Friday 28 September 2012

The Bayeux Tapestry

Every Englishman knows which year the Normans invaded. But I'm sure far fewer know the actual date. After all, we're talking about an event that happened nearly 1000 years ago, so what's a day here or there? 


The Battle of Hastings, 14 October 1066
Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know the fateful day fell on September 28 - two days (and 946 years) before my birthday. The place Duke William landed - Pevensey, not Hastings as many people imagine - is not far from where I was born and grew up. Very handy for school trips!


The pesky Normans arrive at Pevensey, 28 September 1066
Even though it happened nearly 1000 years ago, 1066 is indelibly etched on our national consciousness. I suspect a lot of it stems from a lingering resentment about those pesky Frenchies getting one over us. Even though the Normans were as much Viking as French and nearly all of us will have a Norman ancestor or three lurking somewhere down the family tree. I suspect the disconcerting ginger patch in my beard is the ghost of some distant Norman antecedent. And I'm pretty sure our family nose is. I'd like to think it was a nobleman, but no doubt it was just a grubby soldier getting his end away with some poor Anglo-Saxon wench.

The thing I find most remarkable about the Norman Conquest (and its fascinating lead-up) is the way it was all captured in glorious, panoramic technicolor on the Bayeux Tapestry. It's an extraordinary artifact - a hand-stitched account of the key events in the lead up to Duke William's invasion that's nearly 70 metres long and in almost pristine condition. 


Edward the Confessor send Harold, Earl of Wessex, to Normandy
The Tapestry's tale begins in 1064 with the aging English king Edward sending the Earl of Wessex - Harold Godwinson - to Normandy. Common myth still has it that his mission was to confer the crown of England on the Norman Duke William when Edward died, and swear fealty. But neither the Tapestry nor our knowledge of contemporary kingmaking protocol support this. Either way, the mission didn't go according to plan, and Harold ended up being held hostage by the Normans.
Harold swears an oath to William over a casket of holy relics
Somewhere along the line, Harold ends up swearing allegiance to the Norman Duke William and, importantly, his claim to the English throne when Edward died. Silly boy! Soon after his return to Blighty, Edward died and, as the most powerful nobleman in England, Harry ended up bagging the crown. In all the excitement, he forgot his sacred promise to William. But while Harry was busy measuring the curtains in Winchester, on the other side of the Channel William was choking on his onions.
King Harold is crowned
As every good schoolboy will remember, it is at this point that the Tapestry preempts Harry's foolishness. For no sooner had the crown been placed on the young king's head than an omen of doom shot across the sky. It's Halley's comet, on one of its rare visits to the Earth's atmosphere. And, in those suspicious times, a dreadful portent of things to come. At the bottom right of the panel, a fleet of ghostly ships seem to warn of the impending invasion.
The appearance of Halley's comet soon after
was a bad omen
You see, with his heady combination of Continental excitability and the Viking fondness for berserking, William was a poor choice of person to piss off. Within the year he'd rustled up an army and set sail for Sussex. As we now know from Wikipedia, he landed on a deserted beach at Pevensey on 28 September and made his way to nearby Hastings, where he set about building a castle. Harry, meanwhile, was at he other end of the country fighting another would-be contender for the throne, Harald with an 'a'.


William builds a castle at hastings
On hearing of William's invasion, Harry hightailed it back down south. They met at a field (now the town of Battle) just outside Hastings - William's army fresh and well-positioned, Harry's somewhat disheveled and disadvantaged. The tired Englishmen, fighting on foot, were no match for the mounted Normans. 
The mounted Norman soldiers make mincemeat of the English
at the Battle of Hastings
The second to last panel of the Tapestry is probably the most memorable. I'm sure things are rather different nowadays, but when I was a young whippersnapper, the goriest thing I'd seen by the age of nine (when you generally get on to the Normans) was poor King Harold getting an arrow in the eye. 


