"Adventure before dementia" has added a photo to the pool:
Today's theme is 3-2-1, three photos which I have manipulated in some way or another. In this shot, I have blended three photos of a Rainbow Lorikeet perched on a stake in my garden.
Op de Reeweg bij de Waalhaven in Rotterdam is woensdagavond een ongeluk gebeurd met twee auto's en een vrachtwagen. Volgens 112-correspondenten is daarbij een slachtoffer naar het ziekenhuis gebracht. Over de verwondingen is niets bekend.
VolcanoTech’s sulphur dioxide detecting sensors are in already in use in a number of countries
Weather forecasts now include air quality warnings and cities have networks of air quality sensors driving real-time maps online.
Similar air quality sensors can warn of an imminent volcanic eruption. Just as a fizzy drink releases carbon dioxide when the pressure is released, rising magma emits dissolved sulphur dioxide as it rises. So a big increase in this gas warns that a volcanic eruption may be imminent.
Continue reading...Charlotte Ritchie presents a wildly ambitious and unapologetically brainy YouTube documentary that takes in Big Bang soundwaves, singing dolphins and an astonishing amount in between. Don’t miss it for the world
One of the big things to have come out of David Attenborough’s 100th birthday celebrations this year was the scale of ambition he had during his tenure behind camera. It was Attenborough who commissioned Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation and Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, two vast documentary series that became defining texts on the history of art and science.
The consensus seemed to be that this sort of thing – huge, cerebral, expensive – would simply not get made today, unless it was dumbed down and cut-price and rebranded as Amanda Holden’s Top 10 Renaissance Willies. So it comes as something of a surprise to learn that the Cosmic Shambles Network’s new documentary series, For the Record: An Incomplete History of Music, takes its title as seriously as it does.
Continue reading...Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?
Thursday quiz fans inundated our mailbox with at least two messages pointing out that John Oliver had opened his HBO show discussing the problem of feral hogs, of which there are significantly more than between 30 and 50 in the US. If he starts opening shows talking about Sparks, Kate Bush, Syldavia and Alan Shearer’s fixations on distances, we truly will know where he gets his material from, and the Thursday quiz lawyers are ready. In the meantime, here are 15 questions on topical news, general knowledge and pop culture to see you on towards the weekend. Let us know how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!
The Thursday news quiz, No 253
Continue reading...With tourists buying up property and landlords opting for lucrative Airbnb rentals, young Cornish people are turning to old campervans to give them a roof over their heads
Skye has a thick duvet in the van she calls home in Cornwall. In winter, the 25-year-old goes to bed in several layers of clothes and is grateful for the extra warmth of her cat. She parks up late, often in car parks well away from beaches, and never stays more than one night in case local people get angry and bang on her windows. This is van life. It can be a very different world from the tourist dream.
“Some winters I’ve had ice on the inside of my van windows, and the door handles frozen shut with me inside,” says Skye, a special educational needs teaching assistant. One year her diesel air heater packed up, and she spent the whole winter feeling cold. “That was genuinely awful.” Even with the heater on in the evening, those nights and early mornings when the temperature drops below zero are tough. “I often get dressed in bed,” she says. “You just have to adjust.”
Skye, 25 arriving back at her van after a day of walking
Continue reading...To stay popular with the public – and his backbenchers – he’ll need to make big changes fast. That means changing the way the government borrows
A Labour leader arrives, shirt and smile ironed into place, in his hands a big idea. He has polished one slogan, prepped three anecdotes, memorised eight bullet points. He wants more cash for vital services, or workers to have a stake in their employers, or to take some utility into public control. Not so big an idea, really, but, right on cue, the attacks come from almost every side – breathless lobby reporters, sententious columnists, zombie Blairites. And they all agree on one fatal thing: the bond markets will never wear it.
The death sentence having been pronounced, all that remains for the politician’s proposal is a pauper’s funeral.
Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Mark the return of courgette season by using the vegetable as the centrepiece for a cheesy and peppery pasta sauce
Having made too much parmesan cream for mortadella sandwiches the other week, the rest was carried over from one column to the next, and a recipe for pasta with courgettes and almonds was improved significantly by two large tablespoons of the soft cheese and parmesan beaten into a soft-savoury cream with the texture (but not taste) of toothpaste!
This recipe is also one that welcomes courgettes back to the northern hemisphere – not that they ever went away, now that everything is available all the time. The season proper, though, is something to celebrate as more and more courgettes appear in the gardens of those fortunate enough to grow them (flowers blazing), on market stalls and shop shelves, and in veg boxes. So much so that, at a certain point, it will all get too much and gardeners will start talking about gluts, cooks will threaten chutney and food magazines provide 101 ideas. But I am jumping ahead.
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