Anderson Joins 500 Club and Other Stuff

Jimmy Anderon’s 500th test wicket, some links, some puzzles and some photographs.

INTRODUCTION

As well as the title piece this post will feature links, pictures (items that will be going under the hammer at the end of September principally) and puzzles – including answers to a couple.

ANDERSON JOINS 500 CLUB

As predicted by me in a previous post the third and final test match of the England v West Indies series has featured a moment of cricket history as James Anderson duly collected his 500th wicket in this form of the game. Among bowlers of anything other than spin Glenn McGrath leads the way overall with 563 (off-spinner Muralitharan’s 800 for Sri Lanka is the record, followed by leg-spinner Warne’s 709 for Australia). The two spinners have set marks that are not realistically within Anderson’s grasp but the 563 of McGrath is well and truly catchable.

The historic moment came near the end of play yesterday, in the West Indies second innings (btw as I write this Anderson has increased his tally to 504) and it was a dismissal worthy of the occasion. He was denied in the West Indies first innings not by their batting (they managed a meagre 123 all out) but by a remarkable spell from Ben Stokes who finished that innings with figures of 6-22 – a test best for him. England led by 71, which looks like being decisive – the top score coming from Stokes (60). This combination of circumstances leads to me to finish this section with a raft of predictions/ hostages to fortune:

The Brian Johnston champagne moment – James Anderson’s 500th test wick – 100% certain whatever happens in what is left of this match!
Player of the match – Ben Stokes barring miracles.
Player of the series – Ben Stokes – 100% nailed on.
Match and series results: England win and take the series 2-1 – West Indies have just been dismissed for 177 in their second dig leaving England 107 to win – Anderson a career best 7-42 taking him to 506 test wickets.

LINKS

I am grouping my links in categories, starting with…

AUTISM

Just two links in this subsection, both from americanbadassactivists and both concerned with that hate group masquerading as charity Autism Speaks, or as Laina at thesilentwaveblog calls them A$.

PETITION · KIEHL’S: END YOUR #KIEHLSXAUTISMSPEAKS CAMPAIGN · CHANGE.ORG – This sets out what the petition is about and links to it (I have signed). Here is the feature graphic:
#KIEHLSXAUTISMSPEAKS | SEEKING #ACTUALLYAUTISTIC BLOGS, POSTS, VIDEOS ON TOPIC TO REBLOG/SHARE ON AMERICANBADASSACTIVISTS.ORG. #PEERVOICE – this is the follow up seeking support from #actuallyautistic blogs, hence why I am sharing it here, and urge everyone to support americanbadassactivists, sign the petition and share the message.

NATURE

This subsection features four links:

First, courtesy of Wildlife Planet a piece titled “A Plant That Glows Blue In The Dark“.
With the unprecedented sight on weather maps of America and the Caribbean of three hurricanes poised to make landfall simultaneously (by now one of those, Irma, is already battering Cuba), A C Stark has prodcued a very timely piece whose title “Climate Change: The Elephant in the Room” is sufficient introduction.
This subsection closes with links to two posts from Anna. First we have Part 7 of her series about Butterflies in Trosa.

The other post features a link to a video of a swimming sea eagle (only viewable on youtube) and a picture taken by Anna in which 11 sea eagles are visible.

POLITICS

This subsection includes one stand-alone link and four related links. The stand-alone link comes from Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK is titled “Scottish people deserve the data they need to decide, whatever their political persuasion“.

My remaining four pieces concern a single individual who is widely tipped to be the next leader of the Conservative Party. It is this latter fact which has exposed him to intense scrutiny, resulting in the following collection about…

JACOB REES-MOGG

To set the scene we start with Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK’s piece simply titled “Jacob Rees-Mogg“.

The second and third pieces in this sub-subsection both come courtesy of the Guardian:

Harriet Harman, referring to comments of his about how even though he is the father of six children he has never changed a nappy labels him as a “Dead-beat dad“.
Marina Hyde has an excoriating piece titled “Who could see Jacob Rees-Mogg as authentic? Only the gullible Tories” which is a really enjoyable read.
My final piece comes courtesy of the Skwawkbox. It is titled “MOGG: “DENY ABORTION TO RAPE VICTIMS”. PHILLIPS: “LET’S DO CHELTENHAM!”” referring simultaneously to one of the more odious statements to have emerged from the ‘honourable member for the 18th century’, and Jess Phillips’ friendship with him. The body of the piece fleshes out the difference between the Phillips approach and the more forthright approach of new MP Laura Pidcock.

