Our shrimpies are moulting

Since we got our 3 shrimp, we have never seen more than 2 at a time. Convinced that this can be explained by the probability that one died, we were not surprised to see what appeared to be leftover bits of shrimp in the bottom of the tank. But the mystery is not solved: what we actually found was a fully intact shrimp skin. We take that to mean (and hope it means) that the shrimpies (that we can see) are in good health. To this day, though, we aren’t really sure if we still have 3: as they’re awfully good at hiding (between leaves, in holes on the coral…).

Other than that Quasimoda died a few weeks ago (soon after I expressed my surprised that she was still around). Many of the babies are growing up nicely, and there are more new babies kicking around. The additional plants (bought when we got the shrimp) have clearly had a positive impact, since the babies can hide in open water, rather than wriggling themselves into the filter, to avoid being eaten. All in all our little eco-system seems to be doing okay (even though the average age has dropped considerably, and most of the adults we adopted have died one by one).

And here I am, still amazed at how interesting it is to watch an aquarium for hours (okay, minutes) on end.

Dried fruit and other linguistic marvels

A couple of years ago, I had the interesting opportunity of doing a “maîtrise” (a one-year, university degree at a fourth-year level, that has since been replaced by two-year masters programs) in English, here in France. It was an amazing experience, and I learned first hand that being anglophone means very little when you’ve never done a linguistics course in your life. My French classmates left me in the dust in most classes (but guess who got the last laugh when the year’s required “civilization” (read: history) class was Canadian civ!). Anyway, despite it being my toughest class, linguistics was probably the most interesting. My prof had an incredible talent for making the linguistic evolution of English (with a sprinkling of other languages) fascinating. I realized, during his class, that I’ve always kind of been interesting in linguistics: I remember in OAC (aka grade 13 aka the year before university) having a flash of genius in French class when I mentally picked apart the word vinaigre (vinegar) to find the words vin (wine) and aigre (sour), and “discovered” where vinegar came from. So one story my prof told stayed with me: in (insert era here), the word shirt and the word skirt were simply different pronunciations of the same piece of clothing, which covered most of the body. When the two groups of people with their respective pronunciations started to mix, they assumed that since there were two words, there must be two different things, and shirt came to refer to the piece worn on the upper body, and skirt to the piece worn on the lower body. I don’t know about you, but I find this incredibly interesting. Using a similar theory, I recently “discovered” explanations for two English words taken (almost) directly from French: raisin and prune. In French, “raisin” is grape, and “raisin sec” is raisin. Similarly, “prune” is plum, and “prune sêche” is prune. Ok, so you see where I’m going with this, but I’m going to say it anyway. I figure, the French kept showing up in England with these things called raisins and prunes, which (to survive the trip from France) were dried beforehand. The English already had a word for grape and a word for plum, so they figured these words were for the dried versions, and kept them (hey, it was more interesting and, I imagine, exotic-sounding than dried grape and dried plum). Ok, so I’m not as good a story teller as my linguistics prof, but you get the idea. If you have other such “stories”, please: leave me comments