what I have learned today.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Cornmeal: food you eat when you get the munchies after 'korn'.

[Mr Larrington]

That Lene Lovich did a cover of "I Think We're Alone Now" in 1978.  With "Lucky Number" as the B-side.

[Gattopardo]

There is a plant called mind your own business.

[ElyDave]

What I have learned today:

"corn" is a flexible word in British English used to describe any cereal crop, usually wheat. A cornfield is generally full of wheat or barley, and cornflowers grow in wheatfields.

Maybe it's the pernicious US influence, or my lack of a rural upbringing, but I tend to think of 'corn' as meaning maize rather than barley or wheat.

(wheat fields were not part of the landscape where I grew up in East Kent, so I wouldn't have seen cornflowers very often - it was all hops, orchards or brassicas round my way; these days it's all oilseed rape or new housing estates)

maize seems to be called something different everywhere, ugali in Kenya, Polenta in Italy.

I thought hops were making something of a comeback with the craft beer revolution

[citoyen]

I thought hops were making something of a comeback with the craft beer revolution

Good old East Kent Goldings are not fashionable enough though - these days it's all high-alpha New World varieties like Citra, Amarillo, Chinook, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin... basically anything that imparts a flavour of citrus or passion fruit.

[ElyDave]

perhaps.  I though Golding and Bramling Cross were still pretty good backbone hops

My dad's family is from East London and used to go down to Kent during the hop picking season, there's a photo of him in front of one of the chalets sat on his nan's knee.  It used to be treated as a family holiday apparently.

[ian]

Despite wandering around the Kent countryside a lot, it still seems to be rare to encounter a hop field. I thought I was doing my bit for the hop farmers. Too much stinky oilseed rape, for sure. Noticing a lot more actual maize corn these days – presumably for animal feed.

[citoyen]

Personally, I still rate Goldings and Fuggles very highly but that's probably because I'm a Kentish Man (as opposed to a Man of Kent).

[T42]

Lots of hops around here. No idea what variety. They all go into the insatiable gut of Mr. Kronenbourg, who went into the insatiable gut of Scottish & Newcastle a while back.

[Jakob W]

Do the New World hops varieties grow well in the UK? I vaguely recall having read something a while back about new hybrid varieties being developed here.

[ian]

Personally, I still rate Goldings and Fuggles very highly but that's probably because I'm a Kentish Man (as opposed to a Man of Kent).

In my experience men of Kent strip off their tops and flop out their guts the moment the sun comes out and the temperature rises to above ten degrees. Five minutes later they're sunburned cherry red.

[T42]

WD40 degreaser appears to attack hospital-variety rubber gloves. We had a box of 100 bought for the nurses who looked after the Inlaw Paw, and I'm using them up in the workshop. After using a cloth soaked in it I could pull the fingertips off.

[Kim]

WD40 degreaser appears to attack hospital-variety rubber gloves. We had a box of 100 bought for the nurses who looked after the Inlaw Paw, and I'm using them up in the Workshop. After using a cloth soaked in it I could pull the fingertips off.

This is why you should never use oil-based lubes with condoms.  I thought everyone knew that?

[ElyDave]

hexane does much the same, I have some photos from an audit of a guy doing a lab test with fingerless gloves.

[Jakob W]

Hospital gloves are probably nitrile rater than latex, aren't they? Though the nitrile gloves I've got tend to go at the  fingertips when doing bike maintenance - I always assumed it was just mechanical wear.

[ian]

WD40 degreaser appears to attack hospital-variety rubber gloves. We had a box of 100 bought for the nurses who looked after the Inlaw Paw, and I'm using them up in the Workshop. After using a cloth soaked in it I could pull the fingertips off.

This is why you should never use oil-based lubes with condoms.  I thought everyone knew that?

There's a long list of glove types depending on use. Condom selection is less exhaustive.

Nitrile is fairly resistant to organics and is the go-to glove material owing to latex sensitivities and the fact that latex isn't very resistant to most of the things you'd like gloves to be resistant to. Condoms are mostly polyurethane, as are cheap non-lab grade gloves, and not very chemical resistant, but then again there aren't many sexual uses for hexane.

[Ham]

That The Adventure Syndicate exists, I found out by reading http://theadventuresyndicate.com/blog/2017/8/7/adventures-in-kind-lee-craigie-on-the-tour-divide pointed to by a road.cc article and was hooked

[Cudzoziemiec]

In similar vein, that some people whose age suggests their parents might have been around for the real thing are now wearing mohican brightly coloured punk hairstyles.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I think cornflowers are similar to poppies in the places they like to grow, ie recently disturbed land.

But dont mix up cornflower, cornflour, corn starch or cornmeal.

And don't mix any of them up with quorn.

[Paul]

That The Adventure Syndicate exists, I found out by reading http://theadventuresyndicate.com/blog/2017/8/7/adventures-in-kind-lee-craigie-on-the-tour-divide pointed to by a road.cc article and was hooked

Lee Craigie was a guest here on Saturday, and awesome she is too.

That Emily Chappell is another one.

[clarion]

Indeed, we happened upon Emilio and Lee Craigie talking at the Cycle Show in Birmingham.  Very inspiring (and I'm not even a gurrrl!)

[Mr Larrington]

That the short burst of ukelele heard after Vivian Stanshall announces "Over there, Eric Clapton, ukelele" on the Bonzo's "The Intro And The Outro" was played by... Eric Clapton.

[Bledlow]

I never knew that.

[T42]

Hemlock is a member of the carrot family.

[ian]

It's occasionally called 'poison parsley.'

(shares its family with with celery, parsley, angelica, coriander, fennel, anise, etc.)