A SEGUE LINK – A QUIZ

With apologies to those of my readers whose first language is not English, and who therefore cannot take on this quiz, I offer you courtesy of quizly a test on one of the biggest sources of grammatical mistakes in English, safe in the knowledge that my own score in said quiz can be equalled but not beaten:

PUZZLES

I appended a question to a link that featured the year 1729 in a recent post. This was the question:

The puzzle I am attaching to this is: which two famous mathematicians are linked by the number 1,729 and how did that link come about?

The two famous mathematicians linked by the number 1,729 are G H Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan. The link came about when Hardy visited Ramanujan in hospital during the latter’s final illness and mentioned the number of the cab in which he had travelled – 1,729 and went on to suggest that this was a very dull number. Ramanujan said in response “No Hardy, it is a very interesting number, the smallest that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways”.

The other puzzle I set in that post was this one from brilliant:

If the statement on door 1 is true, then the treasure is behind door 2, which makes the statements on doors 2 and 3 both false = not acceptable.

If the statement on door 2 is true then the treasure is behind door 3, which makes both the other statements false = not acceptable.

If the statement on door 3 is true, then the statement on door 1 could also be true, making the statement on door 2 false – this scenario is acceptable.

Thus we open door 2 and collect the loot.

I finish by setting you another puzzle, again from brilliant, the 100th and last problem in their 100 Day Challenge, and a cracker:

Don’t be intimidated by that maximum difficulty rating – it is not as difficult as the creators thought. Incidentally you still have a couple of days to answer the problems properly on that website should you choose to sign up – although it would be tough to them all in that time!

PICTURES

This is lot 1 in our next sale – the first of 200 lots of old military themed postcards. Can you guess which of the lots pictured here is on my radar as a potential buy?

329-a — Lot 329 (four images) – a fine volume when new but this copy is in terrible condition.

£2 - Trevithick 2 — I picked up this coin in change at Morrison’s today and I took two photos of it, both of which I offer you to finish this post (it is only the Reverse that makes it interesting – the Obverse is the usual portrait of ludicrously over-privileged old woman).

An Auction Deferred

An account of the rescheduled James and Sons auction which happened yesterday.

INTRODUCTION

Followers of this blog will be aware that the second James and Sons August auction had to be postponed. Yesterday, at James and Sons own premises, 5 Norwich Street, Fakenham NR21 9AF was the appointed time and place for the rescheduled auction. We could not display all the stock in the limited space of our shop, so only small items made it downstairs. What follows is in account of my day and of the auction.

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

Some preliminary testing was done on Thursday to help ensure that the auction ran properly. On the Friday I caught the first bus of the morning into Fakenham. I was thus at the shop at about 7:10am, and after making a cup of coffee, getting my computer switched on and checking my emails I had a little time to spare before anyone else would be arriving, so I photographed some maps that will feature in the first of our end of September auctions. At 7:45AM I headed back downstairs, switched the downstairs lights on to acknowledge my presence to the world and was ready for action. Here are some photos from this period…

bus map — This route map can be seen at the bus stands on Oak Street, Fakenham

From here until the picture of the two computers are pictures relating to auction layout and setup

The light was wrong for capturing these Beatrix Potter coins – the sun was shining directly on them.

The IT setup – the silvery computer is the master machine,, and is open on the operator screen, with my notepad, pen, catalogue and ersatz coaster (formerly the back cover of a notepad) in front of it, along with my bidding paddle. Note also the camera attached to to the other machine and positioned to focus on the auctioneer, and the brand spanking new mic in the middle.

The maps – this is lot 538, and although I only got up to lot 545 there are maps from this series up to lot 600, and then a few more will feature in the third and final auction of the end of September series, with lot numbers in the 1500s. I will be imaging the rest on Tuesday.

