h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Heard a commotion outside the window just now.

One of our local Blackbirds just ran out of luck.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BzMvUMtIAAADpZ1.jpg


Sorry the photo's carp due to reflections from the window, but the hawk wasn't going to sit still while I sorted the shot out.

Ouch!

Poor little bird. Its day was going so well, what with that nice piece of bread...

Good to see you had a good day out at my home town last week.

<BB<

Yes Nature red in blood and claw.
bad news for the blackbird, but a needed meal for the hawk.

<BB<
Yes I caught one of the last good day by the looks of it.
Walk was a bit longer than straight along the beach as I diverted up the cliff to see my old school (now closed ), its new replacement built on what was part of the playing fields, and across the county ground past our old house.
Before rejoining the cliff path through Lake and then down to the beach again.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/common-mythconceptions-worlds-most-contagious-falsehoods/

I don't agree with all of these but...

[GDZ]

Which was your old school - Gatten and Lake?
They've done that a lot on the Island, built new schools on the playing fields and sold the old school site 'to improve the school' (not to try and get some money following their dreadfully mismanaged scheme to replace the Island's 3-school system with 2-tier schooling).

<BB<

Gatten and Lake?

Yes that's the one

Happy Birthday to GDZ. He's all old and stuff.

And he'll enjoy you mentioning that But surely, a for GDZ.

Safe travels and enjoy China, Milla. Whereabouts?

Mrs SG V and I, together with two friends, were somewhat in Milla's neck of the woods over the weekend - enjoyed a most beautiful autumn weekend at Kullen. Have a search for Nimis there - somebody created this absolutely huge ... thingumy ... cross between a 3D maze and sculpture is the nearest I can describe it. Amazing!

The business trip is for Suzhou near (in?) Shanghai. I worry about dresscode, and how to behave without inadvertedly being rude...

Nimis is an excellent thing! Tree-house-sculpture-maze, sovereign country and all. Although, the one time I was there, we stopped at the wrong parking, and basically got lost and trekked through uncharted land before we found it. and I was so exhausted I didn't even have the energy to go down to the bottom level... because going back would be a long hike too!

Yeah, there are a lot of height meters both down and up

In China, just be your polite self. They know you're not really going to be able to do Everything Chinese anyway... One thing that always seems to work well, though, is to give and accept business cards using both hands. And not just glancing at the ones you get but read them and then carefully either have them on the table, sorted out, or put them carefully away. They're not to be taken as mere scraps of paper out there

Karl Marx’s Life and Legacy, in a Comic
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/06/marx-nobrow-maier-simon/


A bit more fun than some of his biographers

Sounds fun - does it show him living on the Isle of Wight in Ventnor in 1882-3?

<BB<

Don't know
I've only read the extracts on the web so far...

I would like to use a Monty Python line about not being old but I'm three years past that line so I must be!

Speaking of Marx:

Two men are sunbathing at a nudist colony for intellectuals.

One asks, “I say, have you read Marx?”

“Yes,” replies the other, “it’s these wicker chairs.”

Well, I am certifiably an ethical hacker now. I got the paper that proves it.