Found! An even older blogger

This story has just been published by OhmyNewsInternational: http://tinyurl.com/5brv3d

R.I.P.OLIVE, AVE MARIA

Thousands of bloggers around the world are mourning the death on July 12 of Australian great-great-grandmother Olive Riley, who was the internet world's oldest blogger. She would have been 109 on October 20.

Messages of condolence have caused her website http://www.allaboutolive.com.au/ to crash, although it still displays a moving eulogy from her friend and scribe, Mike Rubbo.

Heartwarming emails expressing affection and admiration for Olive and sympathy to her family and friends have poured in to her proxy website http://worldsoldestblogger.blogspot.com/. They came from dozens of countries, from young and old, Christians, Moslems, Hindus and atheists, united in their love, admiration and sorrow at the passing of a simple soul with a mighty spirit.

Here's a small selection from more than 200 emails: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8375349020852816851&postID=7603448855105047693

the Razzler (Johore, Malaysia) said... Oh gosh.. I am so sad!! A message for Olive. Though we've never met, you have always been my inspiration to be strong, to live life to it's fullest! We love you so very much Olive!! We'll continue to sing happy songs.. May your soul rest in peace!

Alireza Ashtari (Iran) said... i found out about you and your intersting blog in an iranian newspaper! God Bless you.

Texas 1st (Dallas, Texas) said... I read about Miss Olive late last year, and was not able to find her blog until I saw the story today. As I read the stories, they touched me very deeply, and bring back memories of listening to my Gramma Lee tell her stories of growing up in the Oklahoma Territory, USA. It was a sad day when she left us. And it seems a sadder day still now that Miss Olive has left. Mine and my family' thoughts and prayers are with you all. Miss Olive seems to have reached out and touched the whole world. I'm glad she touched me...

Rod Landaeta (computer scientist, Caracas, Venezuela) said... Condolences from Venezuela... The world has just lost a great blogger.

Shaan Jadhav (Pune, India) said... Sad to hear the news about olive. My condolences.

kassy pajarillo (23-year-old hoterlier and nanny, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, US) ) said... My condolence to Mrs.Riley. She's such a woman of might and love.

FxDi@mOnD (Paulo Faustino, "23-year-old gambler and tipster", Leiria, Portugal): said... My condolences from Portugal to Miss Riley. All bloggers from Portugal and Brasil already know there history and she's loved by is amazing life history. All the best to the family.

Christine (54-year-old semi-retired theatrical costume-maker, Sydney, Australia)said... I'd like to send condolences to Mike and Katya, and all Ollie's family and friends. Also to the staff at the nursing home, my deepest sympathy and good wishes to you all.

Devonshire Dumpling (care assistant, Devon, England) said... Thank you for sharing your memories Olive, what an inspiration you were.

Nopiedra (Nelson Piedra, 32, informstion engineer, Loja, Ecuador) said... Mis condolenscias desde Ecuador.

barbara (born in US, grew up in Hawaii, living in Paris) said... I'm very touched to read about Mrs Riley and her blog. I'm of course a blogger & I salute this incredible lady. She is a living example that one is never to old to try things in life. Rest in peace.

81duz1d0 - 81duz1d0 (biduzido), Programmer, Brazil said... R.I.P. Olive. You can be gone, but your posts will last forever in the internet.

With Olive's depature from the blogosphere, the Spanish media have rejoiced that Maria Amelia Lopez has apparently regained the title of the World's Oldest Blogger, a ranking that Olive took from her 18 months ago.

Maria Amelia is 96 years old, although her blog is confusingly titled A mis 95 anos/ 95 years old blogger. http://amis95.blogspot.com

The now outdated heading reads "My friends in Internet, today I am 95 years old. My name is Amelia and I was born in Muxia (A Coruna - Spain) on December the 23rd of 1911. Today it's my birthday and my grandson, who is very stingy, gave me a blog."

Amelia, like Olive, has an amazing memory. She writes entetainingly about her girlhood, Spanish politics past and present, and any other subject that interests her alert mind. Her grandson Daniel records and transcribes her observations, then posts them word for word on the internet.

Her website has attracted nearly 1.3 million hits. If only someone fluent in both Spanish and English would find the time to tranlate her words and her many reader' comments into English,that number could double.

FOOTNOTE. To see a video of Olive Riley enjoying an oyster lunch with the author, click HERE. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lviE4ZKXao

END

Pumpkins' One-Mile Barrier

This story was first published by the South Korean citizen reporters' journal OhmyNewsInternational: http://tinyurl.com/6ccnve


Rival engineering groups in the United States are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars pursuing a bizarre dream: to be first in the world to hurl a 10-pound pumpkin one mile (5,280 feet).

