h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Every home has useless gadgets in the back of the kitchen cupboard...its the rules.
Just back from Wales kayaking, fishing camping. A good weekend.

[WM]

Back from a weekend in Sweden. The Mrs and i did a 15 km hike in less than 3 hours (well, 14.7 in 2 hr 48) yesterday and have no aches today

Not in *my* kitchen cupboard

I do sometimes organise my eggs so the freshest are on top (where family members can help themselves for frying) and the oldest in a separate box underneath (for the bakers in the household). But only if I have any eggs which are old enough for this to be worth doing, so it doesn't happen very often - we get through a couple of dozen a week, more if there's a lot of baking going on.

Yesterday I saw somebody picking the daffodils growing beside the road. I was really shocked. Willing volunteers plant those daffodils for everybody passing by to enjoy, not for some passing by to pick and take home.

Mol

Ah yes, I saw someone picking the daffodils in the park last week. Unfortunately I had the dog with me and was too far away.

Quite often around here you'll see groups of people who've moved to this country picking the roadside daffodils and then selling them in town.

They're usually arrested quickly, cautioned and fined. And pretty much most of the time, it's apparently because they don't know they're not supposed to.

>>Ah yes, I saw someone picking the daffodils in the park last week. grr Unfortunately I had the dog with me and was too far away.<<

An ideal opportunity to set the dog on 'em I would have thought.

And, it's raining. Yay, rain! Thanks all you folks sending your extra rainclouds back this way.

Weatherman says it's still a drought. But some rain has got to be better than no rain, right?

Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain, rain, rain.

'some rain has got to be better than no rain, right'

Hmm - not sure about that at the moment. I suppose if there was no rain, plants would all wither and die, but a lack of heavy downpours that washes away railway lines makes getting to work easier...

<BB<

[]

I sat in the courtyard today and experienced a unitary rainfall. One raindrop fell on me. What's more, I saw no evidence that raindrops fell on my companions or on the ground around us. I guess that's the desert for you.

At least it was rain and not

Little birdy flying high
Dropped a message from the sky
"Oh" said the farmer wiping his eye
"Isn't it lucky cows don't fly!"

I wish I could remember who wrote that, I think it might be Roger Gough, but it's a poem I remember from my childhood.

The air is full of ash and birch pollen... my eyes hurt.

That is actually a little spectacular, Lil. Don't think I've ever tried that. A very few yes - but one single drop...

And that has now become ... what would you call the poetry equivalent of an earworm for music? I have once written a wee piece on the smell of summer rain that I somehow feel the need to dig out of the dusty archives.

I read that poem as a kid, and it's still stuck in my head all these years later

...no idea if the Actinomyces theory is correct (actually, from what I could tell by a quick look up, they do not form spores) - but the microbiologist in me likes the story even if the poet (for what it's worth) finds it a little disturbing going scientific on the pleasant experience

http://io9.com/what-really-causes-that-amazing-after-the-rain-smell-1167869568

(the comments are quite hilarious)

And I still can't find my "Smell of Summer Rain" piece

In Lincoln the after-rain smell had an element of resin from all the junipers.

The pre-rain smell is just as neat; it's wet concrete.

That's a classic poem I remember fondly too.

<BB<

Now to something completely different - via the marketing news we get on the food etc industries, this came to my attention:

http://www.mitonics.com/themachine.asp

Am I really odd in thinking -

“When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”

??