Men can get aggressive every month, particularly toward rugged, fertile looking chaps.
Rob Burriss, a biologist at the University of Liverpool, who led the study, said the behaviour reflected that of other primates: “Groups of animals, such as chimpanzees, can live quite happily together, but when a female is ready to mate the two dominant males within the group become rivals and fight for her attention.”
The waves didn’t break upon the shore. Indeed, the island seemed to be lifted and propelled along by the rollers. Gim planted his feet as far apart as possible, side on to the tide. “This foot’s rising, only slightly, but… And there, it’s under me….. And now this foot. The whole island moves as the wave goes by.”
“That’s a relief. There’s only a small rise above sea level, I thought we were going to flood at high tide.” Sheel ran a hand through the green slime that passed for soil, studied the substance, then shook it off. “Where’s Bobb?”
“He went to the North shore, thought he’d seen something to build with.”
Bobb returned some time later. The setting sun cast a long shadow. “I thought you said he had gone North?”
“He did.”
“So why’s he coming back from the West?”
“Could have done a part circuit.”
“Or our island’s rotating in the current.”
Bobb set down a sack. “There was a camp of some sort back there. I think I have enough stuff to make a solar still. What have you found out?”
Gim took the sack and emptied it. He started sorting through the contents. “Our island’s not very solidly planted.”
“Did you notice the way it moved with the waves?” Sheel asked.
“Yeah. It’s more pronounced toward the edges.”
“Well, I started scooping away at the surface, think it’s algae of some sort. I found a way through the roots of that,” she pointed at the island’s one and only tree, centrally located, “and got so deep,” halfway up her upper arm, “before breaking through to water.”
Gim had assembled a frame for the solar still from the remnants of a parasol. He had shaped the wires to rest on the edge of a large basin, so the vapour rising from a cup of salt water in the middle could condense and run down purified. “There was some rope in that sack. If one of us ties it around our waist we can go over the edge and explore what is under our island.” He had found a smaller cup and was using this to bring water up from Sheel’s hole. It was thick with algae, and there was the occasional tiny fish. Gim strained it through the canvas of the sack before feeding the still. “In the morning, I think.”
Heavensent 1.7
Heavensent 1.5
Heavensent 1.1
Technorati tag: Fiction, Heavensent
The context is the clicking, bleeping, flashing world of screens. There has been a change in our environment that is so all-embracing and in a way so banal that we barely notice it. In just a couple of decades, we have slipped away from a culture based essentially on words to one based essentially on images, or pictures. This is probably one of the great shifts in the story of modern humans but we take it almost for granted.
Technorati tag: Technology, Brain, Icons
Nil Garran was paying tithe to the hidden army. It was his way of resisting, easier and safer than taking up a weapon. He went about his business as usual, letting the occupying armies take his products at their starvation level prices and demand the occasional tribute.
They didn’t know just how fertile the land was, so could not tell that the fields never yielded all the soil fruit they should. Some of the trees in the wild orchard were half bare before harvest began. The land fowl were free to roam, so he could not know how many nested where he did not look, and the water fowl were not his to worry about.
Somewhere in the forests the soldiers had their hidden communities. They guarded the tracks, guns, bomb lobbers and stonks that the Southerners could not account for despite the supposed rout of the Northern armies. They all waited, biding their time, ready to rise up when the time was right. Just like the god king sleeping in his silver tower in the far North. But Gorran didn’t believe in the god king. The god king didn’t steal his tubers.
Heavensent 1.6
Heavensent 1.4
Heavensent 1.1
Technorati tag: Fiction, Heavensent
The two aren’t connected beyond a declared aim of cutting traffic pollution, but I thouight I’d lump them together.
The Clever is a tilting trike powered by compressed natural gas. It’s the result of EU funded research to give car companies something to think about.
The three-year, £1.5m EU-funded research project aimed to produce a totally different class of private motor vehicle specifically designed for the urban environment.
