A couple of nature-related things:
Beavers provide a boost for declining pollinators, study reveals: 'beaver-created wetlands are home to greater numbers of hoverflies and butterflies than human-created equivalents.' Go beavers!
Given that there is reputed to be A Very Large Cat already around those parts, do you really want to start re-introducing the European wildcat to Devon, huh?
Felis silvestris has been absent from mid-Devon for more than a century, but the area has been judged to have the right kind of habitat to support a population of the wildcat. The area has the woodland important for providing cover and den sites while its low intensity grasslands and scrubland create good hunting terrain. According to the study, the wildcats would not be harmful to humans or to farm livestock and pets.
However, the issue arises that like the wildcat population in Scotland, they are interfertile with the existing domestic and feral moggie population:
For a reintroduction project in the south-west to succeed, the study says there would have to be cooperation with local communities and cat welfare organisations to support a neutering programme for feral and domestic cats.
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I was fascinated by the concept of this project: Supernatural Law: Regulating the Paranormal :
We invite chapters that explore how law responds to, regulates, or resists belief and
behaviour in matters that cannot be proven. What role has law played historically in shaping
society’s understanding of the paranormal? With what intentions has it intervened and
which values and ideologies has it sought to uphold? What can we learn from law’s
engagement with the paranormal?
Call is for papers for edited volume, I think it should be a conference with suitable activities arranged - visit to local haunted house, seance with a medium, etc etc.
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This is rather lovely: 'Happiness and tears' as Sikhs see rare outing of ancient holy book; though one does rather have questions seeing that it appears to have been loot from the Anglo-Sikh Wars:
The scripture was formerly in the possession of the Maharaja Kharak Singh, ruler of the Punjab, and taken from the fort at Dullewalla in India during its capture in 1848. It was presented to the university by Sir John Spencer Login, who also brought the Koh-I-Noor to Queen Victoria, through the Rev W H Meiklejohn of Calcutta.
But I liked this:
Trishna Kaur-Singh, Edinburgh University's honorary Sikh chaplain and director of Sikh Sanjog who was at the event, said she wanted the book to remain in Scotland.
She said: "I know people talk about repatriation and that's fine and it's needed in many instances but you have to take into context the fact that the people are here because of that colonial past and have lived their whole lives here.
"They have been parted from their history and their links and it was found here so it should be here for our communities for generations.
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Full scan of Bill Brandt's 1938 photo-essay A Night in London (very few surviving copies).
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