A TESTING BEGINNING

Because of the circumstances of the auction there was a button I had to press called ‘repush bidders live’ when preparing for the start of the auction. Additionally, the auctioneer had decided to start at lot 921 instead of the official lot 924, which meant that I had to manually re-offer those first three lots before the system got back in sequence. A reset request from atgmedia also contributed to a slowish start. However, once this was all dealt with the auction proceeded smoothly.

THE AUCTION AND CLEAR-UP

The militaria fared well, the antiques and bygones far better than I had expected, while the records and books were predictably quiet. Then we got into the ephmera, for which section I had two plans, as follows:

If lot 1415 was available at a price within my means I would get that and my interest as a potential buyer would terminate.
If plan 1 failed then I would try my luck with lots 1422 and 1428, with a fair degree of confidence of getting them.

Lot 1422 (four images)

Lot 1428

In the event the starting price for lot 1415 was too high for me (I had decided that I would come in at £25 but not if more was required, and the auctioneer wanted £30), but I was successful with plan 2, getting each item for £10.

Some of the framed prints sold as well, which is all to the good. Lot 1600, the last item in the sale went under the hammer at about 2:20PM, and once I had accomplished as much of the clear-up of the IT stuff as was possible (typically, the laptop we used as the master computer decided that before shutting down it needed to install a load of updates, so I had to leave it where it was, though now unlugged and running on battery).

After consuming my sandwiches I was able to get away, having had a tiring but very satisfying day.

Puzzles and Pictures

A puzzle based on a blog post, a solution to an old puzzle, another puzzle from brilliant and some photographs

INTRODUCTION

Earlier today I put up a post titled “About Autism“, and because that post contained so much stuff this post is going to be much smaller – and with only a few links, all in one way or another puzzle connected.

DERIVING A PUZZLE FROM A BLOG POST

Ester put up a post titled “Year 1729“, which featured the image below:

The puzzle I am attaching to this is: which two famous mathematicians are linked by the number 1,729 and how did that link come about?

THE SOLUTION TO THE
MARBLES PUZZLE

In a post on Monday titled “Autism, Disability, Mathematics, Religion, Politics” which featured the following problem:

Below is first the answer that I gave, and then one of the solutions posted on brilliant:

This solution from Arjen Vreugdenhil was particularly neat:

NEW PROBLEM: TREASURE HUNT

This is another problem from Brilliant – can you find the treasure?

PHOTOGRAPHS

Wagtail — This time the little wagtail has the shot to itself.

SBS

Some nature themed links and some of my own photographs. Snakes, butterflies and slugs feature prominently in this post, hence its title.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to this nature themed post on aspi.blog. The title is formed from the initial letters of snakes, butterflies and slugs, all of which feature prominently.

SOME SWEDISH STUFF

Of course when posting about nature and mentioning Sweden, Anna is going to feature prominently, but also featured here is the work of two Swedish photographers, Ingrid Benson who specialises in butterflies and John Jonasson who photographs reptiles.

A SERIES OF BUTTERFLY POSTS

Some of you may remember that I reblogged a post from fargaregardsanna about butterflies in and around Trosa that was marked as the first of a series. Well that series now runs to six posts, four posts based on the work of Ingrid Benson and two more featuring some of Anna’s own photographs. I now provide links to all of them:

Fjärilar i Trosa – Butterflies in Trosa Sweden part 1 – the series opener – as all posts in this series are titled in this way the remaining links will only contain the part number at the end of the title.
Part 2 – more from Ingrid Benson.
Part 3 – more from Ingrid’s collection.
Part 4 – the last of these posts to feature Ingrid’s work.
Part 5 – the first of the two posts featuring Anna’s own photographs – I include two rather than the regular one as I could not decide between them.
Part 6 – the last post (to date) in the series.

SNAKES

Anna put up a post titled “Snake day” featuring some pictures of snakes near where she lives…

…at the end of it she included a link to the site run by John Jonasson and featuring pictures and information about snakes.

A COUPLE MORE
NATURE RELATED LINKS

Firstly, from A New Nature Blog comes a post titled “Guest Blog: Agri-environment – a need for detailed scrutiny, by Steve Peel” which is quite a long post but well worth reading.

Secondly, from Mitch Teemley, comes a piece titled “Caterpillars Don’t Become Butterflies!” which explains the process of metamorphosis.

