by Fern Shaw | Nov 7, 2014 | Water Coolers
I read this article a while ago:
*‘US-born neuroscientist John O’Keefe has jointly won the 2014 Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering the brain’s navigation system. Is it any surprise then that he loves Ordnance Survey maps, writes Luke Jones.
O’Keefe came to the UK from the US in the late 1960s. He was supposed to stay for only two years as part of post-doctoral study. He decided to relocate for good.
The 74-year-old told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he was “very attracted to many aspects of British culture”.
Two aspects that he named were the NHS and the Ordnance Survey map. “I like walking on the weekends and finding my way around,” said the professor who found that the brain has an “inner GPS system” in 1971 by discovering nerve cells that help create maps.
Simon Garfield, author of On the Map, agrees with O’Keefe that OS maps are an integral part of British culture.
“Ordnance Survey maps were originally inspired by 18th Century cartography in France,” he says. “But they’ve been associated with sodden walks in the Cairngorms and the Lakeland Fells for so long that they’ll always be thought of as British as roast beef and Big Daddy. What else makes them so? Their indefatigable finicky detail and their historic quirkiness. The maps show bracken and drinking fountains, not something you see much of on satnav.”
So perhaps these are two of the many reasons that we enjoy maps so much. I have a third – the idea of being lost and ‘seeing where the day takes me’ has never really appealed to me all that much. I like to know where I am and if I have a destination, I like to see how I’m going to get there. So having a map is really important to me.
With this in mind, I’m staging a little experiment the next time I’m at our water cooler. I’m going to unfold a map and ask all those that approach if they can find a point on the map and see the reactions. Will it be the time old chestnut where the men will harrumph and pore eagerly over the map eschewing any help and the women will refuse to even look at it or will I be surprised? I shall report back anon. J
*excerpt from an article in the BBC Magazine Monitor
by Fern Shaw | Oct 23, 2014 | Water, Water Coolers
Recently a real and FB friend posted something on my page about listing your top 10 books to read ever or that had a huge influence on your life.
Now as a complete and utter bookworm, believe it or not, I was stumped. A wee bit ironic, that – a wordsmith / blogista without words. Why though? Well, I suppose it’s a little like this – bookworm envy I’d call it. When I read through said friend’s list of what her top 10 were, I saw how inspirational and life affecting they all were. My top 10, not so much.
The reasons are that I have an attention span of a goldfish or what the purported memory span of a goldfish is – 5 seconds … sorry, what? See, like that.
Somehow, my goldfish brain made the connection between water and books and The Wind in the Willows (author – Kenneth Grahame). I was very fortunate to grow up in a household of bookworms, and British classics abounded. The book I had was illustrated by the incredibly gifted E. H. Shepard and his illustrations just brought the magic of the book to life even more.
Anyhow, once my brain had made this wind, willows and water connection I started wondering about the volume of books (fiction) had water in the title. Even specifying fiction, it soon became apparent that I’d bitten off far more than I could digest. Digest, geddit? As in Reader’s Digest. Before your time? Sorry for you as they say in my neck of the woods.
From Like Water for Chocolate to Ring of Bright Water, there are thousands of watery books, more than you can shake a stick at. I’m not even going to go there.
I think I’ll rowboat race my office chair down to around the water cooler and compile my 10 best ever list there. Not a Herculean task as watery books, but close.
by Fern Shaw | Oct 23, 2014 | Water Coolers
Once upon a time there was a planet called Pluto, and a cartoon character dog too, lest we forget. Then, the powers that be decided that Pluto wasn’t a planet and it was demoted. I thought that this must’ve been very demoralising for said planet, to be a former planet and now just a …?
Apparently, in order for an object to be a planet, you would need a satellite or moon orbiting around you, but both Venus and Mercury don’t have moons and it’s not the size of the planet that counts, so I wasn’t sure what the issue was.
What happened when Pluto was discovered?
In 1930 staff at the Lowell Observatory issued a circular entitled “Discovery of a solar system body apparently trans-neptunian” for distribution to astronomers around the world. The announcement describes a new “object” and makes no claim of a planet discovery. This object later became known as Pluto.
