Wintering male Siberian Blue Robin by John Gale.

http://www.galleryofbirds.co.uk/INDEX-2.htm

These buttressed roots are incredible.

Tough times

"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters- pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do...." (Jeremy Bentham).

Perhaps we can infer from that..... no pain, no change. Problem with that is.... no brain, no pain. It is going to have to get really bad before some people feel it:-).

Getting more debt to solve the problem of debt- mmmmm

Darling announces today that he is going to borrow £118 billion (instead of the projected £38 billion) to keep Britain Ltd. from collapsing next year. Indeed it is quite possible that somebody can borrow money to get themselves through a bad time. However it is also possible for someone to dig themselves deeper and deeper and deeper into a dark hole. Of course, I do not possess a crystal ball so I obviously don't know for certain which scenario we are in- however both these options are possible. In such a dangerous situation it is only sensible and rational to expect the worse case scenario, prepare for it while maintaining hope for the best.

"The roots of social order are in our heads, where we possess the instinctive capacities for creating not a perfectly harmonious and virtuous society, but a better one than we have at present.......Pre-eminently this means the encouragement of exchange between equals. Just as trade between countries is the best recipe for friendship between them, so exchange between enfranchised and empowered individuals is the best recipe for co-operation. We must encourage social and material exchange between equals for that is the raw material of trust, and trust the foundation of virtue". (Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue).

And the reason for the current economic collapse.......... lack of trust.

Bring it on

I do love a bit of drama in natural history. Dawkins is hard to beat with material like this:

"We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism- something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole of the history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators" (The Selfish Gene).

November colour

Here is a bit of colour. Some photos I have taken which were sitting in my computer.