A few party-poopers say it can't be done, because they believe no pumpkin can stand up to the G-forces involved. But horticulturists have now developed pumpkins with extra-thick skins -- not recommended for pies, but great as projectiles.

At least two groups have come close to reaching the one-mile barrier. According to a You-Tube video, Guinness World Record Pumpkin Chucker, Matt Parker's Aludium Q-36 Pumpkin Modulator, described elsewhere as "a giant peashooter with an 80ft. long tube," propelled a pumpkin 4,860 feet at Morton, Illinois, in 2001, setting a world record.

But the Delaware-based World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association (and that's not a typo) maintains that the world record is slightly less - 4,434.28 feet - achieved by a 14-ton air cannon named Second Amendment.

"The World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association does not recognise any shots other than those at the Association event" says WCPCA President Frank E. Shade.

"Vary factors such as weather, elevation and propellant used could drastically affect the distance. Example, a shot in Denver's thin air would go infinitely farther than one at sea level. We only allow compressed air by our rules and elsewhere they could use anything including rockets or explosives.


"Matt [Parker] competed here [Nassau, Delaware] with us but he never made that distance with us."

Parker's epic performance took place in his hometown, Morton, Illinois. (In 1978, the State Governor proclaimed Morton to be The Pumpkin Capital of the World.)

"Whoosh... A giant blast of air expels a pumpkin from an 80 foot-long tube. Traveling at nearly the speed of sound, the pumpkin follows a graceful arc towards the horizon. It will land with a splat nearly a mile away.," the Morton Times-News reported in 2001, adding:

The chuck that shook up the Morton Pumpkin Festival was made by the Aludium Q-36 Pumpkin Modulator, a giant contraption that looks like the results of cross breeding a howitzer with parts borrowed from the International Space Station.

One hundred feet long and tipping the scale at 36,000 pounds, the Q-36 is really a giant pea shooter. An 80-foot long tube is connected to a 1,800-gallon compressed air tank. "We can run up to a maximum pressure of 125 PSI," says Matt Parker, one of the designers of the Q-36. Matt punches numbers into a calculator and announces, "At atmospheric pressure that would be 18,000 cubic feet of air." That is the amount of air in a 2,250-square-foot house - all of it just to blow a 10 pound pumpkin out of an 80-foot tube. "Muzzle velocity is 1,000 feet per second," says Matt. Again the calculator springs into action. "It's traveling 681 miles per hour when it leaves the tube, but it loses velocity quickly."

Matt Parker is co-owner of Parker Fabrication, a family-owned machine shop in Morton's new industrial park. In addition to Parker, the crew of the Q-36 consists of Chuck Heerde, James Knepp, Rod Litwiller and Steve Young.

"The guys have had a lot of fun with it," says Bonnie Parker, Matt's mother. Bonnie is the office staff of the family business. She also is the chief cheerleader for the pumpkin-chuckers and serves as the archivist of the Q-36's exploits. Framed newspaper articles detailing the Q-36's world record shot adorn her office wall. In addition to the local papers, her collection includes a picture from the front page of the Wall Street Journal and an article from the London Times.

The entire Parker family takes their punkin' chuckin' seriously. "We don't have grandchildren, so this pumpkin chucker is our baby," explains Bonnie. When asked about the cost to build such a contraption, Pat Parker, Matt's father, is quick to point out, "It's not about sponsorship or advertising or money. It's about people putting their ideas together to solve a problem. A lot more people contributed to this than the five who have their names on the official entry form."
[Above extracts courtesy Morton Times-News.]
Q-36's main rival, the air cannon Second Amendment is owned by S & G Erectors, of Howell, Michigan. Last November it took part in the Punkin Chonkin contest for the fourth time.

"We were in competition with 106 machines, each utilizing various methods of propelling a pumpkin, such as centrifugal force, torsion, human powered, catapults, trebuchets and the ultimate, air cannons," says its website.

"The event had some 40,000 to 50,000 spectators and was covered by CNN, AT&T Dish, The History Channel, Costa Mantis, a documentary film producer from California, and several local TV channels...

"Our world record of 4,434 feet is still intact and we will work out the bugs, trying for that ultimate shot of one mile. Numerous times in practice, we achieved shots over 5,000 feet, just short of the 5,280 that we need to be the first to shoot the mile."

