Friday 10 Nov 2023
This NEWS feed is hereby discontinued.
There will be a daily post on the front page instead. Blogging in this way will be more visible to casual visitors to the site.
This NEWS page is technically redundant, there being no good reason to have two separate blog feeds for general news where one will suffice.
Thursday 9 Nov 2023
The Silent People of Suomussalmi.
Memorial? Protest? Or Art? The artist won’t say.
Wednesday 8 Nov 2023
The Apollo moon landing was real, but NASA’s quarantine procedure was not. New study shows that it didn’t do a very good job of protecting us from “aliens” in the form of microbes.
Tuesday 7 Nov 2023
There are a lot of arguments going on in the world for which I don’t know the rights and wrongs. But I do know I won’t be drinking Tsingtao beer ever again after this one.
Monday 6 Nov 2023
The Blue Boar M1 services at Watford Gap is the oldest motorway service station in Britain. Unlovely though it is, it will bring a tear to the eye of the motoring older generation when it is demolished.
Sunday 5 Nov 2023
Can world leaders regulate AI before it’s too late?
Recall how Britain regulated powered vehicles “before it was too late” – the Red Flag Act (1865).
Saturday 4 Nov 2023
New research describes how a kilonova explosion triggered by colliding neutron stars could eradicate life on Earth for thousands of years.
Ho-ho! Thinking about that is like worrying you might have cancer while falling off a cliff.
Friday 3 Nov 2023
How many people have died in space?
Thursday 2 Nov 2023
What really affects whether bees will swarm? Magical spells? Well… what then?
Kritsky is an expert on the history of beekeeping, though his research has also covered topics from dinosaurs to Darwin. “I have worked on periodical cicadas as one of my primary areas, and you’ve got to do something in between those 17 years.”
Wednesday 1 Nov 2023
Is this an Australian salt lake or a ‘Beating Heart Laid Bare’?
Tuesday 31 Oct 2023
Area 51, Aliens, and the Truth (It’s Out There)… a national security historian explains what’s really going on at the infamous Nevada site.
…sorry, did I say aliens?
Monday 30 Oct 2023
Police in Orem, Utah, would like to make it clear that neither they, nor you, can legally shoot random clowns.
Sunday 29 Oct 2023
Distressed to see my old home town of Hastings in this state. Priory Meadow shopping centre was built over the old cricket ground, which has been prone to flooding at extra-high tides for as long as I remember.
There was some question at the time whether this made it an unsuitable site for a shopping centre. But being so central it was too tempting a prospect for developers to worry about a little thing like that.
Saturday 28 Oct 2023
Maslin: this nearly lost ancient grain tradition could be the future of farming.
Friday 27 Oct 2023
Remembering When America Banned Sliced Bread.
Thursday 26 Oct 2023
THE ONLY ONE who has been unjust to me is the one to whose brother I have been unjust.
Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam (1926)
Wednesday 25 Oct 2023
How the OneCoin “crypto-queen” stole billions from investors.
Tuesday 24 Oct 2023
Monday 23 Oct 2023
When I used the term “garden” [Friday 20 Oct 2023] I meant a traditional forest garden as described in this article.
Sunday 22 Oct 2023
The ghosts in the machine: how your PC depends on long-gone pioneering companies.
Saturday 21 Oct 2023
Berlusconi’s worthless art is proving a headache to his heirs. “He knew what he was buying was worthless” says Cesare Lampronti, a London-based art dealer.
La Repubblica is no friend of the populist oligarch. According to the paper, Berlusconi’s heirs are finding that the enormous collection is a cumbersome burden. The warehouse housing the art costs around €800,000 a year to run. Woodworm has already destroyed part of the collection. In some cases, the cost of exterminating the pests exceeds the value of the paintings.
Friday 20 Oct 2023
Laser mapping reveals hidden structures in the Amazon – with hints at thousands more.
