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Have a Happy Thought:  You know when you go visit a website and realise it’s not quite… finished yet? Or when you’re creating a document and you just need to have some text on the page/screen to see what it’ll look like? Then you’ve encountered Lorem ipsum . This is a very fake Latin-looking set of words that are used as, well, placeholders. And have been used by typesetters for centuries. The idea is that these nonsense-words and sentences distribute letters across a page in a way that let you really see what a final piece of writing will look like – whereas if you just put “placeholder text blah blah blah” the words don’t break and flow across a page in quite the same way.   Here’s the “full” paragraph, created by some unnamed person, probably a printer or printer’s assistant, sometime in the 1500’s: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud ...

Have a Happy Thought: Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate! On Sunday, many countries are entering the Year of the Rabbit, including China, Korea, Japan, and Cambodia, amongst others. Zodiac rabbit, showing the tù (兔) character for rabbit Image: Alice-astro (picture)+User:Miuki (modified caracter) - wikimedia commons. CC BY 3.0   However, some countries that also have significant Lunar New Year celebrations are instead entering the Year of the Cat. These traditions include Vietnam and Nepal. One explanation for this is that the zodiacal name for this year is Mão/M ẹ o 卯 which is similar in pronunciation to the Vietnamese word Mèo for cat. A ginger cat lies curled up on a hiking backpack Image: supplied   Meanwhile, the Malay (including eastern Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and parts of Borneo) are entering the year of the mousedeer. A chevrotain or Lesser mouse-deer (Tragulus kanchil), a small (7–16 kg (15–35 lb), 45 cm (18 in) long, average heigh...

Have a Happy Thought:  2022 was, as they say, a mood . But this did give some opportunities for wonderful news headlines. Sometimes you get a great headline because the thing being reported was just. that. bonkers. Sometimes it's just really good copy-editing!   Here are a few that were compiled online - I've chosen my favourites but you may want to click through to find some more that tickle your fancy :)   Coffey urges staff to be positive, be precise, and not use Oxford commas --The Guardian, 15 September 2022 Is that…? Yes, that is an Oxford comma in that headline!   Top scientist admits ‘space telescope image’ was actually a slice of chorizo By Toyin Owoseje, CNN Updated 10:23 PM EDT, Sun August 7, 2022 --CNN, 7 August 2022 An example of an April-fool's-day-type joke getting well out-of-hand.   Man who paid $2.9m for NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet set to lose almost $2.9m --The Guardian, 14 Ap...

Have a Happy Thought:    We’ve reached the solstice! That’s the date where the Earth’s tilt has the greatest impact on the length of the day. For those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, that means we’re at our longest days – here’s hoping the rain holds off enough for us to enjoy these daylight hours! And for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere – have hope! Your longest night is now behind you.   Speaking of Northern Hemisphere, you’ve got more land mass than we do in the south, so more people live in areas with heavy snowfall. Which leads to wonderful cultural artifacts like…   Snowplows.   Or, specifically, snowplow names. A few local governments have fully democratised naming snowplows and, even if you’re in the heat of summer right now, you’ll enjoy these names:   From Minnesota Department of Transportation : Plowy McPlowFace Plow Bunyan Darth Blader Ctrl Salt Delete No More Mr. Ice Guy ...

RIP Smaug (2011?? – 9 Dec 2022)

Have a Happy Thought:    You know lightning is, in general, amazing to see. But sometimes it can still really surprise you.   This is known as a “jellyfish sprite” – two guesses why. a glowing red patch in a late evening sky, with dark clouds on the horizon below the glow. There is an upper, diffuse bell-shaped glow, with about a dozen points of brighter glow. from each of those points there are what look like dozens to hundreds of streamers coming downward.   Image: Stephen Hummel   This phenomenon happens when there’s enough electrical discharge way up above where storms are. Storms tend to happen in the troposphere, or maybe up into the stratosphere. Sprites are dozens of kilometres above that, in the mesosphere.   For those of you that don’t have kids at exactly the right age to have the layers of the atmosphere memorised… Layers of Earth's Atmosphere. image showing layers of the atmosphere, up to 100km above earth's surface. T...

Have a Happy Thought:    You may have learned a new word when Merriam-Webster published this year’s Word of the Year – Gaslighting . (or maybe you just learned this word now – if so, congratulations, you're one of today's lucky 10,000 !)   What’s mentioned in the write-up from Merriam-Webster Dictionary is that the word comes from the name of a 1938 play, that was then turned into a movie – more than once! A UK version was made in 1940, and then this version in the US in 1944. Movie Poster from the 1994 movie Gaslight. Pastel drawings. A woman's head and upper torso leans to one side, with a man's head and torso shown leaning over her. Another man watches, concerned, from the background. The names Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten are written in large letters above the image. Angela Lansbury is listed along with other supporting cast and crew below the image in smaller text. Image in public domain, original Copyright 1944 Loew's Incorporated - S...

Have a Happy Thought:    Our brains do amazing things with language. And the best part is, we don’t even know our brains are doing half of the things they do. Especially in your first language.   For example, anyone that grew up speaking English will have an immediate reaction to this sentence: Look at this rugby cow oval big leather old brown lovely ball.   You’re probably thinking “what is she even trying to say?!” (yes, that sentiment definitely calls for an Interrobang !)   Try this sentence instead: Look at this lovely big old oval brown cow leather rugby ball. Image: NZ National Army Museum     That one made sense, right?   It’s because of this unspoken, but always followed, rule in English: when you use multiple adjectives, they always go in this order: Number, opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose, [noun]. ( sometimes you can switch around the first two or three, if you’re using a ...

Have a Happy Thought:    In the 1960s, electrical engineers in the US figured out a way to test whether a new audio communication method was clear enough for people to be able to understand each other. They based their testing methods on something developed during World War II that was used to test military communication lines. The testing method set up in the 1960’s is still in use today. It’s used for lots of things, including: actually testing phone lines (including mobile/cell phones – US-based readers may remember the Verizon “Can you hear me now?” guy…) Watching how actors’ mouths move to make animations (including CGI) more realistic Training text-to-speech (or speech-to-text) algorithms Art   What is this magical test, you ask? It’s random words, put together in groups of 10 “phonetically balanced sentences” – each “sentence” is a group of words that include a mixture of sounds commonly made in English. The idea is that...

Have a Happy Thought:   Birds do it, Bees do it…   No, as much as Ella Fitzgerald would want you to believe that we’re talking about falling in love (although honestly, go listen to that song!), We’re talking about… Play!   Yep, we’ve known for years that some bird species are very playful. Anyone familiar with Kea will have heard so . many . stories . And of course, anyone who’s had a pet bird, or been caught in too much of a YouTube, Instagram , or TikTok loop, has seen a parrot or canary or budgerigar playing around.   But it was only recently that some scientists pretty conclusively found some bees very obviously playing . Basically, the investigators set up a bee-sized obstacle course, between the bees and some food. In part of the obstacle course, there were little wooden balls that the bees could move. On the other side, those wooden balls were glued in place. The bees definitely preferred the option where they could move the balls a...