You will never have all the information you need to make a decision. If you did, it would be a foregone conclusion, not a decision.
David Mahoney
I guess that's me!
I can definitely identify with this …
Reasons to be Grateful: 20
Experiment, week 20. Yes, we’re now a third of the way through the 60 week experiment! So here are this week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.
- Photographing Parakeets. As you will have seen from my post earlier in the week I spent a nice sunny afternoon sitting in the garden photographing the local Ring-Necked Parakeets.
- Birch Catkins and Pine Cones. The garden today has been a real delight. It’s been a bit cooler than a few days ago but still wall-to-wall sunshine. The catkins on the silver birches are just out (note to get out the hayfever tablets!) and our Christmas trees (now around 20 feet high) have enormous crops of cones, and are spreading seeds everywhere.
- Butterflies. The warm weather has also brought out the first butterflies, as well as the early bumblebees and queen wasps. The first butterfly I saw, a couple of days ago, was a Holly Blue. Shortly followed by a Small White. And today sitting in the sun there was a brand spanking newly hatched Comma — and I’ve not seen one of those here for a few years either.
- Goldcrest. While in the garden this afternoon, Noreen looked up into the smaller Christmas tree and said “What’s this bird over my head?” I went to look. And there just 5 or 6 feet above us, and completely oblivious to our presence, was the tiniest Goldcrest. It is our smallest native bird, much smaller even than a Blue Tit, and although not hugely rare it is uncommon and seldom seen because it prefers living deep in (preferably conifer) woodland. This is the second one I’ve seen here in a week; and they’re the only ones in the last 10 years! One can hope they’ll stay, but I doubt we have enough nearby trees, especially conifers. I couldn’t get a good photo of it as I was shooting against the bright sky but here’s an image from the web.
- Cold Roast Pork Sandwiches. Finally on a foodie theme … At the end of last week when we were in Norwich visiting my mother we picked up a large, but incredibly cheap, joint of pork shoulder for roasting in Roy’s, the local supermarket chain. It was magnificent; it was so tender that you could cut the cooked meat with a spoon. And it made some delicious cold roast pork sandwiches! I love cold roast pork!
Bird Watching : The Tits
Spring is sprung. The birdies are singing. Once again the British birdwatcher can enjoy their pleasure without having their nuts frozen off. So we are starting a new occasional series to introduce those unfamiliar with British birds to species identification in the field. First …
The Tit Family
There are seven (or maybe eight) species of tits seen in Britain (most commonly seen first).
Blue (or Tiny) Tit |
Great Tit |
Coal Tit |
Long-Tailed Tit |
| Marsh or Willow Tit May be two separate species but impossible to tell apart except hand. Named after the weeping willow tree.  |
Crested Tit |
Bearded Tit |
Pork Pie Conservation
We’ve noticed that recently delicatessens and like establishments are proudly proclaiming availability of “hand-raised pork pies”. Although we’ve not yet definitively identified the establishment promoting this development, the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association are chief suspects. But whoever is responsible we are delighted that there is a movement to conserve the wild pork pie population.
Quotes : On Intelligence
Another in our occasional series of apposite aphorisms.
The time it would take a gang of geriatric virgins [the Roman Catholic hierarchy] to understand and define marriage is longer than the projected lifespan of the universe. It would be a shock if they did have anything coherent to say on the subject after only 2000 years of uninformed speculation from their armchairs.
[WoollyMindedLiberal in a comment on Heresy Corner]
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
[F Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up]
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
[Henry Adams]
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
[Henrik Tikkanen]
I’m designed intelligently? As far as I can see, I was designed by an idiot. My parts are neither interchangeable nor replaceable. I could use a new ankle right now, and almost everything I do injures my back. Some of my internal organs are useless, and can even kill me. My risk calculation engine is useless. I am afraid to eat beef, but have no problem catapulting myself down tree-lined roads on my motorcycle. My judgement is so bad I can be convinced to send my life savings to a complete stranger with just one phone call. The final stake in the heart of intelligent design is that there are people we might otherwise consider intelligent, who, in the face of all this, maintain we are functioning as intended.
[Eric Dietiker]
Parakeets
Now we have nice warm Spring weather I spent some time today sitting quietly on the patio photographing the parakeets on the seed feeder some 10-15 meters away.
Out of around 300 shots (couldn’t have done that back in the days of film!) I got a dozen which, after cropping and some light post-processing, were anything like decent. Here are a couple …
| ‘Ere, was that your camera I heard?” | Oi, haven’t you finished yet?! |
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Click the images for the larger Flickr versions
They are very tricky subjects! Not only are the birds themselves constantly moving but the seed feeder is swinging back and forth; and they were in dappled shade – even with the camera on a tripod too many shots were still blurred. I had my big 80-300 zoom lens at full stretch and have still had to heavily crop the frames.
And there are more shots on my Flickr photostream.
A certain truth …
There is indeed a certain amount of truth in today’s XKCD cartoon!
Click the image for a larger version
And here’s an interesting thing. How is it that one can find a stick figure, which is female only from the length of the hair, sexy? I don’t know. None of the other characters in XKCD cartoons do this to me, but that’s how I react to Megan! It is something visual and not related to the language/words. Very weird. Must say something awfully odd/worrying about me. But then you knew I was deranged. 🙁
The Gallery : Extreme Close Up
This weeks subject over at The Gallery is Extreme Close Up.
Hmmm … this is something I always try and I’m not always very successful at although my little point and shoot Panasonic Lumix TZ18 is especially good at very close range — much better than my big Olympus E620 dSLR! So I took a few close ups specially for this week’s challenge. Here are just two.
Click the images for larger versions
The first is fresh Waitrose French baton. And the second is a nylon strap on a cool bag.
Why not visit The Gallery to see what other people have come up with?
Did you miss … ?
Links to a few recently discovered (by me) items you may have missed.
First off scientists think it likely that redheads feel more pain than people with dark hair. Contrary to the implication of the headline this is not yet proven.
From which there is a logical progression to marriage — well sort of logical anyway. Betty Herbert rails against the arguments over same-sex marriage.
And in turn that brings us nicely to several catty articles. Yes, there seem to have been a little burst of cat-related items in the last week …
We thought we knew how cats survive falls from heights, but it seems they’re even more resilient than we thought.
In another piece of research it has been found that most animals don’t like our music. So what music do pets prefer? For cats it seems to be high pitched with a fast tempo, just like they are.
And if that isn’t bad enough, there is the suggestion that your cat is sending you mad, well crazy anyway. It sounds far-fetched, but it may not be, and it could explain a whole lot.
Lastly for this week here’s an absolutely stunning photo of Aoga-shima, a tiny volcanic island in the Japanese Izu Islands, south of Tokyo. There’s some information here and the inevitable short Wikipedia page. But it’s that aerial photo which is really stunning — you need to see it as large as possible!