Thanks Lucy :) Unfortunately you are...well basically my only follower so I won't be able to send this to people! I thought I'd do it anyway.

11 facts about me:

1. I have an irrational dislike of the colour yellow. But not in flowers.

2. I have incredibly poor spatial awareness and am continually doing things like...burning my toes on candles I have put by the bath. Or hitting my elbows on door frames. And sinks. And tables. :D.

3. I work for an engineering company as a student land contamination consultant, I get to drive a van around the Norfolk Countryside sometimes and look at maps all day! But my work computer is so bad that I have to save every few minutes due to fear it will randomly turn itself off. As it does about seven times a day sometimes.

4. I love travelling. But I haven't done it much yet because I've been too sensible!

5. I like dessert. Dessert is like...the best thing ever.

6. I occasionally act like I am far older than twenty. And sometimes I act like I'm about five years old.

7. I watch birds. One of many nerdy traits. Grebes are really cool - they mate for life, and carry their tiny stripy chicks on their back.

8. I am a very strongly opinionated vegetarian. I won't go on about it until I'm asked. Then I will go on about it.

9. I love ale. And wine. And whisky. And I live next to a great pub called the Fat Cat and Canary.

10. I love taking photos of everything. I'm probably very irritating when I have a camera.

11. I write songs and sing stuff but I hate performing in front of people!

Lucy's Questions

1. If you could befriend any Disney villain and help them mend their ways, who would you choose and why? (This is a very good question) Erm... Shan yu, from Mulan.

Because he's eight feet tall, has a hilariously evil face, and I think if he yelled evil things less and had less of an anger problem he'd be a great guy to have around.

2. You've been invited to a fairy tale themed fancy dress party. Who or what do you dress as? (I need inspiration for attending such a party myself!) I would personally dress as...Red Riding Hood due to a red cloak I conveniently own...But given the option of anything I would probably go as...A frog! Or Fiona from Shrek!

3. If you could choose any activity to be made an official Olympics sport, what would you pick? ...Photography or baking!

4. Where in the world would you most like to go that you haven't already been to? The Himalayas, or Hawaii or...GREECE. I just don't know. Too many places.

5. What is your ultimate karaoke song? If you don't ever do karaoke, what would it be if you were forced to sing? I reckon All the Rowboats by Regina Spektor.

6. If you could have any famous historical figure over for dinner, who would you invite? Rasputin! That would be an interesting dinner. I'd have to learn Russian for the privelage though.

7. If you went to Hogwarts, which house do you think the Sorting Hat would place you in? Errr. Ravenclaw I reckon. Maybe.

8. What was the best science experiment you did, or saw your teacher do, at school? It doesn't count really because it was at University. But in my first year in a physics practical we made flubber and put glitter in it. It was amazing.

9. What's your favourite way to spend a hot summer's day? On an interesting beach with a lot of caves and ancient rocks.

10. What's your favourite way to spend a freezing cold winter's day? Hm...Inside cooking things, and then having a warm bath in the evening.

11. If you could dye your hair any colour you wanted just for fun, which colour would you choose? I do, on a regular basis! Red, usually :)

 ...There we go. I can't actually nominate anyone because nobody else I know really writes blogs! -Sad- But I had fun anyway :P

Getting through winter

Living in Norfolk for approximately fifty per cent of my life at the moment, I don’t seem to see much of the sun. The sky seems to be permanent white-wash grey. I’m not sure if it was a coincidence that the one bright day we had last week, was the one day I spent incredibly cheerful. I think the fact I’m tying the grey sky to Norwich probably indicates something; as thinking about it the weather is always fairly dreary in the winter – everywhere.

Term time seems to be going fast, which is both a good and a very bad thing. Good – I get to go home soon. Bad – I have two reports to write and a presentation to prepare. On DOP (Degree of Pyritization) measurements and what they mean. And why our values were anomalously low. Even though I have found no papers suggesting any possible reason.

I seem to be bad at staying on topic. The winter is too long. For me, it’s November – Mid March. Almost half the year. Spring, which is fantastic, is only March to May. February is a terrible month. I don’t know who thought February was a good idea. The only thing February has going for it is pancakes. In my opinion, we should make every day in February pancake day. Then it would be a far cheerier month. And everyone would put on weight. But they wouldn’t care due to pancake-related-joy.
November has Bonfire Night. December has Christmas. January has…Well…January is at least a tiny bit exciting as you get to feel like you’re making a fresh start for half the month. February is as discussed before. March in Norfolk is so far fairly uninspiring. In fact, it’s actually raining at the moment. Winter rain, not spring rain.

There is a difference, you know. Winter rain is boring. It does not have a smell. It is cold.

Spring rain smells amazing, it’s more unusual, and it’s…well cold too. But I’ve made my point.

There are birds singing though. And I saw a green woodpecker in Eaton Park the other day. I’ve seen daffodils. I saw really confused crocuses in February too. So at least I won’t have to sit through winter much longer.

Unfortunately though, my mood is only very slightly dependant on the weather. So I don’t really know if this means I’m going to cheer up.

I don't even know what this is!

Found this on some guy's blog. It's HILARIOUS. And I don't even know what it is. Or where it come's from.

