Exponentialism

I'm not sure whether exponentialism is a word. If not, I have invented it. I'll be on to the OED in the morning. My definition is "the religion of solving jigsaw puzzles". Put simply, if I have 800 pieces of a 1,000 piece puzzle still to be placed, and I spend one hour today working on the puzzle, I might expect to correctly place say one piece, whilst when I have only 50 pieces still to be placed, I would expect to place all of them within the hour. The placing success grows at an exponential rate rather than a linear one. [Ed: You have a strange definition of "simply", Nigel]

I am a worshipper of exponentialism. It gives me hope in the dark days when pieces don't fit and I simply can't find that piece with a green stripe and a dash of yellow on the tongue. It gives me belief that I will eventually solve the puzzle. It gives me joy in the company of shared believers in the healing powers of puzzling.

Regular readers will know of my difficulties with my Starry Night puzzle. I get great succour from the experiences of a fellow disciple of exponentialism, Hugh Jackman:

That'll be me in a few months' time!

The Germans know how to do it

Until February 2020 I played poker once a week at a local pub. They were just fun games really, highly competitive but friendly with just a £1 stake. Once a month we would play a £10 game, just to kid ourselves we were professionals. Sadly, the pandemic has meant that hasn't happened for nearly a year; squeezing ten people round a small table is not exactly conducive to keeping viruses from spreading. Indeed, we and many other live poker games throughout the UK, rather than Wuhan's bats, may have been the original superspreaders.

My topic today is: kickers. In Texas Holdem poker, a kicker is a side card which can act as a decider between two otherwise equal hands. Two aces, two tens with a six beats two aces, two tens and a five. The six is the kicker.

But enough of poker. What you really want to read about today, my friends, is......football!!! And what word could better reflect the essence of football than: Kicker.

I was intrigued to learn of a German club called Stuttgarter Kickers. They play in the Oberliga Baden-Württemberg, which is the fifth tier of the German professional football pyramid, after two successive relegations. They are currently second in the table. However, matches in this league haven't been played since October, presumably because of Covid-19. They are not due to play again until the last weekend in February; hopefully things might be a bit better by then.

So why my interest in this obscure team? Because of their name, of course. Kickers is such an obvious word for a football club. That's what footballers do, they kick. Sometimes each other but mostly the ball. A typical new football club would entitle themselves something like MyNewClub FC, where the FC stands for Football Club. It sounds so much posher than Kickers, which is the ultimate in onomatopoeia (in its original Greek meaning). Or maybe MyNewClub City or MyNewClub United or MyNewClub Albion, all of them rubbish deflections, claiming some kind of social function, from the primary purpose of the club, which is to kick balls.

I thought at first that this was an anglicized version of a different German word but no, that's their name. Even babelfish.com translates the English "kicker" into German as "kicker".

I wondered if this club is unique in its name but no, there is also the Kickers Offenbach which is absolutely not a hater of The Tales of Hoffman but a genuine football club. A few more include Richmond Kickers of Virginia, USA, playing in the United States Soccer League One, Kickers Emden in the Oberliga Lower Saxony, Femina Kickers in Worb, Switzerland, currently bottom of the Nationalliga B Women table with 0 points after 7 matches and Würzburger Kickers who are in the Bundesliga 2 in Germany. The latter copped out a bit by calling themselves themselves FC Würzburger Kickers - covering all bases and a definite nod to establishment elitism.

I just wish we had some in England. I can think of many English clubs with reputations for being bunches of cloggers - opposition first, ball second. Bolton Kickers more apt than Bolton Wanderers (what does that mean?) for instance. Kickers Wimbledon in the old days. If you've got this far in this post, you'll have your own favourites for that.

Here's to Kickers everywhere - enjoy what you do!

Spheres

I've just had another birthday present. I'm like the Queen, in that I have two birthdays a year. That's the only resemblance; as far as I know, she doesn't have a blog.