The money shot: Good King Harry gets it in the eye
SPOILER ALERT: Rather disappointingly, I just found out today that the arrow was only added in the 18th century (albeit in the place of something far older that may have been a lance). According to Wiki, it was common medieval iconography that a perjurer was to die with a weapon through the eye. So, the tapestry might be said to emphasize William's rightful claim to the throne by depicting Harold as an oath breaker. Whether he actually died in this way remains a mystery and is much debated.


Monday 24 September 2012

The Sea Monkey Diaries: Day Seven

10 good reasons why Sea Monkeys are worthy of the Wunderkammer: 

  1. They are born with one eye, and then grow two more
  2. They have been taken into outer space
  3. They can tolerate salinity of up to 250 g/L (around the same as that of the Dead Sea)
  4. They breathe through their 11 pairs of feet
  5. Mating can last for days at a time
  6. Females can reproduce asexually (a phenomenon known as parthenogenesis)
  7. Even more interestingly, it is meiotic parthenogenesis, the only form of asexual reproduction that permits the continuous production of advantageous combinations of genes
  8. If a pregnant Sea-Monkey dies with viable ovoviviparous eggs (where eggs hatch inside the mother) the embryo Sea-Monkeys will still continue to develop until they are born alive (a rare phenomenon known as necroviviparity 
  9. Male Sea Monkeys don't have testicles
  10. A group of Sea-Monkeys is called a "squall.

For more fun facts about Sea Monkeys, visit:


Thursday 20 September 2012

The Sea Monkey Diaries: Day Three

Danny and I are now the proud parents of at least two baby Sea Monkeys! They're so ridiculously small that I missed my 8am meeting desperately trying to differentiate 'offspring' from 'food'.




Anyway, given that it's almost certainly the closest either of us will ever get to fatherhood, we're celebrating (with cheap Pinot and canned cassoulet!)



More photos to come. Ha! Finally a chance to take my revenge on all the ultrasound scans and goggle-eyed baby pics my breeder friends have subjected me to over the years :-p






Wednesday 19 September 2012

The Sea Monkey Diaries: Day Two



Well, yesterday's packet-ripping action was a hard act to follow, but I actually think today's Sea Monkey fun was even more exciting...

To recap, we have "founded the colony" and purified the water to create a happy home for our new pets. Today we get to add the sachet labelled "Instant Live Eggs".

"Instant Live Eggs" AKA "Brine Shrimp Cysts"

Sea Monkey engineer Harold von Braunhunt was never one to shun an attractive euphemism. And who could blame him - even the least entrepreneurial among us would appreciate that you're far less likely to sell a schoolboy a packet of "Brine Shrimp Cysts" than "Instant Live Eggs"!



Brine shrimps are one of the few invertebrates able to enter a state of suspended animation in which the metabolic processes of the cell are slowed down and the cell ceases all activities like feeding and locomotion. This process - called encystment - enables the shrimp to survive for long periods in unfavourable environmental conditions, such as when its salt pan homes completely dry out. When the encysted shrimp finds itself back in a happy place, the cyst wall breaks down by a process known as excystation.


Coming up...

We now have three or four nail-biting days where we can't do much more than sit back and wait as our brave new world unfolds. Keep following, folks!


Monday 17 September 2012

The Sea Monkey Diaries: Day One


Yesterday, Danny found an unopened Sea Monkey set I gave him last christmas. To be honest, I think it got forgotten in the excitement of snorkeling among far larger sea-beasts of the Poor Knights Islands. Anyway, whatever the reason, we decided the time had come to awaken our sleeping Sea Monkeys... 



What the #@$& are Sea Monkeys?

Well, for a start they're not monkeys. Which is rather obvious, but still highly disappointing. They're also in no way marine. Which makes the whole Sea Monkey thing something of a sham. Yet they've been a popular toy for kids (of all ages) since the 1950s and no-one really seems to mind that they're actually a rather grotesque and practically microscopic shrimp that spends the entirety of its brief existence swimming around in extremely salty puddles!

