Strangely Perfect

In this stark summary from a meeting of 2.5k scientists from across the globe, we find that not only is anthropomorphic climate change real, not only is it getting worse, but also, within the error margins for the ‘hockey stick‘ predictions of only a few years back, recent measurements put the actual effects at the [...]

Not being a frequent foreign traveller, my recent stop in Eisenstadt, Austria, at a 5 star hotel open my eyes a bit.  A peculiar quirk, for me, was the toilet, with a shelf, in the room’s en-suite bathroom.  I’ve since found that it’s called a “shelf toilet”, a German invention to ease the inspection of [...]

Fizzy Oceans Spell Doom As an almost instananeous follow up (the interconnectedness of all things?) to my recent disappointment about the launch failure of the OCO satellite, the BBC, Guardian, Telegraph etc  have all been reporting some recent climate work from Plymouth. An Italian Bay There’s now so much CO2 being absorbed by the oceans [...]

A Case of One Man’s Cake is Another Man’s Poison I first read the short story, “The Bureau d’Exchange de Maux” by Lord Dunsany, in the late seventies in a compilation, probably a Panther Books one.  It’s staggering simplicity is matched by the masterful telling. View Larger Map Later, in (a sort of) homage, Crawling [...]

Two rockets have been sent up recently by NASA. The first, a mission to monitor and greater understand how CO2 affects climate, failed. The second, a mission to search for new Earth-like worlds got up okay, will soon start searching. I’m all for expanding human knowledge and can understand the reasons for the missions.  In [...]

OCO Satellite Fails Of course, the title could be applied to anything.  But today’s disappointing news that a space rocket didn’t make it into orbit,I think, may turn out to be something that will be very greatly missed over the coming years. Failure hits NASA’s ‘CO2 hunter’ The failure of the OCO satellite to make [...]

How Wearing a Seatbelt Prevents Nail Breakage! This woman, Lee Redmond from Salt Lake City, hasn’t cut her nails since 1979, which is either incredibly lazy or some sort of mental problem. She’s in the Guinness Book of Records for her ‘achievement’. Pat Reavy at the local newspaper, the Deserret News, must have taken grrreat [...]

Who Needs Friends like Rosenbaum? During my recent visit to Austria I picked up a little tit-bit from “The Rough Guide to Austria” about the composer Haydn who ‘lived‘ in the town of Eisenstadt where I was staying, for some years.  My sarcastic emphasis is because by all accounts, Haydn’s opinion of Eisenstadt and it’s [...]

There is a saying of the Buddhist monk Nichiren Daishonin, that Winter Always Turns to Spring Those who believe in the Lotus Sutra are as if in winter, but winter always turns to spring. Never, from ancient times on, has anyone heard or seen of winter turning back to autumn. Nor have we ever heard [...]

I’ve just been reading this fascinating book, Encountering the Dharma: Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai, and the Globalization of Buddhist Humanism by a non-Buddhist, Richard Seager, who gives a really good, well-balanced investigation into Buddhism, the Soka Gakkai (SGI) and it’s meteoric rise in popularity under the inspirational personas of Makiguchi, Toda and Ikeda. Well you’d [...]

Introduction Following up an earlier post of mine “Use the Green Stick, Mr Postman!” and how unfriendly competition in the delivery market actually is from the point of view of the environment and the actual service to the customer (us!), the recent news of a  Delivery firm’s 686 jobs at risk should be taken with [...]

As the recent cold weather came to a close, I was fortunate to get a few unique pictures on my trusty Fuji F30 before the peculiar atmospheric conditions returned to normal!

Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources Two Films in a Great Story you Must See Before you Die. Today, Claude Berri died.  A common Frenchman who directed a duo of extraordinary films about common people, their loves, jealousies, humour, insecurities and real needs in a harsh land. The beautifully told plot unfolds to it’s [...]

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