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!