Category: Other creatures

Two versions of Boudicca and the Wheel

I haven’t managed many London photos here recently, or at any rate not as many as before You Know What. But here are two, of the same scene, differently lit, and both elaborately cropped to make them cover the same visual territory:

On the left, how it Boudicca and her daughters and her horses and her chariot, with the Wheel and its shadow behind her, were looking on a sunny-with-clouds day back in February 2016, and on the right the same stuff quite recently, on the same day I photoed this dramatic skyscape, just over a week ago now.

On that same day on October 10th, with its dramatic sky, I also photoed another version of the shadow cast by the Wheel upon the Shell Building, shadows of all sorts, and those particular ones especially, being something of an obsession of mine. This is partly because it goes to how people see, compared to how cameras see, which is another obsession of mine. We see shadows one way, and cameras see them another way. Even as we look at shadows, We sort of unsee those shadows, so that we can grasp the reality of the shapes in front of us, and discount those light contrasts. We project what we know is going on in front of us, past the shadows, so to speak. Cameras just gobble up the contrasts created by the shadows and report them faithfully.

Frogs in rain

Indeed. A couple more creatures to round off my Friday. The casedemic rages on, but there is still an Internet out there, with cute frogs on it:

Found these two grown-up tadpoles here, which was the same place I found those pink trees.

Police horses

Friday is my day of the week for creatures of all sorts, and today BMNB has already featured a butterfly and a bee. But now, four horses, spied and photoed by me, near my home, on my way home from shopping, this very afternoon:

The first two. brown and black, were past me before I could get my camera out from under my shopping, so I only got them from behind. But the second two, black and white, I saw coming from a distance, so I got a better photo of them. But then, another photo of the rear end of the white horse seemed in order, because the colouring of this horse was so pleasing. I seem to recall, as a kid, being told that white horses are called “grays”. This photo perhaps explains why that might be. White horses of a particular sort have a natural tendency to turn gray, in parts. Is that it? Could well be.

These were Police horses, of course, them being the only sorts of horses to be seen around London SW1. Police horses need to live near where these demos are liable to happen, but in between demos they need exercise. They can’t just be stored in a shed, like guns or truncheons or complicated cars. And, around where I live is the perfect spot for this exercise. It’s an area bounded by busy roads with names you’ve heard of, like Victoria Street, Horseferry Road, and by the River Thames. But in between these roads, nobody goes, because this place is not on the way to anywhere else. So, perfect for SW1 Police horses to stroll through without any nasty surprises or causing any traffic complications with their slow pace of movement and their preference for walking next to each other.

The Babylon Bee joins Twitter and Facebook in seeking to suppress claims that Hunter Biden is not entirely honest

Yes, my favourite insect has for many weeks been a bee, the Babylon Bee. But now, the Bee is telling me this:

Since you did not click on that article, you were not horrified by all the alleged revelations about H. Biden. So your life is much better for not reading the completely false story. We are glad you did not read it and share it with others. Because you are a good, upstanding citizen and would not share false smears about someone. Good job!

Until now, I had been supposing Hunter Biden, the son of candidate Joe Biden in an election they’re having over there, to be a corrupt scumbag of the scummiest and baggiest sort. But now that the Babylon Bee has come out alongside Twitter and Facebook in defence of Hunter Biden, I realise that I may have to revise my opinion of this handsome and vigorously entrepreneurial young man. Have I been thoughtlessly misjudging him? Who am I to doubt the Bee?

But, I don’t know, somehow, being told not to click on that article, even by such a respected insect as the Babylon Bee, well, that just doesn’t sit right with me. Who are the Babylonian Bee people to be telling me what I can and can’t read? So, here I am doing this posting in exactly the way they wouldn’t want me to, and including the link to the article, which I personally think that maybe you should read, because, well, as of now, I’m keeping an open mind on this Hunter Biden issue.

The Babylon Bee is run and written by hardcore, fundamentalist Christian extremists, the sort of Christians who actually believe in a lot of that Christian stuff. I, on the other hand, am a moderate middle-of-the-road atheist, who knows that all Gods are made-up hobgoblins, apart from the ones in Wagner operas. I always thought this might in due course lead to a political parting of the ways between the Beeites and me. Maybe this is that parting.

LATER: I take the Babylon Bee seriously, and I am delighted to report that I appear to be in good company.

Butterfly on wall

Via the latest clutch of David Thompson ephemera, my favourite of these:

A somewhat nicer way to apply colourful decoration than what’s in this photo, I think. Besides which, applied colour need only be temporary, so all tastes can take it in turns. If you want to make it permanent, photo it. Photos like that one of the painted butterfly will last longer and better than the painted butterfly will.

I like how they’ve added a shadow under it.

Exotic Ely Cathedral

This, photoed yesterday morning by Ely Cathedral obsessive Andrew Sharpe, really should have gone up here yesterday, because apparently there’s a dog walker to be seen in the foreground, who, because walking, must have been clearly visible to Sharpe at the time of the photo, but who is less easy to spot in the photo, what with photos being, you know, still:

However, dog walking aside, what really interested me about this photo was also picked up by commenter Jane Elizabeth, who said:

It looks positively exotic.