It adds growing support to the proposition that the Amazon is not pristine wilderness, but a substantially populated garden, thousands of years old, that has gone wild in the last 400 years.
Thursday 19 Oct 2023
The Collectors Who Hunt Down Radioactive Glassware.
Wednesday 18 Oct 2023
This magnificent pile was built by the founder of the Toronto Electric Light Company in 1883.
He went bankrupt in 1920 and had to sell up.
Tuesday 17 Oct 2023
Japan Airlines lays on extra plane after sumo wrestlers make aircraft too heavy to fly.
Monday 16 Oct 2023
Quote: A gigantic statue of comic book hero Joe Palooka stands in the little town of Oolitic, Indiana. It seems incongruous today as hardly anyone remembers Joe Palooka…
Well, I remember Joe Palooka and his comic strip from my childhood days.
Sunday 15 Oct 2023
Félicette (1963), the first cat in space, has at last got a proper memorial.
Knowing all about cruel experiments on cats, Spookie would approve.
Saturday 14 Oct 2023.
The bride saved up for 20 years to wed… herself.
The idea has its points. But if you’re embarrassed to be always referring to “my wife” – a sex-change isn’t going to help much.
Plus a breakup could be pretty disastrous.
And what about custody of the children?
Friday 13 Oct 2023
Mannakin Hall. This 20-foot mountain is made up of some 15,000 scrap mannequins.
Thu 12 Oct 2023
The World’s Smallest Drawbridge is 400 years old.
Clearly they don’t have a lot of marauders.
Wed 11 Oct 2023
The World’s Smallest Skyscraper is in Texas, would you believe?
Tue 10 Oct 2023
Advance notice of a poetry/history/old English event with spoken word, music and book promotion by Bob Beagrie and supported by Rowena Somerville from Baytown.
RUNE VISIONS, Flowergate Hall, Whitby, Saturday 18 November 2023, starts 7:30 PM, Entrance £4.
Mon 9 Oct 2023
Did they really mean it to look like a chicken?
Sun 8 Oct 2023
The Great Stalacpipe Organ of Luray Caverns.
Makes music by hammers that gently strike selected stalactites in the extensive caves.
Sat 7 Oct 2023
The room of 10,000 ancient skulls, going back to 12,000 BCE.
Fri 6 Oct 2023
The trouble with all these self-drive cars is that they just might!
Thu 5 Oct 2023
This is the grave of Bert Barrett’s left arm.
The rest of him lived another 61 years and was buried elsewhere.
Wed 4 Oct 2023
In the northernmost city in the world, it’s illegal to be buried because it’s too cold for bodies to decompose.
Tue 3 Oct 2023
Mon 2 Oct 2023
An author is shocked to find AI ripoffs of his book being sold on Amazon.
Sun 1 Oct 2023
‘When I told Americans I was Canadian, they used to say, “Oh, do you live in an igloo?”‘
Sat 30 Sep 2023
I’d have thought the sight of a huge martini-swilling pink elephant outside a liquor store would be more admonitory than enticing.
Fri 29 Sep 2023
Bear attacks in Japan have been rising at an alarming rate, so the city of Takikawa installed a robot wolf as a deterrent.
Thu 28 Sep 2023
Been pondering human-computer interfaces via brain implants… this article about a legal spat in the chess world makes me wonder if we haven’t been viewing the whole thing from the wrong end.
Wed 27 Sep 2023
This enormous monument is one of the most iconic structures in Tokyo, rudely nicknamed “The Golden Turd.”
Tue 26 Sep 2023
The Camera Obscura in Bristol, near the Clifton Suspension Bridge, is an amazing bit of scientific history from 1828, open to the public. A completely non-electronic “security camera” projects views of the surrounding area onto a circular screen in a darkened room.
Mon 25 Sep 2023
Indian Hills – will it ever stop?
If money doesn’t grow on trees why do banks have branches?
