Today I Read (and Learned) ...

Withnail

Well-Known Forumite
It'll have to be a reasonably tall tunnel to encourage Ordinary cyclists.

They're probably at least a little bit on the masochistic side too.
 

peggy

Well-Known Forumite
Today I read and learned that my son has received a detention for arriving late to school. Today his school and the educational welfare officer has learnt just how hard it is for him to go to school and that he should infact be highly rewarded (as should we) for his determination and grit for make it in. Today my son has learned that he isn't to be penalised for his strength of character as he battles to make sense of the world.
Today I will read and learn what support should be in place for a child struggling with ASD. (Anyone with any knowledge please feel free to pm me)
 

Withnail

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Though obviously the flip-side mentality of knocking every aspect of contemporary educational theory because somehow everything was 'better' fifty years ago because people were free to play with barbed wire without any kind of 'nanny stateism' and could drink as much mercury as they wanted whilst jumping into the nearest weed-filled lake, is really helping isn't it?

Service Temporarily Unavailable?

Modern Life Is Rubbish?
 

Withnail

Well-Known Forumite
Some kind of pudding?
... that 'pudding' originally meant 'innards', or 'entrails'.

Pudding Lane, of Great Fire fame, was so called because 'pudding' used to flow down it, being a centre of butchery.

Haggis is thus doubly a pudding, because it's made of pudding, wrapped in pudding.
 

Noah

Well-Known Forumite
The closing time call in the 17th century inns of the Low Country "Doe den tap toe" (Turn the taps off) was the origin of the word tattoo (as in Edinburgh Military ...) as it was a sign that soldiers should return to their barracks. Or so it is said.
 

Noah

Well-Known Forumite
That Historic England have listed the figurehead of HMS Arethusa (the fourth one built 1849). It is now displayed at the Arethusa Venture Centre in Rochester, Kent. The listing describes the figurehead as an elegant 3.5 m wooden figurehead of a female with brown ringlets and a period costume of the 1840s. The figurehead's right breast is exposed.

The reason that so many ships figureheads depict scantily clad females is due to the 19th century belief that a naked woman was be able to calm a storm at sea. How did the Navy manage to lose that tradition?




This was not the origin of the song "The Saucy Arethusa" which was about the first Royal Navy ship of this name built in 1759
 

Noah

Well-Known Forumite
Time

1. The Ordnance Survey is recalculating how long walking routes take. The current formula, which is Victorian, generates times which are unrealistically fast for many modern walkers.

2. The radioactive decay rate of xenon -124 has been observed. It has a half life of a trillion times the current age of the earth. Radioactive? Watching paint dry now classed as an extreme sport?

3. The date of release of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is now closer to the end of World War One than it is to the present day.
 
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littleme

250,000th poster!
Time

1. The Ordnance Survey is recalculating how long walking routes take. The current formula, which is Victorian,generates times which are unrealistically fast for many modern walkers.

2. The radioactive decay rate of xenon -124 has been observed. It has a half life of a trillion times the current age of the earth. Radioactive? Watching paint dry now classed as an extreme sport?

3. The date of release of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is now closer to the end of World War One than it is to the present day.
Just, wow!
 

Lucy

Well-Known Forumite
I've just had a read up on the walking one. It says it doesn't believe people walk at 3 miles an hour any more. I would have thought it's actually slightly quicker...
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
I've just had a read up on the walking one. It says it doesn't believe people walk at 3 miles an hour any more. I would have thought it's actually slightly quicker...
We live in a town that will soon have 3 McDonald's in waddling distance from each other, yet people will still drive to them. The average walking speed probably is less than 3 miles an hour but I suspect the average person no longer really walks. Personally I walk most routes in about 2/3 of what Google expects.
 

Thehooperman

Well-Known Forumite
We live in a town that will soon have 3 McDonald's in waddling distance from each other, yet people will still drive to them. The average walking speed probably is less than 3 miles an hour but I suspect the average person no longer really walks. Personally I walk most routes in about 2/3 of what Google expects.

I walk at about the same pace as Google but that's with my gammy hip.

For some strange reason it takes me 3 or 4 hours to walk the half a mile from the station to Gaol Square as I need to stop for a rest en route :)
 

BobClay

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I walk Tamar Lake regularly. Today it took 58 minutes to do 3.23 miles at 3.3 mph (this from a Satmap GPS.) That's about my average. However it's a good path with only one or two gentle slopes, pretty much hugging the lakeside all the way round. Steep slopes on hills and mountains bring that down considerably. I think my average the last time I did Snowdon a couple of years ago was about 2 mph, up the Rhyd Ddu path and down the Ranger. Strangely I find coming down a slope harder these days than going up. Going up you simply grind away at your own pace, but coming down I find motor cyclist's knee syndrome gets the better of me. (Of course this is offset by the pub at the end of the path.) :pint:
 
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