I was woken up by the chiming of my doorbell at 07:10 today. I'm pretty sure none of my readers will think that 07:10 is anything other than a late start to the day but I'm used to getting out of my warm bed some time between 08:00 and 08:30. For those of you shocked by that, bear in mind I am rarely in bed before midnight. Anyway, it was a courier delivering a large parcel. I hope he's getting overtime for unsocial hours.

Even at that ungodly hour, I was too inquisitive to pass up the opportunity to see what was inside the parcel. A cornucopia of delights! First of all, though, back to my warm bed for another hour's sleep. My heating doesn't come on until 07:30, after all. But I couldn't sleep, so made a cuppa and re-examined my loot.

Best of all was a card from my grandson

but also a new jigsaw puzzle. It's a Death Star - fans of Star Wars will be aware of that monstrous entity; I wish I had one in my Civilization game, I have to make do with Giant Death Robots.

Most intriguing of all, the puzzle is double sided! How is that going to work, for goodness sake? I see problems ahead. Problem #2 is that it's too large for my regular puzzle table - so I have now ordered a circular table of the correct size from Mr Amazon! Don't worry, this has an upside - I can continue with Van Gogh (decent progress is being made with that, since you ask) on my puzzle table whilst setting up the Death Star on my new table.

The Death Star is of course a sphere. And that set me thinking about spheres. Which I know is weird but thinking outside the box is the lifeblood of bloggers.

Now balls are spheres but you'll be relieved to know that I'm not going to talk about football. No, I am into much bigger spheres than those. Last night I watched the movie First Man, about Neil Armstrong and the years leading up to the Apollo 11 mission. It's a decent enough couple of hours if you're looking for some entertainment. Some of the time it's a bit tense, as they travel through the ionosphere and the troposphere. See, spheres! Concentrate, people.

Which of those spheres surrounding the earth is nearer to us? It's the troposphere, in which we all live. Clouds, rain, snow, that sort of stuff. The lowest part is the boundary layer, the earth's surface.

Further out from the troposphere is the stratosphere. This extends outwards a further 50km from the troposphere. The ozone in this layer absorbs ultraviolet light from the sun and prevents us from getting skin cancers and the earth from getting overheated. Or at least it would do if we weren't slowly destroying it with our nasty aerosols.

Then there's the mesosphere, thermosphere and the exosphere. I feel a home schooling science lesson coming on. Taken together, these three make up the ionosphere. It contains free electrons; without them there wouldn't be any radio waves and we couldn't hear Listen With Mother. Or use GPS.

The ionosphere is also where man made satellites orbit the earth. As of 1 April 2020, there were 2,666 of them. That sounds a lot - are they all really necessary? You'd think they would crash into each other. Want to know which countries have launched satellites? I have just the thing for you:

No-one wants to miss out, obviously.

So Nigel, once we get to the edge of the exosphere, are we nearly at the moon? As you see, the exosphere stretches to around 400km above the earth. Further out, the outer regions, up to 16,000km above the earth, make up the magnetosphere. The moon, however, is 384,400km away. So no.

Thinking about the universe is why I couldn't get back to sleep at 07:15 today. I need an afternoon nap!

Sisters in innovation

By popular request, some female mathematicians, scientists and engineers.

Let's start with my favourite - Hypatia. Perhaps the first female mathematician about whom we know a great deal. She taught philosophy and astronomy at the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria at the end of the 4th century AD. agnesscott.edu tells us that "she edited the work On the Conics of Apollonius, which divided cones into different parts by a plane. This concept developed the ideas of hyperbolas, parabolas, and ellipses." I guess to us that sounds esoteric but to mathematicians it's probably fundamental.

Why is she my favourite? OK, you've guessed it - she's the earliest Great Scientist available in the popular Civilization VI computer game, and it's always a race to be the first to recruit her. I know, that's sad. And so was the end of her life - murdered by religious zealots. Maybe this quote of hers didn't endear her to them:

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.

Moving on in time, eight centuries to be exact, we come to Hildegard of Bingen. She was a German Benedictine abbess who has claims to be a polymath, excelling as a botanist, theologian and philosopher as well as a poet and composer. Check out this utterly beautiful piece:

Despite her inherent mysticism, Hildegard was up for a battle, confronting Emperor Frederick Barbarossa for supporting at least three antipopes. She was canonised in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI.