There are many things that make Pluto quite different from the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. But one difference is truly fundamental, and it explains why Pluto is not classified as a planet. Unlike any of the planets, Pluto is embedded in a vast swarm of bodies similar to itself. Pluto is therefore analogous to the asteroid Ceres in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Pluto has many friends orbiting nearby, which is not the case for any of the planets. The planets accumulate, eject, or otherwise control all the mass in their immediate proximity. Pluto and Ceres are not able to do that; therefore they belong to a class that is really quite distinct from the eight planets.
In August of 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to update the definition of what makes a planet. According to their decision a planet must satisfy the following three criteria:
- It must be an object which independently orbits the Sun;
- It must have enough mass so that gravity pulls it into a roughly spheroidal shape;
- It must be large enough to ‘dominate’ its orbit (i.e. its mass must be much larger than anything else which crosses its orbit).
And Bob’s your uncle, Pluto was no longer a planet. Pluto the Dog’s still going strong though, so there’s that. What does this inter planetary sojourn have to do with all things water, you ask? Well, seeing as I’m literally lurking at the water cooler harassing, listening for ideas most of the working day, that’s as close as dammit. In my not so humble opinion.
by Fern Shaw | Oct 8, 2014 | Charity, water cooler, Water Coolers
When you type blogs in English English (not a typo), but your Office is set to American English (default for the globe it would seem) you very quickly develop a sense of humour or humor, with all the typo’s in the different spellings e.g. organise vs. organize; and then with measurements – litres or liters vs. gallons, etcetera, etcetera.
So, imagine my delight when I was advised that the AquaAid Group were water winging their way across the Atlantic and opening up a bottleless water cooler company in the States. The United States of America that is. This meant that for once, when I typed a blog, my spell and grammar check would take seconds instead of minutes.
Even more amazing is that their flagship company HQ is in the City of Luuurve, San Francisco. We will be supplying bottles water coolers all around the San Francisco and (can it even get any better!) San José and Sacramento, all in the (uno momento as I remap my map brain to see states vs. counties) very fabulous (translate), rather marvelous State of Californ I A. Yessiree Bob, we’ve arrived!
Before you get all worked up and think your fave blogista is in town, sadly, this is not the case. When I heard that AquaAid was opening up in the City of Love, I did suggest that perhaps I should be on the scouting party list, but I gathered from the deafening silence that this was unlikely to happen. That’s OH KAY though, as I get to be involved in the manner that I’m best accustomed to – in cyberspace.
As you may have noticed from the different spelling in the logo above, AquAid in the States will be known as AquaAid, to avoid any confusion as to its pronunciation.
As Uffe Hansen, Group Manager of AquAid, says, “We really believe that our mix of high quality products, great service and charitable donations will be a winner in the US Market, as it has been in the UK. We are starting with one office in San Francisco, but hope to open a second in Los Angeles within 18 months”,
More relevant information about us:
Water coolers are our business, and making the world a better place is our passion. That’s what drives us to deliver exceptional products and service to all of our customers.
The AquaAid Group has been supplying bottleless water coolers since its foundation in 1998. Today, we supply an estimated 30,000 customers with 55,000 water coolers from 26 depots.
Our day to day focus is based on solid business principles:
- High quality water coolers, from US manufacturers.
- Environmentally friendly products, removing the need for deliveries of bottled water around the country.
- Most advanced filtration in the bottleless water cooler industry.
- Six-monthly servicing of water coolers, offering peace of mind that your water cooler will always dispense the highest quality water.
- Next day call-outs in the rare event your water cooler develops a fault.
- Local service. No call centers, no sub-contract engineers, just good honest service from a company you can trust.
