Marilyn's Photos - June 9 2025 - Rosa Rugosa

 

I wondered about Roses and their scent.  I find out that fragrance has three components, top note, middle note and base note. So when it comes to Roses, here's one of the formal descriptions: When used as a top note, the fragrance of Rosa rugosa can add a fresh and uplifting quality to a perfume, while as a middle note, it can bring a warm and comforting element to a fragrance. As a base note, Rosa rugosa can help to anchor the scent and give it a long-lasting quality that lingers on the skin. Find out more here  Wouldn't it be such an experience to be a perfumer - one who creates perfumes? I start looking at the information and have second thoughts.  The average salary in Ontario is $55,888 up to $99,000.  What would compare in terms of professionally creating?  Would a mixologist - one who creates cocktails - be equivalent?  Not in terms of salaries.  Their average salary is $40,000 per year.  I wonder if tips factor into this and improve things.  Could one be a perfumer in Ontario?  One would work in a fragrance company such as  Niche Essence, Lurker, Strange Perfumery, Vigyl and the 7 Virtues.  Who would guess there are actually this many. I'm not familiar with perfume and don't wear it. Funny that I should so enjoy floral fragrances in the garden.   So in addition to the Rose's famous smell, there is the mystique of colour - the blue rose.  The picture below shows rainbow roses.  These are creations of chemistry and not photography.  The stem is split into many parts with different colours of water for each piece to soak up into the petals.   What would happen with one of these at the Rose Show next weekend - I expect that would cause quite a reaction from the Judges.   Let's stop and smell the roses in this Royal Botanical Garden - The purple flowers are Alliums and they have an onion scent so it might be a strange combination.

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Marilyn's Photos - June 8 2025 - The New Top Dog Pilots

 

Have you read or heard about this?  The new pilots in the Russian-Ukraine War are gamers who are using those skills to pilot drones.   These are young men, gaming hobbyists/enthusiasts, who have volunteered for Ukraine in the war.  They are generally 18 to mid 20s, and from countries around the world.  They are trained in drone camps in the Ukraine.  The Brent Branbury news item yesterday said that the recruitment method was to post ads on social media - eg.Reddit.  So I checked it out. "Can y'all give me an honest assessment of how realistic/feasible/difficult it is to get into drone piloting as work? "I have no experience piloting drones (unless being a gamer counts), I'm just a gymnastics coach and construction worker in his mid-30's looking for a way to pay my bills that isn't so hard on my body. What little research I've done so far looks like the necessary certifications are fairly cheap (even if the drones themselves aren't), and it sounds like something that I could enjoy enough not to get too burnt out on. "Do the jobs exist? Do they require years of training? Do they pay enough that I'd be able to support myself (I'm in Maryland, if that makes a difference). Are there other questions I'm not asking, but should?" There are lots of these sorts of questions on Reddit - some more specific about Ukraine and some inviting gamers to become pilots in the Ukraine. The MSN article HERE uses the language of the wild west and top gun to dramatize the military transformation.  They highlight celebrities as part of the team - "former techno music DJ Artem Timofeev, former Ukrainian tennis player Alexander Dolgoopolov.  Others are anonymous and the training school trainers have anonymous names as well.      We're heading into Rose Season.  My Rosa Rugosa, one of the strongest scented roses is blooming.  It is also known as the beach rose.  Here's a description: "This particular flower has a sweet and spicy aroma that is both feminine and sophisticated. The fragrance note of Rosa rugosa is often described as being rich and full-bodied, with hints of citrus and spice. The scent is both delicate and powerful, making it a popular choice for perfumers looking to create a luxurious and elegant fragrance."

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Marilyn's Photos - June 7 2025 - Learning from Calculators

 