From the 17th century we have Martine Bertereau, who was a mining engineer and mineralogist. Mr Wiki tells us she "surveyed the sites of hundreds of potential mines in France in the service of the French King Henry IV. Her writings describe the use of divining-rods as well as much useful scientific and practical advice which she derived largely from the Roman engineer Vitruvius's book on architecture, De architectura." She and her husband Jean, also a mineralogist, suffered abuse from many who regarded their work as witchcraft and sorcery, and she eventually died in prison.

Proceeding to the early 20th century, Marie Curie has to be included, of course. She was a chemist and physicist who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. She researched radioactivity and discovered two new elements, Polonium (named after her country of birth) and Radium. She set up institutes as centres of medical research, particularly into radiography. Sadly her death was from exposure to radiation.

We need to finish up in the present day with Yi So-yeon. Born in South Korea in 1978, she gained a doctorate in biotechnology before, in 2008, becoming the first Korean to fly in space. One to watch!

Five great people who have had a considerable impact on our earthly civilisation. Thank you to them all!

Did you get hugged today?

Today is International Hugging Day. It started in the US as National Hugging Day in 1986. I guess they have a lot to hug about today but pandemic protocols might put dampeners on it.

Hugging Days are now celebrated in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Greece, the Scandinavian countries and, of course, the UK. Although it's not something we celebrate in Cornwall, as far as I know. Do I need to get permission from my neighbours? I'm quite surprised they don't have Hugging Days in France and Italy; I'd have thought it's right up their streets. Although maybe Bottom Pinching Day in Italy [That's enough national stereotyping for now, Nigel]. Check out this interview with a "hugging therapist and cuddle practitioner":

Not sure we should be encouraging hugging at the moment, Helen. Plenty of footballers getting into trouble for mass hugging when a goal is scored. Has Boris given you permission?

They seem to like celebratory days in the US. Today, 21 January, is also Women’s Healthy Weight Day, Squirrel Appreciation Day and International Sweatpants Day. I have this vision of healthy women in sweatpants observing squirrels.

Ah, how sweet. No, you're not getting pictures of healthy women in sweatpants.

In Poland, 21 January is Grandmother's Day. If you live in Poland, you can wish your Babcia "Happy Grandmother's Day" with this short poem (If you're not in Poland, you can skip to the next paragraph):

Czy wiesz moja Babciu kochana,
Że w myślach moich jesteś od rana?
Gdy sen z moich oczu zmywałam,
O życzeniach dla Ciebie myślałam.
Szukałam dla Ciebie czegoś cennego,
Aż w końcu znalazłam coś bardzo drogiego.
Płomień miłości Ci ofiaruję,
Bo tego ludziom ciągle brakuje.
Chcę abyś wiecznie szczęśliwa była,
I sto wiosenek w zdrowiu przeżyła.

That's it for today but, to save me some posts over the next few days, I can let you know that 22 January is Hot Sauce Day and 23 January is Handwriting Day. Grandkids, take note. Polish grandkids, take two notes. Three if your pierogi are served with hot sauce.

Celebrating

What am I celebrating?

I've been jabbed rather than my usual jabbering. Now for some

Good luck everyone!

16 January 1944

An auspicious day. A Sunday.

A German U boat was sunk. Eisenhower assumed control of the Allied Expeditionary Force. A Japanese submarine ran aground in New Guinea; a US Navy submarine ran aground on the island of Midway (these were the days before Google Maps).

The painter/designer Chris de Marigny was born. Later he became a writer on modern dance. He died in 1995. This painting of his

apparently shows "two figures reclining in a garden". I actually thought it was a Cornish Pasty.

Churchill was the UK Prime Minister, FDR the US President and Pius XII the Pope.

After being evacuated from London to Reading during World War II, my mother, in a moment of defiance towards the Führer, gave birth to a handsome boy.

Me.

