JOYS OF ENGLISH [via Cacciatore}
Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning.
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture..
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong for me to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear..
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell.
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick'?
Clever Dog!
While dogs have a way of getting what they want, usually by being cute or lovable, one pooch in McDonough, Georgia, really took the cake for being the most ingenious canine in our books. After having gotten out of the house one night, Chika, a Labrador mix, wanted back in, and so guess what she did? She rang the doorbell, and it was captured in an adorable video.
Eventually, her human Rob Fox let Chika in from the chilly fall night.
Later, the recording, captured on a RING doorbell device, was posted on Reddit, and Chika became an internet star. He joked that “in another video I won’t be sharing is me in my underwear two minutes later letting her in.”
Later, the recording, captured on a RING doorbell device, was posted on Reddit, and Chika became an internet star. He joked that “in another video I won’t be sharing is me in my underwear two minutes later letting her in.”
Rrriiiiinnnnggg, rrriiiinnnngg [via John Reid]
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The Mesmerizing Sea Goddess! [via Nina Reznick}
Raising the “Beautiful Sea Goddess”




The spotted comb jelly’s common name refers to orange “knobs” or spots along its body.

“They also have cool whips called ‘auricles’ that they wave around—undulate—in this really cool slow wave motion, probably driving food into their mouths,” he says.


‘Barely organized water’
Spotted comb jellies are not endangered, and range from Baja California north to British Columbia. But seeing them in an aquarium is a rare treat, because their extreme fragility makes handling them a dicey proposition.

Wild specimens first went on exhibit in Monterey in 2002, as part of the special exhibition, “Jellies: Living Art.” On rare occasions, and for brief periods, they’ve returned to the exhibit galleries.

To protect the easily broken beauties from perturbations, Wyatt says members of the team “have to move like a sloth. In order to move them we’ve got to get a beaker around them, and that has to be done very, very slowly. We try to get them to swim into the beaker so we don’t have to disturb the water around them.”
Slow-motion exhibit maintenance

Senior Aquarist Wyatt Patry helped unlock the secrets of culturing comb jellies, including Leucothea.
In the wild, they take refuge at depths up to 300 feet below the surface, “to get away from all the waves and the swells and commotion up above,” Wyatt says. But they also show up in Monterey Bay in late fall, when surface waters are warm and calm.

“Over the last two years, we’ve really kind of excelled at comb jelly culture here at the Aquarium,” Wyatt says, “so we were really ready to receive and work with Leucothea immediately.”
Here he credits his partner Tommy Knowles, as well as Michael Howard and MacKenzie Bubel.

The Aquarium now has dozens of spotted comb jellies on hand. Some grew to four inches long in just two months.
Inspired by Homer’s ‘Odyssey’

“It was named by the master’s student, and in deference to her work, I kept the unpublished name,” says George, a senior education and research specialist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The name translates as “beautiful sea goddess.” (In Homer’s “Odyssey”, Leukothea is a sea nymph who rescues Odysseus from drowning.)

“So, it appears that they can be picky eaters, sorting out what each individual prefers,” he says.
That the Aquarium has managed to culture the species is “amazing” to George. “I never had much luck keeping them in captivity for more than a day, so I’m completely gobsmacked.”

“If asked about the possibility, I would’ve estimated less than a 5 percent chance of success—so kudos to the team,” he says.
Successfully culturing a species often opens the door to sharing subsequent generations of offspring with other public aquariums. But Wyatt, having gone to great lengths to put a few on display, doubts it’s realistic in this case. These jellies, he says, are too fragile.

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