Brine shrimp (Artemia monica)
from Mono Lake ©djpmapleferryman
The scientific name for the Sea Monkey is Artemia nyos. The nyos part is an acronym of New York Ocean Science. You see, Sea Monkeys are not only a registered trademark - they're a completely artificial breed! They were created by American Harold von Braunhut in 1957, in the middle of a nationwide craze for ant farms. 



Day One: Creating A Happy Home

Like great big kids with god-complexes, we set about bringing our little underwater kingdom to life. Day one is spent "colony building", i.e filling the tank with tepid water, and adding the 'water purifier' (which actually includes Sea Monkey eggs and food too). Tomorrow, we add the "Instant Life Eggs". I'm almost too excited to sleep! 


If you just can't wait for the next installment, you can spoil the surprise by visiting the Official Sea Monkey Website.

 

Tuesday 11 September 2012

In a word: Hibernaculum



hi·ber·nac·u·lum

[hahy-ber-nak-yuh-luhm] noun, plural hi·ber·nac·u·la  [-luh]
  1. a protective case or covering, especially for winter, as of an animal or a plant bud.
2. winter quarters, as of a hibernating animal.


A snake hibernaculum in London
via www.wired.com
I've often wished I were a hibernating creature. OK, never a snake to be fair. But certainly a bear or a beaver or some beast that can justifiably hide away and sleep for three or four months every year. I have even planned my perfect hibernaculum. It would be womb-like and well-stocked with midnight snacks. At the centre would be a vast bed; a cozy sea of cushions and pillows and blankets. It would have elements of a Bedouin tent or a yurt. There would certainly be lanterns; each emitting a warm, red light. But only when I wanted. You see, despite the hibernaculum's superficial primitiveness it would, of course, be magically-programmed to respond to my every need.

Once enveloped in the carefree embrace of this nest, the outside world would effectively cease to exist. Lotophagus-like, I would slumber in blissful ignorance until such time as I was bored. Then I would throw the windows of my hibernaculum open, and let in the sounds and smells of spring. 

Yes yes, hardly the true ursine experience. And I should probably never try heroin...

A bear emerging from its hibernaculum
via http://rinklyrimes.blogspot.co.nz/
Anyway, escapist fantasies aside, for many creatures enforced hibernation is the only way to see out the winter. And more often than not, it is a far from solitary experience. Take the red-sided garter snake, which hibernates in a great seething ball. One colony, in Manitoba, is estimated to be 30,000-strong!


©Olivier Blaise
At the other end of the cuteness scale, Alpine marmots spend up to nine months in hibernation. That's too much time in bed even for me!


Via thelocal.de

Anyway, all this talk of hibernacula is making me sleepy...

Sunday 9 September 2012

Red anemones


anemone (n.) 

Flowering plant genus, 1550s, from M.Fr. anemone (16c.) and directly from L. anemone, from Gk. anemone "wind flower," lit. "daughter of the wind," from anemos "wind" (cognate with L. anima; see animus) + -one feminine patronymic suffix.


© Alan Dicks, 2012
I bought this bunch of blood-red anemones yesterday for $5, from a great little dairy (newsagents) on Glenmore Street. It has a crazy selection of cut flowers, especially for a tiny dairy (which, incidentally, is two doors down from another which is almost exactly the same). Lilies. Irises. Orchids. Arums. Narcissi. And these wonderful anemones.

© Alan Dicks, 2012
I found out today that (for rather obvious reasons) they're called poppy anemones. They're also known as Spanish marigolds and anemone de Caen. Their Latin name, Anemone coronaria, presumably refers to their attractive ruff of leaves just below the flowers. While red appears to be the original colour, they now come in an array of primaries and pastels. They're easy to grow, and most nurseries will sell the de Caen hybrids. 

