On the menu tonight... giant mosquitoes, really fearsome spiders, strange tales of taxidermy, life without adjectives, humans and monarch butterflies on the brink.
Stories for stories
Let's have a bit of fun with animals this week. Giant mosquitoes are about to invade Florida. Apparently they are twenty times bigger than the normal thing. Best of luck if you live there. If you think that's creepy, take a look at what these spiders catch in their nets. And to round this section off, here's a collection of strange tales from the exciting realm of taxidermy, some of which involve animals.
Reading and writing
Stephen King seems to have wiped adverbs of the face of the English literary map. It takes some contortion to write without them, but the sense of his message in 'On Writing' is made available in this article. I hope however that he doesn't turn his mind to adjectives, or everyone will end up writing like James Ellroy. If you have tried to mimic the style of 'The Cold Six Thousand' you will know just how tough that can be. If you haven't read it yet, be warned it is the second in the Underworld USA trilogy.
Mother Nature and other terrifying things
The new UN Human Development Report is out and available for download. It's a useful volume that reduces the need to thumbsuck figures or hem and haw. One of its recommendations is that urgent action be taken on climate change. If not, billions could be pushed into extreme poverty. On a sad note, huge numbers of species are being pushed to the brink of extinction or placed in jeopardy. One of those are the lovely orange and black garden beauties, Monarch butterflies.
And finally...
...if you read this thing regularly, you will know I am a bit of a numbers freak. This week was Pi day, but here are some other cool numbers to groove on.
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