Sun 24 Sep 2023
The Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg paid Danish artist Jens Haaning kr532,549 for two commissioned pictures.
They received two blank canvases entitled Take the money and run!
Sat 23 Sep 2023
BBC News item: Lincolnshire woman wakes up with Welsh accent.
The Swedes say of Danish: it’s not a language, it’s a throat condition.
Do we now have to say of Welsh: It’s not an accent, it’s a brain condition?
Fri 22 Sep 2023
Chocolate teacakes inflate in an interesting way if you take them up in a jet fighter. But they can also explode – getting them banned as a flight hazard.
Thu 21 Sep 2023
Al Gore (remember him? – he nearly became president of the USA) tears into the fossil fuel industry and the oil countries.
Wed 20 Sep 2023
Antarctic sea-ice at ‘mind-blowing’ low alarms experts.
Is there anything of my mind left to blow?
The experts have been warning us this was coming for over 65 years! Since 1958, when C David Keeling of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography started taking carbon dioxide readings at Mauna Loa, we’ve known this would happen and have had plenty of time to make sure it wouldn’t.
I feel like a man who’s fallen off a 65 storey building. The ground’s been so long in coming I’ve begun to wonder if perhaps the whole thing hasn’t been a little overblown.
Tue 19 Sep 2023
Thank you, Indian Hills…
I got my wife a new fridge. Her face lit up when she opened it!
Mon 18 Sep 2023
Remember the devastating Cumbre Vieja eruption on La Palma, Canary Islands in 2021? No, of course you don’t. A lot has happened since.
And even though thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed, not a single life was lost. La Palma is not Libya.
The lava has now cooled down enough to go exploring the vast network of lava tubes beneath it. But it’s nowhere near cold.
Sun 17 Sep 2023
Null Island – a sort of Peter-Pan place where all the lost boys end up.
Yes, it really exists.
Sat 16 Sep 2023
That good old standby: Indian Hills Community Center:
Do gun manuals have a troubleshooting section?
Fri 15 Sep 2023
Today I received this flyer (pictured) from The Woodland Trust:
Show politicians the importance of your local trees with an ancient tree scarf.
Help convince your elected representative that old trees deserve legal protection to keep them safe for the future. By “dressing” locally significant trees in handcrafted scarves we can spread the word about just how important Living Legends are.
What message will that send your “elected representative”? That Woodland Trust people are battier than he could have imagined? They not only hug trees, they knit scarves for them. They mother them!
…And why not?
Does a tree have a mother – to cherish him and knit scarves for him – if it’s not Mother Earth?
And isn’t she our mother too?
Which child of yours would you cherish? The one that lives for a thousand years or two and nourishes the surrounding land?
Or the one that lives a hundred years at most, multiplies out of control, plunders, wastes and poisons the land, not to mention the sea and the air, and chops down the thousand-year-old child as of no consequence?
Thu 14 Sep 2023
Yorkshire Building Society has teamed up with Citizens Advice Bureau, to handle advice appointments in the YBS Whitby Branch (19 Flowergate). See the link for details and appointment times.
Wed 13 Sep 2023
Extreme weather has always been a feature of the Burning Man festival, from desert heat to duststorms. But this year’s burn was a washout, with flash floods turning the alkali playa to wet cement. Is it time the partying has to stop?
Tue 12 Sep 2023
The first computer bug was an actual insect: a moth trapped in one of the relays of an early computer.
More firsts: Admiral Grace Hopper (who found the bug) was the US Navy’s first woman admiral. She invented what was to become the first machine-independent computer language: COBOL.
Mon 11 Sep 2023
Thank you Brian Bilston for the first published poem written by an AS (=Artificial Stupidity).
Sun 10 Sep 2023
The dark hobbies of the Prince: the Anatomical Machines of Cappella Sansevero.
Sat 9 Sep 2023
Report to police of a ritual mass murder in Chapel St Leonards was only a yoga class doing Shavasana.
