Do you speak better English than 90% of natives ?

If you can pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of native speakers.

“The Chaos” by Gerard Nolst Trenité aka Charivarius:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spiky?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up !

one for the Physicists

Quantum interference of large organic molecules

OK, massive oversimplification … particles can act as waves yadda yadda (see Matter Wave, Louis de Broglie and especially Double slit experiment).

The fact that, at the quantum level (the *very* small), particles act as waves is a fundamental lynchpin to quantum physics.

De Broglie’s theories of a hundred years ago have been demonstrated with particles such as electrons up to small, uncomplicated molecules.

A recent experiment proves quantum behaviour in molecules of up to 430 atoms which is kind of a “big deal”. I can’t hope to explain this as well as the scientists involved so head on over to nature.com when you’re done here.

One thing to note though is that Gerlich’s team use a molecule of Carbon with 60 atoms as a reference point.

This C₆₀ molecule has the rather fantastic name of Buckminsterfullerene named after, er …, Buckminster Fuller the guy we may know best for coming up with the geodesic dome we know at Disney’s Epcot and the UKs Eden Project.

Comparing a diagram of the molecule to those structures you can see why the Nobel winning creators of C₆₀ decided to honour “Bucky” this way:

Gerlich, S. et al. Quantum interference of large organic molecules. Nat. Commun. 2:263 doi: 10.1038/ncomms1263 (2011)

A thorn in my side …

The thorn letter (Þ) is from Old English, Old Norse and remains in the Iclandic alphabet.

The letter originated from the rune for “giant” () and dates back as far as the 2nd century (the Elder Fuþark).




What does this say ?




No …

It doesn’t.

Over time, the written representation of Þ^e (Middle English abbreviation for the word the) has become “ye”. However, this hasn’t altered its pronunciation.

Þ is pronounced like the “th” in “thick”.

The pub sign reads “The Old Cheshire Cheese”. The Ye does not have a “\ˈyē\” sound nor does Olde have a “\ˈdē\” sound on the end.

It’s not “ye olde” this and “ye olde” that. It isn’t quaint. It isn’t authentic. If it’s pronounced “yeee oldeee” it’s just naff !




Bonus fact … in its typography, the thorn is one of the few characters in a Latin-derived alphabet whose modern lower-case form has greater height than the capital. Upper = Þ, lower = þ.

O star of wonder, star of night

The universe is a big place. A big place full of big stuff. This video just shows just how tiny our little ol’ Sun is …

The Sun’s diameter is around 100 times larger than the Earth’s …

The largest known star is VY Canis Majoris – its diameter is around 2,000 times that of the Sun.

… or a quarter of a million times wider than the Earth.

To put it another way, imagine you are sitting in your lounge …

In your lounge there is a golf-ball …

If the golf-ball were the size of the Earth, your lounge would be the size of the Sun.

If your lounge were the size of the Sun, VY Canis Majoris would be as big as central London:

… pretty big !

The billion dollar industry most don’t know exists … 3D printing

3D printing is not new. In fact, this fast and cheap form of Additive Manufacturing has been a reality for over a decade.

 

What is it ?

A 3D object is “printed” by laying down successive layers of material giving product developers the ability to quickly create objects made of several materials in a single build process. This offers super-rapid prototyping from CAD drawing to the physical object.

To those not involved with the industry, it doesn’t sound very exciting put like that but watch video to see it in action:

The printer in the video is from Z Corporation. Established in the mid 90s, Z Corp supplies technology to industries as diverse as defence, education, sportswear, automotive, consumer electronics, healthcare and entertainment.

Z Corp’s printers are available around the £10k level. Expensive for an individual but peanuts for a design department in private or public sector.

 

Why should we care ?

To the clinician … this technology offers the possibility to create bespoke models of, say, a pelvic bone to plan and practice a major surgery … before putting the patient under the knife.

It allows the creation of simple structures – like blood vessels –  to repair or replace ailing body parts or even printing artificial organs that reduce the risk of rejection by the patient (a major issue/risk/cost of organ transplantation being the discovery of a suitable organ and the immunosuppressive drug regime needed post-op’): see Anthony Atala at TED.

To the military … there are serious cost benefits both from the perspective of initial construction (i.materialise.com blog entry) and, perhaps more strikingly, in the simplification of military logistics: replicating that spare part for a truck in the battlefield is going to be cheaper/faster than taking spares to cover all eventualities or waiting for a logistics shipment.

To the criminal … this is a tech’ to be exploited. Worried that someone might copy your keys? … then don’t let a criminal even photograph them !

To the environmentalist … “The advent of additive manufacturing technologies presents a number of opportunities that have the potential to greatly benefit designers, and contribute to the sustainability of products. [The following] paper examines how aspects of additive manufacturing, from a sustainable design perspective could become a useful tool in the arsenal to bring about the sustainable design of consumer products.” (CCSEnet paper)

 

To the hobbyist … this is a fantastic playground for inventiveness:

• The MakerBot community is a lively group of operators, modders, tinkerers, and hackers working on cool projects all around the world. See one man’s exploits at everythingimakewithmymakerbot.com

• RepRap is a free desktop 3D printer capable of printing plastic objects. Since many parts of RepRap are made from plastic and RepRap can print those parts, RepRap is a self-replicating machine – one that anyone can build.

To the researcher … there is a way to go before this technology is fully exploited:

• The Additive Manufacturing Research Group at Loughborough University was the world’s first research group to undertake systematic research in this field and continues to set the agenda in terms of its research approach.

• Exeter University launched the £2.6m Centre for Additive Layer Manufacturing in September 2011. The centre will enable businesses, entrepreneurs and researchers heavily subsidised access, giving smaller businesses in the West of England access to world-class facilities at affordable prices.

 

To us … the changes will be subtle. Fast prototyping, reducing the time to market, home “printing” and major positive impact to many businesses’ supply chain. 3D printing is going to impact us all … perhaps sooner than we may think.

 

Further reading/viewing:

1) Wired.co.uk – Olivia Solon:

“Thanks to technologies such as 3D printing, the process of boundaries between making and manufacturing have dissolved, meaning that hobbyists can now mass produce in a way that they never could before, according to Chris Anderson, Wired’s US editor-in-chief” 6^th November 2011” Wired article/video

2) “3D printing for all!” (develop3d.com)

3) “Individuality drive and 3D tech make firms go bespoke” (bbc.co.uk)

4) “The rise of additive manufacturing” (theengineer.co.uk)

If life gives you melons … you may be dyslexic

Dyslexia is a broad term defining difficulties in a person’s fluency or comprehension in being able to read; up to one in 10 people are impacted in some way.

Adult dyslexics may be able to read with good comprehension, but they tend to read more slowly than non-dyslexics.

Dyslexia is not an intellectual disability, since dyslexia and IQ are not interrelated.

The University of Twente has studied whether the Dyslexie font can improve comprehension and reading speed for those with dyslexia.

Further information on the font and the study can be found at studiostudio.nl

(Footnote – the British Dyslexia Association has a useful style guide on how to make printed materials more accessible).

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!