Bloggers: capital letters do not make your Titles More Impressive.

For fuck’s sake, this is making me narky. Blogs might be the ragged edge of personal communication unmediated by the Man or the Murdoch and while almost anything might go, capitalizing every word in your title except ‘and’ or ‘the’ (and what did they do to offend your shift key finger?) is just bobbins English.

We fought a war over this shit: if you want capitalize everything, blog in German. A great language for building efficient cars in, but incapable of saying ‘is this the face that launched a thousand a ships and burnt the topless towers of Illium’ without making it sound like a spares manifest for an oil refinery.

Kate Rusby…

another of the generation of superb female singer songwriters that Britain is producing with seemingly insolent ease. Up there with Eliza Carthy and Karine Polwart, and that’s exalted company. Just listening to her CD Awkward Annie, and if I hear a lovelier song than High on a Hill this year I’ll be surprised. Pleasantly, obviously. Kate Rusby website here.

Oh, listening on, Awkward Annie is just superb. Not a mediocre track on it and the musicianship in her band is just take-my-guitar-outside-and-smash-it fantastic.

Humphrey Lyttleton has died.

The world is a worse place for his passing. Great, great jazz musician* and superb host of BBC Radio 4’s ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a clue.’ If you haven’t heard Humph get a laugh by saying nothing, you haven’t heard true a master at work. If you have time to spare and want a guaranteed belly-laugh, go to the Clue site and listen to a some clips.

BBC obituary here.

* In a slightly spine-shivering PS, I borrowed one of his CDs from Whitby Library yesterday, got home to hear of his death.

Nature red in beak and claw.

Standing at the kitchen window, a blackbird perches on the window ledge. A bang, for a fraction of a second there’s a raptor staring in then it’s off down the drive, a blackbird in its talons. It didn’t have a restful lunch: a second blackbird flew into a nearby tree, gave it the verbals then attacked it and drove it out of the garden. Sorry the photo’s manky - compact digital camera with lots of zooming and cropping, but I’m sure you get the idea.

Prawns…

a good article here about the intensive farming of prawns in Asia so that we can have our curries and stir fries.  It contains all the familiar plot elements of globalisation and capitalism - environmental destruction, small farmers getting trampled, pollution, intimidation, even killings.

I delivered a yacht for a man who got rich selling frozen food, and his advice about eating intensively farmed prawns from aboard was simple: don’t.  Buy locally sourced or not at all if you care about your health.

Triceratops for sale!

Dammit if only I’d known! I’ve always wanted a triceratops - the coolest of dinosaurs - skeleton. Great for provoking philosophical thoughts and surely the best coat and hatstand in the world. It didn’t sell. I’ve always thought the French were wierd. They wash in water full of tadpoles, you know.

Happy St George’s Day.

The dragon was probably misunderstood and these days would have had a social worker, there’s no God for George to sit at the right hand of, His feet certainly did not walk upon England’s mountains green, but this is a fine country with the best language on the planet and we should be proud to celebrate it.  (Pic: the North Yorkshire Moors from Low Hawsker.)

UK climate change skepics and denialists…

yes it’s been it’s been rainy and cold but that doesn’t mean global warming has stopped. It’s been a big, muscular la Nina. The whole story here. Real science, well written and comprehensible to non-experts.

A La Niña is essentially the opposite of an El Niño. During El Niño, trade winds weaken and warm water occupies the entire tropical Pacific Ocean. Heavy rains tied to the warm water move into the central Pacific Ocean and cause drought in Indonesia and Australia while altering the path of the atmospheric jet stream over North and South America.

The jet stream - a big, powerful, high stream of west to east wind that affects how Atlantic weather systems pass over Britain. For the last year, affected by la Nina it’s been colder and wetter then we’d expect leading the S&D’s to proclaim the end of global warming. Er, no.

“The comings and goings of El Niño, La Niña and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are part of a longer, ongoing change in global climate,” said Josh Willis, a JPL oceanographer and climate scientist. Sea level rise and global warming due to increases in greenhouse gases can be strongly affected by large natural climate phenomenon such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation. “In fact,” said Willis, “these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”

That’s science. Proper, peer-reviewed science. Global warming is happening, humans are responsible for a significant part of it and la Nina has temporarily damped its effects. Politicians, commentators and arts graduates who have arrived at high places in the media: on your knees in the face of greatness.

The Discovery Institute

are a bunch of dishonest quotemining twats too scared of honest criticism to allow comments. My cat could rip ‘em a new one for that rubbish.

Ta Dispersal for bringing that particular winnit to my attantion.

Lunartalks elsewhere…

writing as someone else more famous than I.