Abi, glad to be of service thus enabling you to hopefully find what you need - and yes, that's pretty much what I use my palette knife for, that and spreading cake mix evenly in the tins before baking.
Just for general info, because it occured to me to be curious enough to go and look it up, possibly because the alternative is sorting out major chunks of paper for the accountant...
According to Lewis & Short's Latin dictionary - the really hefty one you get to buy if you're studing Classics at Oxford.
Spatula. I A broad piece. II A small palm-branch.
Diminutive of spatha, I a broad flat wooden instrument for stirring any liquid. II a batten or broad piece of wood used by early weavers for driving home the threads of the woof. III a broad two-edged sword without a point.
I'd just like to offer some more observations on aikido, to follow those way back when upthread.
Yes, if you are serious about your aikido, your technique will benefit enormously from doing weapons work.
It's always been a martial art that's had a broad spectrum from hard, direct styles through to blending and flowing styles, which while they can be described as soft, are most certainly not ineffective. The effect comes from using movement to exploit an attacker's momentum and use that to defeat him (or her, obviously).
(and equally obviously, I hope, I am simplifying here)
Which is why it can be an excellent martial art for women, and also, in these litigious times, how it can enable you to defend yourself and immobilise an attacker without (necessarily) doing any lasting harm to said attacker that will get the police wondering just who attacked who.
That said, hard and direct styles aren't about pure strength. They rely on movement etc just the same - they just back all that up with more physical impact.
My husband was once in a class where Chiba Sensei explained how these two broad differences emerged very early on, as the Iwama dojo is in a rural area while the Hombu dojo is in Tokyo.
Thus the early students at Iwama were mostly rice farmers, who were very strong and physically active and able. The students at Hombu were mainly office clerks without comparable levels of strength. Different styles naturally developed .
In my experience, traditional aikido is very open-minded when it comes to exploring variations in technique to accommodate differences in physical stature and strength - while making sure the technique is still as effective as possible.
I was taking part in a class in England with Yamaguchi Sensei many years ago when he reduced his translator to startled giggles. It took a few moments for her to recover her poise and explain that he was explaining just this point, adding that in his opinion, there are as many different ways of doing any technique as there are of making love.
It's all down to the interaction of the two particular bodies involved at that exact time and place.
Well, abi @ 124, and I'm hoping I'm not going to regret this, in my Home Economics class, down on the English south coast where I went to school, your spatula would be a palette knife. Almost all culinary uses for this related to cakes.
We did indeed have fish slices as you describe, metal or plastic to protect non-stick pans, while a spatula would be a blunt, flat, square-ended implement, made from either plastic, rigid or flexible, or most commonly, from wood.
abi @ 238, thank you kindly.
xopher @ 239, ok, you asked for it, pal.
ahem
The Universal Monster Template Theory – bearing in mind that I’m summarising from a talk given by a cryptozoologist who was in turn summarising the presumably considerable quantities of thought and argument that went into developing this.
Cryptozoologists are always interested in myths, since they seek out mythical creatures, and it has become apparent to them that that wherever one goes in the world, there are common themes in monster myths. The six universals are giant hairy humanoids, little people (often magical), big mysterious dogs, big dangerous cats, giant snakes and flying predators – which are variously expressed as birds or dragons, which also encroach on the giant snake theme.
One puzzle about this is while fear of enormous lizards or predatory cats may be perfectly reasonable in areas where crocodiles or tigers are part of the local fauna, these six archetypal monsters crop up everywhere, including in places that have never had even faintly relevant animals. And anyway having myths developed from local animals still doesn’t explain the persistence of giants and little people in folk lore.
NB the Homo Florensis discoveries happened since I heard this talk, and I imagine have had cryptozoologists hopping up and down with excitement.
At which point, we move to Madagascar, a place of considerable interest to cryptozoologists on account of its unique wildlife, its extinctions (or not) and its rich mythical culture. And lemurs, some of which have stripey tails which is thus the most tangential of links with raccoons.
One puzzle there for zoologists, crypto and otherwise, is one behaviour of lemurs, which are, please note, a primitive primate. If something blots out the sun, be it a cloud or a plane or anything, lemurs will freeze and exhibit classic prey-animal not-wanting-to-be-eaten reactions. But there’s nothing flying around Madagascar that is big enough to carry off a lemur, certainly not the largest species but even they still exhibit exactly the same response.
But recent fossils discoveries have shown a truly massive eagle once lived there, umpty-thousand years ago. So it’s suggested that this prey-animal behaviour in lemurs is a very ancient instinct, carried over from the days when something could indeed swoop out of the sky and eat them.