De Caen hybrids
The double-flowered varieties always strike me as a bit blowzy, but the singles are stunning. The red ones are particularly handsome. And they look great next to Danny's red retro lamp. I particularly love their simplicity (the buttercup family to which they belong is one of the world's most primitive); their unapologetically bold colouring; and their stiff, sinuous stems. It's just a shame about the name. It's not that anemone is an unpleasant word. But like 'thief' and 'championing', it's one I really struggle to pronounce. Perhaps I should start using the old vernacular name 'wind flower' instead?

A. coronaria in the wild (Shokeda forest, Israel)
© Zachi Evenor
Like buttercups, anemones grow in vast colonies. It's easy to see why the anemone fields of the Negev desert are famous. Their north European cousins are less vibrant, but certainly no less attractive. The springs of my childhood were spent in the anemone-carpeted woods of Kent. In early March, long before the bluebells were out, the forest floor would become white with wood anemones. I miss them a lot...

Wood anemones (A. nemorosa)at Milstead, Kent
© Alan Dicks, 2010

Friday 7 September 2012

Painted Wolf

Review of Painted Wolf by Pearl Fiction (2012)

Former Zeigeist band member Per Störby (AKA Pearl Fiction) is so damn hot off the press he doesn't even have an entry on Wikipedia. In fact, there's precious little about him online at all. Which is all rather surprising because his debut album - Painted Wolf - did come out in January. And it's bloody brilliant! 



Painted Wolf opens with "Run" - dance-y, deliciously darkwave electropop and infused with a wonderfully catchy sea shanty-like bass. It's a well-chosen opening track, nicely setting the tone of the album.

The second track, "Ritual" wouldn't be out of place on a Cut Copy album - it is pure Nu-Disco - funky, fun, and quite a big departure from his earlier work. 

It took me a while to get "Insomnia", but now it has become one of my favourite tracks on the album. The gravelly, menacing voice that annouces this track soon gives way to chirpy OMD-styles synths and a colourful chorus sung in canon. The result is a perfectly-rendered impression of the kaleidoscopic delirium that comes from sleep deprivation.



Track four, "Talking Seems To Fade Away", is irrepressibly bouncy, even though it seems to be talking about relationship breakdowns. Stylistically, it reminds me a lot of Empire of the Sun and other Aussie indietronica outfits. Which is certainly no bad thing.



"Stories From A Purple Soul" is one of my favourite tracks ontghe album. If you like The xx you'll like this. It has a lot of elements I hear in some of the poppier Zeigeist tracks

The title track, "Painted Wolf" is the danciest and most accessible on the album. It's classic indietronica. Very similar to Cut Copy, but with elements of darkwave and just the tinest hint of Italo Disco in the drums.



"The Ruby Fever" is catchy, funky indietronica that brings to mind fellow Scandos Annie and Miike Snow. As does "This is not the end". Neither is a favourite track, but they're fun and thoroughly accessible.

If I had to chose a favourite track on the album, it would be "Strangulated". It's the closet Pearl Fiction gets to Zeigeist - in fact, it would fit seamlessly into The Jade Motel. Haunting synths and a melody that reminds me of David Bowie's China Girl.

After the dark, dreamy "Strangulated" pop-y, funky "If You Wanna" was the last thing I wanted. But despite my initial disappointment at the change in tempo, it's catchy, feel-good and fun. Not a bad way to end the album on at all.

Oh, and in case you haven't already noticed, he's rather cute too!
Via themusicsnobmilitia.blogspot.com 

Overall, I'd say the album is far more accessible than The Jade Motel and generally lighter and funkier. If you like Australian-style indietronica, you will love it. If you're looking for the same hit you get off Zeigeist - the cold, industrial, space-y synths and dark, dramatic melodies you may be a little disappointed. It's not that they're missing entirely from Painted Wolf - they're just diluted with a lot of the lighter elements of electropop. 

