Saturday, June 16, 2007
Good News Day In The Arran Banner
On a day when a cricketer, not a footballer, got a knighthood - and a comic genius (Barry Humphries) got a CBE, there is also very wonderful news in The Arran Banner. I'm not quite sure why, but these stories always cheer me up. They're certainly a reminder of the astonishing, endless diversity of nature - and the impossibility of ever having the faintest idea how many species there are in existence.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I'm glad Botham got a knighthood. He's a proper English hero: magnetic, flawed, endlessly energetic, patriotic, indefatigable, generous and, in the best kind of way, a little bit stupid.
ReplyDeleteAnd let us not, forget, Brit, that, judging by the frosty atmosphere of the Sky commentary box, he dislikes Nasser Hussein.
ReplyDeleteI thought Gower's quip - "He's said it won't change him a bit...he'll still look down on you" didn't get the hoots of hilarity it deserved.
ReplyDeleteDo you, like me, enjoy the rain break chat on TV and TMS almost as much as the actual cricket?
I thought , Nige, that it had been proven that there are, excuse me if my memory is faulty, 1,213 species in existence.
ReplyDeleteQuite right Andrew - that's 1,231 species of species. And Brit, that's exactly right about Botham. Someone also described him as having the demeanour of a newly laid-off British Rail buffet steward. Harsh, but captures something of the man... Says something, too, that winning the 1981 Ashes Botham-and-Willis-style went unremarked by the Palace at the time, but next time England won at home it was gongs all round (followed by the inevitable lapse back into mediocrity and worse).
ReplyDeleteAnd what's especially remarkable, Nige, is that of the 1,231(thanks for the correction) species on the planet, 79 are a type of snail.
ReplyDeleteFascinatingly, the lifespan of the snail is much greater than one might have imagined. Achatinidae snails live around 5 to 7 years and Helix snails live about 2 to 3 years. Aquatic Apple Snails live only a year or so. In captivity, their lifespan is much longer, ranging from ten to fifteen years for most species. On occasions, snails have lived beyond this lifespan, up to 30 years or more.
Thanks to Wikipedia.
And I always thought the snails's watchword was Live Fast, Die Young... Long way to go to catch that whale they got the other day with a chunk of 1880s harpoon in him though.
ReplyDeleteNo, hte snail would seem to be a much more prudent creatuer than one might have imagines. Carrying his home around with him would have led me to think also that he, or indeed she would have been a bit of a 'Wherever I lay my hat, that's my home,' sort of being but apparently not. The thing about the whale comparison is that if the snail were the size of a whale, then its age would presumably rise commensurably. Do the maths- the results are staggering. To think also that there are snails that have outlived Alexander the Great and Jimi Hendrix.
ReplyDeleteBut what about that Chanderpaul? A mass of neurotic tics inside excessivley large cricketing equipment that suddnely becomes weirdly calm when the ball is five yards away. Fascinating to watch.
ReplyDeleteI suppose Darwin would have much to say about how this Chanderpaul creature has adapted to its environment.
ReplyDeletesurely even more staggering is that among all these species, there is only one that writes blog entries about new species.
ReplyDeleteOr only one that we know of. i wonder which of these current species is most likely to blog? Birds? Is blogging a kind of birdsong?
A friend wrote her master's thesis about some hitherto unknown species of plants she discovered in an area not far from my house. Sounds delightful until photographs are produced and one realizes that they are nothing more than ugly, rambling weeds. Apparently, one plant sparsely covers an area about 50' in diameter, and is dead-center in the middle of what Lowe's once hoped would be their next Do-It-Yourself warehouse. Upon this discovery, all sorts of political fun and games ensued and Lowe's bowed out after a few years. Home Depot is now interested in the site. I planned to suggest that they show their good faith to the property owners by presenting them with a few gallons of pre-mixed Roundup, but thought better of it lest I be charged as an accessory should the plant suddenly wither and die.
ReplyDelete