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  Have a Happy Thought: If you are a native English speaker, here are a couple of things about our shared language that you probably do, but didn’t know you do:   1.     When you are describing things, you put adjectives in a very specific order. This even has an acronym: NOSASCOMP: a.    Number b.   Opinion c.   Size d.   Age e.   Shape f.     Colour g.   Origin h.   Material i.      Purpose In other words, you can have a pair of lovely, big, old, round, red, Dutch, wooden, school clogs… But you really wouldn’t have huge, pretty, black, one, writing, old, British, round, paper pad.   2.   When you are ending a conversation, you also do this in a very specific order. a.    Summary b.   Justification c.   Positive statement d.   Continuity of relationship e.   Well-wishing While you don’t have to do all o...

Have a Happy Thought: Happy Thanksgiving, to everyone who celebrates this uniquely US-American holiday! One of the central foods in many Thanksgiving meals is Turkey meat. A roast turkey prepared for a traditional U.S.  Thanksgiving  meal. The white plastic object in the breast is a  pop-up thermometer . Credit: Patrick Fitzgerald  from Atlanta, GA, USA -  Flickr.com  -  image description page   Many children, (and to be honest many adults), are confused as to why this bird, which is native to the Americas, shares/shared a name with a country in south-east Europe / western Asia. Well, strap in, this is a story. So, there are these large birds that live in the Americas and were domesticated by about 2,000 years ago. After Europeans stumbled across the “New World”, some of these explorers realised that the domesticated bird was a great food stock, and decided to bring it back to the “Old World”. To Europeans, these birds lo...

  Have a Happy Thought: The universe is full of beauty. Here are some photos taken this year, submitted to the Royal Museums Greenwich Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. This was one of the harder times for me to choose which images to share with you… they are all so beautiful! Everything below comes from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025 shortlist (but the winners have been announced , in case you want to skip straight to those).     The Arctic Flower by Vincent Beudez. Sjursnes, Tromsø, Norway   Gateway to the Galaxy by Yujie Zhang. Songyang County, China   Into the Past by Jim Hildreth. Moonscape Overlook, Wayne County, Utah, USA   Moonrise Perfection Over the Dolomites by Fabian Dalpiaz. Santuario di Pietralba, Deutschnofen, South Tyrol, Italy   Fireworks by Bence Tóth, Péter Feltóti and Bertalan Kecskés. Sződliget, Pest and Törökkoppány, Somogy, Hungary   Neon Sun by Peter Wa...

  Have a Happy Thought:  Just over fifty years ago, on November 10 th 1975, the Fitz , The Mighty Fitz , The Big Fitz , Pride of the American Side , The Toledo Express , The Titanic of the Great Lakes , otherwise known as The SS Edmund Fitzgerald , sank on Lake Superior during an unexpectedly strong storm. The history of the ship and story of its sinking are well worth a read. What happened afterward is just as amazing. For one, the sinking of such a large ship, with all 29 crew lost, left an indelible mark on the communities in and around the Great Lakes. This tragedy was memorialised in a folk rock ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", by the Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. It is a beautiful, haunting song to hear – especially knowing that the events that unfold really happened. You can search for the original recording, or and you can listen to this recent cover by a Brooklyn, NY -based bluegrass band the Punch Brothers. The song, ...

  Have a Happy Thought:  The medical progress just within my lifetime will never cease to amaze me. The latest entry: We may now have a blood test for ME/CFS. (That’s Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). This is a syndrome (complex group of symptoms that come from a disease or other mis-working of the body) that has evaded physical testing for a really long time. And because of that, many people who have ME/CFS have been discounted by their doctors or other medical providers. Or by family, friends, coworkers, bosses, etc. And with the rise of Long Covid, which is theorised to be very much similar to ME/CFS, any research into this area is much needed. Enough background, the news: A group of scientists in England have announced a blood test that is highly sensitive (correctly picks up “positive” cases) and highly specific (correctly identifying “negative” cases). (Obviously, being good at both is best – otherwise you’re either missing a whole bunch ...

  Have a Happy Thought: People that study bones have long understood that at a certain age, the growth plates close over, and the bones don’t get any longer. In humans, this happens sometime in the late teens or early 20s. In other words, early adulthood. This pattern – bone growth stopping in early adulthood – is common to pretty much all animals. Including… dinosaurs. Palaeontologists have put this knowledge to use as they study fossilised bones – yes, apparently you can see in a fossil whether the growth plates are closed or not! In fact, this has very recently led to a discovery… or at least a naming… of (say this in a scary/dramatic voice in your head): the Nanotyrannus . Image: a pack of Nanotyrannus hunt a juvenile T. rex. Art by Anthony Hutchings. Yep, that’s right. There were mini-Tyrannosaurs running around the late Jurassic. For years, palaeontologists just figured that these were juvenile T. Rex, or even a “teenage” of the species. But now, by looking ...

  Have a Happy Thought: In the olden days, people told stories of going out into the desert to meditate, find (often divine) inspiration, or to refresh their spirits. And this is often portrayed as a huge sacrifice, going out into a desolate landscape. These photos might give you a different mental picture of what it would mean to "go out into the desert." Starting with Namibia, under the light of the Milky Way: Image: Daniel Kordan   Or Cappadocia, in central Turkey: Image: Daniel Kordan   Western Kazakhstan surely meets the definition of desert … Image: Daniel Kordan   Actually, have some more of Kazakhstan: Image: Daniel Kordan   Image: Daniel Kordan :   Or the Atacama desert: Image: Daniel Kordan   Of course, you could effectively travel the world through the camera lens of Daniel Kordan – His website is absolutely worth a visit, and I can almost guarantee you've seen his work somewhere! (Yes,...

Have a Happy Thought: (Before I go too far, do you ever have those times in your life when you just keep seeing the same thing over and over? Like you learn a new word, and then that word appears in a book you're reading, a tv show you're watching, and in a random-facts quiz later that week? Yeah, that's been my life lately. Which is why there is some cross-over between this week's topic and that from just a few weeks ago .) The world around us, especially the living world, is constantly surprising us. We humans continue to learn new things all the time (thanks, science!), and then of course there is the fact that " Life, uh, finds a way " to deal with an ever-changing environment. The latest example of this? Two species of jay birds, whose ancestors have not crossed paths in about 7 million years, have recently been finding themselves in the same place. Green jays are a tropical bird, living in the central Americas.  Image: Green Jay (Cyanocorax yncas) Photo ...