Sideswipe: October 18: Yip Yip planters

Yip Yip planters.

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper

Apparently, we humans are healthiest when we confine our eating to a narrow window of no more than 12 hours. The benefits increase with every hour we shave off that 12, down to perhaps six hours. That discovery is behind the escalating trend of daily fasting. But few people know of the other big finding: we're even healthier when we set our eating window early in the day - specifically, when we eat from an hour or two after we wake until mid-afternoon. Most people who practice intermittent fasting do so by skipping breakfast, but the research shows it's far healthier to skip dinner; or, better said, to eat dinner no later than about 3pm. Researchers found that longer fasting periods gave the body time to make more repairs. For those who wish to eat dinner at the normal time, scientists advise keeping it light and earlyish and stacking most of the day's calories before mid-afternoon. Read more here.

Pink or pinky?

Teachers' tweets

"Me: Who is your favourite singer?
Kid: (Holds up his pinky finger)
Short silence ...
Me: "No, your favourite singer, not your favourite finger."

"Someone farted in class the other day and a kid accused ME of doing it. I told them I don't fart in class and that, if I did, I would go out into the hallway. Now, anytime I leave the classroom, they ask: 'Are you going out to fart?' I am dead."

"A student asked me once if a word needed a 'flying comma'. He meant the apostrophe, but I think I'm going to call them flying commas from now on ..."

Still bitter after all this time

Raye Wills of Devonport writes: "I was 8 years old at primary school in the early 50s when they started a Savings Bank setup, with a bank book to watch savings grow. Parents gave me 2/6d a week to invest but also the same to my brother, three years younger. This scheme ceased at age 10 when starting Intermediate. He got five years of cash savings, I got two!"