GREENYGREY’S RAMBLES

The Greenygrey behaved itself again today.  It waited until I’d completed my long run until arriving in the afternoon.  Maybe you can train a Greenygrey after all?  I had another iridiscent lights experience, but this time it was in water!  I noticed the sky reflection on the canal water had the trademark iridescent lights stripy blue, purple and yellow colours, but when I looked up I couldn’t see them in the sky.  Nice anyway… and different.

I completed a trilogy of articles on how to get the most from television documentaries on Suite 101 yesterday:

How to Learn from Television in the Digital Age
How to Make the Most of Television Documentaries
How to Find More Television Documentaries Info

Health Warning: television documentaries can be addictive and give you square eyes.

I spent three hours in space last night on the StarshipBBC, and have brought back all the latest theories about life and form in space.  So please return tomorrow and I’ll divulge my secret hoard of documentary stardust.

P.S.  Congratulations to Leeds United for the great 4-1 win last night, and hope that means the corner has been turned after the recent poor form.

As you may know by now, while this blog celebrates the great advances made by humanity over its history it also has a Socratian emphasis on questioning just how wise we really are in the great scheme of things.

Horizon: Don’t Grow Old…But You Will 

This week’s Horizon documentary on the BBC looked at scientific efforts to find an elixir to protect us against ageing.

It didn’t bring us news of anything yet available to definitely keep us young, but ran through the possibilities and theories quite entertainingly.

Evidence of a Documentary Providing Infotainment But Nothing Monumental

A lot of people watching will probably have hoped to receive some groundbreaking news about an elixir, but instead we got progress reports on the current science.

However, there were some interesting studies cited: such as the one where old people who’d been dependent on the welfare services were given more independence.  They improved most of their capabilities over a small amount of time.

That kind of empowerment is also the objective of Chipmunka, my book publishers.  I also believe that if people are treated with respect and patience they can perform much better than if they are continuously criticised and pressured.

That is partly why I have now included the Greenygrey on our website biography page.

Have a great weekend!!

Hi, no the heading is not a new punk band, or GG’s playmates, but the stars of last night’s BBC Natural World documentary: Prairie Dogs - Talk of the Town.  It contained both very funny footage, and very important information about their ‘culture’.

The funnies were when Professor Con Slobodchikoff, who has been researching prairie dogs for thirty years, wheeled out a fake coyote and other predators to hear the reaction of the prairie dogs.  Turned out the PDs had a different call for each animal, and passed it on to their young, which is thought to be evidence of a ‘language’.  They also have a call for the all clear, which is like a raucous prairie dog Mexican wave!

Anyway, for an expert view I’ll pass you over to Pablo Orlov, distant prairie dog cousin of Alexandr Orlov, the star of the Compare the Meerkats website:

‘Hello Greezygreyzters, Pablo Orlov here.  Pleez excuz mi Eenglish.  It eez great to be here wiz youz.  Alexandr recently told me he owz loads to the Greezygrey one, and earlier influences such as Scoobzy Doo, as their travels and rise to cebrity status paved zee way for udder anthromorphic stars like Alexandr.

Anyway, of course we prairie dogs can communicate.  Simples.’

Thank you for your expert opinion Pablo, and thanks also to Alexandr for the acknowledgement to GG. 

Last Chance to See is a series of programmes searching for some of the most endangered animals in the world.  The first was about manatees and the second on rhinos.  They are both still watchable from the programme link above.  Tomorrow (Sunday) night it is the aye-aye of Madagascar, and it should be a good programme, as aye-ayes are both strange and cute animals.

New Manatee Poem

They didn’t find any wild manatees on the first programme, and it is such a nice gentle animal that it inspired the following poem, which tries to deal with what I view as a dreadful and worrying situation with a degree of comedy…I hope!

Like most of the extinction problems around the world, it is not maliciousness that is wiping out animal species, just the sheer exponential growth of the human species.

Nice to Eat You Mr and Mrs Manatee

Hello Mr. and Mrs. Manatee,
My name is humanity.
I’m going to be your calamity
for your time on Earth
because your meat pleases me
tastes like beef you see
but you’re very difficult to herd
the very idea is just absurd
what with you under water
you can’t even be heard.
So goodbye Mr Manatee
it was nice eating you.

Watched a couple of good documentaries this week that featured the county I live in, Yorkshire, quite a bit, and passing them on to you here.

They both featured lots of wonderful greenygrey scenery from all over the UK I might just add.

First of all, thanks to  skorealuva for visiting this site and saving my Gurkhas and Al Quaeda blog from last year on http://www.postsaver.org/tags/quaeda

Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant

The first documentary I’m citing was Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant, which you can watch on Channel 4 catch-up until the end of May from the link above.

It looked at the childhood and youth of Henry and had lots of useful bits of info as well as enough plots to keep a melodramatic soap opera going for a while.

Henry, who is probably our most famous monarch, was only second in line, and if it hadn’t been for the death of his older brother, Arthur, through illness the history of Britain would likely have been very different (and probably better in many ways!).

It gives a good clear and concise explanation about how the War of the Roses  between the Houses of York and Lancaster was settled by the marrying of Henry’s parents and Henry’s diplomacy with the nobles of the two houses.

Henry was pretty good up to then, but I predict he goes a bit wayward in upcoming episodes!!

The North-South Divide

The second documentary was Timeshift: The North-South Divide, which is available from the link above.

It was about the north-south divide in the UK, which the programme stated had changed a little due to the London commuter belt moving a little further north, but was still divided by a line roughly from the Severn in the south-west to the Wash in the centre-east.

The divide is economic rather than strictly geographical, with all of Wales in the north despite much of it being more southern geographically than central England.

The divide is not conclusive either, with pockets of wealth in the north (the old spa town of Harrogate in Yorkshire was the main example shown) and struggling areas in the south (Hastings was the main example, which has suffered because of poor transport to London while its neighbours either side of it have prospered).

The divide also seemed to be on outlook as much as economy, with the north caring more about identity while the south was more concerned with trade.

Leeds, where the Greenygrey proudly abides and deals in words, was shown as an example of a northern city with both identity and entrepreneurship.