Anyway, this is my first attempt at an album review. It has been a lot more work than I thought, and I've lost count of the times I've listened to the album over the past three days. The fact that I' still not bored of it is a good testament to how good it is! I'm very surprised there aren't more reviews of Painted Wolf out there - I'd be really keen to hear what other people think of it.


More on Pearl Fiction


Tuesday 4 September 2012

Aye-aye

According to local legends, the aye-aye is a demon that can kill just by pointing a finger. That fact alone makes it a worthy addition to the Wunderkammer. However, the aye-aye's more prosaic characteristics are equally fascinating...

Close-up of baby Aye-aye
via Factzoo.com
Like much of Madagascar's flora and fauna, it is found nowhere else on Earth. They are the largest nocturnal primate in the world. Although it is classified as a lemur, it has continually-growing incisors like rodents and uses bat-like echolocation to find its prey. It occupies the ecological niche elsewhere filled by woodpeckers (of which there are none in Madagascar) and, most remarkably of all, hangs upside down to have sex!

© Natural History Museum, London
Its fabled "fingers of doom" are actually sophisticated tools which, like some arboreal Gagoolthe aye-aye methodically taps tree trunks to seek out grubs. This great video from National Geographic shows the aye-aye in action..  





The thriving folklore around the aye-eye is also one of the main reasons its numbers are in steady decline. In 1933 scientists thought it was extinct, but it was rediscovered in 1957. Unfortunately, many Malagasy still continue to persecute them, not only because of deep-seated superstitions but because they supplement their diet of grubs with farmers' fruit and veg. Also, as is the case in much of the tropics, Madagascar's forests are being felled at an alarming rate.

I have naturalist Gerald Durrell to thank for first introducing me to the aye-aye. During his later life, he was instrumental in aye-aye conservation, setting up an important captive breeding population and working with the Malagasy government and people to  ensure a future for this most curious creature of the night.

Find out more about the aye-aye and how you can help:





Saturday 1 September 2012

Passenger pigeon

In the 1870s, the passenger pigeon was one of the commonest birds in the world. By 1 September 1914, it was extinct.

J.G. Hubbard, 1898 via Wisconsin Historical Society
You might well ask how could this happen. The answer, as it so often is with these things, is us. In very simple terms, we killed and ate them into extinction. Of course, there is usually more than one contributing factor to an extinction. In the passenger pigeon's case, habitat loss also played its part. But it would be fair to say that human greed in one form or another was entirely responsible for the complete annihilation of a most extraordinary bird.

John Audubon, 1824
Extraordinary, you say? But it's just a pigeon. A rather pretty pigeon, if Audubon's illustration is anything to go by (which, of course it is), but still a pigeon.

In fact, the incredible thing about the passenger pigeon was not its appearance. It was the mind-boggling numbers it flocked in. One report from Canada in 1866 described a flock of pigeons one mile wide, 300 miles long, and taking 14 hours to pass a single point. The estimated number of birds in this one flock was 3.5 BILLION!

A shooting party

With numbers like that, you can excuse a hungry pioneer bagging a few birds for the pot. But humans don't like to do things by halves. We have a singular inability to take just what we need. By the mid-1800s, there was a lucrative commercial pigeon meat industry up and running, with millions of birds being killed and processed every year. According to Wikipedia, slaves and servants in 18th and 19th century America often saw no other meat. In 1878 at Petoskey, Michigan, 50,000 birds were killed each day for nearly five months.

H. T. Phillips' Store, a typical game store of the 1870s
by William Butts Mershon
This grotesque industry continued until the mid 1890s, by which time the passenger pigeon had all but disappeared. Various conservation attempts and closed seasons failed. Too late, zoologists realised the birds could not breed successfully in smaller groups - they were so gregarious that they needed to be in huge flocks to initiate courtship and mating.

Martha, the last ever passenger pigeon
via http://godwin.bobanna.com
On this day, 98 years ago, the last known Passenger Pigeon, died in Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha (after America's first First Lady). Her body was frozen into a block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian Institution, where it was skinned, dissected, photographed and mounted. An inglorious end to a species that once dominated the skies of the eastern USA.

