Feedly vs WordPress Reader

I’m still having all manner of grief with WP Reader, so I’m gradually migrating everybody over to Feedly, which is replacing Google Reader as it’s phased out.

It takes time, and I’m a klutz, so I may not be reading as much or as many of you as i like over the next few days.

It’s nothing personal if I miss you.

How to see in the dark

Tags

angler fish, baleen whales, bioluminescence, catseyes, fireflies, GlowSticks, krill, light

This is a bit of a cheat. I try to blog a day in advance, but of course yesterday was Monday, the day after maid’s day off, so I had to write Monday’s blog, then my next blog. For reasons that will become clear tomorrow, I had to write Wednesday’s blog yesterday as well as Monday’s, which meant that Tuesday’s blog, ie the one for today, got neglected. So I had to drag Tuesday’s blog, today’s, out of the B Warehouse, which is where I store blogs I’ve written but not yet blogged. I do hope that’s all clear.

Sad to relate, you can’t see in the dark. To see, you require light. But there are some interesting ways of finding this requirement. By a strange coincidence somebody put a post up on Facebook a few of days ago about angler fish. These ugly little suckers attract their prey by means of a ‘fishing rod,’ a bodily protuberance that has a lure on it. In deep dark waters, the lure luminesces, and prey are attracted by the light. Then they get eaten.

What was odd was that, when the post rolled in, I happened to be looking for some information on luciferases, since I thought this might make an interesting blogpost. Spooky, eh?

Luciferases are enzymes found in bioluminescent organisms that allow them to turn metabolic energy into light without any heat being evolved. There’s more than one, depending on the source. That found in fireflies is similar to that found in click beetles. In turn it’s different from those found in sea pansies, or bacteria, or dinoflagellates, or marine copepods. That’s odd too. Lots of ways of achieving the same evolutionary aim. You’d think it was wasteful, but Nature thinks it’s a damned good idea, this parallel evolution malarkey.

Copepods are little crustaceans, a bit like but not the same as krill (staple diet of the baleen whales as I’m sure you are aware,) and their luciferases are a bit different from those found elsewhere. They’re actively secreted and don’t remain inside the synthesising organism. That means you can do lots of different tests on copepod luciferases from the same organism because you don’t need to mash it up. Most of the glow in the wake of a ship at night, or in waves breaking on a beach, comes from copepods, but there’s some from other things such as jellyfish.

I knew all of this because at university I did a literature research project on luciferases. This was before I got sidetracked onto training goldfish http://wp.me/p2C8Zz-vu. It still fascinates me all these considerable years later.

Then I got to thinking about GlowSticks, so beloved of urban warrior ravers, and indeed of professionals needing light without heat, such as in areas where there may be pockets of inflammable gas or vapours and you really don’t want any danger of a spark from anything electrical. Deep sea divers use them too. Do they work the same way, I wondered? Well, yes and no.

Both bioluminescence and GlowSticks rely on the oxidation of a molecule. In animals this is a flavine of some description, of a group called luciferins, and they will not oxidise without a luciferase enzyme. They emit photons as the oxidise, hence the glow. (It’s a bit more complex than that, but I’ll not bore you.) In a GlowStick, you drop a couple of Es and then you break the glass capsule in the plastic tube before you start pulling shapes and yelling ‘Aceeeedddd!’, just before being hospitalised for hyperthermia and dehydration. When you break the capsule, you release some hydrogen peroxide into the tube containing a phenyl oxalate ester (no, don’t ask, you really do not want to know,) and the ester oxidises. It fires off photons as it does so, but sadly these are not in the visible spectrum. They have to interact with a fluorescent dye, which absorbs the photons and re-emits them at a visible wavelength, just like a high vis safety jacket. The colour of the fluorescent dye determines what colour it glows.

Mildly interesting snippet. If you activate a GlowStick and pop it in your freezer, it will stop glowing. Bring it out and let it warm up, it will start glowing again. But only till the reagents are exhausted. Then it’s all over. It’s a dead GlowStick. Awwwww.

One last point. A cat’s eyes do not glow in the dark. They glow in very dim light because the retina is partly reflective, and the light bounces around inside the eye so the cat can make the most of this precious hunting resource. It doe mean their visual acuity isn’t great, but there’s a price to pay for everything. A cat’s eyes do not glow in the dark, hence you can’t find a black cat in a dark cellar, a proverbially difficult task.

How not to get killed by a hippopotamus

Tags

Artiodactylae, gestation, hippoporamus, pagga, survival, sweating bolld, urban collective

Statistically, if you’re on the African subcontinent, you’re more likely to die in an attack by a hippo than by any other animal. They’re mean muthas.

Firstly, they’re big. A full grown large (or common) hippo enters the ring at a fighting weight of up to 4 tons. Even the pygmy hippo is a substantial 600 lbs fully grown. That’s a big pygmy, no? Interestingly, hippos are not big eaters, proportionately speaking. An adult common hippo eats only (!) about 80 lbs of grass and stuff per day, or about 1% of its bodyweight. A cow eats 2.5% of its own bodyweight. Maybe we should farm hippos instead of cows; much more efficient converters. That’s a joke, my urban warrior collective.

Incidentally, a hippo calf is born weighing about 80 lbs, after an amazingly short gestation of only eight months. The mother may give birth on land or in the water, which is where the idea of the human birthing pool came from I guess. A newborn hippo can hold its breath for about 40 seconds, or so I was told. Adults are even better at this. If you watch a slow moving river, you can often see v-shaped wakes on the surface, caused by hippos wandering down the riverbed. Hippos don’t float, so they can walk on the bottom. It’s like watching a small phantom flotilla topside.

It’s not true that hippos sweat blood. In fact they don’t strictly sweat at all, which is why they spend all the sunlight hours in water or wallowing in mud to keep cool and wet. If they do fetch up out of water, they do secrete a thick red goo, and this helps to keep the skin moist and also to ward off sunburn. Hippos, like domestic pigs, can suffer badly from this.

Frankly, I’d avoid wallowing anywhere near where a hippo has done. One of the ways that the males mark their territory is to swish their tails vigorously while they are defaecating, to splash their astonishingly copious turds around their home patch. I said copious. Eighty pounds of roughage a day is going to be an extremely moving experience, isn’t it?

The males have very bad anger management issues, and they’re tooled up for the job. Their canine teeth may be up to 20”, and they have jaws that can crush a whole white cabbage without even slowing down. To ward off enemies, a hippo may yawn, scoop water with its mouth, shake its head, rear up, lunge, roar, grunt, chase, and make a loud wheezing sound, all of which are threat displays. It’s a lot like the Yates’s in Harlow on a Saturday night. If all that posturing doesn’t work, the males will fight, and they inflict a lot of damage when they do. It’s not a half-hearted shoving match. It’s a proper full-on pagga, and if you get caught up in it  you are in deep, deep trouble. Again, much like Harlow on a Saturday night.

There are two main ways to piss off a hippopotamus. One is to get between it and the water. They’re at home in rivers (hence the name hippopotamus, or river horse in Greek), and home is where the heart is. When startled or threatened they head straight for water, and woe betide you if you happen to be in the way.

The second way is to get anywhere near a mother and her calf anytime during the first two weeks or so after the birth. Mum and little Hip spend that time away from the herd so the calf imprints on her. They’re rather vulnerable away from the herd, so mum gets medieval on dangers. Do not mess with a recently calved female hippo. You have been warned.

By the way, hippopotamuses aren’t related to horses. There’s a pig connection. Also they belong to the family Artiodactylae, and this family includes, bizarrely, deer and antelopes.

How to get a new nickname

Tags

chillies, epistaxis, fahl, hardmen, ladyboy, machismo, nosebleeds

nobodyreadsme at the weekends anyway, so this is a bit of a throwaway.

Last night, I happened to have just enough money to afford a pint. Just the one. So I entered my favourite watering hole, bought said pint.

One of my mates had been buying items from a website called ‘Foods of Fire.’ All of their products are heavily laden with chilli. It’s a very macho guy site, real ‘Mine is bigger than yours is.’ The ethos seems to be that unless you end up in hospital having your stomach pumped then you’re a bit of a ladyboy.

I should point out I’m not a greb with a machismo complex. I just like the taste of chillies, and I like the heat. It accentuates the flavour. I’ve put the hours in too. When in Thailand for 10 days, I ate chillies at every meal, without fail. Scrambled eggs with finely sliced tiny green chillies in sweetened rice wine vinegar are a rousing start to your day. In India, I’ve had mutton curry for breakfast. It’s fab. I once made a Chinese dish of stewed aubergines with chillies. It was so hot nobody else could eat it. I ate the lot, and gave myself a nosebleed. However, I’m not the sort of yobbo who goes into an Indian restaurant and says, ‘OK, give me a fahl, and if I don’t pass out I’m not paying for it.’ Resistance to chilli heat isn’t big, and it isn’t clever. It’s nowhere near as impressive as bench pressing 300 lb, and even that I find unmoving.