Our immediate past gives us insight into where AI is going with children's mental abilities.  I am thinking about is calculators. Calculators came into their own in the 1970s.  So by the early 1980s, I used a financial calculator in the MBA program  where probability calculations are a part of marketing strategies. I remember what a labour-saving tool it was.   Calculators became ubiquitous in the 1990s in classrooms.  There was doubt that students could maintain a high level of skill while relying on calculators to do basic arithmetic. That controversy still exists.  Articles say progress has not been made in integrating calculators with mental arithmetic.  Studies show that heavy reliance on calculators leads to declines in student mathematical skills.   So I went searching for more and found a edutopia article on using calculators to deepen students' engagement with math HERE. I found it engaging for me, too.   "PERCENTAGE In this lesson, I always begin by telling students that I’m going to give them several percentage problems as well as the answers. The first thing students wonder is why I would give them the answers. Aren’t they supposed to figure those out? Not in this case, I tell them: The goal is not to get the answer, but to figure out how the answer was gotten. The first problem we tackle is pretty simple: What is 50% of 24? The students can usually shout out “12!” before I finish writing the problem on the board. “Excellent!” I respond. “Now, how could you figure that out on a calculator?” At that moment, students grab a basic four-function calculator. I walk around and have students show me their methods, and I tell them that dividing 24 by 2 is not what I wanted. “But 50% is half,” they protest. “So you divide by 2.” “Certainly,” I say. “But we’re not always going to have something as nice as 50%, so we have to find a different way.” Exasperated, my students try to figure out what I want. After letting them engage in productive struggle, I guide them toward the idea that we can use the numbers 50 and 24 to reach 12. Soon, they’re getting ideas like multiplying the numbers, resulting in 1,200. “That’s kind of like 12,” someone will say. “But I have to get rid of these zeroes.” My students start figuring out that to reach the answer, we can multiply the percent by the whole number and then divide by 100. Some students even propose that you just turn one of the numbers into a decimal before multiplying (50 times 0.24 or 0.50 times 24). Others say that you put a decimal point into both numbers, but only one digit in each (5.0 times 2.4). Some suggest using the % button on the calculator, which would also turn their number on the screen into a decimal. I then have students provide conjectures about why all of these strategies work and what they have in common. Soon, my students are engaging in a mathematical discussion about relationships between decimals and percents, how the number 100 is inherent to all of the calculations, and how 50%, 0.50, and ½ are all the same thing. I continue the lesson with more complicated problems. Trying to solve something like 17.35% of 8.4 using paper and pencil is overwhelming—but with calculators, my students approach even seemingly scary problems like this with confidence, armed with the knowledge that the relationships remain constant regardless of the complexity of the numbers. Using ideas like percent-decimal equivalence—as well as efficient algorithms like “% × n ÷ 100”—my students develop, with the help of calculators, conceptual understanding and procedural fluency."   Isn't this a masterful sculpture on the landscape.  This is at the Week 1 winning Trillium garden in Grimsby.

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Marilyn's Photos - June 6 2025 - Looking into Spoilerl Alert

 

Spoiler alert came to mind.  I realized it must be a recent term.  And it is.  It originated on the internet in 1979.  "Spoiler" on its own is a much earlier term - someone who robs and plunders - from the 1500s.   But we know Spoiler with alert.  And the most famous of these?  The true identity of Darth Vader is one of the most widely known spoilers in popular culture - that's from Wikipedia.   Wikipedia says there are three types - short, long and thematic.  Shot spoilers reveal the plot ending in a brief way.  Long spoilers provide more context and summary.  Thematic spoilers reveal a story's unifying theme as well as a synopsis of the plot and the ending.   It sounds like Cole's Notes and summaries might be synonyms with thematic spoilers.  However, often spoilers are published before the book, movie or television show is released.  There's a quote from Alfred Hitchcock in the Wikipedia article:  "Please don't give away the ending, it's the only one we have." Here's more of his quotes: There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it Always make the audience suffer as much as possible The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder Don't we miss Alfred Hitchcock!   Is it a spoiler to reveal what an abstract is made from?  This is a section of the Henry Moore sculpture out front off the Art Gallery of Ontario.

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Marilyn's Photos - June 5 2025 - Remember Susan Boyle

 

Susan Boyle became a celebrity in November 2009 on Britain's Got Talent.  There was a mismatch of expectations, wasn't there?  No fat girl should sing like an angel.  Angels are not fat.  So the underdog story was particularly compelling.  Not that she got onto Britain's Got Talent without being able to sing.   And how fat was she, really? I read an article describing the "reveal" as staged and the story promoted as a modern parable on our judgement of appearances.  Something about this combination was compelling the public.  She continued in and out of the press, and on social media over time.  Every detail off her behaviour, actions was covered.   So it isn't surprising to see headlines over her loss of weight. That's a long time ago - she was diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes in 2012.  So when did she lose 50 pounds?  It was in 2016.  But there are before and after pictures with a "princess" having emerged, as though just today.  From 2024:  Susan Boyle is now so thin and looks beautiful! It is a modern-day Grim Fairy Tale.   Iris - the flower with the "sweet grape" scent.

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