Do you *honestly* expect me to believe...

... that the BBC has a correspondent called Jonah Fisher? Who has been sent to cover Greenpeace's protests at Japanese whaling in the Antarctic?

Two questions:
(i) What were Mr and Mrs Fisher thinking?
(ii) How long must the guy have been waiting for this break?

(Mind you, it does sound like he feels he's the butt of someone's joke - scroll to bottom of this).

Who'd be a penguin?!

I just watched 'March of the Penguins', a documentary film about...Emperor Penguins. More precisely, the extraordinary lengths they have to go to in order to maintain their existence. The cinamatography was fantastic; the narration was cheesy. At the time of its release, there was quite a stir, as various interpretations were imposed on it. Some Christian groups heralded it as a prime example of the benefits of the family unit, or as a clear reflection of intelligent design. Some gay groups were keen to point out the existence of homosexual penguin liaisons. Personally, I think that the film was about...penguins.

Specifically, I think if there is any one single message to take home from the film it is this: Emperor Penguins have a pretty raw deal of it. Out of all the life cycles that God/Evolution could have dealt them, theirs is a pretty sucky one. In summary:

• At the age of five, you emerge from the water in which you've been happily swimming, and waddle in a fashion which is pretty inefficient for 70 miles.
• You find a mate, get on with it, and wait for an egg to arrive. Once it does, the female passes it to the male (hopefully without calamity) and then waddles the 70 miles back the the sea to try to regain the third of her biomass lost in egg production.
• The male waits with the egg, until the female returns with dinner for the chick some days/weeks later. He then sets off for the seas, to replace the 50% biomass lost and... to bring back dinner.
• And so the cycle of long distance takeaways continues, through the longest nights, and harshest weather, until eventually things warm up a bit and the sea comes to the penguins. At which point, back off for a swim, and trying to avoid being eaten by seals.

At all of the above stages there seems to be a risk of death by various methods (cracking, freezing, exhaustion, predation, abandonment) which makes you wonder how on earth the population manages to increase by a net amount of more than three birds per year.

So, who'd be a penguin? Not me, for sure. It did remind me, though of Eddie Izzard's sketch about assignation of the various methods of procreation at the dawn of the universe.

Maybe the penguins don't have it so bad after all...

If I was going there I wouldn't start from here...

Here's an interesting experiment: is it possible to get all the way from Lands End to John O'Groats, starting with nothing at all (save a little preservation of dignity)? Here's what happened when a couple of guys tried to find out:

I must say, regardless of generosity, I might not be that keen to listen if randomly approached in the street by a guy wearing nothing but boxer shorts. Just as well somebody was though!

Reset

I rather like this:


(From http://xkcd.com/363/)

Now add a dash of socialism...

I'm quite a keen baker, and I've had various positive comments in return for cakes, the highest of which being anything that suggests I'm nearly as good as my mother. But I heard the strangest ever baking-related comment today.

Recently I spent a weekend visiting a friend who'd moved away. On the Saturday she'd invited people round for dinner, so while she prepared that I volunteered to make a chocolate espresso cake for dessert. (Note: Cadbury's Dream is not a good substitute for white chocolate and does not melt well in a microwave. The burning smell did clear fairly quickly though...)

Anyway, to the point - there was plenty left over so on the Monday my friend took the remains in to her workplace to offer to her colleagues. Which prompted the following conversation:

Colleague: Is this one of those do-gooder cakes?
Friend: Eh?
Colleague: One of those do-gooder, fair trade, ethical thingies.
Friend: Well, the coffee is fair trade...

What on earth is a 'do-gooder' cake? How can you tell from the taste whether the ingredients are fair trade or not? And who in their right mind gets snooty about ingredients when someone is waving free chocolate cake under their nose?

I dunno - perhaps I stirred in a sprinkling of my leftie politics when I made it. Or maybe wrapping it in a copy of Populorum Progressio was a bit of a giveaway...

Brother Anthony

Deary me, I've been a useless blogger of late.

Anyway - my initial knee-jerk thoughts on Tony Blair becoming a Catholic:

• Weren't we good enough for him when he was PM?
• Is he going to do a U-turn on various issues that rather set him against the RC church's teachings?
• Why is he so special that he was received now? It's traditional for new members to be received, publicly, at Easter. Or...
• ...is this a ploy orchestrated by Alistair Campbell in an attempt to upstage Jesus? ;-)

Sorry, I'm not being very charitable am I? Will try harder.

Achievement

Someone described me today as the 'geekiest girl in the lab'.

I was strangely proud.

Quotation of the day

Thank you to a lighthearted driver on South Eastern Trains, who brightened a frustratingly slow journey with this gem:

"We will be arriving at Waterloo East very soon. Please mind the gap
between the timetable and reality."

:)

Hmph!

I wouldn't normally waste blogspace on reality TV, but if I'm honest I have a very soft spot for Strictly Come Dancing. I am therefore one of the disgruntled masses who are incredulous about the premature eviction of Gabby and James. Not that Penny and Ian should have gone either, but it was ridiculous that this was the composition of the dreaded 'bottom two.'

I mean seriously, let's compare this (skip to 1:30):


with this horror (skip to 1:15 if you want to spare yourself extra pain):

In one word: hmph!

(It's ok, guys, normal service will resume shortly)

Libraries Gave Us Power

library books Originally uploaded by timetrax23

I am a firm believer that local public libraries are Very Important. They enable anyone to access information for free, provide a focal point for the community, and promote literacy, which is a Good Thing. Libraries should be cherished and supported. So there.

As to the last time I actually used our local library? Well..ahem...erm... it was a while back. Sufficiently far that I can't remember. I can make excuses about local libraries not providing sufficiently specialist resources for a post-grad, but the reality is that I like buying books. I like buying them, I like owning them. I even enjoy reading them, although it would be a lie to say that I've read every one that I own.

I was in Waterstones the other day, casting around for something new to read, and was suddenly faced by the rather unappealing prospect of paying £8.99 for a 220 page Penguin Modern Classic. This seemed more than a bit excessive, and the local library, the source of so much enjoyment during my childhood and teens, suddenly came to mind.

So today I made my first trip there for ages, and came away with said 220 page classic, a contemporary novel and a modern history book. All free. No extra consumption, no worries about where I'm going to store them. Should have done it sooner. I hearby resolve to make better use of my local library.

When did you last visit yours?