The beauty of Onomatopoeia

Today's Picture of the Day from National Geographic of two macaws (see below) made me think of words that sound like what they are: Onomatopoetic.

In Brazil, the name for Macaw is Arrara, because of their call.

The Return of the Clothesline

I remember as a child that my mother hung clothes out to dry outside. I remember how wonderful the sheets and towels smelled, and I noticed when we moved to the States from Switzerland, that I never saw another house with a clothes line.

I guess it wasn't illegal, but apparently in some places it is. Now, there's a movement to get those laws reversed. For example, the Province of Ontario is looking to overturn every such law in the province, on the grounds that drying your clothes outside is the environmentally sound thing to do.

Indeed, an electric clothes dryer uses about 6% of household energy, the same as a refrigerator, even though it's used much less.

And the movement is taking hold - in the UK last year, at one retailer sales of clotheslines were up 150% and clothespins were up 1000%.

So, people, hang your clothes out on the line. Not only will they smell better, but it's better for the planet.

All the news that's fit to print - from Cyprus

The tale of the expat and the copycat
By Marianna Pissa

AIRPORT staff in Paphos were left red faced last week after a copycat was unmasked by a British passenger.

The British resident of Cyprus was waiting for his luggage and his cat on his return from the UK, a local newspaper reported. After waiting for a long time, he finally received his suitcases, but there was no sign of his cat. Eventually, airport employees approached the man with smiles on their faces carrying his special pet carrier, with a very lively cat inside.

But as soon as the man saw the cat, he said it was not his. The airport staff insisted that the cat was in the cage and consequently had to be his, even pointing to the animal’s ID collar.

They continued to insist until the British expat said: "This is not my cat gentlemen, because the one that I brought from London was dead."

Dumbfounded, the airport employees could not believe what they heard.

The man had gone to London on holiday and took his (live) cat with him. There, however, the cat fell ill and died, and the man wanted to bring it back to Cyprus to bury it in his garden.

As it later emerged, when the cage with the dead cat reached the Paphos airport, an employee saw the dead cat and immediately alerted his colleagues, wondering what they should do in case they were blamed for the incident.

They decided to take a stray cat from outside the airport that resembled the dead cat in colour and face. After a feline chase in the grounds of the airport and after some intense washing and grooming, they put the collar of the dead cat on the copy cat, put it in the cage and sent the cage out for the owner to receive it.

It is not known whether the Briton decided to adopt the stray.

Food Riots & Climate Change

So, what are we to do? In many parts of the world, including the US, land is being diverted from food crops to energy crops - corn into ethanol in the US, sugar into ethanol in Brazil, palm oil into biodiesel in SE Asia. We're bring down rain forest to plant energy crops that ultimately increases food prices and decreases biodiversity so that we can drive big cars.

Washington has refused to increase CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) Standards for years, allowing US auto manufacturers to continue producing gas guzzlers. For this, we are getting food riots in Thailand, Italy, the Philippines, Haiti, Uzbekistan, and many more.

Chitty Chitty Bond Bond?

Here's a piece of trivia for you:
Ian Fleming, best known as the creator of James Bond, was also the author of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Who would have guessed?

By the way, it's the hundredth anniversary of his birth this month.