Thinking in Afrikaans

I went to a shop yesterday and was served by a woman with a distinctly South African accent.  She made a intriguing mistake while serving me.  The cash register showed the correct change to be "£3.81" but she was about to hand me "£3.18" when she corrected herself, saying "I'm thinking in Afrikaans".   Is there something about the way numbers are represented in Afrikaans that could lead to such errors.  Or was the remark just a racist denigration of the intelligence of Afrikaners?

Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard

A chapter summary from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (from volume one of the 1852 edition):

Early modes of wearing the hair and beard—Excommunication and outlawry decreed against curls—Louis VII.’s submission thereto the cause of the long wars between England and France—Charles V. of Spain and his courtiers—Peter the Great—His tax upon beards—Revival of beards and moustaches after the French Revolution of 1830—The King of Bavaria (1838) orders all civilians wearing moustaches to be arrested and shaved—Examples from Bayeux tapestry

While we are on the subject of religion and beards, a week ago a boy from Bangladesh asked me if I had a beard because of my religion.  I answered "No.  I grew it because I am lazy", but then I added "You could say that laziness is my religion".

The Modern Nature Editor

It is good to see the Henry Gee getting back to his usual self again after that nonsense of writing his blog in iambic pentameter:

I am the very model of a modern Nature editor
I am the man to whom no scientist is more indebteder
I know the names of all the geological orogenies
And can tell you lots about the reconstruction of phylogenies

Read the rest here. 

(This would never have been allowed in the days of John Maddox.)

Me, my Mother, and Muscovy Ducks

 

Another photo from the family archives.  Me and my mother (Clare Brelstaff) in a park in Barrow-in-Furness in December 1959. We lived in Barrow from 1959 to 1962, before we moved to my father's home town of Guisborough.

I had assumed that my first recorded sighting of a muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) was this one from 2004.  However, if you look in the background of the above photo you will see that my first sighting must have been 45 years earlier.

Runescape trumps Software Engineering

I was chatting with some boys in a science lesson yesterday.  They seemed distinctly more impressed by the fact that my daughter used to run a Runescape clan and got to level 99 woodcutting, than the fact that I used to write software for aircraft.  Sigh.