I'm going to go to bed now as I'm tired, and my brain is smush - probably why I was so amused by this thing. Wait, one last thing:

Why I don't like Human Beings

Right, here we go. Most people that know me, know I base most of my arguments on an overwhelming disregard for the human race in general. So here is a lovely list of human failings :D Obviously some of them are generalisations, and quite few apply to me as well, but I'd like to change ALL of them. But mostly its impossible as I'm complaining about a set thing...

• We don't have mythical powers. I mean, we're just not cool enough. Why don't we have wings, or, or breathe fire?! Why can't we by super-strong or invisible?!
• We eat tuna. I mean that's just wrong.
• We manage to justify eating meat. Claiming it's natural to do so just isn't good enough, surely we're capable to making moral decisions, as we're more sophisticated than an animal. Being more 'intelligent' is a reason we shouldn't eat meat, not a justification to do so. We think and talk in words, so therefore we get to eat everything else! Great idea. Also, it's not just eating them, is it? If we weren't so vastly overpopulated and needed to kill so much, and we simply hunted ourselves, I wouldn't have -so- much of a problem, but we breed animals specifically to kill them. Often in unimagionably cruel ways. So someone please tell me that's the right thing to do?
• We do maths. Seriously people?!
• We cull things because there are too many of them. E.g. rabbits and myxamatosis. Jeez! How hypocritical!? I do understand though that sometimes people do have slightly better arguments for this.
• We don't cope well with power, e.g. every evil dictator there's ever been (QUITE A FEW)
• We are pretty selfish. (Like most living, breathing things.... ) ZOMG SID THE SELFISH PLANKTON!
• We're not very good at making books into films, apparently, at least from my film education. Excluding LOTR. Obviously.
• Somebody invented tabloid newspapers.
• We're slowly destroying the earth, which is beautiful.
• Wealth is distributed really unfairly.
• We pump loads of money into pointless things which could be used for much better causes. By the way, just so you know, I'm not pretending I'm not human, I mean I buy cosmetics and pointless stuff I could live without. It's a silly criticism but it sort of makes sense. Like putting so many millions into space exploration. Why can't we just look after our own planet?!
• One of us must have created the first ever computer virus.
• MURDER?!
• RAPE?!
• Ahem, MASS MURDER?!
• Intolerance?
• Lying...
• People who don't like magic the gathering?!

End xD

Yay for written thought...

The Gaia hypothesis is fascinating. Well, when you're revising it, it's not so fascinating, because everyone always uses ridiculously scientific terms. I might not have even got the right name =P What I'm talking about is the concept that everything involving the earth is inter-linking. That the whole planet is a system which restores balance and corrects mistakes.

Think about it - Things die, right? When they die, they only decompose because of the existence of other organisms - detrivours/decomposers, which break down the dead organic material to sustain their own lives. Some of that organic matter ends up back in soil - and provides important nutrients for plants - which in turn, provide nutrients for animals. Which in turn, are hunted and eaten - providing yet more nutrients.

A few obvious examples:

• The Greenhouse Effect. It's great, in fact without it, we wouldn't exist at all, and the earth would be roughly thirty degrees colder. The gases keep some of the radiation trapped at just the right temperature for life to flourish - and if things start to change (i.e. climate change) the earth has feedback mechanisms in place to stop it - or accelerate it. There are both positive and negative feedback mechanisms. The positive ones are the ones human's should worry about.
• If the earth warms up a few degrees - it could get warm enough for permafrost to melt in siberia. Whoosh, ridiculous amounts of methane escape into the troposphere. Methane being a gas roughly twenty times stronger a greenhouse gas then Co2, this is bad. The earth further warms up.
• Also, seas expand. The warmer it is, the more the sea will expand, and the more volume it has. It's also worth noting that the sea releases greenhouse gases when heated as well which would again, accelerate the enhanced greenhouse effect.
• Then, there are the negative mechanisms: That a warmer climate would mean increased evaporation from oceans - which would mean more clouds - increasing the earths albedo as more light reflects off lighter surfaces. This may have a cooling effect.
• But if you think about it hard, you could perhaps consider that the postive mechanisms are maybe yet another defensive mechanism that the earth has.

As a race, human beings are a threat to the planet. There are so many of us, doing such stupid things we are actually tipping the very careful balance that the earth has, so we threaten life itself. We're just not natural, we don't seem to fit in on the earth. If it gets so warm that some of us die out, we'll stop causing surplus greenhouse gases to drift off, and perhaps it would return to normal. Perhaps a heck of a lot of the human population would disappear, and the earth would be safe again for awhile.

Same with the Ozone layer - the fact something is sitting in the stratospere filtering out UV rays. Again, if we tamper with that with our chemicals we'll probably get ZAPPED (really technical word there) and partly/entirely die out, so that the earth can rebuild itself again. There's so many other things as well.

So another reason why it amazes me, there are so many levels to it. Not only the intricacies of the entire planet, the reliance everything has on everything else. It's beautiful.

I don't want to spoil it :( I believe in God, I mean, how else could there have been such an extreme, extreme coincidence to make something so huge, so interconnected and clever that we'll never fully understand it? And I guess unless we try and undo are mistakes REALLY quickly the earth will try and erase us, which is kind of sad. But I might be completely wrong, after all, what do I know xD?