One fewer car

Do you know the difference in meaning between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’? ‘Less’ refers to something that can’t be counted, e.g. flour, love, blue. And ‘fewer’ refers to something that can, e.g. people, plates, cars. Lots of bikes bear ‘One less car’ stickers. But I’ve never seen a ‘One fewer car’ sticker. Anyway why should a sloganeer respect correct English usage? All of this notwithstanding, last Sunday the number of cars in a certain Daylesford carport reduced by one – from one to none. Darling Meg, PJ and Zephyr (pictured) have chosen to become a carless household. And last Sunday it happened. They’re the only carless household I know of. Carlessness brings advantages (e.g. environmental, health, financial). And some disadvantages (e.g. time, convenience, comfort). I assume that currently for Meg and PJ the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Or at least they aim to determine if this is so; or not. I understand their decision. Good luck to them for trying. Tomorrow they’re each picking up a cargo bike – called a Kona Ute [1]. Meg tells me hers is green and PJ’s is brown; and both bikes have brown panniers, front (dog) baskets, and super bright front and back lights for country riding. Oh what fun. I look forward to seeing the Kona Utes, and how it all works out. I’ll keep you posted.

Survival Ark - coming over the horizon

Last 18 May I wrote I was looking to buy a hand-operated flour mill – to grind wheat into flour for 100% wholemeal bread [1]. Now, 12 weeks later, I still haven’t bought one. But I will soon. Last Monday Sweetheart Vivienne and I went to the health food store in Deloraine to buy flour and yeast. Whilst there I asked about flour mills. The proprietor showed us one. It looked okay, and it was a good price. But I had misgivings. Free floating ones. Gut feelings. When I asked about the warranty, he said he’d have to check. I took that as a way to temporise. I said I’d be back in two days. Yesterday I made some internet and phone inquiries. I’ve found a better one: more functional design, improved grinding capacity, made in Victoria, lifetime guarantee. It’s about A$90 dearer. But the advantages justify the higher price. So later today I need to tell the Deloraine man I’m not buying the mill he’s selling. That’s too hard for me to do. I don’t know why, but it is. A result of one of my many long-term psychological glitches. So Sweetheart Vivienne’s doing it. She’s much more psychologically able than I. Also we’re returning a 20kg bag of baker’s flour we bought on Monday – as we’ll need less once we grind our own flour. So all going well, some time next week we’ll be proud owners of a Survival Ark (pictured). Oh what fun. Stay tuned.

Janus-sunaJ

Janus, in Roman mythology, is the god of gates, doors, doorways, starts and ends [1]. January, the gateway to the New Year, is named after him. He’s usually depicted with two faces or heads facing in opposite directions. That is, at the same time looking back to the past and forward to the future. I knew all that before. But until last Tuesday when I read this Grammar Girl item [2], I didn’t know what a Janus Word is. Surprise surprise, it’s a word with two opposite meanings. Presumably such words are word usage mutations. Examples GG gives are sanction, cleave, screen and trim. A little internet trolling reveals the proper name for Janus Word is contronym (sometimes spelt contranym), or alternatively antagonym or autantonym or contradictanym; and these words are special examples of homonyms, i.e. words with the same spelling but different meanings. Indeed they’re homonymic antonyms. And they’re examples of polysemy, i.e. when a word has multiple meanings. Me? Compared with all these words ending in ‘nym’, I prefer the name Janus Word. Several webpages give us many more Janus Words [3, 4, 5]. Oh what fun. Ho hum.

P.S. Literally two minutes after I completed this post, I received an email from darling Emily saying she loved the Janus Word inclusion on Grammar Girl’s newsletter. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Em.

The shape of things to come?

Vis-à-vis the farm part of Farmdoc, a recurring theme in this blog is hay. In the nine years my sharefarmer Sharon and I’ve been jointly farming our adjoining properties, we’ve used square hay bales [1]. (They’re actually rectangular but called square.) This is because they’re smaller and lighter than round bales – the hay in a round bale’s roughly the same as in 15 square bales – so we can handle them manually. (Lifting round bales needs machinery – which Joel Salatin derides as ‘heavy metal’ [2] – which we don’t have and don’t want.) As neither Sharon nor I is getting younger (and stronger), we’re seeking ways to make our farming easier. So we decided we’d experiment this year. Last Saturday we bought a round bale (pictured) (for A$50) which we rolled off Sharon’s ute into one of our paddocks where we have 36 sheep and 29 goats. Instead of feeding square bale hay to them daily, the round bale’s now available to them, buffet-like, 24/7. How quickly they’ll eat it, and whether it’ll be degraded by the weather or them climbing and then excreting on it, remains to be seen. But if you don’t ask the question you won’t know the answer. This aspect of farming’s fun. It intrigues me. Stay tuned.

Publicising offence details - is shaming effective?

Today’s photograph (which you can click on to enlarge), taken by Sweetheart Vivienne, is from last Tuesday’s Examiner (i.e. Launceston’s daily newspaper). It publicises details of 11 people who each received a fine and a license disqualification for driving with a blood alcohol concentration [BAC] over the 0.05% legal maximum. Unsurprisingly all 11 are male. Surprisingly only three are aged under 30 years and six over 40 years. Their BACs range from 0.052-0.215, with four BACs over twice the legal limit. The fines range from A$200-2,500. And the disqualification periods range from 3-30 months. Clearly this group comprises serious traffic offenders who were a serious hazard to the local road using public. I don’t normally read the Examiner, and I’ve never before seen a similar item. I assume its main aim’s is to cause the offenders shame by making the details of their offences public. My dictionary defines ‘shame’ as ‘a painful emotion resulting from an awareness of inadequacy or guilt’ and ‘a state of dishonour’. I’ve no idea if publicising details of the BAC offences and penalties causes the offenders shame; or not. (For all I know they may view it as a badge of honour.) But more importantly it needs to be established whether or not it reduces BAC offence recidivism. It’s a fascinating question. For an enterprising graduate student there’s at least a research paper in it. And maybe even a thesis. Oh what fun.

farmdoc's blog post number 576

Last mid June, I wrote that ‘Though I haven’t created music, it’s been a major accompaniment to my life. Just about all types. Classical, opera, folk, bluegrass. Even country.’ That list didn’t include Rap. And I’m not sure I’d include it today. But I’m on the way to finding out. Last Thursday darling Emily’s boyfriend Jono – aka J-Dog, as he’s affectionately called – presented me with a CD compilation he’d burned especially for me. Titled Rap 101 with Prof J-Dog, you can see the CD’s emblazoned with ‘Farmdoc’s Hip Hop Mixtape #1’. (I must confess that until then I didn’t know for sure that Rap and Hip Hop are one and the same.) The CD has 17 tracks, each by a different American artist/group. I’d previously heard of only one, i.e. Eminem, the heterograph of the confectionery). I can’t recall exactly how this CD came about. I think I confessed to Prof J-Dog that I knew nought about Rap, and he volunteered to rectify my deficiency. Yesterday Sweetheart Vivienne and I played a few tracks during our drive back from Daylesford. The words were hard to hear, so I look forward to listening on my iPod. Until then I’m taking my decision under advisement and reserving my judgement. I’ll let you know my verdict. Prof J-Dog said if I like Rap 101, he’ll make me a Rap 201 CD. (Or is that 102?) And that one’ll be Australian Rap. Oh what fun. Stay tuned.