Lola at the Coffee House

Having fun are you fm? Making things up again. Are you for concreting over the parks?

Why did you bolt the evolution thread as soon as you were asked to explain your position on eugenics? You scientific trail blazer you!!!

Spengler congratulated Shaw for having the nerve to tackle the issue.

Go drill some more holes and frack us up.

Are turkeys closely related to vultures fm?

And you ducked the challenge to try your hand at the Acronym game.

Mrs fm 10--fm 0.

This is easy.

bump

Biologists argue that attempts to save wildlife focuses too much on cute and cuddly mammals like the panda and dormice. Instead they believe conservation efforts should focus on less attractive beasts that face far greater threats.

Someone who saw the BBC 2 programme about vultures had this to say -

"As with almost everything in life, the more someone teaches you about something, the more attractive the subject becomes. Those snakelike necks – featherless in the service of personal hygiene – exert a pull of 40lbs. A parent vulture daily brings its chick (whose feathers grow 2cm a day) a kilo of meat from up to 100 miles away, stored in its crop to stay fresh. They feed in an order defined by a complex interplay of species, size and seniority – and there is a fair amount of stabbing, clawing and screeching to make sure it is enforced. In slow motion, they have an elemental savagery and purity of purpose that is – well, yes, almost beautiful.

But what they also do as they strip the flesh from frequently diseased corpses is kill, in stomach acids powerful enough to dissolve metal, countless billions of pathogens that would otherwise poison watercourses, the food chain and – ultimately – us. Or they did until Us started poisoning the vultures instead, via toxins administered to predators by cattle farmers and poachers. In India, this practice has led to 50,000 extra human deaths from rabies. In Africa, it is just getting started. Our own elemental savagery once again turned out to be the ugliest thing around."

I totally agree with the last sentence!

That's all quite interesting, vonny. I hope that the program on vultures will migrate to a channel over here, I'd like to watch it.

I never realized--or really appreciated--how the scavenging of vultures helps to keep other pollutants and diseases in check.

I see it as all a rondeley, and we mess it up.

Our own elemental savagery once again turned out to be the ugliest thing around."

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What of the elemental savagery of the UK and the USA, Vonny?

If you have an ipad you may be able to watch it within the next 15 hours.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03sfvhd

I don't have an ipad, ehBeth, but thanks for the link.

I do get BBC America on my cable line-up, but the program on vultures is not on their schedule. That's the sort of thing that might also pop up on pbs, so I'll just keep an eye out for it.

Nor did I until I saw the programme on BBC. Now I am quite fascinated by the subject. It's totally changed my mind about vultures!

This poem was studied by students taking GCSE English.

Vultures

In the greyness
and drizzle of one despondent
dawn unstirred by harbingers
of sunbreak a vulture
perching high on broken
bones of a dead tree
nestled close to his
mate his smooth
bashed-in head, a pebble
on a stem rooted in
a dump of gross
feathers, inclined affectionately
to hers. Yesterday they picked
the eyes of a swollen
corpse in a water-logged
trench and ate the
things in its bowel. Full
gorged they chose their roost
keeping the hollowed remnant
in easy range of cold
telescopic eyes...

Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep - her face
turned to the wall!

...Thus the Commandant at Belsen
Camp going home for
the day with fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils will stop
at the wayside sweet-shop
and pick up a chocolate
for his tender offspring
waiting at home for Daddy's
return...

Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.

Chinua Achebe

I've just been looking at pictures of Sicilian food - looks delicious. Does Wassau have any of this on his new menu? Weather is so horrendous here, with awful Atlantic storms hitting our coastline, that something bright and hearty is sorely needed.

Sicilian foccacia



Tomato, eggplant and more



Looking delicious ---



and sweet things

I hadn't heard of Chinua Achebe until you posted that poem. Very beautiful and very moving - but tragic too. Loved it.

My interest in Chinua Achebe has been stirred - have you read 'Things Fall Apart'? Fascinating that Chinua Achebe's first novel is the most widely read book in modern African literature

I'm afraid I haven't read it, but I should.

Did you see either BBC series Italy Unpacked or Sicily Unpacked?

They were both brilliant, excellent focus on Italian art and cuisine.

Nope - missed them. Will they be on iPlayer or am I too late?

I don't know. Sicily Unpacked was on last year, but Italy Unpacked only ended a couple of weeks ago.

Italy Unpacked is on iPlayer, but Sicily Unpacked is unavailable. Thanks for that - will take a look at it later.

Anything special on the menu for tomorrow, St. Valentine's Day, Wassau? Something romantic and delicious - something to make us all forget the awful weather, and to celebrate the special day.