So, there you have it – we’ve gone Stateside. If you’re planning to relocate to the States, you can now ‘take’ AquAid or AquaAid, rather, with you. If you’re already there, get in touch, we have a dynamic team happy to assist.
by Fern Shaw | Sep 2, 2014 | water cooler, Water Coolers
I’ve hit a bit of creative burnout, people. Happens to the best of us. It may have something to do with that inevitable, eventual information overload, or the hailstorm I slid through yesterday, or the fact that I’ve not been getting my full 6 hours sleep a night. Who knows? So here I slump. Hence the title, ‘slumping at the water cooler’. It goes without saying that the HOD and her gang are casting dark looks at me, but I’ve sort of perfected the ‘speak to the hand’ ignore – when I’m not slumping or draping myself over the bottle fed, I upend myself (a little like the water bottle does) and hang upside down, trapeze like. If anyone approaches with a battle light in their eyes, I just lift my top lip, showing my fangs, uhh, canines, ever so slightly. Works like a charm I tell you.
So, the idea today is all about free association, which as you may have twigged by now, is rather a speciality of mine. Before you chip in, no, you can’t play – this is a game I play all on my ownsome. Off we go:
Penguins – Opus & Bill – fabulous, fabulous cartoon from Berkeley Breathed circa the ‘80’s. I passed my passion for Opus onto a dear friend of mine who named his cat after him.
Cat on a hot tin roof – Fiddler on the Roof – To Kill a Mockingbird: A life changing novel by Harper Lee. Cannot even begin to explain the connection there.
Wacky Wicks – Beechies – Strawberry Beechies and that bubble-gum smell. Still a favourite.
Nosferatu – Dracul – Dracula – Nazgul (the winged creatures from The Lord of the Rings). Okay, that one, perhaps, is not so difficult to figure out.
So, there you have it, dear people, plenty of brain fodder for you to go and eddicate yourselves with. Pleasure.
Psst. The photo of the penguin baba was initially chose for no reason at all – just because it’s a really good photo and also because it’s of a cute, fluffy, baby penguin. This of course started the Penguin – Opus etc. association. Powerful stuff, eh?
by Fern Shaw | Aug 4, 2014 | Water, water cooler, Water Coolers
What I know about maths could fit on one hand, both hands, at a stretch.
The first one that boggles my mind is the Fibonacci numbers that are Nature’s numbering system.
Another example is from The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. In it, there’s mention made of Fermat’s Last Theorem, which Lisbeth Salander attacks with relish. It’s round about here that my grey matter literally freezes and I’m not joking – I can almost feel my brain kick into neutral. There’s actually little wonder that I spend so much time at the water cooler, my brain grinds to a halt so often that I need to drink lots of water to lubricate it to start functioning again!
Having said this, I do believe that the Fibonacci numbers do kind of, sort of, make sense. There’s symmetry in there that appeals to my rather particular warped logic. All of these equations point to connections that are just there or have been there all along if we just choose to open ourselves up to this magic.
Here’s why I think this:
I’m history mad. When it comes to my forefathers, colour me fascinated. Racial memory, call it what you will, whenever I hear about certain ancient tribes, something resonates within me. One particular example of this is the Vikings. I watch a series called Vikings. I see how fierce they were but also discover that they were also interested in farming and fertile earth and all good things. I see some of their rituals which are, to put it politely, rather brutal.
Not one week later, I start watching another series, Shetland and in the second episode, it shows a centuries old Scottish festival called, wait for it, Up Helly Aa. Part of the festival involves the dragging of a galley through the streets of various towns, culminating in lit torches being thrown into the galley, setting it alight and the galley being consumed in fire. (Early galleys were made from a light timber frame covered with canvas or alternatively old boats, whose useful life afloat was over, were converted and subsequently sent to Valhalla). The festival seems to have derived from the Norse culture, some of whom invaded the Shetlands in the 12th century. We all know by now my wish to have a Viking burial, see Tornados are water, who knew? Sometime in all of this, I watched another program and there was mention made of Freya, the Norse goddess of love and fertility, who I only learnt about while watching Vikings.
So now it seems that there is this symmetry and connectivity in choices that I’ve made – okay, watching Vikings was very much a conscious decision, but I had no clue that Shetland would have all the ancient Viking elements in it nor that they would be burning galleys at festivals or that Freya is mentioned on more than one occasion all of a sardine.
I’m going to leave this with you to ponder over. My brain hurts and I need to drink water.