Towering over most contestants was the Big Ten-Inch air cannon , with an aluminum barrel 10 inches in diameter and 100 feet long. You can read about it at http://www.geocities.com/zbig10inch/

FOOTNOTE. Pumpkin throwing is a popular sport in many US cities and small towns. Pumpkin festivals are held wherever these vegetables are grown and eaten, and that goes for most of the world. In Goomeri, Queensland, Australia, instead of being hurled by gigantic air guns, pumpkins are treated more gently, by being rolled down a hill. For more details and photos of the Goomeri festival, see http://www.goomeri.org.au/pumpkinfest/

END

Slinging Limes From a Purple Bra

While most of the world's nations are hoping to outlaw cluster bombs http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2008/05/080529_cluster_wt_sl.shtml small groups of engineers and students are modernizing a medieval war machine.

Called a trebuchet (pronounced tray-boo-shay), it was a huge mechanized catapult, a seesaw-like device powered by a counterweight, employed in attacking besieged castles.

Attackers were reputed to have hurled severed heads of their enemies over the castle walls. That may or may not be true. But this year's miniature machines have a peaceful purpose. They'll be used to hurl eggs various distances, to be caught, preferably unbroken, at an English village fair.

The home-made trebuchets will be a highlight of the third annual World Egg-Throwing Contest in Swaton, Lincolnshire, on June 29. Eggs will "fly through the air with the greatest of ease", and helmeted competitors will try to catch them at the end of their flight.

Three points will be awarded for a successful “hurl” when the egg is caught without touching the ground and is unbroken. If the “target” is struck and the egg broken, the unfortunate would-be catcher wins just one point.

Andy Dunlop, President of the World Egg Throwing Federation, is organizing the contest in aid of local charities. Full details are shown on the official website http://sbc.edu/news/?id=2587 says:

Engineering students used trebuchets to hurl plastic limes at a not-to-scale replica of the Alamo. Billed as a re-enactment of the Battle of La Margarita, the teams were scored on distance and accuracy...

“Only at a women’s college can ... a trebuchet sling be a brassiere cup,” Sweet Briar assistant professor of engineering Scott Pierce observed, watching his students maneuver their medieval-era weapons into launch positions.

A C-cup, purple in color.

The two trebuchets made of two-by-fours represent the students’ end-of-semester projects. They had designed, analyzed, modeled, constructed and analyzed some more; it was time to see which machine would perform closest to their mathematical predictions. This is the point in the engineering process where reality and math intersect, Pierce said.

Team Jose Cuervo won the day, beating Team Los Positivo Fringe by a hairsbreadth. The prize was a candy-filled piñata that came with the option to load it into the winning trebuchet and chuck it.

“We’re throwing this thing,” said Amanda Baker, a junior engineering major. Sophomore Jenna Wasylenko wasn’t so sure. “I don’t think it will fit in my bra.”

If the girls take their trebuchet across the Atlantic to Swaton and wrap their c-cup around an egg, it's a safe bet we'll all watch the TV news to see whether the catcher ends up with egg on her face.

Here are the latest updates, announced by Andy Dunlop on June 2:

At least 12 trebuchets have been constructed or are being built.

A Latvian led team is currently putting its final touches to a machine constructed out of aluminium in Peterborough.

A USA team from Houston is completing its final planning. The American team has a real problem flying the machine over, as “weapons of mass destruction” are not allowed on normal passenger planes. They intend to construct from scratch once they arrive.

The Welsh team from Cardiff is preparing, for the first time since 1294, to invade England with its homemade trebuchet. This fearsome team consists of the current World Record Holder for Dry Foam Flinging and Runner up in the World Pea Shooting Championship.

One English team is arriving from Northumbria University, to help beat off the Welsh challenge, with machines designed and constructed as part of a degree course.

FOOTNOTES. Here's another story about trebuchets, written five years ago: Pigs Can Fly; So Can Pianos, Horses, Cars.

Anagram film wins award

(in other words, flaw winds a grammarian)


An eight-minute film about anagrams has won the American Documentary P.O.V. Short Film Award at this year's Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto. Its title, ARS MAGNA (Latin for Great Art) is an anagram of the word ANAGRAMS.

It features two of the world's best anagrammers, Anu Garg and Cory Calhoun. As someone long fascinated by this form of word play, I first wrote about them nine years ago. http://wordsmith.org/anagram/article-sydneymorningherald.html

I praised Cory, who was then a 22-year-old student at Western Washington University, for having composed what I thought (and still think) was the world's best anagram, based on Hamlet's famous soliloquy:

Original phrase (Shakespeare). :

To be or not to be, that is the question, whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Anagram:

In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.

