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:

1. “Unreal Photos Of Animals From The Scandinavian Vicious Forest” – a piece highlighting the work of Finnish photographer Konsta Punka taking pictures of forest creatures:
   
   

2. “Beach That Disappeared 33 Years Ago Has Reappeared” 
   
   

3. “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