MY PHOTOGRAPHS

We end as usual with some of my own photographs:

butterfly1 — The first four of the six butterfly pics that open this set of photos were taken yesterday.

small water creature — This was floating along the Gaywood river too rapidly for its progress to be down to the flow of the river (which is sluggish).

Slug 1 — The slugs (three pics) – today is warm and just a bit damp – and the slugs love it that way.

Swimming cormorants — Two swimming cormorants in one shot – a first for me.

Diving cormorant — This cormorant went into a dive as I was clicking the shutter…

Cormorant — …but then came up again not much later.

Links, Pics and Puzzles

Lionks to various pieces I have found on the internet, an answer and solution to one problem and a new problem, and some photographs.

INTRODUCTION

This is a sharing post with some of my own stuff as well. I hope you enjoy it.

CROSSBOW BOLT STOPPED PLAY

Play between Surrey and Middlesex at the Oval has been halted and the ground has been locked down because a crossbow bolt was fired from outside the ground into the ground. Everyone at the ground is now in sheltered areas not out in the open. Armed police are now present at the ground. The match has now been officially abandoned, and a controlled evacuation of the ground is now underway.

SCIENCE AND NATURE

First a trio from wildlifeplanet:

“Unreal Photos Of Animals From The Scandinavian Vicious Forest” – a piece highlighting the work of Finnish photographer Konsta Punka taking pictures of forest creatures:
“Beach That Disappeared 33 Years Ago Has Reappeared”
“Here Is The Bird That Is Able To Fly For 10 Months Non-Stop (Video)” – a piece about the swift.

Hurricane Harvey has quite rightly received a lot of coverage. Here are three of the better pieces:

“Harvey Didn’t Come Out of the Blue. Now Is The Time to Talk About Climate Change” this comes from the website systemchangenotclimatechange
“HARVEY DIDN’T COME OUT OF THE BLUE. NOW IS THE TIME TO TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE.” This is from theintercept.com and is written by Naomi Klein.
“Why are the crucial questions about Hurricane Harvey not being asked?” – an excellent piece by George Monbiot in the Guardian.

THE BEST BUS STOP

This bus stop is the subject of a post on illaboratoriodipleeny titled “Una meravigliosa fermata del bus….” that was brought to my attention by Anna, who was as impressed by it as I am. Here is the bus stop:

SOME POLITICAL PIECES

I start with a tool created by the Labour Party called the living wage calculator. You enter your postcode and it tells you how many people in your area would benefit from the minimum wage being increased to £10 per hour. Below is what is says about my postcode:

My next two pieces both come from the Skwawkbox:

“CONFIRMED: IT’S #LEONARD V #SARWAR FOR SCOTTISH LABOUR” electing Sarwar would mean a continuation of the approach that has failed miserably for both Kezia Dugdale and her predecessor Jim Murphy, whereas Leonard would be a move to the left.
“NURSE: WHY YOU NEED TO GET BEHIND THE #SCRAPTHECAP CAMPAIGN” – this is about the pay cap imposed on public sector workers, which the Tories recently voted to uphold. Their subsequent celebrations at having successfully voted to make life worse for public sector workers were utterly sickening.

My final link in this section comes from Pride’s Purge and is a superb exposure of one of the nastier displays of mendacity that the right wing press have been guilty of. It is titled “How the press lied about the little girl staying with Muslim foster parents. Here are the facts.“

A SOLUTION AND A NEW PROBLEM

In one of my posts on Monday I set a problem from brilliant. Here is I show the answer and an impressive solution. I also offer a new problem to end the section.

Thomas’ answer:

I admit to being lazy on this one – knowing that the internal angles of an octagon add up to 1080 degrees and that 7 x 90 = 630 I realised that with seven acute angles the remaining angle would have to be over 450 degrees, and the max is just under 360 degrees which takes you back to where you started. However 6 x 90 = 540 which means that the remaining two angles would have to add up to something in excess of 540 degrees, which is no great difficulty. Therefore I gave the correct answer of six (in less time than it has taken me to type this). However, one solver by the name of Atomsky Jahid produced a splendid effort:

A NEW PROBLEM

The mass extinction at the end of the Permian era is at the time of writing officially the largest in Earth’s history. An estimated 96% of all species on Earth at that time were rendered extinct. If the death rate in species that were not completely wiped out had been the same as the extinction rate what proportion of living creatures would have been wiped out in this event?