I don't know the exact time of day that this momentous event occurred but I have now been alive for approximately 675,000 hours. I'm exhausted just thinking about that. That's 450,000 football matches (excluding added time for injuries, extra time, penalties, etc etc.)

To honour this poster, I shall spend my birthday in trivial endeavours but also writing authoritative blog posts based on my 40,500,000 minutes experience of life.

Moving on. Don't look back.

Apologies if you heard any inappropriate language

This goes down as one of the most banal statements ever by football commentators. Ever since football has been on TV when there are no spectators, you can usually select to watch with either fake crowd noise, which is obviously absurd, or with just the stadium sounds. With 22 players and around 6 coaches shouting instructions - or abuse - at each other, you can hear quite a lot of what is said.

These are vigorous, highly motivated (although that applies to some more than others) young men and it's unrealistic to expect them to say "pardon me but I think you accidently kicked me" or "excuse me referee, I think you made a small error there".

If you really think this is how footballers should speak, you are probably watching the wrong sport and would be better served by show jumping. Or croquet, although I have been known to... no I'm not going there.

In any case, usually we haven't heard anything at all, but as soon as you hear or see the apology message you think "wait! what did they say? I missed it".

Broadcasters take varying approaches to this "problem". Some have a kind of ticker tape notification, others instruct the commentator to offer the apology - for swearing or "bad" or "inappropriate language". Frankly it's ludicrous. If you are sensitive to impolite language, you could:

• watch with the fake crowd noise on, or
• watch with the sound off (there are advantages to this, in that you don't hear the nonsense spouted by commentators and co-commentators), or
• watch snooker

In any case, who decides what is "inappropriate"? Or "swearing"? I won't quote examples on this family-friendly blog but I would contend that industrial language is entirely appropriate for football. So it would be more honest to say "apologies for appropriate language". Broadcasters, take note.

I did a bit of research into what constitutes inappropriate language in this context and, not surprisingly, I decided it's best not to quote any, however absurd some of them might seem.

It's also true that most of my language while watching my favourites teams is, although both appropriate and deserved, not something I would have wanted my mother to hear. And possibly worse than anything the players might say. I just wish they could hear my advice and act on it.

Now I do realise that the broadcasters are simply following Ofcom rules, and that most matches start before the 9pm watershed but really? It's football; take it or leave it.

Here's my suggestion as to what the message might say:

"If you are offended by any of the language that you heard, please note that your television set, or streaming device, has an OFF button."

The greatest nation ever?

I've been watching the proceedings from the US House of Representatives, as they debate the articles of impeachment. Speaker after speaker refers to the USA as "the greatest nation ever".

Have they never heard of the Ancient Greeks, the Egyptians? Not to mention the Mayans, Aztecs, the Incas and the Osirians? And more.

"Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" [Monty Python, Life Of Brian"]

Calm down, people.

Anyone want Diego?

News of free agents (see earlier posts from October). Diego Costa is available! In England, Costa is remembered as a a key part of Chelsea's Premier League title winning teams of 2015 and 2017. How to describe his style of play? Start with the fact that no defender wanted to play against him. Aggressive, physical, a trickster who riled opponents into giving away penalties and red cards (see Gabriel Paulista for Arsenal in 2015 - https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/arsenal-furious-gabriel-sees-red-6474691). Sum him up in one word? Nasty.

But a terrific centre forward in his prime; 58 goals and 28 assists in 120 matches for Chelsea.

After Chelsea he went back to Atletico Madrid, winning the Europa League for coach Diego Simeone

- another hard man as a player, perfectly suited to Costa. In 2020, however, he was blighted by injury - 132 days injured during the year. Age, at 32, and a hard man style of play, perhaps took their toll and even when he came back from injury he couldn't get back his place in the team. In December he and the club agreed to terminate his contract.

So now he is a free agent. You'd think that he still has a couple of years at near to the top level in him. He probably wouldn't want huge wages - largely because no club is going to take a punt on high wages given his injury record. But you'd imagine there are clubs around for whom he could do a decent job, maybe on a pay by play contract. There are two Premier League clubs which have scored only 9 goals this season - Burnley from 16 games and Sheffield United from 18.