“The only solutions at the moment are motorbikes or cars” said Ben Drew, a research officer at the University of Bath, one of the institutions involved in the project.
[Cough]Bicycle![cough]
Meanwhile, mister “vote blue, go green” wants to see the return of school buses to combat the school run, and a reduction in carbon emissions from new cars. The thought of voting Tory makes me go green for completely different reasons. All this point scoring over Priuses (Prii?) just reminds me that the Lib Dems have been the only of the three main parties to have been touting eco policies since before they became trendy.
(Meanwhile, the BBC stole the car from one of its reporters to see what it would be like to live without petrol.)
I hardly ever Upshifted, to be honest. The nearest I came was my period working for British Gas, which left me with an ulcer and large debts. So I’ve been partially downshifted for a few years, though I could still go further and I’ve only just got round to slowly getting rid of all the crap I’ve accumulated.
I may be going against the theme of Downshifting Week because I’m planning to move back up from a three day to a four day week, so I can earn some money before my contract ends.
via Treehugger
Technorati tag: Downshifting
I hardly ever Upshifted, to be honest. The nearest I came was my period working for British Gas, which left me with an ulcer and large debts. So I’ve been partially downshifted for a few years, though I could still go further and I’ve only just got round to slowly getting rid of all the crap I’ve accumulated.
I may be going against the theme of Downshifting Week because I’m planning to move back up from a three day to a four day week, so I can earn some money before my contract ends.
via Treehugger
Technorati tag: Downshifting
I have so little trust in our government that I think the proposals for a tidal power scheme on the Severn Estuary is really a decoy to help them go nuclear. They’ve proposed a huge green power scheme that would generate power by doing a lot of environmental damage. So now Tony Blair can say “Look, y’know, we did consider non-nuclear alternatives but, right, the surfers wouldn’t let us. Let’s go nuclear.”
I have a bit of respect for Peter Hain, but I think he’s been wrong footed into supporting the proposal. And his statement contains a phrase that sums up the government’s big mistake in their quest to cut CO2.
He said it could help to fill the looming “energy gap” which will emerge as nuclear power stations are gradually decommissioned. “This not just a climate change issue. This debate is about security of supply. It’s about keeping the lights on,” he added.
The problem wouldn’t be so big if we bothered to turn some of the lights off occasionally. Energy saving and microgeneration are a better investment than yet another big scheme.
There are, smaller scale, ways to harness the power of the Severn bore which wouldn’t destroy the ecosystem of the estuary. Rather than condemning the plan outright, perhaps the surfers and environmentalists could propose a few underwater turbines out of the shipping lanes.
Technorati tag: Tidal Power, Severn Estuary, Severn Bore
Tony Blair has accused other politicians of being “out of touch”.
David Cameron opts for a bigger (albeit hybrid) car whilst calling for a cut in traffic pollution.
At points our leaders do the satirists’ job for them
Technorati tag: Tony Blair, Tony Blair is a liar, David Cameron, Satire
I don’t need to tell you to turn TVs off properly rather than leaving them on standby, do I? What I didn’t know was that my pc is drawing power as long as it’s plugged in. Our landlord’s annoying and fitted sockets without switches on them, so I’m going to have to start pulling the plugs out of the wall every night.
Technorati tag: Standby, Energy Consumption
Jusrt a couple of pictures from the past week. It seems only appropriate that one of them is of St. George.
Technorati tag: Photos, St. George
Web pages designed to the Golden Ratio- 1.618:1- are harder to navigate than those not.
“It has been suggested since antiquity that the ratio is aesthetically pleasing,” says Van Schaik. “But we found that not only is it not liked in web pages, it is also less efficient in terms of accuracy and speed.”
Technorati tag: Web Design, Golden Ratio
If I ever advance beyond binary sudoku maybe I’ll go back to this site for lessons on advanced sudoku strategies.
Practice on this flash sudoku game.
A singing sheep gives us the Daily Mail view of the interwebnet.
Technorati tag: Flash, Satire, Daily Mail