This is my favourite recent photo, despite its technical imperfections.  It would never make it to the short list in any photography competition, I realise that.  But here it is anyway:

Click to get it bigger, but frankly, not a lot better.

So yes, that was taken from Englefield Green, which is about twenty miles away from the centre of London, and up on a bit of a hill.  The family house, which is still in the process of being sold, is a few dozen yards further up the hill from there.  But despite having lived there all of my early life and having gone back to visit numerous times since, I only discovered this view last Sunday.  I was back to say hello to the younger of my two elder brothers, who is caretaking for us.  We were walking back down to Egham station, me to get to the station and him to keep me company.  The weather, having been very fitful earlier in the day, was perfect, not a cloud in the sky.  And there it was, between a couple of the little suburban bungalows set back from the road.  At first I wasn’t entirely sure, my eyesight being only what it is.  But there is no mistaking that shape, is there?  Taking the shot involved a spot of mild trespassing in someone’s forecourt, to get past nearer obstacles, but through the big front windows it looked like no one was in, so, what the eye didn’t see ...  And yes, the focussing is not all it might be.  Maybe I’ll go back and try again, although I doubt I’ll ever get better weather for it.

I have several times photoed this view, although never even this clearly, from the also quite nearby Air Forces Memorial which you can climb to the top of and look out from, over nearby Runnymede (of Magna Carta fame) and beyond that all along the Thames valley from Windsor Castle on the left to Heathrow centre right and beyond it to London on the right to far right, very far right just before the view stops being where the Gherkin is just about visible.  But I never knew until now that you can see any of London from even nearer to home, which is how I still think of it and will continue to think of it until the developers smash it up.

One here, and nine more here.

Here.  Thanks again to MJ.  Small Singapore Things.

David Thompson should be told about this ... what is the singular of ephemera?  Ephemeron?
 

Knowing my predilection for Friday felinity, Michael J today sent in the link to a story entitled Baby tiger found stuffed in bag at Thai airport.  Baby tiger: cute.  Smuggling baby tigers: bad. Rich Iranians like to keep baby tigers as pets: bad.  Baby tiger nearly died: bad.  Baby tiger rescued from nasty smuggling woman: good.  You know the kind of thing.

But why, instead of exporting tigers from Thailand being illegal, doesn’t Thailand let the exporting of tigers be a legal business?  There is obviously money to be made, provided they don’t over-produce the little things, thereby reducing their exoticism and pet snob appeal.  And legal capitalists would be far more likely to worry about preserving tigers in the long term than illegal smugglers, who might just swipe the lot for short term gain.

I seem to recall Leon Louw having written stuff about this, at some time in the past.  His point, as I recall it, was that lefties get all gooey-eyed about endangered species, but don’t care enough about them to make them unendangered to the point of actually ensuring that they survive and flourish.  Flourishing animals aren’t romantic and endearing.  Only endangered ones are good.  Link anyone?  I couldn’t find anything by Louw on this specific point.

More cattery (via David Thompson) here.  Stupid New York women dressing cats up in stupid costumes.

Bad.
 
 
 
 

Earlier this year Toby Baxendale talked into my recording machine, with only occasional interruptions from me, about the banking crisis and what to do about it.

This happened before the recent general election, so apologies for the delay in sticking this up, but nothing important has changed.  The delay was because the thing was rather long, and I hesitated about how to present it.  In the end, I just sliced out some stuff, mostly at the beginning, and shoved it up.  I’m guessing that the audience for this, some of it at least, will be willing to spend a bit of time on it.  So, I left it at just over an hour, rather than cutting it any further.  The crude timing of this two part conversation is that the “what do we do?” question is put just after the 38 minute mark.

Some of what I omitted was by way of biographical introduction about Toby.  If you would like to know more about him, read this, or listen to the the first conversation that I recorded with him in November of last year.

Here are links to the Cobden Centre, of which Toby is the chairman, and to its blog.  Toby’s own Cobden Centre bloggings can be read here.

I want to keep a note of this picture (it’s one of these) of what looks like a tap with water coming out of it, but which is actually a tap balanced on a solid piece of perspex.

I have been looking for this image for years, to illustrate a piece of blogging I want to do at Samizdata, Real Soon Now, about the Fixed Quantity of Wealth Fallacy.  Ideally, the shape of the water coming out of the tap would be doing that that this-way-that-way thing that water coming out of a tap sometimes does, rather than it just forming a perfect column, perfectly circular if you, as it were, cut horizontally though it.  Can anyone find a version of this sculpture that looks like that, rather than like the one on the right?

Here.  Can’t ignore that just because I’m on holiday.

The bails:

The stumps.