Pictures and Stuff

It is (was) dragon boat festival this weekend. I confess I don't know what dragon boat festival celebrates. If we are in Asia when the festival arrives, we always go and see the races, and then eat jong tsi, sticky rice dumplings. In the west there are no races, but we still make the dumplings. The dragon made hundreds of dumplings yesterday and we ate them in the garden. We spent a lot of time in the garden yesterday. It looks really quite nice now. The path up to the garage is passable now, though the Weigela needs cutting back. It was spectacular this year, but has somewhat taken over.

There are a lot of dumplings left over. the dragon is going to share them with her Asian friends today I think. I hope the weather will remain nice. It was looking a bit grim last week. I need sunshine. I had two beers yesterday. It was the first alcohol to pass my lips for several weeks. I found some novelty beers in the local Indian shop. One was a Bollywood beer. Very colourful label, quite nice. The other was Desperado beer. I just liked the name. It had all sorts of aromatic flavourings. Tasted a bit gingery. Quite odd.

We've also been making bread again:





We have loads of strawberries growing in the garden. They are still green, but dumpy tried to eat one anyway yesterday. I knocked one off with the lawn mower. That was depressing. we need a new lawn mower. The current one has been in my possession for about 20 years, and it was second hand when I bought it from my old boss. Perhaps we should treat ourselves to a new one.

I was drawn to the headline, Brain size not key to intellect, this morning. Perhaps I am turning into a pedantic old git, but headlines like this annoy me. Is this a new discovery? Has no one except me noticed that there are several mammals with bigger brains, but smaller intellects, than humans? Isn't this another observation from the school of the bleeding obvious?

I am prepared, as always, to read the article before I take the piss however. I didn't have to read very far. From the first two paragraphs:

"UK research reveals that the rising complexity of connections between brain cells may have been the biggest driving force.

The Nature Neuroscience study found clear differences between brain junctions in mammals, insects and single cell creatures."

Hang on, single celled creatures!? Connections between brain cells? Can anyone see where I'm going with this? It's too easy isn't it?

Oh this is going nowhere. I'll write something good one day, hones