"Believe it or not," Cory told me by email in 1999, "I created that anagram phrase without any aid from a computer program. I started by arranging all the letters in a more or less alphabetical order, then thought of several Shakespeare-related words. I created a list, then (as I often do with anagrams) let the letters 'speak to me', as to what word would go around the mainly Shakespearian words.

"All along, I tried to yield a phrase that made a direct comment about the play itself. Often, and much to my fright, I'll look at words and phrases and almost instantaneously come up with an anagram of it. For example, I once saw the word Spectrum on a car, and Crumpets sprang to mind."

Today Cory, now 31 and living in Seattle, is a man of many talents and interests. He describes himself as an anagrammatist, puzzlesmith, designer, writer and artist. He says on his website: http://myspace.com/coryscalhoun

"I'm currently living in West Seattle with my gorgeous wife Miriam. We're both arts majors; my day job is chef at the Essential Baking Company; hers is HR operations at Tommy Bahama. That is, until A) I get a publishing deal, B) she gets a gig in either nutrition or music, or C) both.

"I’ve got eclectic tastes and embrace my inner geek. I make crossword puzzles and anagrams ...belt out karaoke with the gang, scrutinize and revel in the latest 'Lost' theories, and rock out to the odd TMBG track."

Anu Garg, the India-born Wordsmith who founded the global newsletter A Word A Day, http://wordsmith.org/awad/ has long been intrigued by the magic of anagrams. "They never lie," he quipped several years ago.

Researching the web in 1999, I discovered to my surprise that the letters spelling ANAGRAM GENIUS could be shuffled to show that his NAME IS ANU GARG. That was confusing, as William Tunstall-Pedoe, a clever Cambridge (UK) software developer and entrepreneur, runs a commercial website called Anagram Genius, and markets software with that name. http://www.anagramgenius.com/

Anu also lives in Seattle, with his wife and daughter. In addition to composing his daily newsletter, he writes books about words, and designed and runs the Internet Anagram Server, http://wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html

Tap in your name (or anyone else's) and in a flash you'll see myriad anagrams using those same letters.

Anagrams have provided amusement for many centuries, and in numerous languages. Thousands of clever anagrams in English are listed on hundreds of websites. Here are a few favorites:

Elvis = Lives

Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one

New York Times = Monkeys write

Dormitory = Dirty Room

Mother-in-law = Woman Hitler

The Detectives = Detect Thieves

Schoolmaster = The Classroom

Presbyterian = Best In Prayer

A Decimal Point = I'm a Dot in Place

The Countryside = No City Dust Here

Listen = Silent

A Telephone Girl = Repeating "Hello"

The Morse Code = Here Come Dots

And here's a classsic anagram composed years ago by Steve Krakowski, that has just become topical again: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Neil A. Armstrong = A thin man ran; makes a large stride; left planet, pins flag on moon! On to Mars!

"Ars Magna" starring Anu, Cory and his lovely wife Miriam, was produced earlier this year as an entry in the International Documentary Challenge. http://documentarychallenge.org/

One hundred and twenty-two film makers from sixteen countries set out to make a documentary in five days. "Ars Magna" is travelling on the festival circuit and will be screened at the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle on July 10.

To view it now, click HERE http://www.pbs.org/pov/shorts/shorts_arsmagna.html

DISCLOSURE. The author of this article is Anu Garg's copy editor.

Citizen Reporters in World War I

Harry Lamin, a British soldier who endured the horrors of life in the trenches of the Western Front in World War I, was one of the world's first citizen reporters. His homely despatches are now being posted on the internet, http://wwar1.blogspot.com/ exactly 90 years after he wrote them.

His letters to his family, posted one at a time, read like a serial cliffhanger, causing thousands of present-day internet surfers worldwide to worry about his welfare. 'Where is he?" one frantic viewer wrote a few days ago. 'What's happened? I need the next letter! Is he dead? Is he alive? It's been 8 days and no word from him!'

Three years ago, Bill Lamin, now 59, an information technology teacher living in Cornwall, England, read a bundle of letters his grandfather, Private Harry Lamin, had written from the western front in 1917-18. He sorted them into chronological order, and just one year ago began posting them as a blog. http://www.wwar1.blogspot.com/ which has attracted more than a million hits.

