Watch it to the end.
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THE GOOD OLD BBC
This is another link from Dave Shannon, whom God preserve. It constitutes proof, if proof were needed, that there are still some things that my ex-employer does incomparably well.
I hope you feel as uplifted watching it as I did.
As before, just click on the link or cut-and-paste it into your Internet Browser’s ‘Search’ box.
And enjoy!
www.youtube.com/embed/auSo1MyWf8g?rel=0 <
Thanks for your wonderful contributions, Dave.
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THE WORLD: A TRUCKSHUNTER GEOGRAPHY
It’s time once again to resume our world tour, during which we crash-land in each of the world’s countries and do some clandestine digging around with the sole purpose of finding out what they’re really like behind the ambassadorial pleasantries.
What do the people there eat and drink? How do they say ‘not bloody likely’? Do they have a version of The X Factor? And (specially for Vivienne) when did they last have an earthquake?
The next nation to suffer at our unforgiving hands is Armenia. So your assignment, should you choose etc etc etc, is to snuffle around in the geographical undergrowth and emerge with as much offbeat information and trivia about Armenia as you can.
A botanically-minded friend has already unearthed an item of unsurpassing unimportance, namely….that, in much the same way that all carrots ultimately come from Afghanistan, every apricot ever grown was descended from its wild ancestors, all of which came from Armenia. The apricot’s botanical name means ‘Armenian plum’.
Beat that!
I await your email with breath fully bated.
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CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com
1 comment:
Here's a Welsh joke for you from the valleys stand-up Dai Laffin:
"Does dim drwyn gydi ci ni"
"Sut maen'n gwynto?"
"Adnafol!"
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