Old Weather Forum

Eric, May the sun shine on you this day, may you have health and prosperity in the coming year and may more to come. Happy Birthday!
Regards, Morgan

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Eric!!!

Happy Birthday Eric

Okay, thank you all!!

I've had a lovely birthday, but it is truly a delight to find all these fantastic teapots from all of you. Now I will have to drink more tea, whose antioxidants will surely lead to health and prosperity.

FYI. Another great article from the ABC (Australia)

(In case you wondered how your OW data gets to Michael when you press send.)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-06/ ... /103137378

If only the resources we use for spying on each other could be used to improve people's lives

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all.
-Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, architect, and poet (6 Mar 1475-1564)

Why is it that Americans can change clocks forward or back an hour twice a year, but they can't change to metric units once in a lifetime?

I'm just grumpy because tonight we lose an hour to go on Daylight Saving Time.

My sister-in-law sent a note that while we are setting our clocks ahead one hour, Alabama is setting their calendars back 200 years.

Some of the non-metric units were more intuitive e.g. 1 angstrom is more or less the diameter of a hydrogen atom, a yard is roughly the distance from a man's nose to the end of his fingers (useful for long bow archers or people measuring cloth). Being a fairly small woman by today's standards I have to turn my head slightly to improve the accuracy. A furlong was the length of virgin ground which could be broken by a single plough horse in a day's work. 1 mile is roughly equivalent to 1000 double paces of a roman soldier. A chain (22 yards) was a convenient length for a surveyor's chain and so the length of a cricket pitch. You did need a better memory and an ability to do mental arithmetic to do complicated stuff but on a day to day basis they were quite useful (the hand - still used for horses - was roughly the width of a groom's hand, an inch was roughly the width of a man's thumb and a foot was self explanatory).

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons.
-Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (11 Mar 1952-2001)

Everyone is on their A game today!

ggordon wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2024 9:00 am Why is it that Americans can change clocks forward or back an hour twice a year, but they can't change to metric units once in a lifetime?

I'm just grumpy because tonight we lose an hour to go on Daylight Saving Time.

Daylight Savings was my today's contribution to Not exactly Scrabble
In OZ it started on the first Sunday in October runs through to April so we are still Grumpy

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
-Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (14 Mar 1879-1955)

If you think you have had some problems in your life, read this.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-16/ ... 103591570?

The picture of a ward full of Iron lungs got me.

Some Facts for St Patricks St Patricks Day.

10 facts about St Patrick

1. St Patrick wasn’t Irish – he was English! According to sources, his parents were Roman-British. Shocking.

2. The first ever St Patrick’s Day wasn’t celebrated in Ireland but in Boston, in 1737.

3. At the age of 16, so the story goes, Paddy was captured and sold into slavery in Ireland. He turned to God to help him endure his enslavement. (Who wouldn’t?)

4. The official colour of St Patrick is actually blue. Green became associated with St Patrick’s Day because it’s the colour worn by immortals and, in Irish culture, it was believed that wearing green helped your crops to grow.

5. Miracles associated with St Patrick include driving all the snakes out of Ireland – but there is evidence to suggest that there weren’t any snakes in Ireland in the first place.

6. Your odds of finding a four-leaf clover are about 1 in 10,000. So much for the luck of the Irish.

7. The phrase ‘Drowning the Shamrock’ (which means to drink alcohol on St Patrick’s Day) comes from the custom of floating a shamrock on top of whiskey before drinking it. The Irish believe it brings you good luck for a year.

8. St Patrick was not called Patrick. Most sources agree that his actual name was Maewyn Succat.

9. 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry. That’s almost nine times the population of Ireland, which has 4.1 million people.

10. Legend has it that the shamrock was used by St Patrick to demonstrate the Holy Trinity (The father, son and the Holy Spirit) to the pagans.

https://greatbritishmag.co.uk/uk-cultur ... t-patrick/