Bill rightly says, 'What has been produced is a moving and poignant account of an ordinary man's experiences in an extraordinary situation. I have edited nothing. The spellings and grammar are exactly as Harry wrote them.'

Harry was conscripted in 1917, at the age of 30, and served with the York and Lancashire Regiment. He survived historic and bloody battles including Messines Ridge http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/messines.htm and Passchendaele, http://www.macknortshs.qld.edu.au/ANZAC/passchendaele.htm , which are still remembered for the appalling loss of lives of soldiers fighting on both sides.

'It is a rum job waiting for the time to go over the top - and without any rum too,' Harry commented in one letter. On June 11, 1917, he wrote to his brother Jack about the battle of Messines Ridge.

'We have had another terrible time this week the men here say it was worst than the Somme advance http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/somme.htm last July. We lost a lot of men but we got where we were asked to take. It was awful I am alright got buried and knocked about but quite well now and hope to remain so.

'We were praised by the general and all, everybody said we had done well, quite a success. I will tell you more when I see you.'

Today, hundreds of thousands of web surfers are anxiously waiting to learn whether Harry was wounded or killed in the closing stages of the war, when he was stationed in Italy.

Grandson Bill is keeping that secret, letting readers share the anxiety the family must have suffered while awaiting another letter from Harry... or a fateful telegram from the War Office.

On a happier note, here's a letter Captain Charles S. Normington, a 24-year-old American World War I soldier, wrote from Paris to his parents on Armistice Day, 11 November, 1918. His daughter, Lois Haugner, of Appleton, Wisconsin., recently posted it on the internet. http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/999999990422/APC0101/50930004

Dear Folks:

Arrived here last night, and was on the street today when the armistice with Germany was signed. Anyone who was not here can never be told, or imagine, the happiness of the people here.
They cheereed and cried and laughed and then started all over again.

Immediately a parade was started on the Rue De Italiennes and has been going on ever since. In the parade were hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the U.S., England, Canada, France, Australia, Italy and the colonies.

Each soldier had his arms full of French girls, some crying, others laughing, each girl had to kiss every soldier before she would let him pass.

When those early citizen reporters Harry Lamin and Charles Normington wrote to their folks 90 years ago, they could not have imagined their letters would be read by countless netizens around the world in 2008.

Niagara Falls on Deck

Mild-mannered Bostonian Jeff Deck crossed the United States unmolested, blithely correcting hundreds of typos displayed in public places , but as soon as he crossed the Canadian border last week he was threatened by "two very large, chain-bedecked men," who told him: "Keep walking, or we’ll fix it so you can’t walk anymore.”

"This sounded like a persuasive argument, so Benjamin and I kept walking," Jeff reported in his whimsical blog http://www.jeffdeck.com/teal/blog/?p=83 on 9 May. " I decided that the whole town [Niagara Falls, Ontario] could go to hell, for all I cared.

"In our first three encounters, we’d been rebuffed, threatened, and condescended to, and from here on I would feel no obligation to point out mistakes to those who had wrought them."

Instead, he contented himself with photographing numerous typos he found in Niagara Falls, and displaying them in his popular blog.

Calming down, the 28-year-old crusader wrote: "My indignation died down when we made our way out of the wretched tourist area and to the Falls themselves. They seemed a bit smaller than they had looked to me the last time I visited, but then again, I’d been around twelve or thirteen at the time."

Before crossing the border, Jeff amended a sign in a fruit store in Erie, Pennsylvania, offering MACINTOSH apples for sale. He changed the spelling to McIntosh.
"We’re not talking about one of the computing products put out by my much-loathed nemesis, after all, so an a is unwelcome," he said.

He's right, of course. McIntosh Red apples were named in honor of a Scottish immigrant's son who discovered seeds of a marvelous new apple in Canada more than 200 years ago. His name was John McIntosh, and today his apples are one of the world's favorites. You can read about him in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McIntosh

There's an interesting link between McIntosh apples (the fruit) and Mac Apples (the computer), explained by TAM, The Apple Museum: http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=44

Steve Jobs came up with the name in early 1976. At the time, he was often visiting and working on a small farm friends of his owned. It was a hippie commune where Steve spent a few months of the year.

When he returned from one of those stays, he told Steve Wozniak about his idea. Jobs probably was working on apple plantages. Or he just wanted their startup to be in front of Atari in the phone book. Or it was a tribute to Apple Records, the music label of the Beatles.

Well, perhaps the computer should have been labelled the Apple Mc!