Canada goose
Shelduck
Wigeon
Teal (dipped a Green-winged teal)
Mallard
Pintail
Shoveler
Eider
Pheasant (heard)
Great Crested Grebe
(Possible Slavonian Grebe - not a clear enough sighting to confirm for list)
Marsh Harrier
Sparrowhawk
Oystercatcher
Lapwing
Black-headed Gull
Herring Gull
Caspian Gull
Woodpigeon
Collared Dove
Kingfisher
Green Woodpecker
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Magpie
Jackdaw
Carrion Crow
Blue Tit
Great Tit
Coal Tit
Waxwing (finally!)
Starling
Blackbird
Robin
Pied Wagtail
Chaffinch
Goldfinch
35 Species. Not bad for a half-day amble.
January 2nd, 2011, Minsmere RSPB.
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Fundamentalism
There seems to exist a sub-set of the general atheist population who's main reason for labelling themselves "atheist" is in active rebellion against "christians", rather than because they knowingly lack a belief in gods in general. It's self-definition through hatred of another group. Very negative, and, in my observed opinion, just another expression of that dark side of humanity we usually see as racism, or sport (soccer) hooliganism.
Fundamentalists are frequently easy targets, and I have been guilty myself of shooting those particular fish, but I do it in their barrel (if you'll forgive the distortion of the metaphor), so they have the option of shooting back.
Having a group such as "Thinking Atheists" (on Facebook) is, IMO, cowardly. The group posture together, bragging about their superiority over those terrible fundies, hooting at the perceived inadequacies of the fundies, but without the courage to face them on their own ground. Like the media image of redneck kids in pick-ups hunting lone coloured folk for a beating. As soon as they feel threatened by an outsider, they gang up on them to drive them off and bolster their fragile self-image.
Basically, it's a part of humanity that needs to boost itself by discriminating against others, and is running out of "others" they can get away with discriminating against.
Speaking as somebody who could legitimately carry the title Thinking Atheist, I could do without "their sort" using my world-view as an excuse to beat up on a vulnerable minority.
Fundamentalists are frequently easy targets, and I have been guilty myself of shooting those particular fish, but I do it in their barrel (if you'll forgive the distortion of the metaphor), so they have the option of shooting back.
Having a group such as "Thinking Atheists" (on Facebook) is, IMO, cowardly. The group posture together, bragging about their superiority over those terrible fundies, hooting at the perceived inadequacies of the fundies, but without the courage to face them on their own ground. Like the media image of redneck kids in pick-ups hunting lone coloured folk for a beating. As soon as they feel threatened by an outsider, they gang up on them to drive them off and bolster their fragile self-image.
Basically, it's a part of humanity that needs to boost itself by discriminating against others, and is running out of "others" they can get away with discriminating against.
Speaking as somebody who could legitimately carry the title Thinking Atheist, I could do without "their sort" using my world-view as an excuse to beat up on a vulnerable minority.
Sunday, 19 December 2010
Duty.
There are all kinds of folk in this world, most of them them at least reasonably pleasant to be with, or, at least, no more than mildly annoying.
Unfortunately, there are some who are not pleasant to be with.
Sometimes their darker aspects are kept hidden, expressed only to themselves, or in private with other, like-minded souls.
Sometimes, though, the dark aspects can be revealed, especially when alcohol is involved.
A friend of mine, someone I have known vaguely for a while, but only relatively recently have I known her well enough to "promote" her from acquaintance to friend, was in her cups this week, and was upset about it. She was, in fact, extremely drunk, because she had trusted somebody else, somebody who is nominally a very responsible person, to pour her drinks. The drinks being mixes, and she being trusting, she was at the edge of conciousness in only a couple of hours.
It was, I will admit, funny at first, because I was stone-cold sober when we met that night, and she was rolling giddy. Then I realised, a little later in the evening, that she was in distress.
She had realised, through the ethanol-induced fug, that she was drunker than she had intended to be, and not under as much self-control as she wished.
She was upset and annoyed at herself for getting herself in such a state.
Here's the thing, though. The actual perpetrator here was the one who poured her drinks, who deliberately got her drunker than she wanted, because it would be funny to see her drunk.
To me, this is disrespectful, and even misanthropic. He had made her a victim.
Worse, though, was the fact that she had been a similar victim a week or so before.
Another man, one she thought was a friend, also got her drunk, and himself, and then tried to take advantage. Forcibly.
Fortunately she was able to fight him off, and other people there, better friends than he deserves, took him away.