PHOTOGRAPHS

Guildhall — With Heritage Open Day coming up soon I decided to revisit these first two pics which feature thw town hall.

Greyfriars + wm — Greyfriars tower and the war memorial

P1040566 — A hald-moon in an early evening sky.

P1040564 — The first of three closer up and enhanced shots of the half-moon.

Auction Delayed

The rescheduling of an auction – a first in my time at James and Sons.

INTRODUCTION

Yesterday was the day on which James and Sons’ second August auction should have taken place. This post is about what actually happened.

TECHNOLOGY ISSUES

I arrived at Fakenham Racecourse precisely as planned, which was about the last occasion on that day that anything could be said to have gone to plan. We were slightly late getting things set up. Then my computer failed to connect to the racecourse’s internet as their set up is not secure enough for my computer’s liking. Another laptop having been located it then became apparent that we would not be able to run video, although the audio seemed fine.

Just after lot 923 went under the hammer we finally and definitively lost our audio as well. Discussion with the folks at the-saleroom.com, which included them being given remote access to one of our computers failed to resolve the situation, and after 15 minutes attempting to resolve the situation we decided that the only option was to postpone the auction, so on Friday 8th September at 10AM we will be having an auction at our shop which will start at lot 924 and end at lot 1600.

DAMAGE LIMITATION

Once the we had got the stuff back to the shop we got the auction officially rescheduled and I sent out a bulk email and a press release about the new auction. Here are both documents, and all the images used in their creation save for that of the record.

publicity — I know I got the date wrong on this one – I was very tired and failed to notice.

JAMES AUCTION ON SEPTEMBER 10TH JAMES AUCTION ALERT

Science and Nature (and other stuff)

Some recent internet finds and some of my own photographs.

INTRODUCTION

This post features links to some recent internet finds and some of my own photographs.

SOME SCIENCE AND NATURE LINKS

I start with a piece from mongabay which argues that “The Sixth Great Extinction” is actually “The First Biotacide“. Below is a picture from this article:

Steller’s Sea Cow holds the the world record for rapidity of extinction. Illustration from “Extinct monsters,” London: Chapman & Hall, 1896. Photo via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The second piece in this section comes from thewildlifeplanet and is titled “Italian Super-Volcano Approaches Eruption“

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

I have five links to share in this section:

vlogexpedition have a piece about the world’s longest railway journey – that along the Trans-Siberian railway.
My next piece comes from Vox Political, who got direct from the person whose story it is, Paula Peters. The title of the piece “Bus driver subjects disability activist to humiliating discrimination” gives you a good idea of the nature of the story. British law on this matter is unequivocal – the bus driver is legally obliged to give wheelchair users priority over mothers with buggies (this courtesy of a court ruling in January). Given the completeness of the information Paula provides, the bus company in question have only one option open to them both legally and morally – they must sack the offending driver and must make sure that all their drivers are aware of their responsibilities to disabled passengers.
I am treating my last three pieces in this section together, as all are connected with London Underground, all come from indy100.com and all have been pressed on to my London transport themed website. They are respectively:
“This is Officially the best Tube line”
“Quiz: Can you name the London Underground line by its colour?“
“This gif exposes the lies the London Tube map is telling you”

FAB FOUR FINAL LINKS

First in this section comes a link to RobertLovesPi’s Blog for this piece titled “A Twisted Expansion of the Truncated Octahedron“, which features a very cool graphic.

The Skwawkbox have produced an excellent piece titled “ATTACKS ON PIDCOCK SHOW MORAL BANKRUPTCY OF RIGHT – IN OR OUT OF LABOUR” Laura Pidcock is the recently elected MP for Northwest Durham and she has been making waves for her unashamed hostility to Tories and her criticisms of the cosiness and clubbiness of the House of Commons.

I started this post with a couple of science and nature related links, and now as we approach my photographs we are finishing where we started with stuff about nature, first of all Cindy Knoke with a wonderful post about a castle that has been dedicated to raptors, titled “Castle Rapture“.