Fri 8 Sep 2023
“Saved by a Whale’s Tail” — what a fluke!
Thu 7 Sep 2023
More from Indian Hills…
My new stair lift is just driving me up the wall.
Wed 6 Sep 2023
Galileo’s middle finger has been preserved in a reliquary.
Was this supposed to enshrine his antipathy to the Church?
Tue 5 Sep 2023
If a Fly Lands in Your Drink, Should You Still Drink It?
Mon 4 Sep 2023
…toilets will glow and you won’t have to take your panties off.
Sun 3 Sep 2023
Burning Man festival-goers trapped in desert as rain turns site to mud.
Sat 2 Sep 2023
Health alarm as tide of rotting seaweed chokes UK holiday beaches.
The Kent area also suffers from nutrient enrichment of coastal waters due to sewage discharge as well as agricultural run-off.
Fri 1 Sep 2023
Muffler Men – big plastic retro advertising figures near gas stations in the USA.
Thu 31 Aug 2023
It won its title by a heroic decision of the whole village to quarantine itself during an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1665. Three-quarters of the village died.
Wed 30 Aug 2023
Tue 29 Aug 2023
Forget that stroll in the sunny countryside – how about a bit of bog-snorkelling?
Mon 28 Aug 2023
During daylight hours hippos pretend to be vegan. But before the advent of infra-red cameras, nobody could see what they do in the dark.
Sun 27 Aug 2023
A transporter carrying a fleet of luxury cars overturned on a main road in Kent.
I’m sitting here weeping hot bitter tears. Each one of those marvellous cars could have been sold for a fat profit to a happy proud owner.
Sat 26 Aug 2023
The Monument of the Third Angel, in Chernobyl, Ukraine, honors those who lost their lives, homes and communities in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
The name of the monument is a biblical reference (besides being the name of the nuclear plant, chernobyl is also a type of local wormwood):
And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from Heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
Revelations 8:10-11
Fri 25 Aug 2023
Indian Hills forever!
Tried calling the tinnitus helpline. No answer – just kept ringing.
Thu 24 Aug 2023
The abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine.
The new amusement park was due to be opened on May Day, 1986. But three days earlier, something bad happened.
Wed 23 Aug 2023
The bluest bioluminescence in the insect world.
Tue 22 Aug 2023
To Southern enslavers, the Underground Railroad was the ultimate conspiracy. There was even a “medical” term for the desire to escape from slavery: drapetomania.
Mon 21 Aug 2023
A bridge to nowhere… The Infinite Bridge.
Sun 20 Aug 2023
Why can’t we have interesting bridges like this?
Sat 19 Aug 2023
How long could you survive in space without a spacesuit?
The short answer is: not very long. 10 seconds before you mercifully lose consciousness.
Fri 18 Aug 2023
This place looks as if it might have been fun once.
Thu 17 Aug 2023
Tradition has it these are Don Quixote’s Windmills.
Wed 16 Aug 2023
Indian Hills again…
Old Skiers go downhill fast
Tue 15 Aug 2023
Why do lions have manes?
Mon 14 Aug 2023
Colorado River: where has all the water gone? Enough snow has fallen on the mountains…
Sun 13 Aug 2023
Orcas and humans once hunted together in southeastern Australia, until their millennia-old relationship broke down.
Guess whose fault that was!
Sat 12 Aug 2023
The New York Federal Gold Vault: the largest concentration of gold anywhere, ever.
Fri 11 Aug 2023
(Resting)
Thu 10 Aug 2023
(Is this some sort of political commentary?)
3-9 Aug 2023
(Resting)
Wed 2 Aug 2023
Do you know this woman? It’s a good guess a great-great-great grandparent of hers was Neanderthal.
Tue 1 Aug 2023
For older NEWS items see:
WWG NEWS is edited by Ian Clark
Whitby Writers Group 