When I was very young I suffered from cetaphobia which is a fear of whales.
My parents, I and my younger brother had gone to Belle Vue zoo near Manchester (no longer there).
There was a large whale there. My parents and brother went into the whale and I refused to as I did not want to be eaten.
This is the only image I can find of that whale:

It was known as Willie the Whale, was made out of concrete, 8 feet high and 32 feet long and inside was a small aquarium though I didn't realise it then

@slimfern posted:

Your vomiting or someone else's

My own

@El Loro posted:

When I was very young I suffered from cetaphobia which is a fear of whales.
My parents, I and my younger brother had gone to Belle Vue zoo near Manchester (no longer there).
There was a large whale there. My parents and brother went into the whale and I refused to as I did not want to be eaten.
This is the only image I can find of that whale:

It was known as Willie the Whale, was made out of concrete, 8 feet high and 32 feet long and inside was a small aquarium though I didn't realise it then

Awww

@El Loro posted:

When I was very young I suffered from cetaphobia which is a fear of whales.
My parents, I and my younger brother had gone to Belle Vue zoo near Manchester (no longer there).
There was a large whale there. My parents and brother went into the whale and I refused to as I did not want to be eaten.
This is the only image I can find of that whale:

It was known as Willie the Whale, was made out of concrete, 8 feet high and 32 feet long and inside was a small aquarium though I didn't realise it then

Awww.. Had you been watching Pinocchio El

There must have been others with the same fear for there to be a named phobia.

I spent many years with a totally irrational fear of zombies ..Kinemortophobia
To the point where I wouldn't walk on pavements in case one would run out of a driveway and had to sleep with a light on

@slimfern posted:

I spent many years with a totally irrational fear of zombies ..Kinemortophobia
To the point where I wouldn't walk on pavements in case one would run out of a driveway and had to sleep with a light on

@slimfern posted:

Awww.. Had you been watching Pinocchio El

There must have been others with the same fear for there to be a named phobia.

I think I was older when I saw Pinocchio. That was at the cinema as that was the only way to see Disney films then.
It might have been as Sunday School re Jonah and the whale. Though it's more likely that it was seeing something I saw on television according to my mother

@El Loro posted:

I think I was older when I saw Pinocchio. That was at the cinema as that was the only way to see Disney films then.
It might have been as Sunday School re Jonah and the whale. Though it's more likely that it was seeing something I saw on television according to my mother

Awwwww

@El Loro posted:

I think I was older when I saw Pinocchio. That was at the cinema as that was the only way to see Disney films then.
It might have been as Sunday School re Jonah and the whale. Though it's more likely that it was seeing something I saw on television according to my mother

Watching Disney on the big screen is the best way El
Was always the best part of a bank holiday...that one hour of Disney on tv

@El Loro posted:

I think I was older when I saw Pinocchio. That was at the cinema as that was the only way to see Disney films then.
It might have been as Sunday School re Jonah and the whale. Though it's more likely that it was seeing something I saw on television according to my mother

This is likely to have been the programme I saw:
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/5e...450ebc6911f30af555fd
I would have  almost certainly seen it and old enough to be scared by it but not old enough to really understand it.
(Peter Scott was the equivalent of David Attenborough back then and was the founder of the wetland wildlife reserve at Slimbridge).

@slimfern posted:

Wow ….how weird is that .

Here's another optical illusion based on the Escher stairs:

@El Loro posted:

Here's another optical illusion based on the Escher stairs:

@El Loro posted:

Here's another optical illusion based on the Escher stairs:

I presume it’s actually a flat surface El?

@Baz posted:

I presume it’s actually a flat surface El?

Yes, it would be
It's taken from Escher's "Ascending and Descending" which was a lithograph.

@El Loro posted:

Yes, it would be
It's taken from Escher's "Ascending and Descending" which was a lithograph.

That’s looks a little cruel

@El Loro posted:

That’s one way of doing it I guess El

@Baz posted:

That’s one way of doing it I guess El

Sky diving fish ...an experience for them I suppose
Good that they are restocking though

Colin Pitchfork to be freed after 1980s schoolgirl rapes and murders as government loses challenge

Colin Pitchfork, who raped and murdered two schoolgirls in the 1980s, will be released from prison after the Parole Board rejected a government challenge.

Pitchfork was given a life sentence with a minimum 30-year term after strangling Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth, both 15, in Leicestershire in 1983 and 1986 respectively.

The government had challenged the Parole Board's decision that Pitchfork was "suitable for release" following a hearing in March. But in a statement on Tuesday, the board said the appeal had been refused.

Pitchfork, who is now in his early 60s, was sentenced to life in 1988 after pleading guilty to two murders, two rapes, two indecent assaults and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
He was the first person in UK history to be convicted on the basis of DNA evidence...

Should he be released?

Unreal. Nope     

@velvet donkey posted:

Unreal. Nope     

Life should mean life..

Football-sized goldfish take over lake after decades of people dumping unwanted pet fish

Conservationists in Minnesota have requested the general public stop releases pet goldfish into lakes and other bodies of water as they are now considered to be an invasive species.