Of course, the story of the passenger pigeon is a very familiar one, not least here in New Zealand where over 50% of native bird species have gone extinct since human settlement. Whether it was the giant, flightless moa, eaten into extinction by Polynesian settlers, or the hauntingly-voiced huia hunted out of existence because an English king 20,000 miles away once wore its tail feather in his hat, humans have had an unbelievably devastating impact on our fellow creatures and the places they live.

What is, perhaps, most remarkable about all this is that we have hunted a five billion-strong species into oblivion in a matter of decades and still haven't learned from our mistake! Ever ashamed to be human?

Find out more about the passenger pigeon here:



Help to make sure this doesn't happen again here:










Monday 13 August 2012

Killer cone snail

I'm probably tempting fate by posting this three days before I jet off to Rarotonga for a snorkeling holiday, but I just read a fascinating feature in the National Geographic on Dangerous and Deadly Sea Creatures, which include the beautiful and benign-looking textile cone snail.   


Conus textilus © De Agostini/Getty Images
You would never guess to look at it, but it is one of the most venomous creatures on Earth. In fact, according to Wikipedia, it was even used as a murder weapon in an episode of Hawaii Five-O! You see, like all cone snail species, it is equipped with a battery of toxic harpoon-like teeth propelled from an extendable proboscis. These can fire in any direction, even backwards, and easily penetrate gloves or wetsuits.

When it comes to the poison department, these shellfish mean business. Another name for particularly pretty geography cone of the Indo-Pacific is the "cigarette shell". And not because it's white and brown. Get yourself harpooned by this little four-incher, and you'll only live long enough to smoke a cigarette. Given that there's not even an antidote, I'd probably want something a bit stronger than a cigarette! 


Conus geographus © Didier Descouens
The secret to staying safe is apparently to not pick them up (or piss off the wrong Hawaiian!) So I'll be quashing my magpie instinct when I'm out on the reef, and enjoy these beauties from a safe distance.

Here are some more killer cones...




From top to bottom: striated cone, vexillium cone and marble cone 



Sunday 12 August 2012

Julia Davis

Julia Davis has such an exquisite sense of pathos that I think to fully-enjoy her, a strong sado-masochistic streak is essential

The sadist in you will derive cathartic pleasure from the creative and unrelenting misery and indignity she subjects her (often unsympathetic) victims to. The masochist will then spend the next few hours wondering if you are a bad person to have laughed so loudly. Basically, you will wince and cringe and curl your toes...and enjoy every second of it.





Part of the reason I chose Davis to be the first comedian in my Wunderkammer is this great article in the Guardian. I particularly enjoyed it because it gives a very frank insight into what drives her to plumb the very darkest depths of the human psyche. It seems her fascination for what she describes as "wrong relationships" is her natural sensitivity to life's cruelties. 


In the best comic tradition, Davis' villains - and the scenarios they find themselves in - are absurd amplifications of reality. Trying to find the good in them is futile - these are unambiguously despicable people. Even so, they are still complex enough to avoid being clumsy pastiches. I think one reason for this is that her victims can generally be seen as complicit in their abuse. Take Nighty Night's Cathy: an insipid, hopelessly naive doormat who is too painfully polite to stand up to neighbour - and narcissistic sociopath - Jill. These willing victims were gloriously abundant in her earlier series, Human Remains, which she co-wrote with the equally pathos-attuned Rob Brydon. The excruciatingly submissive Pete in "An English Squeak", for example, and the tragic Michelle in "All Over My Glasses". However cruel the villain is, there is a certain sadistic satisfaction at watching them play with their quarry.

I'd be interested to hear your take on Julia Davis. Does she make you long for more, or just leave you cold? If you never seen her, this scene from Nighty Night will give you a good idea of what you're missing.