That man is a criminal. I wish I knew who he was, but my friend, out of a wish to avoid further trouble, will not tell the police what he did.
As I write here, I am torn. I know, and you, dear reader, also know, that this man should pay for his crime. But my loyalty to my friend's wishes prevents me giving more details so that he may be identified, because I do not wish that she be identified as well.
I would post dates, times, locations if I could.
Names and addresses, if I had them.
I am not a violent man, but I wish violence upon this person. Unfortunately, I am no great specimen of athleticism, so I could not dole out anything like what he deserves, and would suffer worse myself.
Instead, I must be vague.
Somewhere, out there in the East of England, is a man who thinks that a woman must give up her virtue simply because a friend was willing to.
A man who treats women as entertainment, not as people.
A man willing to commit rape (for that is what he attempted) to satisfy himself.
A man who tries to blame the woman for "making him" force himself upon her by refusing to give herself willingly.
I remind my friend; you are not to blame. You did not invite this. You are a victim, the fault is not yours.
I doubt that you, dear reader, know this man at all, or the victim, but, if you know of one like him, I am placing you under an obligation, a geas, to watch him. Monitor him. To warn others of his nature.
And as soon as he steps out of line, deal with him.
If you are as civilised as most of us pretend to be, then deal with him through legal channels.
If your reaction is as visceral as mine was when I first heard, then do as you see fit.
But don't kill him. Don't beat him to the point where punishment falls on you rather than him.
Hold him up. Publicly shame him.
Show the world his true nature.
In fact, maybe it's time we brought back the stocks.
Unfortunately, there are some who are not pleasant to be with.
Sometimes their darker aspects are kept hidden, expressed only to themselves, or in private with other, like-minded souls.
Sometimes, though, the dark aspects can be revealed, especially when alcohol is involved.
A friend of mine, someone I have known vaguely for a while, but only relatively recently have I known her well enough to "promote" her from acquaintance to friend, was in her cups this week, and was upset about it. She was, in fact, extremely drunk, because she had trusted somebody else, somebody who is nominally a very responsible person, to pour her drinks. The drinks being mixes, and she being trusting, she was at the edge of conciousness in only a couple of hours.
It was, I will admit, funny at first, because I was stone-cold sober when we met that night, and she was rolling giddy. Then I realised, a little later in the evening, that she was in distress.
She had realised, through the ethanol-induced fug, that she was drunker than she had intended to be, and not under as much self-control as she wished.
She was upset and annoyed at herself for getting herself in such a state.
Here's the thing, though. The actual perpetrator here was the one who poured her drinks, who deliberately got her drunker than she wanted, because it would be funny to see her drunk.
To me, this is disrespectful, and even misanthropic. He had made her a victim.
Worse, though, was the fact that she had been a similar victim a week or so before.
Another man, one she thought was a friend, also got her drunk, and himself, and then tried to take advantage. Forcibly.
Fortunately she was able to fight him off, and other people there, better friends than he deserves, took him away.
That man is a criminal. I wish I knew who he was, but my friend, out of a wish to avoid further trouble, will not tell the police what he did.
As I write here, I am torn. I know, and you, dear reader, also know, that this man should pay for his crime. But my loyalty to my friend's wishes prevents me giving more details so that he may be identified, because I do not wish that she be identified as well.
I would post dates, times, locations if I could.
Names and addresses, if I had them.
I am not a violent man, but I wish violence upon this person. Unfortunately, I am no great specimen of athleticism, so I could not dole out anything like what he deserves, and would suffer worse myself.
Instead, I must be vague.
Somewhere, out there in the East of England, is a man who thinks that a woman must give up her virtue simply because a friend was willing to.
A man who treats women as entertainment, not as people.
A man willing to commit rape (for that is what he attempted) to satisfy himself.
A man who tries to blame the woman for "making him" force himself upon her by refusing to give herself willingly.
I remind my friend; you are not to blame. You did not invite this. You are a victim, the fault is not yours.
I doubt that you, dear reader, know this man at all, or the victim, but, if you know of one like him, I am placing you under an obligation, a geas, to watch him. Monitor him. To warn others of his nature.
And as soon as he steps out of line, deal with him.
If you are as civilised as most of us pretend to be, then deal with him through legal channels.
If your reaction is as visceral as mine was when I first heard, then do as you see fit.
But don't kill him. Don't beat him to the point where punishment falls on you rather than him.
Hold him up. Publicly shame him.
Show the world his true nature.
In fact, maybe it's time we brought back the stocks.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Dear Mr Baker...
Dear Mr Baker,
I just read your article on the BBC website.
I agree that the plans will churn out top quality teachers, but it will also result in an even greater shortage of quality staff than already exists.
The idea of "teaching schools" will prevent married people, tied to their family's location, from taking up the profession, and people burdened with student loans will not be able to afford even more house-moves.
There are three things we need to be good teachers:
1. More realistic targets with less administration required to track them.
2. More non-teaching time to keep up with the admin, tracking, marking, planning, training ...
3. Respect.
Of course, we will never get these
1. If they make the targets realistic, they will not have the excuses to keep adopting "improvements" which also happen to save money (our local authority [Suffolk] is closing all the Middle schools, allegedly to improve standards, but they have already admitted that it was really to save money - after July, two thirds of the staff in my school [including me] will be made redundant as the pupils are crammed into over-large classes in an under-resourced high school).
2. Requires more teachers, when there is already a shortage.
3. We haven't had the respect of government or public for years - empty words from the front benches won't change that (and the media doesn't help, only reporting on poor examples, and showing unrealistic rubbish like Waterloo Road).
Regards
Kiteman.
I just read your article on the BBC website.
I agree that the plans will churn out top quality teachers, but it will also result in an even greater shortage of quality staff than already exists.
The idea of "teaching schools" will prevent married people, tied to their family's location, from taking up the profession, and people burdened with student loans will not be able to afford even more house-moves.
There are three things we need to be good teachers:
1. More realistic targets with less administration required to track them.
2. More non-teaching time to keep up with the admin, tracking, marking, planning, training ...
3. Respect.
Of course, we will never get these
1. If they make the targets realistic, they will not have the excuses to keep adopting "improvements" which also happen to save money (our local authority [Suffolk] is closing all the Middle schools, allegedly to improve standards, but they have already admitted that it was really to save money - after July, two thirds of the staff in my school [including me] will be made redundant as the pupils are crammed into over-large classes in an under-resourced high school).
2. Requires more teachers, when there is already a shortage.
3. We haven't had the respect of government or public for years - empty words from the front benches won't change that (and the media doesn't help, only reporting on poor examples, and showing unrealistic rubbish like Waterloo Road).
Regards
Kiteman.
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Remembrance
It's taken me a few days to get this down. It's has been spinning around in my head without "gelling" for some time, even before the 11th.
Fortunately, though,I had one of my 4am moments of clarity, and it all settled into place.
Remembrance causes me problems. Quite deep ones, sometimes.
It's a cliché, but War is Hell. The World conflicts caused death, pain and suffering on a scale we lucky 21st-Century humans have trouble comprehending. WWI in particular ate whole generations, chewing the heart out of entire towns when the "pals" brigades took off.
Today' conflicts cause major headlines when individual troops are injured or killed. Each victim is named on TV.
Undesirable as such deaths are, they pale in comparison to the battle of Passiondale, when each step the Allied lines advanced cost twenty thousand Allied lives, and probably similar numbers of Axis lives.
The thought of such waste chokes me up.
When I stand on parade with my Cubs, I stand behind them so that they cannot see me cry. When I see the ever-smaller group of WWII veterans, when I hear the Ode of Remembrance and the Kohima Epitaph, a real lump comes to my throat. I managed to hold it in during the laying of the wreaths this year, until, instead of being laid on behalf of a regiment or association, one wreath was laid by "The Family of ......". A woman and her two children laid the wreath, and instead of saluting or bowing their heads, the little girl blew a kiss towards the memorial.
Typing that brings a lump to my throat now, three days later. There and then, tears streamed down my face.
Fortunately, I suppose, the weather was foul, and we were standing in the rain.
Later, in the church, a girl in her teens sang, alone, unaccompanied and without a microphone, The Green Fields of France. I don't remember her name, but the song, and the purity of her voice, set me off again.
In case you haven't realised, Remembrance Sunday is an incredibly sad day for me.
But I wouldn't miss it for the world.
Because those deaths, that suffering, were not truly wasted, because they changed the world. Every death changes the world a little bit, for better or worse. The changes wrought by those wars were immense, and, I believe, ultimately to the good for all sides.
And, in between the horrors inflicted by the masses at the will of the politicians, in spite of the glory some found in the horror, some also found joy.
This is what gives me pause; without the millions of deaths in WWI, I would not exist.
My great grandfather was an American serviceman, travelling through Scotland and England for reasons I do not know. On that journey, he met my great grandmother. She accompanied him back to the States, where my grandmother was born not long after.
Things did not work out, and my great grandmother returned to England within a few weeks of my grandmother's birth. He, though, remained in America.