With the last word before my photographs is Anna, who has recently posted part 13 of her amazing Paradise on Earth series, this time focussing on some of the smaller creatures who live in and around Trosa.

PHOTOGRAPHS

I will start this set of photographs with some of the smaller creatures I have recently captured, before finishing with some general pictures. These pictures were all taken yesterday.

Coming Up: Heritage Open Day 2017

Official publicity for Heritage Day 2017 in King’s Lynn.

INTRODUCTION

I have mentioned Heritage Open Day 2017 several times in this blog, including the fact that I will be stewarding at 11-13 King Street between 12 and 2PM. The official pamphlet for the event is now out, and with just less than two weeks to go I take this opportunity to share it with you.

THE MAP

Here is the map that is in the middle of the pamphlet, to help you orient yourselves:

THE PAMPHLET IN ORDER

This section shows the full pamphlet in all its glory:

A COUPLE OF CLOSE FOCUSES

The first place I havce chosen to focus on is Hampton Court, where my aunt lives:

I finish this post with 11-13 King Street:

James and Sons First August Auction

An account of the first of James and Sons’ two August auctions.

INTRODUCTION

As I have previously mentioned the presence of a Bank Holiday at a crucial time means that James and Sons are having two auctions in August. The first took place yesterday and is the subject of this post. The second will take place on Wednesday, with setup happening on the Tuesday.

THE GOODS

For this first auction, which took place at our own premises on Norwich Street, Fakenham, the following items were going under the hammer:

Coins – lots 1-300
Stamps – lots 301-400
Postal History – lots 401-550
Cigarette Cards – lots 551-650
Postcards – lots 651-807

These lots would take somewhat in excess of five hours to sell at our usual rate of progress.

THE DAY FROM MY ANGLE

With viewing advertised as starting from 8AM it was necessary for someone to be present from that hour of the morning. My colleague Andrew would be turning up to assist with the IT setup, which left me with a choice of two options:

Get the 6:23 bus and arrive at the shop very early
Get the 7:30 bus and arrive at the shop a bit later than ideal

Being me I preferred the first option, and duly unlocked the shop at 7:20AM. I made a coffee, checked my personal emails, knocked up a poster to explain what was going on (screenshot and link to original below):
800 LOT AUCTION

The originals were A4 sized – Arial Black 64pt in bold for this interested in such matters, and I produced 3 copies, one for a window towards the town centre end of the shop, one for the window at the opposite end and one to go with the regular closed/open sign on the door which was also set to closed. Next up came transferring everything needed for the setup downstairs, and doing as much as could be done at that stage. Then, just as I decided to turn the downstairs lights on and acknowledge my presence to the world in general my colleague arrived and we were able to complete the set up, and I fetched a couple of extra chairs from behind the shop so that we had seating for five room bidders. When the auctioneer arrived I was then able to connect up both the computers we were using for the auction (one is his laptop), switch them on, log in to the correct screens in each (the operator screen on his laptop which we use as that master computer and the auctioneer screen on the other), get the slideshow going on the big screen and precheck audio and video so that even if no one at atgmedia (they are seriously understaffed) managed to do an official check I would know that they were working. At 9AM the auctioneer asked me to make a preliminary announcement in case anyone was already logged on, so I did so. A second announcement at 9:30 was heard by someone at atgmedia who confirmed that audio and video were working. Just after this our first room bidder arrived and I issued him with a bidding card (and later added his details to our client database as a coin buyer) and gave some advice about car parks (although I am a non-driver I am well acquainted with the ways of car parks in Fakenham, and my advice was sound – if he wants to park free then go to Tesco where he could park free for three hours, which as a coin specialist would be enough to see every lot of interest to him go under the hammer, if happy to pay use the car park behind our shop). At 9:50 I closed down the operator screen on the main computer, and relogged in from scratch, a regular precaution that I take. Finally, the time reached 10:00 and the start of…

THE AUCTION

The coins by and large sold well, with several bidders in the room and some action online. The stamps were quiet although some did sell, including a Chinese stamp which went for £85. The postal history also started quiet, but a large number of the later lots sold to an internet bidder. Some of the cigarette cards sold. There were some good sales among the postcards, and others which attracted no interest elsewhere were knocked down to a postcard dealer with whom the auctioneer has a regular arrangement. Each time an item sold to an online bidder whose name I did not recognize I noted their surname, paddle number and area of interest so that whatever else I have time to do in that respect actual bidders will definitely be added to the client database.