So we return to the persistence of the six universal monsters in human myth. The theory goes that all these stories have grown out of the subconscious because Homo Sapiens still has primitive instincts lurking in the most basic bits of the brain.
When we were Australopithecines living in the African savannah there were indeed other humanoids bigger and smaller, who didn’t make the evolutionary cut. At about 4'6", our remote ancesters were certainly preyed upon by big dogs, big cats, giant snakes and big eagles all quite capable of carrying us off - these megafauna are in the fossil record along with the humanoid variants that similarly died out, and together with plain evidence of Australopithecines being eated by such things.
That’s the theory anyway. Make of it what you will.
Um, Carrie@179, it's a bit lengthy and I fear I'd be offending against local custom and practise by going majorly off-topic, even if it does involve lemurs and some of those have stripey tails like raccoons...
I shall aim to write up a concise summary and follow the linkage through to your own blog and get in touch with you there, OK?
Only that'll have to be tomorrow (UK time) as I'm about to leave to spend a couple of hours throwing grown men around a padded room - I practise the Japanese martial art of Aikido.
Jakob @ 155, ooh, Picocon, now there's an idea for a really fun way to spend a Saturday in London (February 17th in case anyone's curious).
And it just so happens that one Charles Stross, as seen upthread, is a Guest of Honour.
I shall consult family calendars and see if it can be managed!
Claude #82, and Lee #109, I'm England-based so mostly frequently go to FantasyCon in UK, P-Con and Octocon in Dublin and others in UK and Ireland as and when invited. I've made two thoroughly rewarding visits to Boskone but can't get there this year, unfortunately. I am planning* on getting over to World Fantasy Con in Saratoga this year.
(*for values of planning applicable to a woman with two school-age children and a husband whose work regularly takes him abroad)
To return to non-native animals, our biggest pest in the Cotswolds used to be mink, released from fur farms by animal rights folk. The mink proceeded to slaughter the native otters, birdlife, water voles, you name it, driving many to local extinction. Eradication of the mink by an alliance of naturalists and game-keepers protecting their pheasants has been a long, laborious process, now enabling local wildlife to recover. The pheasants still get shot but field sports are a fact of life round here.
Now we just need to deal with the American Crayfish that's wiping out the native variant in our rivers.
I did hear some qualified good news on invasive plants a while ago though. Apparently the nightmare scenario for botanists was a hybrid of Russian Vine and Kudzu. And this was found somewhere! Only it turned out to be a totally rubbish plant as it inherited the most useless characteristics of both parents and ended up in a tangled floppy mess.
Though of course, that's only good news until genetics throws up a hybrid that wins the lottery on the pernicious characteristics. But apparently lab experiments suggest this is unlikely for assorted genetic reasons - at this point the radio programme outstripped my secondary school biology knowledge.
With regard to raccoons in the UK, I met a cryptozoologist* a while ago who told me he and his colleagues reckon there are indeed established and breeding populations tucked away here and there in remote areas, on account of the occasional sightings and road-kill findings being too frequent to be convincingly explained by zoo escapes and pet releases.
*as far as I gathered, cryptozoologists do the following:
determining a particular small insignificant brown bird on an Indonesian island is a different species to the small insignificant brown bird on the next island over;
investigating the spread of non-native species
finding creatures that have been thought extinct for years;
finding creatures entirely new to science, including quite big ones, not just bugs;
searching for things like the Yeti and/or Sasquatch;
developing fabulous theories to explain mankind's prediliction for myths about dragons and the like.
As you might expect, the conversation got increasingly surreal. I will happily explain The Universal Monster Template theory to anyone who buys me a drink at a convention.
No, Teresa, I couldn't ever forgive someone who'd tortured my loved one. Seriously, I still have a hard time being civil to the mother of a boy who led the vicious bullying of my elder son at primary school three years ago. Nor will I ever forgive the then headteacher who did nothing to stop it - he was and remains equally culpable in my eyes. It's not even any real consolation to know I got my complaints about him into the official record.
The thought of being the mother or sister of someone detained where they might be subject to these authorised interrogation techniques quite simply paralyses me with horror.
As for generations of penance, cultural memory is indeed very, very long. As a small child, I sat at my Irish grandmother's knee, kindly, genuinely devout Catholic woman that she was, to be told all about the iniquitous crimes of Cromwell and King Billy. Which we won't debate here, and yes I got a very different interpretation of events from the English girls' grammar school where I was educated. The facts aren't relevant to this discussion. The burning resentment still widely felt three centuries later is.
#67, a late response to Martin, it's been busy here. So, apologies as appropriate.
Conservative Central Office will have no joy trying to collar my proxy vote because I always vote, in everything, up to and including local and European elections and have done since my 18th birthday.
I think it stems from the intense frustration of being unable to do anything about Thatcher in my teens...
So doorstep conversations with canvassers have also gone:
'Can we rely on your vote?'
'Not while there's breath in my body.'
'But it's very important that you vote!'
'I agree, absolutely, but I shan't be voting for your candidate.'
There's usually a baffled pause in response, as the notion of not voting Tory is so outlandish...
Then the fun really starts if they ask, 'But why?'
Which doesn't make the wider point you're flagging up about using or risking losing one's vote any less valid.
If I should ever turn up and find I can't vote, hoo boy, I know just which journos I'd contact...
And getting back to the issue of torture, IIRC what are currently being called authorised interrogation techniques were adjudged to be torture when inflicted by the British Army on Republican suspects in Northern Ireland in the 70's and 80's. Certainly the long time standing was.
And look how well that whole approach turned out, in terms of making martyrs, recruiting newly radicalised youth, hardening opinion of the more moderate majority and so on.
I don't want to trivialise what is a very serious and necessary discussion but I thought you all might be interested in the following.
My younger son was telling me over breakfast what they'd done in English class yesterday. They'd been working collectively on Wanted posters. Which had featured a raft of storybook baddies and popstars - and by popular agreement, George W Bush, for crimes against humanity.
Once I'd stopped choking on my cereal, I thought about that. A class of ten and eleven year olds in prosperous rural central England isn't going to come up with this based on in-depth knowledge of all the facts and facets of events going back to when they'd barely started school. But it's going to be a reflection of what they catch in passing on the TV news and primarily what they overhear their parents and grandparents saying at home.
David Cameron*, current Conservative leader is the local MP. This is about as mainstream-right wing an area as you'll find in the UK, old-style Shire Tories and die-hard Thatcherites all round.
And this perception of the current Bush administration is sufficiently prevalent locally for ten and eleven year olds to have picked up on it.
*Conservative canvassers knocking on our door asking if they can rely on our vote can expect to be told, 'not while there's breath in my body'.
Just in case anyone's curious, because I was: Stephanie has posted an explanation about relaunching Writing Wise on her own blog, dated May 22nd. She did this because, you know, there just wasn't any decent site serving writers' needs. Well, there was one, unnamed, that solved most of her wants, but...
Make of that what you will. While you're doing that, don't believe that there are no comments to that post - clicking through anyway I find a bunch of them, ranging from vitriolic to 'more in sorrow than in anger but still pretty damn annoyed'. If she's reading them, she cannot avoid knowing what people think of her now.
Over at Writing Wise? A handful of introductory type posts dated 21st and 22nd May from a couple of contributors as well as Stephanie and James C. The forums? Sorry, I don't know the html for dark and echoing halls of eerie nothingness. Or a desolate prairie where the only movement is a tumbleweed, plaything of an uncaring breeze.
Just in case anyone's curious but doesn't want to offer aid and comfort by way of traffic statistics.
Readers may like to know that Michael Brown gave an interview to the BBC's 'Today' radio programme this morning. It makes for interesting listening and can be accessed via their listen again facility, at 0731 on the timeline. (And off this particular topic, there are other items relating to current US policy at 0737 and 0810.)
As far as the British legal establishment is concerned, I am told by a barrister that the majority opinion is against the death penalty. Because there is apparently evidence that more guilty murderers are acquited when juries know that their decision will end in a death, even if they honestly believe it's beyond reasonable doubt. I can't cite any such study as this was just a conversation, but there's a ring of truth to it for me.
Especially after another friend was on the jury for a murder trial - dealing with multiple London gangland axe-murders. The three accused all put up defences of mutual contradiction and counter-accusation. They were convicted, but my pal was honest about her own vote having a definite element of 'fingers crossed, if one of them is innocent at least he might have some chance of appeal.' She would not have voted for conviction knowing the men would hang.
On Tookie Williams, I don't feel qualified to comment. Erwin James, who writes for The Guardian is qualified, being a lifer convicted of murder, now out on licence here in the UK. I would recommend anyone with an interest in penal issues to read his thoughts on this execution as well as his other writings on all aspects of prison life and rehabilitation.
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