Friday, June 01, 2007
Regulitis
A new case has been reported from Portsmouth where it has been decided to restrict all traffic in residential areas to 20mph. Existing case on the smoking front confirmed by reports of spot fines for evil doers who might drop dead fags on a public pavement.
On a more interesting note, BH reports a slug (of the 4cm variety) sliding down a rope of its own slime from the ivy above the kitchen window, down to the patio. One sees small green caterpillars doing something like this in woods in the Spring but I have never seen a slug doing it.
By accident we found the charcoal den of the Epsom common trusties today. Three or four large iron contraptions in which they toast the trees that they chop down. Presumably we pay for these contraptions and their entertainment on the rates. One day when I am very bored I will join their committee and vote against all activity. Or maybe it is a closed shop and/or a self-perpetuating clique of middle class eco-warriers which won't let me in.
And an interesting factlet from history, a propos of reading about the Armenian massacres at the start of the last century. It seems that the Ottoman empire was then in collapse, amongst other things by being torn apart by the nationalism then rampant. But, unlike the British, the Turks (the Ottomans having failed to become a race or a nationality) had no natural homeland to retreat to. They could not just junk their empire and go back home again. What is now Turkey contained lots of Greeks and Armenians who were not even Muslims let alone Turks and they were all rather mixed up. Plus the Kurds. This gave the Turks no good foundation on which to rebuild themselves. So the Armenians were massacred before the first war and the Greeks overreached themselves in the collapse after the first war and were expelled, many of them winding up in the US. Not yet got to the bottom of why the Armenians were treated so differantly from the Greeks or why the Kurds were left alone this time around. All this in contrast to the Austrian empire which was collapsing at around the same time and which could retreat to the reasonably ethnically clean Austria, albeit leaving various German minorities stranded elsewhere and which would cause trouble later.
On a more interesting note, BH reports a slug (of the 4cm variety) sliding down a rope of its own slime from the ivy above the kitchen window, down to the patio. One sees small green caterpillars doing something like this in woods in the Spring but I have never seen a slug doing it.
By accident we found the charcoal den of the Epsom common trusties today. Three or four large iron contraptions in which they toast the trees that they chop down. Presumably we pay for these contraptions and their entertainment on the rates. One day when I am very bored I will join their committee and vote against all activity. Or maybe it is a closed shop and/or a self-perpetuating clique of middle class eco-warriers which won't let me in.
And an interesting factlet from history, a propos of reading about the Armenian massacres at the start of the last century. It seems that the Ottoman empire was then in collapse, amongst other things by being torn apart by the nationalism then rampant. But, unlike the British, the Turks (the Ottomans having failed to become a race or a nationality) had no natural homeland to retreat to. They could not just junk their empire and go back home again. What is now Turkey contained lots of Greeks and Armenians who were not even Muslims let alone Turks and they were all rather mixed up. Plus the Kurds. This gave the Turks no good foundation on which to rebuild themselves. So the Armenians were massacred before the first war and the Greeks overreached themselves in the collapse after the first war and were expelled, many of them winding up in the US. Not yet got to the bottom of why the Armenians were treated so differantly from the Greeks or why the Kurds were left alone this time around. All this in contrast to the Austrian empire which was collapsing at around the same time and which could retreat to the reasonably ethnically clean Austria, albeit leaving various German minorities stranded elsewhere and which would cause trouble later.
# posted by Jim @ 11:51 AM 
