Bee dancing continued

For all those interested in how to do the "bee dance" check out this site!!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bees/dances.html

Bee dancing

Interesting topic of the day-bee dancing!!! When a hunter bee returns to the hive it tells the other bees the location of the nectar, by dancing! There are three kinds of dance-the round dance showing that nectar is 5m away from the hive, the sickle dance showing it is 5-20m away and the tailwagging dance when it's more than 20m away. And if this wasn't amazing enough they can convey even more information!! The faster the dance the more nectar there is, and the direction they face when dancing indicates which direction to fly in when leaving the hive!!
So clever!

Why red and green?

Today I have been trying to discover why red yellow and green are used for traffic lights, what is the significance of these colours? Why are they used and not blue, pink and purple? I guess red could mean danger, ie if you don't stop you or someone else could be in danger, but what's the link between red and danger anyway?

But yeah, whilst researching traffic lights on the web I came across this site which is quite amusing...

http://iusedtobelieve.com/

Fun with words

http://www.fun-with-words.com/index.html

Wow what a great website!! (Thanks Charlotte!)

Here's a few of my favourites from it:

Palindromes:
Doc Note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod
Go hang a salami; I'm a lasagna hog!
Rats live on no evil star

Anagrams:
The earthquakes - That queer shake
The Morse code - Here come dots
The public art galleries - Large picture halls, I bet

Malapropisms:
Good punctuation means not to be late.
He had to use a fire distinguisher.
"Don't" is a contraption.

Ambigious newspaper headlines:
SAFETY EXPERTS SAY SCHOOL BUS PASSENGERS SHOULD BE BELTED
INCLUDE YOUR CHILDREN WHEN BAKING COOKIES
DRUNK GETS NINE MONTHS IN VIOLIN CASE

Funny signs: (and these are all proper signs, you can see pictures on the site!!)
Don't let worries kill you; let the church help
Slow children at play
Danger Ahead: Fasten Safety Belts and Remove Dentures

Study Skills

Learnt a lot in my study skills lecture today...mostly how bad I am at English!! There are so many grammar rules I don't know, for example

• "I was stood" is incorrect English, seems perfectly normal to me! But maybe I'm just thick!
• You shouldn't split infinitives, because you can't in latin or something like that (?!?) Meaning phrases such as "To boldly go" are incorrect!!
• Criteria is the plural of criterion, so you can't use it in singular terms. Glad to know it's not just me that didn't know this, the Black Eyed Peas obviously didn't either: "Negative images is the main criteria"!! Shocking!!

We also learnt something about serial commas (you should avoid using them in academic writing apparently) quite a scary image really, evil serial killing commas...!!!

Don't know why I'm bothering to learn a foreign language when I can't even speak my own properly!!

Riddle...

The answer to the riddle (if anyone's interested which they're probably not but hey I'll tell you anyway cos I have nothing better to do!)

When it's a notion

I know, so funny!

Test

Found out today I got 90% in a linguistics test I had a couple of weeks ago!! Woohoo!! (ok so it was 9/10 in a multiple choice test but it sounds better to say 90%!!) And I'm not showing off or anything, I'm just very happy cos I thought I'd done really badly! And it is 5% of my mark...which isn't very much I know but I'm still happy!!

UNO

Help I'm losing my UNO playing ability!! I was very badly defeated by Thanh Mai tonight, only won 4 out of 18 games!!! This has never happened to me before!! I'm really going to have to work on my skills before we have a re-match!!
It's such a great game though!! I'm so glad I missed my plane and got stranded in France for 2 days with nothing to do but play UNO...every cloud has a silver lining!!

Frufoos!

Wow just been reminiscing about the wonders of primary school, those were the days! Does anyone else remember frufoo yogurts? They came in round pots with a little toy thing in the middle (not actually in the yogurt...there was a separate compartment in the middle of the pot!!) but yeah there was a craze for them at our school, everyone used to have them in their packed lunches and collect the toys, which were fruits with faces, arms, legs etc quite scary when you think about it!! The evil army of pears, strawberries, bananas, oranges and grapes coming to take over the world...

Using language...

Today I have been reading a fascinating linguistics book (called Using Language if anyone's interested...) I learnt lots of amazing facts, such as "Individual actions are performed by individual people" and "joint actions are performed by ensembles of people"!!! Wow I never would've guessed that!! How thick do they think we are?!?
I also learnt the answer to this riddle (such a great book!):
When is a thought like the sea?
I'll leave you to ponder that for a while, then might post the answer...!!

Sexy bonfire?

Just been talking to my brother (who is six by the way) on the phone about bonfire night; he was telling me about the bonfire he's going to, I said "that'll be good" and he said "yeah, sexy"!!!
How can a bonfire be sexy...?!?!?

Jokes!!

My sister has just told me some amazing jokes (the kind 8 year olds find hilarious) Quite liked this one though:
Why did the frog say miaow?
He was learning a foreign language!!!

Decisions, decisions

I decided to write about how bad I am at making decisions but I'm so bad at making decisions I can't decide what to write about being so bad at making decisions!!
Argh!! If anyone's willing to give me lessons in decision making let me know...!!

Woohoo!

Yay, I have a blog!!