What I Learnt Today

Elizabeth II has been reigning over us for a long time, but it is unlikely she will overtake the world record holder Louis XIV of France. He became king of France in 1643 at the age of 4, and remained monarch till his death (from gangrene) at age 76.

Practice makes perfect.

He was very very good at playing the role of Le Roi Soleil – the Sun King. He had a daily ritual, or ‘lever’, which began with a royal dressing that took 2 hours. He had the kingly-look down pat, and built the grand palace at Versailles to match. When he moved the court to Versailles, he devoted his old place, Le Louvre, to the arts, of which he was a magniicent patron. He became the archetypal royal whose style  the rest did their best to follow – the Lady Gaga of his time.

However, where he outdid the other monarchs was that as well as being excellent at playing the part of king, he devoted himself to being good at the real work of leadership – administration and decision making and law making and the other duties that noblesse oblige. With no power sharing magna carta, French kings were significantly more powerful than English ones.He successfully centralised power in Paris, codifed the civil law across France (Code Louis), modernised the army, and developed the French economy with a skilled migration scheme, an improved system of taxation and a focus on export earnngs. This may be how he escaped the beheading that was the fate of many of his foreign contemporaries.

This then is the advice he wrote to his grandson Philip before he assumed the job of king of Spain.

“Never favour those who flatter you the most, but hold rather to those who risk your displeasure for your own good. Never neglect business for pleasure, organise your life so that there is time in it for relaxation and entertainment. Give the business of government your full attention. Inform yourself as much as you can before taking any decision. Make every effort to get to know men of distinction, so that you may call on them when you need them. Be courteous to all, speak hurtfully to no man”

What I Learnt On 20th May in other years

20th May 2020 World Bee Day – what the Waggle Dance teaches us about innovation

I’ve always thought this would be a particularly cool way of getting home from work each day.

Oobject.com  have recently posted a collection of 12 of the world’s best waterslides.

Bags having go on the well named ‘Insano’ in Brazil.

Our own Wet And Wild has some new ‘high thrill’ rides, including the Tornado.

If you’d like to feel what it’s like to ride home on the Barclay’s waterslide featured in the video, Millie reckons the Waterslide app for iPhone is good fun.

What I Learnt On 19th May in other years

19th May 2020 Have a Squiz at These

Matt went to a lot of trouble to propose to Ginny.

His arranged for his brother Charlie to take her to the movies as Matt was ‘working.’

And then………..

Full back story at mashable.com

What I Learnt On 18th May in other years

18th May 2020 There are decades where nothing happens …

18th May 2012 Why Rugby Has Backs

Should it be “What I Learnt Today?” or “What I Learned Today?”

I am “waiting for” a response, or I am “waiting on” a response?

Netspeak at http://www.netspeak.org is a cool tool that provides a ‘common language’ search. It answers questions about preferred usage, by searching the web for matches for a phrase you specify.

Replace a word you’re not sure about with a ‘?’, or have Netspeak pick between two options using square brackets [ ].

Try these

what I [learnt learned] today

Try it

shows “What I learned today” is much more commonly used than “What I learnt today”
(imagine all those 12,503 people being incorrect, and only 304 being on the money) 

a ? in time

Try It

shows ‘a point in time’ is most commonly used – followed by ‘a moment in time’, ‘a wrinkle in time’ (?) and ‘a stich’ in time

? Lembke

Try It

shows that the most common first name for a Lembke on the web is Holger.

More examples at the Netspeak site

PS. It seems that cousin Holger has his own website. I wonder what it is for? Sprechen sie deutsch?  Unfortunately, my German is completely informed by what I learnt from Hogans Heroes. Achtung! Schnell! I know nufink. At least I can speak to Mike.

What I Learnt On 17th May in other years

17th May 2020 Pandemic – Just for fun

We all know that people of West African origin are good sprinters because they have more ‘fast twitch’ muscle fibers. Right? And people of East African origin, particularly those from Ethiopia, have muscles that are better for endurance running because of ‘slow twitch muscle fibres’. Correct?

No, wrong – according to Dr Yannis Pitsiladis, who’s Reader in Exercise Physiology at the University of Glasgow. There are no published studies comparing muscle biopsies between different ethic groups that can demonstrate such a difference. Certainly successful sprinters have more fast twitch fibres, and marathon runners have slow twitch, but this is not based on ethnicity.

“Our students would often ask us in class why is it that no white man up until last year has run 100 metres in under 10 seconds while there have been hundreds of individuals of black colour who’ve managed to do that? Why?” asked Dr Pitsiladis on a recent Health Report.

Of course, genes play an important part in determining athletic potential. If you want to be an athelete, it is better to have athletic parents. But this is independent of ethnicity.  Interestingly, in all the studies of the human genome, they have not determined the difference in genes that make someone look black and someone else look white. (nor tall, for that matter)

So what are the other important factors

Run lots when you are a kid. In Dr Pitsiladis’s studies, many of the kids in Ethiopia ran 5km to their primary schools, home at lunch, back to school and then ran home again at the end of the day. 20km a day! Ethiopians consider running a gift from God. If our kids have to walk a mile it is a Federal Case.

Run without shoes from a young age. Running bare feet, we land on our toes (it hurts too much to heel strike). This has greater shock absorber effect, reduces injuries and prepares us for a lifetime of running and for the hard training required to make it as an elite athelete. By the time we a adolescents, it is too late to change to bare feet running.

Have a hunger to do well. Many young people have to do well at sport or return to poverty. That is a strong motivator.

Too late for me, I’m afraid, but the shoes are coming off Millie tomorrow. A 5km barefoot jog to school each morning should be just the ticket.

You can listen to or read the interview between Norman Swan and Yannis Pitsiladis at the Health Report site.

What I Learnt On 16th May in other years

16th May 2020 La tour de lockdown

16th May 2014 I told you I’d be ready in five minutes…

Performing a coordinated High Five requires quite a knack.
Cool when done well, it can be a common cause of an ‘epic fail’.

NASA crashed a bomb into the moon – which you’d have to agree is a good shot. However, the red-shirted scientist in this live feed got ‘dissed’ when he tried to initiate a celebratory high five.

Even the usually very cool John Mayer can fail

This bear can’t take a trick

Luckilly, not all are as disastrous as this one

For a coordinated sportsman, this is a sad miss.

(Lucky the crowd was so small)

So what is the secret to a perfect high five.

Will tells me that the secret to never missing a high five is for each person to watch the other’s elbow.

This is confirmed by the team at Perfect High Five.

High Five!

What I Learnt On 15th May in other years

15th May 2020 Fancy Friday – Pardon my French