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.