Indeed it does.

Those spiky tower things, that look like small space rockets, what are they called? Anyway, those. Sharpe’s photo features several of what look like them, which makes Ely Cathedral as a whole look decidedly Islamic in atmosphere. There’s much talk nowadays about how Europe was profoundly influenced by Islam in medieval times. This is partly done to cheer up middle easterners, who have for several centuries now been on the receiving end of the influencing, but also because it’s true. Europe was indeed profoundly influenced by Islam, and not least by its architecture.

The clouds definitely add something. Clouds always juice up a sunset, or in this case a sunrise.

Jonathan the 188-year-old tortoise

Here:

He is the oldest known living terrestrial animal in the world.

And there was me thinking I was getting old.

He has his own Wikipedia page:

Jonathan (hatched c. 1832) is a Seychelles giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea hololissa), a subspecies of the Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea), and the oldest known living terrestrial animal in the world. Jonathan resides on the island of Saint Helena, a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic Ocean.

The tweet I linked to above says “happy birthday” to Jonathan, but they don’t know exactly when he was born. He could be even older.

Some recent animal tweets from SS-W

Whenever Friday comes around, I like to do postings that involve the other animals with whom we share our planet. I mean, this is the internet. And currently my favourite source of animal stuff is the Twitter page of Steve Stewart-Williams. He wrote a book about one of the apes, The Ape That Understood The Universe, in other words: us. And his animal tweets often illustrate stuff he has already said in that.

But then again, sometimes he is just saying, along with the rest of the internet: Wow. take a look at this. There follow links to just a few of the many creaturely tweets SS-W has done lately, ones that particularly caught my attention.

Take a look, for instance, at this hammerhead shark skeleton. Wow. Or the amazing camouflage of the great grey owl. Wow again.

All the cute animal stuff on the internet is so cute because it shows animals plucking on our heart strings by behaving the way human children behave, often because they’ve evolved to do exactly that. Our animal pals can be unselfconsciously enthusiastic, eager to please, eager to try things. And as often as not they do all this with big round eyes.

Like this dog that plays volleyball with humans, or this baby rhino learning new dance moves. From a goat.

But don’t get too carried away with the cute. Take a look at how this stork throws one of its babies out of the nest. Take that, internet. And, don’t get all superior to Mummy Stork there. Humans are only as nice as they can be, and are regularly as nasty as they feel they have to be. For many centuries, resource-stretched human parents would give up on their less promising young ones, and I bet there are out-of-the-way spots on our planet now where they still do this kind of thing. Plus, you know, wars and massacres and whatnot. So yes, Mother Nature can be a bitch.

But then again, sometimes she’s a generous bitch. Venom from honeybees has been found to rapidly kill aggressive and hard-to-treat breast cancer cells. I wonder how they found out to investigate that. Guess I’d better now read the article.

They’re not banging drums – they’re blowing a tiger horn

In this earlier posting here about The Plague, I said this:

The government will try to say that the continuing absence of Armageddon, which is what will be the next chapter in this story, proves that Lockdown has worked and is working. They’ve been marching down the High Street in weird robes and banging big drums to keep the elephant away, and look, no elephant! It’s working! It worked! No. There never was an elephant. A mouse, yes, maybe even a big old rat. But no elephant.

However, I must correct this. They have not, as it turns out, been marching down the High Street in weird robes and banging big drums, to keep the elephant away. I now learn that what they have been doing is blowing a tiger horn, to keep the tigers away.

Ivor Cummins explains. And tweets this, to get everyone’s attention:

Wow – the Tiger Horn is about to be blasted like never before!

Little old me doesn’t get to choose the metaphors for all this. Cummins does. So, forget about the elephant. Tiger horn and tigers it is.

Thoughts and a purchase provoked by a hand operated mechanical swimming whale

Here.

This is total trivia. I mean, what serious use is this, besides to amuse?

But, the fact that Twitter is full of trivia is not itself trivial. Consider the politics of this. This kind of nonsense appeals to people of all merely ideological inclinations, and is regarded as totally damn silly by lots of other people of all merely ideological inclinations. It thus serves to shake up and to dilute the merely tribal relationships of politics, which must never be allowed to become the only relationships that matter.

Also, my claim that this twiddle-it-yourself swimming whale is mere trivia could be wrong. Many a great invention has begun as a piece of fun.

Let me see if the Internet can back me up on this. Yes, here we go:

Play is a frivolous pastime only to be indulged once the real work of the world is done. Or so we tend to think. But what if play is actually a key driver of progress? In Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World, Steven Johnson argues that many of our most important innovations – from probability theory to artificial intelligence – have their origins in human beings just trying to have some fun.

Now on its way to me, via Amazon.

I love the Internet.

Also, this is why I like to do quota posting as well as proper posting. Quota postings can lead you (I of course mean me) to all sorts of stuff that proper posting wouldn’t.