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Happy Yorkshire Day, everyone! 
Not an entry, but thank you, Jack, for the generous GAW, and congrats on it being your 25th GAW in less than 13 years as a BF member!! 
I suspect the 25 is counting just GAW "contests" and does NOT include all of the magnanimous gifting of knives and sundries to individuals here, there, and any time! 
To celebrate this auspicious holiday, I'll post some musings on what (if anything
) Yorkshire means to me. As so many of us do, I'll start with knives. This morning, I prepared my oatmeal (it contains a variety of fruits, vegetables, meats, seeds, candies, and nuts each morning) with my Union Jack, a rosewood lambsfoot that my wife and daughter purchased for me in a York hardware store on a visit to the UK in 2017. They also bought me a local seasoning that I do not usually put in my oatmeal, but for Yorkshire Day, the obligation to use it was strong!
Also in the knife realm, this week I'm carrying my Black Jack, an A. Wright & Son ebony lambsfoot commissioned by Jack Black for the Guardians of the Lambsfoot this year:
I own several lambsfoot knives, almost all of which have ties to Yorkshire:
Let's turn next to cultural influences. How many of you realized that Henry Briggs, the 16th century British mathematician that gave us common logarithms (base 10 logarithms) and thus "doubled the lives of astronomers" by facilitating computation (including eventually the slide rule), was born in Warley Wood in the parish of Halifax, Yorkshire?? Similarly, did you know that John Venn, the 19th century (his 184th birthday is this Saturday) mathematician who gave us Venn diagrams was born near Hull, in Yorkshire? An earlier poster already mentioned James Herriot, the pen name of the author who wrote delightful books set in Yorkshire describing his adventures as a veterinarian. One of my favorite tales of his is "The Bull in the Bowler Hat". I grew up on a dairy farm, we had all our cows artificially inseminated, and I sometimes wondered how the product was actually harvested. Herriot's story answers the question, at least regarding the early days of AI (not "artificial intelligence" in this case), and does so in a way that never fails to leave me teary-eyed with laughter when I read it. (If I can find a link to it online, I'll add it here later.) ETA: I did find the entire story online in a Google Books preview, but I don't know if the link will actually work in this post because it's so long:
https://books.google.com/books?id=K...james herriot story about bull and av&f=false
(You can also search Google Books for "the best of james herriot: complete edition" and the first "hit" takes you to the table of contents where Chapter 7 in Part 4 has a link to take you to the story that devastated me yet again.)
Happy Yorkshire Day indeed! What a county!
- GT
Not an entry, but thank you, Jack, for the generous GAW, and congrats on it being your 25th GAW in less than 13 years as a BF member!! I suspect the 25 is counting just GAW "contests" and does NOT include all of the magnanimous gifting of knives and sundries to individuals here, there, and any time! To celebrate this auspicious holiday, I'll post some musings on what (if anything
) Yorkshire means to me. As so many of us do, I'll start with knives. This morning, I prepared my oatmeal (it contains a variety of fruits, vegetables, meats, seeds, candies, and nuts each morning) with my Union Jack, a rosewood lambsfoot that my wife and daughter purchased for me in a York hardware store on a visit to the UK in 2017. They also bought me a local seasoning that I do not usually put in my oatmeal, but for Yorkshire Day, the obligation to use it was strong!Also in the knife realm, this week I'm carrying my Black Jack, an A. Wright & Son ebony lambsfoot commissioned by Jack Black for the Guardians of the Lambsfoot this year:
I own several lambsfoot knives, almost all of which have ties to Yorkshire:
Let's turn next to cultural influences. How many of you realized that Henry Briggs, the 16th century British mathematician that gave us common logarithms (base 10 logarithms) and thus "doubled the lives of astronomers" by facilitating computation (including eventually the slide rule), was born in Warley Wood in the parish of Halifax, Yorkshire?? Similarly, did you know that John Venn, the 19th century (his 184th birthday is this Saturday) mathematician who gave us Venn diagrams was born near Hull, in Yorkshire? An earlier poster already mentioned James Herriot, the pen name of the author who wrote delightful books set in Yorkshire describing his adventures as a veterinarian. One of my favorite tales of his is "The Bull in the Bowler Hat". I grew up on a dairy farm, we had all our cows artificially inseminated, and I sometimes wondered how the product was actually harvested. Herriot's story answers the question, at least regarding the early days of AI (not "artificial intelligence" in this case), and does so in a way that never fails to leave me teary-eyed with laughter when I read it. (If I can find a link to it online, I'll add it here later.) ETA: I did find the entire story online in a Google Books preview, but I don't know if the link will actually work in this post because it's so long:
https://books.google.com/books?id=K...james herriot story about bull and av&f=false
(You can also search Google Books for "the best of james herriot: complete edition" and the first "hit" takes you to the table of contents where Chapter 7 in Part 4 has a link to take you to the story that devastated me yet again.)
Happy Yorkshire Day indeed! What a county!
- GT
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