19 June 2009

What a Way to Earn Your Keep!

Greetings,

You know, I used to think that nothing would surprise me when it came to duties that teachers were expected to perform. In my other life as a teacher, as well as teaching my subject, we were required to supervise various sporting and cultural groups, and if you've been with me for any length of time, you'll recall the unfortunate Incident of the Whistle.

Then there was the time I naively agreed to let students bring in exhibits to illustrate talks they'd been researching and writing for a class assignment. We had the usual rock collections, books of stamps and Meccano sets fashioned into cranes and structures that defied every engineering precept known to mankind, and then we had Christopher's project.

Christopher was one of those kids who today would be described as a "challenging" student, but back in the 70s we just described him as a little trouble-maker. However, he'd been inspired by this particular assignment for some odd reason (which will be revealed in all its shocking horror in a moment) and was keen to present his talk to the class. Our lesson, as luck would have it, was the last of the day and he'd arrived at school that morning with a large box which he'd left at the front office for safe keeping.

After wriggling in his seat through the first presentation, his hand had shot up as he asked permission to go to the office to collect his props.

Returning with the box, he set it down with almost reverent care on a chair next to the front desk as he arranged the notes for his talk ... which happened to be about his pet. He spoke with love and affection about his pet, how he'd rescued it, tended to its needs, designed and built a shelter for it, but all without actually telling us what "it" was. And I have to say that this was making me a tad nervous until he revealed that his pet slept in his room with him.

"Phew," I thought, "his mother wouldn't let him sleep in a room with anything other than a normal pet ..." So I gave my full attention back to what he was saying as he reached into his box and brought out ... a snake. Now this was not just any old harmless snake that you wouldn't mind letting loose in a class full of 14-year-old kids ... but a young eastern brown snake. 

As soon as I saw it, my mind filled with newspaper headlines: "Killer Snake Loose in Classroom, Teacher Charged ... Students Panic as Deadly Snake Runs Amok ... Parents Rush to School to Save Children." So I interrupted, thanked him for his presentation and told him to put the snake back in its box. Amazingly, he did this, but not before holding the snake up one last time so it could see where he sat in the classroom, and (of course) that's when it bit him.

I was amazed for a second time in as many minutes when the rest of the class sat calmly by, telling me not to panic because Christopher had kept snakes for years and had been bitten heaps of times and ... But by then I had another boy's school tie wrapped around his arm as a tourniquet, the lid firmly shut on the box with the snake inside and was sitting Christopher quietly in a chair as I sent others running to phone for an ambulance and fetch the Deputy Principal.

As it happened the kids were right, and the frequent bites Christopher had received over the years had given him a certain protection against snake venom, plus the snake was only young and knew him, so probably it was just giving him a little love-bite ... He was admitted to hospital and given a dose of anti-venom, and insisted that the snake stayed under his bed throughout his stay.

To say that the Principal was less than impressed would be an understatement, but he apparently had quite an after-dinner story to tell at future conferences, since I was the only teacher who'd had to fill out an accident report for a snake bite at a city school.

But all that is as nothing compared to the extra duties imposed on teachers at an Indian school in Musoorie in the Himalayas. I was told about this by Gaile, one of our Merry Band who is currently teaching in India. She took a group of students on a school trip and ... but I'll let Gaile finish the story:

"The beginning of April the Geography teacher and I took seven students to the Woodstock School in Musoorie (pronounced the same as the state in the US) in the Himalayas for an M.U.N conference. What an interesting experience. I had forgotten just how cold it could get in the mountains (definitely getting soft), and so we froze, but the students had a good experience, so that was a plus. 

"The school, as well as the town, is built into the side of a mountain.  On the odder side of that, the teachers have an unusual duty. Monkey chasing (and I'm not talking about the ones that are usually in a classroom). Apparently the local monkeys invade the school grounds and so one of the tasks a teacher has is to chase them away.  To help out, the school has Guard Monkeys (Gibbons) which will attack any other monkey that comes onto the school grounds. (I wouldn't have known about the "extra duty" if one of the teachers hadn't left a presentation to chase one off.)"

A teacher, with one of the Guard Monkeys, going on monkey-chasing duty at the school in Musoorie as bemused visiting students watch ...

So, all you Chalkies out there, no more complaints about playground duty! 

But who am I to comment on two or three or even five oddities like this when I'm responsible for the only snake-bite in a city school?

You probably didn't notice anything unusual about that sentence above, but I'm sure you'll be gob-smacked to hear that it contains five of the oldest words in the English language. Yes, five!

It was scientists at Reading University in southern England who made this discovery after using a whizz-bang super computer (ThamesBlue) to examine language over the past 30,000 years.

