Is that agave? Having never seen the plant in bloom, I was surprised to learn it was in the asparagus family last year www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkmd...

Reminded of this!

Whether we will be able to realise our hopes will depend on the maintenance of an acceptable degree of international order.

8/8

...and that it works in growing harmony with the United States... All our history in this and earlier centuries underlines the basic point that the best progress is made when Europeans and Americans act in concert. We must not allow ourselves to be enticed into a form of continental insularity.

7/8

Britain is at the heart of a growing movement towards greater cohesion within Europe... NATO, too, is adapting to the new realities in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and to changing attitudes in the West. It is Britain’s prime concern to ensure that the new Europe is open and liberal...

6/8

The ... dramatic changes in Eastern Europe ... have opened up great opportunities for the people of those countries. They are finding their own paths to freedom. But the paths would have been blocked if ... your country and mine had not stood together. Let us never forget that lesson.

5/8

Both our countries saw the invasion of Kuwait in just the same terms. An outrage to be reversed, both for the people of Kuwait and for the sake of the principle that naked aggression should not prevail.

4/8

The future is as ever obscure. The only certainty is that it will present the world with new and daunting problems. But if we continue to stick to our fundamental ideals... we can resolve them. Recent events in the Gulf have proved that it is possible to do just that.

3/8

A significant part of your social contract is written down in your Constitution. Ours rests on custom and will. The spirit behind both however is precisely the same. It is the spirit of democracy. The ideals are clear enough, but they must never be taken for granted."

2/8

Oh yes please do add me 🙂

And for #etymology fans wondering what the orchid plant has to do with the Ancient Greek word for testicle… the tubers of the plant look like this.

[Picture from Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz, orchid.unibas.ch ]

Would that have been your gut feel before doing those calculations? I was thinking it'd be either minute or hour, but had no instinct about which of those seemed most plausible.

Got me wondering about what it was meant to say (I'm guessing "equivalent to 36 football fields per ") Must admit I have no gut feel about the unit of time that seems most plausible.

Could make a good (if depressing) #coremaths Fermi estimation question.

And before then, the country has its Semiquincentennial and the men's football World Cup. Also the next moon landing mission. Imagine the 2027 reboot of this photo. Booo indeed.

It's not something I've given much thought to, since I'd probably be writing as I speak... but I think I unwittingly say stuff in brackets faster, i.e. 5 lots of *xplus2* all over 3 😅