Any takers? I'll definitely have him in my Free Agent XI.

Acknowledgement for details to https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/statistik/vertragslosespieler

The  good:

The  bad:

And the  ugly:

Vexillology

Words you may not have encountered.

Vexillology is the study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags. Do people make up words to justify their own activities? Is there a word for the study of blogging? If not (a) why not and (b) let's think of one.

Vexillology is derived from the Latin word vexillum, which refers to a kind of square flag which was carried by Roman cavalry. So we need a Latin word for blog. There isn't one, which I suppose means there were no Roman bloggers. Although you could argue that Pliny the Younger was a blogger, so I'm going to say that Plinyology is the study of blogging. Mr Google gives no results for plinyology, so I think I must be the first. Does that make me a neologist? I think that may also be a new word. So that's Nigel 2 Dictionaries 0; I'll get on to the OED in the morning.

The December 2020 updates to the OED include deliverology, apparently coined by British civil servants as a humorous, spuriously scientific sounding name for the process of successfully (or unsuccessfully) implementing policy and achieving goals in government.

Anyway, I'm interested in flags, so that makes me a vexillophile. I'm also interested in words, which makes me a logophile. dictionary.com calls me a word nerd. I'm OK with that. What else? I'm interested in jigsaw puzzles, as you know. Apparently that makes me a dissectologist. 

Who knew? More of this stuff throughout 2021.

Four Generals and an Admiral

Some years ago we lived in High Wycombe. Ever since, my sons and I have - with more or less consistency and enthusiasm - supported, or at least taken occasional interest in, the local football team, Wycombe Wanderers.

Gareth Ainsworth's seven years as manager of the club makes him the longest serving manager in the professional leagues in England. He works fantastically well with the players, using a group of long serving senior players, who he calls his "four generals", to create and maintain squad unity. Vital given that, having very little cash, the club has each year had to bed in a group of loan players.

The latest loan player is a 19 year old striker Admiral Muskwe, a Zimbabwean International from Leicester. I've never heard of anyone called Admiral although I often given that moniker to my friend Tony, in honour of his service in the Royal Navy (although not quite at that rank).

Apparently there was a burst of popularity for this name in the USA for a few years around 1900, perhaps due to the Spanish-American War, but close to zero since then. Admiral as a baby's name was ranked number 11,433 in 2017 according to babycenter.com, although number 394 in 1898. I found a site listing the 50 most popular baby names in Africa but no Admiral. Sadly, I have no further info. If you know of anyone called Admiral, please let me (and my hundreds of readers) know.

Other names which boomed in popularity after the Spanish-American War included Maine, Manila and Havana (all girls). Could have been worse, for example Guam.

I've not heard of anyone being named St Austell. Except for the Saint, of course.

Anyway, the boy played really well in today's 4-1 victory in the FA Cup. Here he is, speaking during the period last May when football was inactive.

What else did these designers and engineers build?

Gustav Eiffel, in addition to building a small tower somewhere, built various bridges for the French railways, notable the Garabit viaduct in the Massif Central region of France. He later became involved in the financial scandal of the Panama Canal.

George Ferris - George Washington Gale Ferris Jr - built a little wheel

for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He also designed and inspected railroad bridges, trestles, and tunnels, none of which were famous or spawned hundreds of imitations.

In addition to building steamships, railways, dockyards, bridges

and tunnels, Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed and built a pre-fabricated hospital for use in the field in the Crimean War.

As well as taking a bath and shouting "Eureka", Archimedes designed a screw, to pump water uphill.

Leonardo da Vinci is known for well, doing everything.

Most remarkably, he died at the age of 67, when the average lifespan at the time was around 35. I guess he was just too busy to die.

George Stephenson built the first public inter-city railway line between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830. His chosen rail gauge became a modern standard. Later in life he built deep coal mines using a technique called tubbing. And made a pile of money.

Elon Musk is most recently well known for space rockets which can land on their backsides but he made his fortune as founder of PayPal, when it was bought by eBay.