The last lot went under the hammer at about 2:30PM, and I then attended to clearing up the IT/ electronic equipment, and as my last work related action of the day sent an email written by the auctioneer to the buyer of postal history regarding some of the earlier lots in that section that he might have missed (he is based in the USA, so the first postal history lots went under the hammer quite early morning his time).

In total those items that did sell had a combined hammer price of just over £3,900 which made it a good day. We wait to see what happens on Wednesday.

PHOTOGRAPHS

I will end with some pictures that relate to this post:

Auction stock full — The whole stock for this auction in one shot

Bulky lots — The bulky lots down on the ground

PH and CC — postal history and cigarette cards

Lot 28 – sold for over double the upper estimate (3 images)

Lot 638 – I thought about bidding on this but decided not to – there is stuff on Wednesday that I want more than I want this.

This is lot 1053, which will be going under the hammer on Wednesday (5 images)

Midweek Mixture

Some stuff I have seen recently on the internet, a little teaser of a problem and some photographs from today’s ‘ecotherapy’ session.

INTRODUCTION

I spent most of this morning indulging in ‘ecotherapy’ (i.e. getting out and about in the open air – my thanks to The Gentleman for the term), which also provide me with photographs which will end this post. In between times I will share various pieces that have caught my eye recently.

NATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

I start this section with a petition that has been set up on thepetitionsite calling for Michael Gove to be replaced as Defra minister (see graphic below, which also functions as a link):

GOVE is bad for the environment. Demand new Defra Minister!

It is pretty much impossible for any replacement to be worse than the Downright Dishonourable Mr Gove, although while this dreadful government remains in office the right person for the job will not be selected. In the hope that Jeremy Corbyn, or someone who can influence him might see this I say, as I did when naming my fantasy cabinet a while back that the right person for this role is Caroline Lucas.

SOLAR POWER IN AUSTRALIA

It makes perfect sense for Australia to be looking at solar power in a big way, just as here in Norfolk we should take advantage of our biggest renewable resource by building many more wind turbines. I am therefore delighted to share this story from the treehugger website titled “Australia will be home to world’s largest single-tower solar thermal power plant“, the feature graphic from which I produce below:

THE DEATH OF THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE

This is the title of a piece in The Economist. After 120 years of dominating the scene the internal combustion engine’s days are numbered, and the end for this pollution generating monstrosity cannot come soon enough. I include their feature graphic below.

A PLAN TO REVIVE AN EXTINCT SPECIES

This one comes from thewildlifeplanet.com and the species that may be being brought back from extinction is the Caspian tiger. The plan involves using DNA from the Siberian tiger, a rare but surviving species that is closely related to the Caspian tiger. A potential living area for the revived species has been identified in Kazakhstan. The map below shows the areas reckoned to have been inhabited by the common ancestor of these tiger species when it was around 10,000 years ago.

ANNA’S CHURCH

I end this section of the post with a nod to Anna and the brief post she put up yesterdya about her continuing fight to protect nature under the title “I went to my church“, one picture from which I reproduce below.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

I am going to present these links as a bulleted list, amplifying some of them a little:

Our government has recently reneged on promised rail electrification programs in Wales and in northern England (yes, largely due to privatisation and consequent neglect our railways are so backward that not all of them have yet been electrified, some services still being run by diesel locomotives). Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK has put up a short post outlining how these electrifications could be funded.
The title of my next piece, from Buzzfeed, should be sufficient: “People Who Use Wheelchairs Are Being Forced To Crawl On To Trains And It’s 2017“
The last piece in this section come from the skwawkbox. The first features a video from Double Down News which referring back to an incident from last year is utterly devastating for Virgin Trains, as it shows conclusively that Jeremy Corbyn was telling the truth when he described that train as ‘ram-packed’ and Virgin’s subseqnet denials, including one from the boss, Richard Branson, were lies. The most devastating footage comes about halfway through the video, which is embedded below, and shows the reserved seats filling (as one might expect) moments after Corbyn had walked past them. The skwawkbox piece is titled “DOUBLE DOWN VIDEO SCOOP PROVES WHAT WE TOLD YOU LAST YEAR: #TRAINGATE WAS FULL“.

