The secret life of balloons

A bunch of photos that I took at the Boston Marathon in 2003 (with an ultra-cheap $7.59 single use camera) as part of my investigation into the secret life of balloons. [Click on image to see all the photos.]

Fetus, not, foetus!

'SIR-
The unborn child is not to blame
For bastard spelling of his name
The Romans knew their Latin best.
To Virgil, Ovid and the rest
He was a FETUS and so stayed
Till later Isidore made
A diphthong of the vowel E
Confusing us and Dr. B.

The FETAL noun you can relate
To the verb feo - generate.
Its origin cannot be hung
On the verb foeto - bring forth young.
If so, then FOETUS should adorn
The newborn child, not the unborn,
And so in mother's arms we'd see
Our FOETAL physiology.

To other words the diphthong came,
But they've their old form back again
You won't be thanked in '69
To tell your bird she's foeminine.
To call the FETUS transatlantic
Will drive the editors quite frantic
Ere Norsemen on Cape Cod were wrecked,
The spelling FETUS was correct.'

Geoffrey Chamberlain, King's College Hospital,
London SE5, Lancet 2(1309) 1969

A place that...

...betwixt the rivers lies. Given the remote likelihood that a Baltimore Oriole would ever make it to this place - Kondayampettai or for that matter Thiruvanaikaval - my good deed for the day is to make this a tangible possiblity.