Tree seen from a window

Almost graphical, isn’t it? Like a page from an old book.

Wikipedia day-of-birth meme

Recipe:

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. ´
5. Post it.

So, for February 27:

Three events:

• 1860 - Abraham Lincoln makes a speech at Cooper Union in the city of New York that is largely responsible for his election to the Presidency.


• 1933 - Reichstag fire: Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, is set on fire.


• 1940 - Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discover carbon-14

Two birthdays:

• 1902 - John Steinbeck, American writer, Nobel laureate (d. 1968)


• 1923 - Dexter Gordon, American jazz saxophonist (d. 1990)

One death:

• 1936 - Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1849)

Decided against tagging anyone – the world’s politest self service right at ya’…

Once a scout

…always a scout, I guess.

On this rather ordinary Tuesday – apart from being a vacation day – as I was doing routine stuff in the kitchen, I could let my mind wander a bit. And after a little while found it planning the start of the autumn scouting season.

OK, I did get some inspiration from the DDS leader magazine ‘Broen’, which came in the mail today and had a section on a recent development session in the organisation. ‘TeenSpot’ it was called and was about today’s teenagers, what is rummaging about in their minds, how do we keep them or get them caught in the scouting and so on.

Many people – very surprisingly to scouts – think of scouting as nerdy. One major finding in the study is that one of the core values is the team spirit or solidarity (good English word for ‘sammenhold’, anyone?). That is what scouts again and again name as the most important bit of all the important bits.

And, surely, one that is most enjoyable. Which is why I’m planning on starting right out of the blocks with emphasis on building team spirit in the five new patrols after the summer holidays.

If the rest of the troop leader patrol agrees, of course. Because we need a good team spirit behind it!

DDS TeamSpot  (Danish only, sorry)

Non-dairy coffee creamer

I’ll tell you frankly: I do not think that this is one of the greatest inventions in the history of man.

Non-dairy cream?? Doesn’t compute! Not for me, anyway.

It’s actually up there with other things I don’t understand: Caffeine-free coffee, alcohol-free beer, sugar AND caffeine free Coca-Cola.

Why 42?

It appears to be 30 years ago that Douglas Adams launched the answer that has been famous for such a long time: 42.

Of all the theories, thoughts and potential answers as to why this was to be the chosen one, I think I like this one the best (lifted from the comments to the bbc.co.uk page above):

42. Is the answer to the question "What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9". Once you come to accept that everything is based on a simple error, all the bigger
errors are so much easier to live with. Brendan Johnson, Kenilworth, Warks, UK

True. Very much so, I think.