They discovered that the oldest words in our language include I, you, who, and the numbers two, three and five. These are the words that have changed least and are likely to remain with us for the foreseeable future, while other words look set to peg out within a relatively short time.

When I first read this, I thought "Huh?" But the more I thought about it, the more sensible it sounded, because words for numbers can't change. If two means two of something that's all it can mean, and it's difficult to think of a better word for the concept. Likewise for I, you and who, but when it comes to other words, you can understand why their days are numbered. Words such as dirty and squeeze for example ... think of all the different ways you can express those ideas and you see why the chances of just one surviving down through the centuries are pretty remote.

You'll find a list of the 50 most common words in English here.

Spare a thought for the astronaut sent into space with two monkeys ...

NASA decided to send a shuttle into space with two monkeys and an astronaut. They trained them for months. Then when they thought they were ready, they placed all three in the shuttle and got ready to send them up into space.

As the moment came closer NASA's mission control centre announced, "This is mission control to Monkey One. Initiate!"

At that the first monkey started typing like mad and suddenly the shuttle's engines ignited and the shuttle took off.

Two hours later NASA's mission control centre announced, "This is mission control to Monkey Two. Initiate!"

At that the second monkey started typing like mad and suddenly the shuttle separated from the empty fuel tanks.

Another two hours later mission control announced, "This is mission control to Astronaut..."

At this the astronaut responded, "I know, I know. Feed the monkeys and don't touch anything."

This week's quiz:

See how well acquainted you are with our hirsute cousins ...

prehensile, folivorous, quadrupedal, arboreal, brachiation, atavistic, vibrissa, crepuscular, phylogeny, quadrumanous

1. locomotion using four hands (grasping extremities) as orang-utans do

2. evolutionary history of a species or group of related species

3. active at dawn and dusk

4. whiskers

5. living in trees

6. locomotion on four feet

7. eats leaves

8. recurrence in an organism of a trait or character typical of an ancestral form and usually due to genetic recombination

9. adapted for seizing or grasping

10. locomotion by arm swinging with full shoulder rotation; grasp/release propulsion, usually with hook-like grasp

And here's a little story you can tell the kiddies ...

A gorilla was walking through the jungle when he came across a deer eating grass in a clearing. The gorilla roared," Who is the king of the jungle?"

The deer replied, "Oh, you are, Master."

The gorilla walked off, pleased. Soon he came across a zebra drinking at a water hole. The gorilla roared, "Who is the king of the jungle?"

The zebra replied, "Oh, you are, Master."

The gorilla walked off again, pleased. Then he came across an elephant, "Who is the king of the jungle?" he roared. With that, the elephant threw the gorilla across a tree and jumped on him.

The gorilla got up off the ground and said, "OK, OK, there's no need to get mad just because you don't know the answer."

Last week's quiz:

cooper, isinglass, ale, grist, sparging, chromatography, draught, fining, lees, wort

1. substance which is added to beer or wine to aid its clarification, for example isinglass, gelatin, silica and bentonite - FINING

2. method for separating a mixture of chemical compounds into individual components by selective distribution between two immiscible (cannot be mixed) materials (or phases), one stationary and the other mobile; the phases are selected so that the mobile phase will carry the various components through the stationary or solid phase at differing rates to give separation; the method used by the major beer and spirit manufacturers to measure alcohol strength - CHROMATOGRAPHY

3. sediment deposited by wine during manufacture and maturation (includes grape skins and other residue) - LEES

4. person who makes and repairs wooden casks - COOPER

5. unfermented mash, particularly if produced from a liquid feedstock or if the solids have been removed to yield a relatively clear, free-flowing liquid - WORT

6. type of beer.; brew made with top-fermenting yeast; usually brown to dark-brown with a distinctive fruity taste - ALE

7. semi-transparent colloidal substance obtained from the swim bladders of sturgeon - ISINGLASS

8. crushed malt ready for mashing - GRIST

9. term for beer which is drawn through a tap or pump to the bar - DRAUGHT

10. spraying hot water through a rotating arm over the mash in the mash tun to ensure complete extraction of malt sugars - SPARGING

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A Little Something Extra

There's a fascinating study of ape gestures and how they relate to the evolution of language from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences here.

A final word on monkeys ...

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true ...

Word of the week: Simian (adj) with the characteristics of an ape; monkey-like

This one comes from the Latin simia, meaning 'ape' which in turn comes from simus, 'snub-nosed', from the Greek word simos 'bent upward.'

Oxymoron of the week: silly as a monkey

This week's very apt Latin phrase is from Cicero ...

Simia quam similis, turpissimus bestia, nobis!

[SEE-mee-ah KWAHM see-MEE-lees toor-pees-SEE-moos BAYS-tee-ah]

(How like us is that very ugly beast the monkey.)