Links, various

[heliopausa]

To amuse those of you who live where it really snows: the news story about snow falling in Hobart recently - even on the beach!  and some schools were closed, for a snow-day.  :) 

In delight that maybe only other Australians will follow: Bronwyn Bishop has resigned!  a blow against arrogance and corruption.  Just one blow - corruption is still around and corroding our political system, but still... this is good news.  It's also left our Prime Minister looking even more of a loose cannon - since he plainly didn't know how to handle the situation, at first making light of it, and then going to ground to avoid it. 
It wasn't giant corruption on a world scale - swanning around using taxpayers' money to bignote herself, and travel in luxury - but she's been riding for a fall with her blatant self-interest and partiality as Speaker, and I am very glad to see her go. 
There's other alarm bells in the story, too - why the Federal Police handed the matter over to the Department of Finance to investigate, and why the Department of Finance seem disposed to let her off the hook.  But for today, I'm glad she's gone as Speaker.

also in the category that this might only interest other Australians: I hope like mad that Adam Goodes returns next weekend and is met with sustained cheering.  I can't do a blinking thing about it, though, that I can think of.  Not all the opinions in the world (like this from the Age newspaper) can help unless the crowd themselves see themselves for what they are - racist and baying for blood.  Suggestions welcome.
(For non-Australians - Goode, a football player, has been booed incessantly whenever he takes the ground ever since he over-reacted badly to a young girl shouting abuse at him (she claims she didn't know it was racist, which I think is garbage, but irrelevant). The crowds have seized on this to boo him, allegedly because he was bullying to the girl, but... oh, come on!  They're not fooling anyone.)

Does this constitute a mass spoiler?  British academics come up with a formula to predict whodunnit in any Agatha Christie crime novel.

Great to see mangroves getting the attention they deserve!    They're the Puddleglums of the plant world - they don't look heroic, but they hang in there and achieve much, unsung.  (also: Sri Lanka has passed legislation preserving all of its remaining mangrove coasts.  Cheers!  \o/)

Les Miserables ground to a halt in last week's busyness, just as four young couples were spending a glorious holiday together around Paris -not just because of the busyness, but also because I could tell that this delicate happiness was not going to last - so I stopped to enjoy it before Hugo unleashes whatever mad dog/volcano/general depressing event he has planned.  The writing is amazing.  Here's one sentence about that idyllic holiday:
"That day was composed of dawn, from one end to the other."  

It's even more beautiful in French.  Not that I'm it reading in French! - just that that sentence was so stunning that I wanted to see how Hugo said it, which was:
"Cette journée-là était d'un bout à l'autre faite d'aurore."

Comments

[edenfalling]

That article about the Tasmanian snow is ridiculously cute. Everyone is so excited!!!... and then most of the pictures are, um, mild, to say the least. :-)

[heliopausa]

I can't deny it! :D

[transposable_element]

When I was about 13, we had a whole INCH of snow in my home town, which is a big deal event in this part of California. I think it's the only time in my entire life that we've had snow that stuck (for a whole day!). Schools were closed, traffic was snarled, people made little teeny snow people! It was awesome.

[heliopausa]

Exactly! :D

[autumnia]

The snow looks beautiful on the beach, and how cute someone built a snowman on top of the sand. :-)

Pfft, that's nothing compared to what we got this year. Though that being said, I don't mind a dusting but will happily pass on the inches and inches of it that take forever to melt. Boston's crazy snow mound finally melted away sometime last month!

[heliopausa]

"that's nothing compared to what we got this year"

:D Yes - I thought it might amuse some of you who live in really snowy places!

and that's certainly pretty eye-blinking - leftover snow still hanging around in July!

[marmota_b]

Well, I've seen cars covered completely by snow in the mountains of the Czech Republic; but I also live in a town that may go the whole winter without so much as an actual covering of snow staying on the ground. So I relate to both sides. "In Prague a calamity like in Siberia, three centimetres of snow, and at the Museum, there's four!", as the singer-songwriter Jaromír Nohavica wrote in an extremely popular mocking song about a particularly snowy winter. :-) Were it not so specifically Czech, we could have sent it over to North America to comfort them this winter, it's hilarious.
Meanwhile, our summer continues to be hot and dry, so I'm really enjoying the sight of the snow.

Mangroves! One of the many things I find fascinating but don't normally have time for.

[heliopausa]

It took me a while, but I found it! :)

I'm so glad you like mangroves! They're such stubborn, (but who can stand against bulldozers? :( ) alien-seeming trees! Wading or struggling through a mangrove belt is hard, with those unyielding leafless shoots spiking up everywhere through the soil/sand/mud. (You can see why I align them with Marshwiggles!)

(I hope you get rain soon.)

[marmota_b]

Very marshwiggly!

You did find it. I did not want to send you on a chase like that!

[heliopausa]

You remember the menu of the autumn feast at Harfang? and that Eustace is vegetarian (more or less). Then...
here's something for your amusement. :)

[marmota_b]

Hehe. Amusement achieved. :-)