The city of Burnsville, a suburb of Minneapolis, shared some images of an incredibly large goldfish that was discovered in a local lake after being let loose.

“Please don’t release your pet goldfish into ponds and lakes! They grow bigger than you think and contribute to poor water quality by mucking up the bottom sediments and uprooting plants. Groups of these large goldfish were recently found in Keller Lake,” the city

Wonder if they taste good

@velvet donkey posted:

Unreal. Nope     

@slimfern posted:

Life should mean life..

I agree …I think it’s disgusting that they are releasing him !

@slimfern posted:

Football-sized goldfish take over lake after decades of people dumping unwanted pet fish

Conservationists in Minnesota have requested the general public stop releases pet goldfish into lakes and other bodies of water as they are now considered to be an invasive species.

The city of Burnsville, a suburb of Minneapolis, shared some images of an incredibly large goldfish that was discovered in a local lake after being let loose.

“Please don’t release your pet goldfish into ponds and lakes! They grow bigger than you think and contribute to poor water quality by mucking up the bottom sediments and uprooting plants. Groups of these large goldfish were recently found in Keller Lake,” the city

Wonder if they taste good

Good grief

Visit one Scottish distillery where you can sleep, and one where you can eat

Just when you thought Scotland had run out of islands to make whisky on, the Isle of the Roe Deer has released its inaugural whisky. Isle of Raasay Distillery also became the first distillery to offer accommodation, located within sniffing distance of the mash tuns of this state of art distillery, housed inside an old Victorian villa.

Fourteen miles long and five wide Raasay island, a 25 minute ferry ride from Isle of Skye, has landmarks including the flat-topped Dun Caan mountain, ruined castles Brochel and Vreokle, the cliffs of Creag na Bruaich, and, at long last, a fully functioning distillery.

Previously famous for golden eagles, an endemic bank vole and another place Bonnie Prince Charlie hid after the Battle of Culloden, it now has its own premium whisky. The Hebridean island’s single malt is the first legally produced on the island whose original illicit whisky-makers confined their activities to coastline caves. Isle of Raasay Hebridean Gin was released two years ago.

The distillery offers luxury six-room accommodation in the converted Victorian-era Borodale House overlooking the isle of Skye’s Cullin mountains and named after a local broch or Iron Age stone structure.

Can you pass a high school test from more than 100 years ago?

1. What is 35.7 + 4?

2. What is 5.8 + 5.14 - 59.112

3. A man bought a farm for $2400 and sold it for $2700. What per cent did he gain?

4. A school enrolled 120 pupils and the number of boys was two thirds of the number of girls. How many of each sex were enrolled?

5. “William struck James.” Change the Voice of the verb.

6. How long a rope is required to reach from the top of a building 40m high, to the ground 30m from the base of the building?

7. Define proper noun and common noun.

8. What is a Personal pronoun?

9. Define longitude and latitude

10. How does the liver compare in size with other glands in the human body?

11. Name the three branches of the government of the United States.

12. During what war was the Battle of Antietam fought?

Answers:

1. 39.7 2. -48.172 3. 12. 5 per cent 4. 72 girls and 48 boys 5. “James was struck by William” 6. 50m 7. A proper noun is the name of something specific. A common noun refers to something in a general sense 8. A personal pronoun is a pronoun that refers to a particular person, group, or thing. 9. They are the imaginary lines that divide the Earth into measurable horizontal and vertical lines. 10. The liver is the largest gland in the body. 11. Legislative, executive and judicial. 12. American Civil War

Slim, I got them all right other than the last one which is not surprising

@El Loro posted:

Slim, I got them all right other than the last one which is not surprising

Well done El

@slimfern posted:

Well done El

Thanks

I got two of them wrong Thanks Slim

@Baz posted:

I got two of them wrong Thanks Slim

second prize Baz

@slimfern posted:

second prize Baz

Always the bridesmaid , never the bride , that’s me

@Baz posted:

Always the bridesmaid , never the bride , that’s me

World Emoji Day 2021: How aubergines and crying faces connected us all online

Between 1998 and 1999, while the rest of the tech world was preoccupied with the Millennium bug, a 27-year-old engineer at Japanese phone company, NTT Docomo, was working on a project that would define the next era of digital communication. Although he didn’t know it yet.

From his office in the Gifu prefecture, Shigetaka Kurita, was trying to create a way for customers to communicate through icons. For years his employer had been successful at selling pagers to Japan’s teenagers, and its decision to add a heart symbol to one device had proved popular. But as competitors quickly created similar features Kurita knew Docomo required more.

The result was a set of 176 icons in 12x12 pixels, which Kurita named emoji, a combination of two Japanese words: “e” for picture and “moji” for character. Drawing from manga and Chinese characters, as well as international bathroom signs, he covered everything from weather, to traffic, and modes of transport. Today Kurita’s symbols are such an integral part of popular culture they are exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

🤣🤣🎂🎂

@Baz posted:

🤣🤣🎂🎂