I’ll reiterate. I don’t aspire to be one of those people who thinks it’s really macho to eat something that makes smoke come out of your ears I think that’s childish in all the wrong ways.

Anyway, the race was on. Food of Fire goods were on free offer. I started off with the chilli roasted peanuts. They were more than OK, jolly delicious, but I never even broke stride. ‘Brilliant. I like them.’

My mate looked at me. Grown men were weeping in the background.

’Do you like pickled onions?’

‘Love them. Used to make my own, put a couple of dried chillies in them. Alison and I used to call them ‘Ye Olde Bastards.’ Terrific.’

‘Try these then, hard man.’

He held up a jar of Foods of Fire pickled silverskin onions. There was a layer of chilli oil floating on the vinegar.

‘I’m up for those!’

So he got me a teaspoon. I lifted one of the onions out, looked at it, and shovelled it into my mouth, had a good crunch.

‘Hey! These are damned good!’

‘Have some more. Feel free, please.’

I ate four in a row, then put the lid back on the jar.

‘I’d better stop now, or I’ll eat the lot.’

The real hardmen ion the pub managed one each, and were gagging and reaching for pints to cool things down.

Mate’s brother came up.

‘How you feeling?’

‘OK. I know I’ve eaten something hot, but it’s not as if I’m going to die.’

‘Jesus! Your eyes have glazed over!! Don’t look at me! They’re scary!’

‘I’m still speaking, aren’t I?’

‘And you had four! Respect brother!’

Mate said, approvingly, ‘And in line to finish the jar, single handed.’

‘You, my friend, are the f****** Chilli Monster,’ said mate’s brother.

So now I have a new nickname in the pub. Chilli Monster. A legend in my own local.

Tomorrow is, of course, maid’s day off. Next week you can look forward to some more fascinating facts about polar bears, some very silly song lyrics (with an Indian slant, coincidentally), having fun with fireworks, and guidance on how not to get killed by a hippopotamus.

They’re all in the B Warehouse. Aren’t you the lucky ones?

Call My Bluff-Round 4

Tags

bluffing, clout, culture gap, dilligaf, language, slang

I was rather taken aback last week when one of my more erudite and well travelled followers did not understand the word ‘faff.’ Someone else fell at the fence ‘jimjams.’ So here we go again as I attempt to explain English as a foreign language. To English speakers.

A word of warning. One of these is a complete fabrication, and all three definitions are hence wrong.

Gash

1. Talk arrant nonsense
2. Waste or offcuts of no use whatsoever
3. Surplus to requirements

Salmon

1. Tobacco
2. To witter on
3. Proper, correct, spot on

Pikey

1. Bad tempered
2. Smelly
3. A traveller or (incorrectly) a gypsy

Wassocked

1. Extremely drunk
2. Beaten up in a fight
3. Profoundly smitten with a person of the opposite sex

Bobble

1. A dunce, dimwit
2. To fumble. Especially a soccer goalie
3. Fall off a pair of suicidally high stilletto shoes

Dilligaf (occasionally dilligas)

1. A discrete, non-toxic fart
2. Verb, to faff about, act ineffectually
3. Insouciant, unfazed by adverse circumstances

Rithmatic

1. Unable to add up
2. Acting without the need to think, on autopilot
3. The way your dad dances

Take boggatt

1. Race around in an uncontrolled runaway fashion
2. Become very afraid
3. Get annoyed, take umbrage

Pull a wire

1. A ‘relief ‘massage
2. Annoy, similar to pull someone’s chain or rattle their bars
3. Suddenly change behaviour

Clout

1. All girl one hit wonder band in the 1970s
2. A vulgar but inoffensive euphemism for a lady’s naughty bits
3. Women out on the town to pull. Similar to blart

And the answers are:

Gash. Both 2 and 3 are correct. Useless offcuts (which you nevertheless store in perpetuity ‘in case they might be handy’), or simply surplus to requirements

Salmon. Number 1. Tobacco, especially in the context of rolling a spliff. Rhyming slang. Salmon and trout=snout=tobacco

Pikey. Number 3. A traveller who tries to sell you lucky white heather while his mates steal your lawnmower and anything else in the shed while your attention is elsewhere

Wassocked. Number 1. Sideways drunk

Bobble. Number 2

Dilligaf (also Dilligas). Number 3. Acronym for Do I look like I give a f***

Rithmatic None of the above. I made it up

Pull a wire Sudden behaviour change. Usually in a compound form. ‘I dunno what happened. One minute he was fine, next it was like someone pulled a wire in his head, and he went mental.’

Clout. All 3 are correct. In sense 1, the one hit was a song called ‘Substitute,’ and I have to admit I rather liked it.

How to have a good night out

Tags

car pound, gigs, Marquee Club, Mount Pleasant, parking ticket, towing charge, traffic wardens, Wardour Street

I was reminded of this sorry tale of woe a few minutes ago when I saw a woman pleading with a traffic warden who was issuing her a ticket. It cut no ice at all. She got the stock reply,’ I’ve started writing it now. It’s in the system.’ She was going to get a £50 fine, reduced to £25 if she pays within 14 days, but she was whingeing nonetheless.

She got off quite lightly. Some years ago, Alison and a friend of ours went to a gig at the Marquee Club in London’s Wardour Street. As ever parking was a bloody nightmare, but I found a back street with single yellow lines. It was a dead end, with a derelict warehouse at the end, so no through traffic. It was gone 6:30, so the parking restrictions didn’t apply, and it seemed a good bet. Because it was narrow, though, I parked with two wheels up on the kerb to avoid forming a pinchpoint if an emergency vehicle needed access. I wasn’t the only one to do this; there was a neat row of us doing the same. We were partially blocking the pavement, but the only pedestrians were people who’d parked in the street, so who cared?

Went to the gig, got out about 11:15, and walked back to the street, which was full of people milling aimlessly around and declaiming, ‘Dude! Where’s my car?’ or somesuch. Every single car had gone. Ergo we had all fallen foul of the Parking Stasi, and our cars were now sitting safely in a pound somewhere. I managed to find a policeman who told me the pound was in Mount Pleasant, and would close at 12:00. Bad news, since it was now about 11:40, and there was no way we could get there in time for the pound still to be open.

Only one choice. Jump a tube back to Liverpool Street station and hope we were in time for the last train. Oh yes, I was the only one with any money, so I was going to have to shoulder the burden of cost. At Liverpool Street we found to our horror that the last train to Cambridge, via Stansted where we were headed, had long since departed. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth. I’ve spent the night on a station in London, and it’s a bloody cold experience. However, I had enough sense to think outside the box. I knew there was a train to Bishop’s Stortford some time after 12:00, so strictly it’s an early rather than a late one. I paid for three tickets, and we scrambled aboard just as the train was about to leave. When we got to Stortford, I had to fork out for a cab to Stansted. Double fare after midnight, natch.

Next day, I had to hike down to Stansted station and pay for a peak rate single ticket to London, then fork out for a tube fair to get to my office in the wilds of Vauxhall Cross. Reason? I was due at a meeting in Hoddesdon at 11:00; Hoddesdon was about 20 minutes from Stansted. I went through it on the train. But I need the car, because from there I had to go straight to Hull for an afternoon meeting, and some clown had forgotten to give me something for that meeting. I got a cab from the office to Mount Pleasant, getting there just as the pound opened. Retrieved the car and headed back up to where I’d been about 90 minutes ago.

The cost of this little fiasco?

3x tube fares £3

3x train fares £27

1x cab fare @double rate £20

1x peak train fare £12

Tube, Liverpool Street to Vauxhall £2

Cab, office to Mount Pleasant £24

Parking fine £60

Towing charge, payable before the parking fine, both being paid before the car would be released, £100

TOTAL COST OF DEBACLE = £248

That was before the cost of the tickets for the gig, the cost of Alison and friend getting into town, a quick bite to eat, and drinks in The Marquee. Say £310 for the night out? I decided I was living beyond my means.

Now you can see why a £25 fine seems quite reasonable, all things told. Especially as nowadays you could probably add another 50% or so. Call it a nice round £450. I’ve had two weeks in India for less than that.

I’ve been faffing with my theme layout

I think this is an improvement. What say ye? I can always change back if there’s a demand for it.

Extra! Extra! Rid doll abahdit!

Tags

lack of perspective, prosecutors, sex, sex and violence, sex toys, vibrators

I quite like an occasional browse through the local papers. It’s always reassuring to find that people can behave even more stupidly than I can, and nowhere is it more apparent than in the crime reporting, which in this particular issue of the highly regarded journal the Braintree and Witham Times, May 8^th, 2013, was on page 3. Makes a change from semi-naked women.

There was quite a lot of the usual suspects. ‘Roofer found with £1000 of cannabis in loft.’ ‘London man charged with local crimes.’ All a bit pedestrian. One story did catch my attention though. ‘Sex toy wrecker’s court case ‘disproportionate’’

This is an odd one. Prosecutors have been criticised for bringing a court case against a man for damaging his girlfriend’s 35 quid sex toy. Take a little while, if you must, to assimilate that. It took me a few seconds.

The defendant, one Felix Boachie (really?) had previously warned his then girlfriend about leaving sex toys around the house. I can see his point I suppose, though it might be a wizard wheeze for putting JoHos off their stride a bit.

Mr Boachie had gone to his girlfriend’s bedroom to look for a laptop. Instead he found the £35 vibrator, and destroyed it with a pair of scissors.

Several interesting aspects to this. Thirty five quid sounds quite a lot to me, though my knowledge of this particular divertissement is limited. Doesn’t it sound a lot to you for a glorified electric toothbrush? I think the purchaser would be justified in expecting flashing lights, bells, whistles… Oh, so you saw that episode of Sex in the City, then? Personally, for that money, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to expect it to show some affection by lighting your cigarette for you afterwards as well.

As I say, my experience is limited here, but I’m surprised he managed to inflict much damage on the device while armed only with a pair of scissors. An angle grinder or powersaw, a hedge trimmer, those might work. But these throbby things are pretty robustly built (or so I’m told), and I wouldn’t have thought a pair of scissors would make much of a dent.

The defence lawyer was a Mr Baker, which given the circumstances is a bit unfortunate; I bet he had some trouble at school when he was a mere Master Baker. Anyway, fair play to him. He found the whole thing ‘…ridiculous. If you fight in the street you get a fixed penalty notice. Destroy a sex toy and you have to go to court.’

The prosecution, Mr Allen, said that the case had gone to court because the pair had got into a confrontation when the police arrived. The police? Who the hell called them? Who shopped up the unfortunate Mr Boachie for chopping up a vibrator? I think we should be told. The public has a right to know.

Some further from a police spokesman.

‘A man was arrested following a domestic disturbance during which other allegations were made….these other allegations were not proceeded with but…authorised he should be charged with criminal damage….Essex Police has a duty to investigate a complaint and deal with it appropriately.’

That’s an interesting word, ‘appropriately.’ The prosecution threw out all but the criminal damage charge, and £35 doesn’t strike me as an ‘appropriate’ sum to justify a court case. The court, to its credit, refused to award costs against Mr Boachie, and he got a suspended sentence, meaning if he keeps his nose clean for the next six months he escapes the gallows. But it does mean that the good burghers of Essex have had to stump up the entire costs of bringing the case. I don’t think that’s an ‘appropriate’ use of taxpayers’ money at all.

How to sell a cathedral (and coin a neologism along the way)

Tags

Brunelleschi, campanile, cathedrals, churches, domes, Firenze, Florenece, Giotto, homies, Marc Zimmerframe, Romeo&Juliet

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the cathedral in Firenze in Italy. You may well have seen pictures though. Any panoramic postcard of Florence will feature this building very prominently.

I myself do not find it a thing of beauty. It’s impressive, yes, imposing even, but not beautiful to my eyes. I think it’s downright ugly, though I’m in a minority here. I have the impression it’s a bit of an Emperor’s new clothes building, foisted on the world by clever marketing. And a bit of research revealed that a certain Marco Zimmerframmeo was involved in presenting the idea of the building to the decision makers. You may recollect that one of his descendants was instrumental in getting funding for the Large Hadron Collider. See http://wp.me/p2C8Zz-dy for a reminder.

The architect, Amolfo de Cambio, really went to town. The exterior is clad in polychromic panels of pink, green, and white marble. The side windows are Moorish arched, not Gothic pointed, of black and white marble. The campanile is different again. The whole shooting match is topped off with huge dome, and roofed with terracotta tiles. I think it looks a bit of an orecchia di porco. It can’t have been an easy sell, and this wasn’t helped by Marco’s rudimentary Italian, and the Italians’ poor grasp of Dudish.

I am indebted to Dan Brown for allowing me access to the minutes for some of the meetings.

‘Hey, Amolfo, my man, how’s it hangin’?’

‘Scusi?’

‘Errrmm. Comment allez vous?’

‘Scusi?’

‘Don’t sweat it, dude. So these are your plans for the church, yeah?’

‘Issa Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, si. Issalso collared Il Duomo.’

‘Kinda beyond me, dude. I’ll call it a cathedral. Listen dude, what’s with all this white and pink and green? Looks like vanilla, strawberry, and pistachio ice cream, man.’

‘Issa polychromic panels. Marble. Issa fromma Carrara.’

‘Sure, if you say so. And the windows. Black and white arches? Come on, man. Are you sure you’re in the pipe here? Five by five?’

‘Issa Moorish.’

‘I know Ben and Jerry’s is moreish, dude. It’s like they put something addictive in it.’

‘No, issa Moorish. Likea Morse. Arabic.’

‘Man! That’s way out there on the edge! Arabic influence on a Catholic cathedral, dude. But hey! That’s your job. My job is to sell this puppy, right? So what I’m gonna need is a big model of this. Humungous.’

‘Scusi?’

‘Really big, capisce?’

‘Si.’

‘What’s this baby here, poking up?’

‘Issa campanile.’

‘What? Err, scusi?’

‘Issabella tour.’

‘Who’s she? Your old lady?’

‘NO! Issabella tour! Bella! Dingdong!’

‘OK dude, now I geddit. No need to get your thong in a bunch.’

The scene is now the approvals committee room. There are many red-robed men in skullcaps, looking serious. On the table in front of them is a large object covered with a sheet. Marco Zimmerframmeo steps forward.

‘Right, dudes, you are going to love this. Amolfo here has done a great job. Great job. A Big Kahuna of a job.’

Marco whips the sheet off. Amolfo gasps, and whispers to him, ‘Marco! Weir issa …’

‘Chillax, dude. You’ve done your job. Let me do mine.’

‘So dudes, wadda ya think? How about that pink and green and white, hey? Cool or what? See, Molfi here thinks just because a building has to have a like, serious purpose, doesn’t mean it has to be sombre, right? And the Moorish windows? Who else but a genius would have thought of them with Gothic, eh? I really think the camper nearly is awesome, too.’

One of the robed men leans forward.

‘Weir mustapha dom.’

‘Pardon me? Err, scusi?’

‘Weir mustapha dom. Weir ask forra dom. Weir issa dom?’

‘Heh heh! Just me and Molfi here pulling your chains, dude.’ He reaches into a big box that is hidden under the table, and extracts a rounded tulip-shaped object that, when turned upside down, sits neatly on the model of the building.

‘Tada! Biggest in Europe. Dudes, you will have the honour of being able to say yours is bigger than anyone else’s! Cool, huh? And guess what? Molfi and his compadres reckon that in about 400 years, when things need a bit of a nip’n’tuck, take the years off a bit, a pretend Gothic façade at the west door will look truly righteous.’

The robes confer briefly.

‘Weir ticket. Whither dom.’

Yet another success for the irrepressible Marc Zimmerframe. There was also a curious linguistic side effect of his foray to Europe. While in Italy, he heard members of the Motagues and the Capulets referring to each other as uomi, or men. Marco, as he was then, was much taken with this word, which he took back with him to his native California. It was seized on with enthusiasm by the Bloods and the Crips, and corrupted to ‘omies,’ later to ‘homies,’ thus entering the American lexicon.

Footnote. I know that the whole shooting match was a collaborative effort. The basic design was indeed by Amolfo di Cambio, and work started in 1296. By the time things were completed and consecrated in 1436, Brunelleschi had added the dome, and Giotto had designed the campanile. Then in the 19^th century, the Gothic Revival west façade was added according to a design by Emilio de Fabris. I’m also aware that the cathedral was finished nearly 60 years before Columbus hit the shores of the New World, and the Montagues and Capulets didn’t come into being for another 200 years.

It’s called artistic licence.

Problems with my reader-part Z of a continuing saga

One of the blogs I follow has just managed to reblog an entire year+ worth of pictures of fluffy cats from another blog. I’m sure this was inadvertent, but hell it’s annoying.