List your obsessions

Look back at this over the last 18 months, and it's pretty obvious that the things I think most important are Climate Change, Iraq and my family. As my family's mostly private, that tends sometimes to lead to a bit of a two-toned theme to this blog.
I'm not bothered with that. If I look back on this in 10 years time, that shouldn't surprise me. If I and the net were around to look back on it in 50 years time, the perspective would be somewhat different.
Probably one of the most important things happening in the world now is the deaths of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people every year trying to get to the West, or being deported back to another country and murdered there. That this is not a "story" is because of the reasons that drive people to try and migrate here: the devastating consequences of neo-colonialisation. Thousands more die every day as a conseqquence of the starvation and warfare that are a result of this neo-colonialisation.
And it's not in the news. It's not discussed. Conservatives or liberals or revolutionaries - nobody in the West is discussing it. Because we are collaborators in an act of genocide. Like the Polish peasant in 'The Sorrow and the Pity' who would claim that he didn't know what was going on at Auschwitz, we'll tell the future that we didn't know.
Not that this should come as any surprise to an Englishman. After all, we've had an empire intent on genocidal acts for the best part of a millenium.
So I thought I'd write this quick note on the net. And then at least it's out there. We did know. We do know.
And we're doing nothing.

Gorilla on the loose

So, strange story today. A silverback gorilla escaped from his enclosure at the Rotterdam Zoo today. He seems to have jumped over a ditch, which is unexpected because he's supposed to be scared of water, then sat next to a woman who began to scream. So he smacked and bit her and dragged her around, then let go of her and went to the full restaurant where everyone had tried to hide. He smashed through the glass door and scared the shit out of everyone in there, injuring a couple more.
Eventually he was shot with a trank dart.
He was born and raised in Berlin, where he also escaped in 2004 (without anyone being hurt), before being moved to Rotterdam the following year.
Apparently this picture is of him (Bokito) yesterday. Doesn't look too happy.

Once again then, zoos aren't good for animals. The primary argument here would be that in the wild his chances of survival are minimal, but let's be honest. As long as you're charging people by the thousand money to come and gawk at him, caged together with his woman and child, then it's pretty clear where the primary motive lies. If zoos want to reinvent themselves as conservationary institutions, then a radical rethink is required.
Apparently Bokito tends to agree.

New pictures here underneath from The Guardian.

Subtropical Storm Andrea

Throw away the calendar, hurricane season is here!

Well, that didn't take long. The first named storm of the Atlantic season got called Andrea 3 hours ago. Nothing spectacular is forecast for it - nothing more spectacular than its mere presence that is, but as the chance of it being named was put at 10% just three days ago, that means little.

Radishes and Polar Bears

So a few days ago I ate the first thing out of the little vegetable plot I've made in the garden. A quarter of a radish. (Of course, I picked a whole radish, but shared it between 4 of us. I'm not sure how it works when there's five).
April's just finished with Koninginnedag and a four day weekend for me. It's been the hottest April on record by a country mile. Over here, almost 5 degrees above normal for the month. It was the climate of the South of France (according to the KNMI, normal for Nice). Rather pleasantly, the Med & the northern Sahara have been having heavy rain and cooler weather, which emphasises how unpredictable Climate Change will be. In many respects, it wouldn't surprise me to see some greening of the Sahara - at least at the fringes - and with the recent rain and the earlier reports from Mali & the Western Sahara, that optimism might yet be borne out.
Another piece of positive climate news was that the Kilimanjaro glacier appears to be disappearing more slowly than was thought, and its receding has more to do with the lack of moisture in the air blowing in from the Indian Ocean rather than the rise in temperatue - it seems that the temperature at the top of the mountain continues to remain below zero.
Ice in the Arctic has been in the news again - the National Snow and Ice Data Center has issued a press release suggesting that the ice loss in the Arctic might be faster than previously thought. However, I'm rather suspicious of this one, as it's extrapolating on part of a winter, and not taking full account of the very cold March and April that hs been there so far. It's looking at September ice loss, rather than an annual mean as well. Just smells of dodgy science.
More positively too, the Anatarctic ice sheet is currently thicker and larger than usual going into winter.
All of this is making me refine my own ideas about Climate Change - I continue to be very suspicious of the Black/White scare story that is being put about. I still suspect that the current political climate has more to do with the dwindling oil supply than the real climate change; and as usual we're seeing scare stories and media hype in place of science and strategy.

The kids have been away again last night, staying with friends, and Es & myself managed to go out and see a movie which was pleasant to be able to do. We've been giving ourselves a bit more time together lately: it's something that you really need as a preganant couple, so to speak, and something we usually tend to underestimate how much we need.
One last thought that crops up since the last mail, is how disapponting the whole cricket winter has been, and how much of a gutter it was with the final day of the Eredivisie last Sunday.
But at least - Scunny are Champions! Bring on the Premiership!