ELECTORAL REFORM

Britain’s First Past the Post (FPTP) system of electing representatives has had its day. Those who support this system claim that it delivers stable majority governments, but it has failed to do this three times running (no majority in 2010, wafer-thin majority for Cameron in 2015, May running a minority government with the support of the vile DUP in 2017. I have three recent pieces dealing with this topic for your attention.

Setting the scene for the other two a post on theconversation.com titled “Wasted votes, hyper-marginals and disillusion: reform group issues damning report on election 2017“
The Electoral Reform Society’s introduction to their full report titled “June’s election was the third strike for Westminster’s voting system. It’s out” and…
The full report itself, titled “The 2017 General Election: Volatile Voting, Random Results“.

As well as the voting system needing reform, the results in Northern Ireland showed that it is time for the Labour Party to abandon its pact with the SDLP and field candidates of its own – the recent Stormont election successes of Gerry Carroll and Eamonn McCann have demonstrated that non-sectarian socialists standing as such can win in Northern Ireland.

A PROBLEM AND SOME PHOTOGRAPHS

I generally finish my posts by putting up some of my own photographs. Before getting to those I have a teaser for you:

The above table shows two putative sets of coin toss records, each for one coin tossed thirty times. Which is more like to be genuine based on what you can see?

a) series one
b) series two

If you want to have a public stab at answering this feel free to use the comments, although I will say neither yea nor nay until I put my next post up, which will include an answer to this little teaser.

Now for those photographs…

	Thomas on Describing and Imaging Ep…
	cindy knoke on Describing and Imaging Ep…
	Thomas on A New Find
	amsutcliffebtinterne… on A New Find
	Derek Li on About Autism

INTRODUCTION

ANDERSON JOINS 500 CLUB

LINKS

AUTISM

NATURE

POLITICS

JACOB REES-MOGG

A SEGUE LINK – A QUIZ

PUZZLES

PICTURES

INTRODUCTION

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

A TESTING BEGINNING

THE AUCTION AND CLEAR-UP

INTRODUCTION

DERIVING A PUZZLE FROM A BLOG POST

THE SOLUTION TO THE MARBLES PUZZLE

NEW PROBLEM: TREASURE HUNT

PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION

SOME SWEDISH STUFF

A SERIES OF BUTTERFLY POSTS

SNAKES

A COUPLE MORE NATURE RELATED LINKS

MY PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION

CROSSBOW BOLT STOPPED PLAY

SCIENCE AND NATURE

THE BEST BUS STOP

SOME POLITICAL PIECES

A SOLUTION AND A NEW PROBLEM

A NEW PROBLEM

PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION

TECHNOLOGY ISSUES

DAMAGE LIMITATION

INTRODUCTION

SOME SCIENCE AND NATURE LINKS

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

FAB FOUR FINAL LINKS

PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION

THE MAP

THE PAMPHLET IN ORDER

A COUPLE OF CLOSE FOCUSES

INTRODUCTION

THE GOODS

THE DAY FROM MY ANGLE

THE AUCTION

PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION

NATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

GOVE is bad for the environment. Demand new Defra Minister!

SOLAR POWER IN AUSTRALIA

THE DEATH OF THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE

A PLAN TO REVIVE AN EXTINCT SPECIES

ANNA’S CHURCH

I end this section of the post with a nod to Anna and the brief post she put up yesterdya about her continuing fight to protect nature under the title “I went to my church“, one picture from which I reproduce below. PUBLIC TRANSPORT

ELECTORAL REFORM

A PROBLEM AND SOME PHOTOGRAPHS

THE SOLUTION TO THE
MARBLES PUZZLE

A COUPLE MORE
NATURE RELATED LINKS

I end this section of the post with a nod to Anna and the brief post she put up yesterdya about her continuing fight to protect nature under the title “I went to my church“, one picture from which I reproduce below.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT