Can horses laugh?

Why was the cat afraid of the tree? Because of its bark.

For Sale - Dead Budgie. Not going cheep.

What do you get if you cross two snakes with a magic spell? Addercadabra and abradacobra.

My friend said he'd shoot me if I didn't stop my flamingo impressions. I had to put my foot down.

What happens to a frog's car when it breaks down? It gets toad away.

Can a kangaroo jump higher than the Empire State Building? Of course. The Empire State Building can't jump.

How did Noah see the animals in the Ark at night? With flood lighting.

How does a lion greet the other animals in the field? “Pleased to eat you.”

What do you call 2 octopuses that look exactly the same? Itenticle.

Where do you find a dog with no legs? Where you left it.

What do you call an alligator wearing a vest? An Investigator.

Did you hear the one about....

London Grammar

In my continual search for music I don't know, I came across this.

London Grammar are [maybe that should be "is"? Band is definitely a singular entity, but "are" flows better] apparently an electro pop band. I don't know what that is, which isn't surprising for a 77 year old (me not them). I quite like this track; the vocal has a bit of the Joni Mitchell inflexion. Not very electro, I'd say. Less keen on the video, which is a bit weird.

The song is from 2013 but could have been written for lockdown and its effects on young people.

Maybe I'm wasting my young years
Don't you know that it's only fear
I wouldn't worry, you have all your life
I've heard it takes some time to get it right

Oldsters like me need to be less focussed on the effects of lockdown on ourselves. I don't think enough about what it is like to have been a five year old, or a teenager, this last year. Education stalled, social isolation, daily living in a family bubble with no outlet, the prospect of "wasting my young years". I know this isn't what the song is about, but it could be.

Tell me if you like the song. Or click "interesting". Or something else.

Real Bread Week

This will please my son and my co-grandfather, both of whom are bread making devotees. Check out @bakerdanski on Instagram.

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Created and run by the Real Bread Campaign since 2010, #RealBreadWeek is the annual, international celebration of Real Bread and the people behind its rise. [get the pun] This year it runs from 20 to 28 February.

Real bread is apparently additive free and...well that's it, I think.

I should mention that I don't eat bread at home. Too many carbs for my attempts at weight control. Although I will eat the occasional McDonalds burger bun. [Oh no! I've been outed by the Real Breaders! My statue will be torn down]

I have had occasional impulses to bake some bread but they don't last long. That is both the bread - because it's usually tasty - and the impulse. But on the whole I regard any kitchen activity as a distraction from much more important activities such as ... blogging. Cooking and baking - get them over and done with as soon as possible, so that I can return to my sedentary lifestyle.

Not sure why these people need a Week. Why not Real Bread Day, or the International Day of Real Bread? Or Lockdown Real Bread Year. A Week sounds kind of...well, weak. Or greedy. Anyway 20 to 28 February is nine days, isn't it? Can't you count?

So get baking, you bread fanatics, and share the outcomes HERE!

Designated survivor: final take

In my previous post about the Netflix series Designated Survivor, I noted that it was "a pretty good TV series". A "mixture of The West Wing - daily travails of a President and his team; Homeland - a Congressman comes back from the dead as an unexpected survivor whom a female agent suspects of being a traitor - and 24, with its throbbing dramatic soundtrack."

I don't recall how many episodes I had watched at that stage but pretty sure it was early in season 1, which ultimately had 22 episodes. So did season 2; finally season 3 had just 10. Frankly I think it had simply run out of steam by then so was cancelled, apparently because of issues with actors' contracts, although how that can happen mid way through a season I don't know.

I've now ploughed my way through them all. Season 1 was perfectly reasonable, in that it had a purposeful and credible narrative where the Housing Secretary in the US government becomes President because he is the designated survivor when a terrorist attack destroys the Capitol and everyone in it during the State of the Union. Last man standing. The new President has to build a government and the season is that story, as well as that of the FBI agent tasked with unearthing the terrorists. There is a congressman who mysteriously survives the attack, despite attending the speech; is he genuine? See Brody in Homeland.

Season 1 is complete in itself; all the narratives are brought to some kind of satisfactory conclusion. It could easily have stood on its own. But no, TV production companies have to get their money's worth, so season 2 followed. But needed a reason to exist and to my mind never came up with one. It reverted to The West Wing, for want of any better idea. The daily travails of a President and his senior staff. The problem is that it's impossible to compete with The West Wing, in my view, because that show established a very high bar for realism, writing, characterisations and acting.

In The West Wing, the President's senior staffers are substantial characters who know what they are doing. They are strongly written and acted and form a capable ensemble. In Designated Survivor, they are weak. Is this because they are weak actors or because the characters are weak? Or both? Who knows? What I do know is that the ensemble is disjointed and unfocussed. I suppose you could argue that this is the essence of the underlying theme of a President thrown into the job and necessarily floundering along the way, with his team no better. But that is no basis for a strong TV series - or at least for the second season.

And that brings me to the President himself. Martin Sheen's Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing was calm, dignified and experienced. In contrast Kiefer Sutherland's Tom Kirkman is indecisive, inexperienced and, overwhelmed by this job to which he is unsuited, prone to sudden rages, verging on manic-depressive. The showrunners might say that it's interesting to see how this works on a personal level and how the character develops. No it's not; it's a TV show, not a work of art.

And so to season 3, which at least had a plausible narrative of the President standing for re-election (this term is used throughout, even though he was never elected in the first place). There are new staffers and some from season 2 (including Zoe McLellan's White House Counsel, whom I thought the best of a moderate bunch) didn't return. I wonder what is behind this unusually high turnover of actors. Anyway, after ten episodes the show ends.

I've missed out some significant plot details of all three seasons so as not to provide spoilers.

One of my main tests of a TV series is: can I empathise with any of the characters? Sadly, this show falls short on that, with the exception of Maggie Q's FBI (later CIA) agent Hannah Wells.  Obviously this taints my views on the whole series, so is very personal and shouldn't put anyone off. Particularly those of you whose empathies are likely to be different to mine. By the way, part of my connection with the Hannah Wells character is that she isn't Homeland's Carrie Mathison, whose craziness in the end made me shout at the TV in the way that I do during football matches.

It's not uncommon for me to give up on TV series before the end; I even gave up on Homeland because it seemed to me to lose its purpose - once Brody died - much as this series did after season 1. I think my son in Australia, and my daughter in law, said that they gave up half way through season 2. I get that. However, despite my clear reservations, I watched it through to the end. Now it's quite possible this was a result of lockdown fatigue but I did want to see how it ended. If you want something to occupy the long evenings, I wouldn't discourage you from watching Designated Survivor. If you do, tell me what you think!

My day in pictures

Designated Survivor

Discovery of the week: an entertaining Netflix series Designated Survivor, in which Kiefer Sutherland does his tight-lipped, ultra aggressive Jack Bauer characterisation as a US Housing Secretary who becomes President as the Designated Survivor when the Capitol is bombed and destroyed during the State of the Union address. It's a mixture of The West Wing - daily travails of a President and his team; Homeland - a Congressman comes back from the dead as an unexpected survivor whom a female agent suspects of being a traitor - and 24, with its throbbing dramatic soundtrack.

I thought this idea of a Cabinet member designated by the President as being the one person not to attend the State of the Union and to take over if a catastrophe happens, to be a neat but implausible plot line. But it turns out to be real!

Apparently the idea of someone not attending the State of the Union or a Presidential Inauguration, and being sequestered in a safe and a secure location, began in the Cold War amid the threat of nuclear war in the 1960s. It's not just any old person, it has to be a person in the formal line of succession to the President, which effectively means a member of the Cabinet. In recent years Secretaries of Interior, Agriculture and Commerce have been designated. On 20 September 2001, nine days after the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney sat out President  George W. Bush's speech to a joint session of Congress. The designated survivor is chosen by the President and has to qualify as President, i.e. be at least 35, US natural-born and a US resident for at least 14 years.

I'm not sure but I think that, at the time, the designated survivor's name is not publicised but subsequent perusal of the list of attendees at events such as the Presidential inauguration can reveal a realistic guess. So who was not at President Biden's inauguration? Well, that would be none other than Donald J. Trump, of whom you may have heard. Was that the plan all along?

So it sounds like a sensible idea and I wonder whether other nations have similar protocols.

I could find no instances of that. For instance in the UK, what if the State Opening of Parliament was occurring when the Houses of Parliament were bombed into oblivion? The Queen is Head of State and there is a long  line of succession, so that seems OK, although I don't know whether a senior member of the Royal Family is sequestered in a secure location just in case. The monarch invites someone to form a government, i.e. become Prime Minister, so that seems OK too. No problem, we Brits have it sorted.

Anyway, it's a pretty good TV series. Enjoy!

Animal magic

Acquisition of a Joystick-Operated Video Task by Pigs (Sus scrofa). The heading of an article in frontiers in Psychology, by Candace Croney and Sarah Boysen of the Department of Comparative Pathobiology and Animal Science, Center for Animal Welfare Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana and the Comparative Cognition Project, Sunbury, Ohio.

Four pigs were trained to "manipulate a joystick that controlled movement of a cursor displayed on a computer monitor. Results indicate that despite dexterity and visual constraints, pigs have the capacity to acquire a joystick-operated video-game task".

I rang my local pig farm to see whether any of their pigs could give me a hand dealing with this problem I'm having with barbarians:

Unfortunately their pigs haven't yet achieved their BTEC in Video Gaming, but they suggested I talked to the chicken farm, as they had heard that their animals had some special skills.

A contributor to an online forum in BackYard Chickens:

This morning we are out in the pen with our girls. Feeding treats, doing chores etc. Everything as usual. But today, when the treats were gone, the girls went over to a corner of the pen and layed down, very close to each other. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm?

We got more treats, they came over, scratched, ate and enjoyed. Once again, as soon as the food was gone, back to the same corner huddled together. They have never done this before. 5 minutes later, we had an earthquake! Since the earthquake they have been up walking, scratching, pecking as they do every day.

The chicken farmer, having never experienced this behaviour as earthquakes are not all that common in Cornwall, referred me to a nearby reptile park.

The United States Geological Survey tells us:

The earliest reference we have to unusual animal behavior prior to a significant earthquake is from Greece in 373 BC. Rats, weasels, snakes, and centipedes reportedly left their homes and headed for safety several days before a destructive earthquake.

Neuroscientist Michael Brecht of the Humboldt University of Berlin conducted an experiment which showed that rats can learn the rules of hide-and-seek. However when I contacted him, he referred me to a horde of barbarians living in the tundra near St. Austell..........

Dynastic mini quiz answers

Q1. Who was Kublai Khan's grandfather? Genghis Khan

Q2. Who was the great grandmother of Sophie of Württemberg, Queen of the Netherlands? Catherine The Great

Q3. How many great grandchildren did Queen Victoria have? 87

Q4. What relation is a great great grandchild with another of different great grandparentage? Third cousin

Q5. What relation is Abraham Lincoln to George Clooney? Half-first cousin five times removed

And seven places I definitely won't be visiting

⛔Chernobyl. Can't think why.

⛔North Korea. Too close to dangerous countries like, er, North Korea.

⛔Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Apparently my invitation got "lost in the mail".

⛔Caracas, Venezuela. "The most dangerous city in  the world". 120 homicides per 100,000 residents.

⛔Norwich. All Ipswich fans will know why.

⛔Mawsynram And Cherrapunji, India.

⛔Yakusk, Siberia. -40 degrees Celsius in winter.

My seven places to visit

Thinking about the ancient world wonders and the "new seven" wonders, I got to thinking about what seven other places I would like to visit. So here they are.

Uluru, aka Ayres Rock, Northern Territory, Australia.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

Estádio Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Iguazu Falls, on the Argentina/Brazil border.

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

Polar bear migration, Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.

Trans Siberian Railway, Moscow to Beijing via Mongolia.

Let me hear yours!

The new seven wonders of the world

The "new seven wonders of the world" were chosen by tens of millions of people voting in a contest run by a Swiss company, The New 7 Wonders Foundation, in 2007. Here they are, in no particular order.

The Great Wall of China.

Petra, in Jordan.

Chichen Itza, Mayan site in Mexico.

Cristo Redentor, "Christ The Redeemer", in Rio de Janeiro.

The Colosseum, in Rome.

The Taj Mahal, Agra, India.

Machu Picchu, Incan site in Peru.

Next, I will be cogitating on what would be on my list of my "must visit" places in the world. A kind of bucket list, In suppose. Pretty impractical in pandemic times but maybe...... What would you choose?

An apple a day...

...keeps the doctor away.

The phrase can be traced back to 1866, when Notes and Queries magazine published the first-known example of the proverb: “Eat an apple on going to bed, And you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread." According to wonderopolis.org, which is a great name for a web site. [Should that be website?] It's tag line [should that be tagline?] is "Where the Wonders Of Learning Never Cease". Darn, they got there before me.

And it's true. I eat an apple every day - or at least most days - and no doctor has been to my door in, well, years, maybe ever. [Warning to readers: don't confuse correlation with causality]

It's also true that "a brandy at night makes me want to write".

And "a post a week keeps your blog unique".

"Every second must be reckoned". Very profound.

The oldsters sure knew a thing or two. Keep eating those Granny Smiths.

Call My Agent!

This is easily the funniest TV show in a long time. Generally I'm not a Laugh Out Loud person but this show does exactly that for me.

If you need cheering up, this is the show for you. If you want to wake up in the morning happy, this is your dream. If you want to sleep well at night, watch an episode before bedtime. If you're down, watch another episode.

It's a French TV series - with subtitles obviously, the original title is Dix Pour Cent - with an ensemble cast centred around the workings of a Paris talent agency. It's on Netflix and there have been four seasons.

It's basically a French farce, with excellent dialogue and acting. Each episode stars a well known French actor - I've just watched Juliette Binoche in S2 E6.

Thank you Giles Coren of the Times for referencing this and adding joy to my life! 

You thought the Mayans died out four centuries ago?

Maya was a pre-Columbian civilisation in Mesoamerica.

The Spanish arrived in the Caribbean in the early 16th century and eventually conquered the whole region of what we now call Central and South America. Except for Brazil, where the Portuguese got there first. Until then, the major Mesoamerican cultures were the Maya, the Incas, Aztecs and Olmecs.

The name Maya was not in fact what the people called themselves. Their political culture developed as a number of city states and it wasn't until the city of Mayapan became the  predominant political and cultural capital that the name Maya came into usage, in the 13th, 14th and early 15th centuries. Mayan peoples still identified themselves by their sub cultures such as the Yucatecs, the Tztzil and the Tzeltal. I'm not sure why there are so many instances of the letter z in Mesoamerican names but they can be useful in Scrabble - if your house rules allow proper names.

Rather than bore you with a dry historical journey, which I am definitely not qualified to write, my interest was piqued by the discovery that Mayan people still live today. Can you guess how many? I'd have ignorantly thought maybe a few hundred thousand but it's actually around six million! Primarily in Mexico, they also live in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize. There are apparently 31 distinct groups, speaking different, mutually unintelligible (at least according to the Canadian Museum of History) languages. I imagine that's a bit like a Cornishman trying to understand a Geordie. When I was a young teenager, a Londoner, I went with my parents to an event in Scotland and I literally could not understand a word of what the locals said.

The modern Mayan people maintain many of their historical customs. They engage in agriculture and practise various crafts.

Although of course many have adapted to and adopted modern cultures, traditional groups still follow the old ways. The Lacandón of the Chiapas rain forest, in Mexico, hunted with bow and arrow until the 1950s. One of the biggest threats to the Mayan culture is their felling of tropical rain forests to to make way for corn fields. This obviously doesn't endear them to the modern world. Or Greta Thunberg.

I would love to be able to visit Mayan sites such as Chichen Itza.

This is one of the "new seven wonders of the world", voted by tens of millions of people in a contest run by a Swiss company, The New 7 Wonders Foundation (which, frankly, isn't the catchiest name they could have used). I'm going to post separately about them. You might like to think about what you'd include in the list, before I start.

I guess modern nations have been pretty slow to recognise and respect the old civilisations and peoples in their midst. The Native Americans, the Aborigines, the Kikuyu and many others have suffered greatly at the hands of colonial conquerors and today's nation states perhaps don't understand the concepts of city states, tribal groupings and diverse languages, or the desire of their people to maintain their traditions. Homogeneity rules! I hope one day I will get to see Chichen Itza; in doing so, I will do my part in honouring an amazing culture.

Dynastic mini quiz

Q1. Who was Kublai Khan's grandfather?

Q2. Who was the great grandmother of Sophie of Württemberg, Queen of the Netherlands?

Q3. How many great grandchildren did Queen Victoria have?

Q4. What relation is a great great grandchild with another of different great grandparentage?

Q5. What relation is Abraham Lincoln to George Clooney?

Notable Vietnamese

Triệu Thị Trinh, better known by the honorific Bà Triệu or Lady Triệu, was a Vietnamese warrior who resisted the Eastern Wu occupation of Vietnam in the 3rd century AD. Her fight against the Chinese occupation of her country, which had been annexed by the Han dynasty in the 2nd century BC, had some success in the short term but it remained part of China for a further seven centuries.

Vietnam was under Chinese sovereignty on and off for around 1,500 years. In 1428, Lê Lợi re-established the independent nation of Vietnam under his House of Lê. He was a guerilla leader who drove out the Ming Chinese armies but subsequently proved an astute politician by his diplomatic negotiations with the Ming court, promising loyalty to China in return for political independence. This is he.

Many years of tribal civil wars followed. But they inspired Vietnamese poets such as Nguyễn Du, Đặng Trần Côn and Hồ Xuân Hương. The latter's satirical and erotic oeuvre included such as:

[kids, skip to the end]

"My body is like a jackfruit swinging on a tree,
My skin is rough, my pulp is thick.
Dear prince, if you want me then pierce me upon your stick
Don't squeeze, i'll ooze and stain your hands."
("The Jackfruit")

Because I pitied, this happened,
I wonder if he knows?
Our match had not begun
When fate intervened.
The sin he will have to bear, for a hundred years -
Right now, love's burden is all mine.
("Premarital Pregnancy")

The modern history of this small. much maligned nation began with the oppression of Western Christian religious influence and resulted in French invasion and colonisation. Phan Đình Phùng was a Vietnamese revolutionary who led rebel armies against French colonial forces at the end of the 19th century and is regarded to this day as a revolutionary hero.

In World War II, Japanese invasion and a French Vichy government were overcome by the Allies but in September 1945 Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. His Viet Minh forces defeated the French in 1954. Twenty years of war followed, with first the French seeking to defend its interests and then the USA attempting to stop the spread of communism. Despite this pressure, the communists solidified control over the country and renamed Saigon, the previous South Vietnam capital, as Ho Chi Minh City.

After two thousand years of conflict, Vietnam is now a modern nation, a member of the United Nations since 1977 and currently a member of the UN Security Council. They have one of the fastest growing economies in South East Asia and a poverty rate below 6 per cent. Let's hope the next two thousand years will be peaceful and stable.