The world turned, as it does, and eventually I came along. Although she is years dead, my grandmother remains one of the most influential people in my life. From her I learned personal honour, national pride (not jingoism), confidence in my abilities, and a love of chess and Scrabble.
She unwittingly gave me an interest in nature and birds, even before my father did, thanks to the copy of the AA Book of British Birds she kept beside the back window, for when she sat and watched the birds eating scraps in the garden.
I loved my grandmother, and miss her still.
I never knew the millions of war-dead, but I regret their loss.
But without that war, great grandfather would never have visited the UK, and, for me, history would have been vastly different.
And my 4am clarity, the gelling moment that summed all this up?
The realisation that I cannot sum all this up. I cannot bring these thoughts to a tidy end, and I must not.
Tidy ends lead to closure.
Closure eases the pain.
Pain eased is pain forgotten, and if we forget the pain of war we will, inevitably, have another, and another and another. Einstein said that he did not know what weapons WW3 would be fought with, but he did know that WW4 would be fought with sticks.
But that's a whole other kettle of emotional scars...
Friday, 22 October 2010
Software
A friend built himself a whole new computer recently, purely because he wanted one that was capable of running the latest version of CorelDraw.
I wonder, sometimes, why people put so much effort into being bang up to date, on the cutting edge of software technology. New software doesn't work. It's buggy, unpredictable, and never meets expectations.
If it's an update of something you already owned, you don't just have to learn how to use the new stuff, you have to unlearn the habits and shortcuts you had learned for the earlier version.
How much of an update do people actually use? How many unused, memory-eating features do they add, just to call it an upgrade?
Microsoft publish a word-processor and a DTP package, but the word-processor can do everything the early DTPs could do, and the DTP has far more word-processing capability than earlier versions of the word-processor. Who needs both?
Not me.
The latest version of PhotoShop costs $700. The "extended" version costs $1000. Do I want them? I do not. Do I need them? I do not.
I am still using my eight-year-old second-hand copy of PhotoShop Elements that cost a fiver.
It does everything I need - stick a few layers together, tweak a few colours - and uses a tiny fraction of the memory.
When I reveal this fact to my constantly-updating friends, I get treated like some kind of Luddite.
I haven't told them that I am planning not to upgrade my phone this Christmas. Again.
I wonder, sometimes, why people put so much effort into being bang up to date, on the cutting edge of software technology. New software doesn't work. It's buggy, unpredictable, and never meets expectations.
If it's an update of something you already owned, you don't just have to learn how to use the new stuff, you have to unlearn the habits and shortcuts you had learned for the earlier version.
How much of an update do people actually use? How many unused, memory-eating features do they add, just to call it an upgrade?
Microsoft publish a word-processor and a DTP package, but the word-processor can do everything the early DTPs could do, and the DTP has far more word-processing capability than earlier versions of the word-processor. Who needs both?
Not me.
The latest version of PhotoShop costs $700. The "extended" version costs $1000. Do I want them? I do not. Do I need them? I do not.
I am still using my eight-year-old second-hand copy of PhotoShop Elements that cost a fiver.
It does everything I need - stick a few layers together, tweak a few colours - and uses a tiny fraction of the memory.
When I reveal this fact to my constantly-updating friends, I get treated like some kind of Luddite.
I haven't told them that I am planning not to upgrade my phone this Christmas. Again.
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Disaster!
My latest project has gone completely awry!
I've been working on making paper from nettles, and was all ready to do the actual sheet-forming, but I'd been delayed - events conspired to rob me of time whenever I tried to set periods aside to do things.
The pulp ended up sitting sealed in unsterilised jars for far too long.
Even though it looked OK, it smelled utterly faecal.
So, it has gone down the toilet and I have gone back to step one: collect nettles.
I have not given up, though. The local nettle patches have grown since I collected the last batch. The stems are woodier, and the bast might be easier to strip.
I am considering skipping the retting step this time, and going straight for the cook.
Watch this space.
I've been working on making paper from nettles, and was all ready to do the actual sheet-forming, but I'd been delayed - events conspired to rob me of time whenever I tried to set periods aside to do things.
The pulp ended up sitting sealed in unsterilised jars for far too long.
Even though it looked OK, it smelled utterly faecal.
So, it has gone down the toilet and I have gone back to step one: collect nettles.
I have not given up, though. The local nettle patches have grown since I collected the last batch. The stems are woodier, and the bast might be easier to strip.
I am considering skipping the retting step this time, and going straight for the cook.
Watch this space.
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