Charles Babbage is credited with the invention of the mechanical computer. He was also a writer; in his On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures of 1832 he exposed the restrictive practices of book publishers and called them a cartel.

Thomas Alva Edison is known for development of the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the electric light bulb, but he also collaborated with Henry Ford and David Firestone on the Edison Botanic Research Corporation, which was created to find a domestic source for organic rubber.

Clever people.

Seven pieces

Progress report on my Starry Night jigsaw puzzle. Today I fitted in seven pieces. Other than the first day making the borders, this is a daily record. Doesn't sound impressive? Believe me, this puzzle is a nightmare. No pun intended.

So far I have completed 194 of the 1,000 pieces. So 806 to go. At seven a day that would take 

days, meaning I would finish the puzzle on 2 May. However, there are many days when I don't do any pieces; I look at the jigsaw and give myself the choice of three options:

1. Persist until the end
2. Pack the puzzle up and tell MiceElf (who gave me the  puzzle) that I finished it and forgot to take a photo
3. Invite my friend Tony to bring his dog Lily round for a cup of tea, which will undoubtedly result in Lily leaping onto the coffee table and scattering the pieces all over the room (as happened once before)

Of course, maths would tell you that, for each piece added, the time taken to position the next piece would be increasingly less (because there is one space less to fill). So maybe before May!

So far, I have continued to pursue option 1. In my Cursing Van Gogh post in October 2020, I announced that "this puzzle is going to take me until Christmas to complete". I didn't say which Christmas.

7 Pieces is an album by American jazz composer and arranger Jimmy Giuffre in 1959. I couldn't find a recording of this album but here's Jimmy on tenor sax a year earlier:

I just love those harmonies.

There is a series of two books, the series called Seven Pieces, by Helena Field. It is described as a "A Reverse Harem Fantasy ". I can't imagine what that means. 

You should hear this

This from the Washington Post site today. It's excerpts from a telephone call from President Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Raffensperger's general  counsel Ryan Germany. You can read more details on the site at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html. There's a paywall but you can get a short-term free access - for five articles, I think.

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty a giant egg sitting on a wall? No. ripleys.com tells us "According to a number of military historians, Humpty Dumpty was the name of a cannon used by the Royalists during the English Civil War.

The conflict raged from 1642 to 1649, and in June of 1648, Humpty Dumpty was stationed on the walls of Colchester. It was one of several cannons erected to try and keep Parliament’s army from taking the city. The next month, however, the Parliamentary forces heavily damaged the walls beneath Humpty Dumpty with their own artillery. You can guess where this is going: Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and broke into pieces."

The image of Humpty as an egg derives from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.

Nursery rhymes often cause dispute amongst historians as to their origins and meanings. Take this:

Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row 

Some will tell you that Mary referred to Mary Tudor, silver bells to thumb screws, cockle shells to a genital torture device and the pretty maids were in fact lining up to be executed by the Halifax Gibbet (a guillotine). Perfect for your toddlers.

Others that the silver bells stood for Catholic Cathedral bells, the cockle shells stood for the pilgrimage to Spain and the pretty maids in a row stood for a row of nuns. Not much more suitable.

Why did our mothers teach us to recite this garbage?

I'm particularly averse to:

It’s raining, it’s pouring
The old man is snoring
He went to bed and he bumped his head
And couldn’t get up in the morning

Scary and depressing. Is this how kids see their grandpas?

Here's another particularly upsetting one:

Rock-a-bye, baby,
In the tree top.
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
And down will come baby,
Cradle and all

Are they trying to tell us life is hard, and may well be short? I'm not even going to mention Jack and Jill. Or Miss Muffet. Or Solomon Grundy, a tale for pandemic times. Ugh.

But I'll end with a chuckle. This version of a rhyme is common:

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor doggie a bone,
When she got there
The cupboard was bare
So the poor little doggie had none

This less so, but much more fun:

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor daughter a dress.
But when she got there
The cupboard was bare
And so was her daughter, I guess!

Am I Benjamin Button, reverting to childhood?