Bits n Bobs 250318

Sunday rolls round again. this one called Palm Sunday when I was growing up in the Church of England. The week before Easter Sunday, Jesus arrived in Jerusalem a few days before Passover and this supporters spread palm fronds in the street hence Palm Sunday.  If it's ever concerned you that he was crucified on Friday and rose again, 48 hours later, on the third day, worry no more. It's because the Romans counted their dates inclusively. Each of their months started = 1st with the Calends and the 8th was called Nones for the same inclusive reasons. The Ides, of March, and other months was more moveable but occurred in the middle of their 30/31 day months.

Did someone mention the death penalty? We don't put people to death in this country, not since Michael Manning was hanged on 20th April 1954. In the USA they do and they get themselves all tied in knots about the method by which they terminate their prisoners. The lawyers have a field day over it but the functionaries who actually do the deed seem to be barely competent to carry out the 'humane' method decided upon by each state. Manning was hanged 22 weeks after his arrest. In the US, people can languish on death row for 22 years, which seems intrinsically less humane than any method of judicial killing. In any case, Oklahoma have now approved a new method: asphyxiation with Nitrogen, the inert gas that makes up 80% of our atmosphere. I am a little teed off with the sciencification of the death penalty: there are plenty of quick, brutal and efficient ways of killing that don't involve science.  There are also unquick, distressing and messy ways of killing that do.

• We got off light with Storm Emma. Holyhead the ferryport in North Wales got hammered.
• Before
• After
• Update on the Florida ABC bridge collapse

That's enough horror, let's have some fluffy as antidote:

• An 'ot meat pie made out of 'is Dad
• Propaganda for Ireland Inc.
• Lumberjacking in the 1950s.
• Forgetfulness an animated poem by Billy Collins
• Instant shelters with Concrete Canvas Inc. "Just add water".
• Nat Geog
• Deployment in the front line
• Costs = £30K for 50 sq.m.
• Girls do science. Well at least one girl does science.
  She's invented a lead Pb monitor to test the water.
• Queen for the deaf - Don't stop me now in mime.
• The other day at work, I saw that the electricians had come to the end of their cable drum and asked for the discard. They make handy tables for garden tea-parties: and even look nice if you paint them. The drum never made it home because I recognised envy in the eye of a colleague who has two small boys at home, and I gave it to her. Later she sent me a photo of the lads doing rowdy boy things with their new toy. I sent her this link to an educational video about how cable drums are made.
• Interesting essay about George "AND/OR/NOT" Boole, Cork's most famous mathematician.
• A bit obsessive about fairer ways to decide who wins the Olympic Games.
• Bloboprev on Ranking Universities
• Blovoprev on aknowledgeing the limits of accuracy in Sports.
• Kodaline - Follow your fire
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