Butterfly

Denver has a Butterfly Pavilion. They ship farmed chrysalises from foreign, and when they hatch, the butterflies are released into the greenhouse, where they die. I suppose this is probably how most butterfly pavilions operate, but it did seem a bit like the greenhouse was the pet that was being fed by butterflies.

This one was huge. Bigger than a, um... tarantula? eeep! The band of big furry spiders at the Butterfly Pavilion seem to thrive rather better than the butterflies. The zookeeper said this one was about 15 years old...

Read more...

NCAR

Ben wishes to star on the blog yet again (spot him here). But first, here is NCAR, his workplace, which seems to be ageing awfully well for a 1960s concrete structure.

Perhaps the sandy concrete is soft enough that the surface remains fairly fresh looking. Perhaps that means it is wearing away, but there looks to be plenty of concrete left.

And here are Ben and friends at lunch in NCAR's famous cafeteria. There's not much James and I wont do for a free lunch, so in the afternoon we entertained the workers with seminars.

Read more...

Madness

"We like driving in our bus,
It is far too big for us"
(sung to the obvious tune)

Odd to see a car so big that makes James (6.5 feet tall) look like an ipsy wipsy imp. However, there is methodism in our madness. Next week the in laws arrive to be taken on a road trip across the Zenlands of Wyoming and Utah. In our bus we hope they will be able to swing their legs about in the back without getting DVT. It is a little alarming how well it climbs. Must have a massive engine, and is probably getting about 1 mpg. Hopefully it also has a massive tank. Oh well. At least it isn't using as much power as the NCAR climate model ensemble runs on the Yellowstone computer (also in Wyoming).

Read more...

The world from the air

Been seeing far too many aeroplane views recently, but even supposedly dull countries can look quite interesting from the air.

Read more...

Temples

We did a fair bit of templing while on unicorn safari, but weren't lucky enough to spot any more.
Here's ye olde village church.

And although it would be poetic if this was taken inside the same church, unfortunately that church was locked. Instead this is just one of Bath Abbey's many windows. Don't see much stained glass in Japan. In fact our temples don't contain much glass at all. I suppose this explains how the dragons get in.

Read more...

"summer" ?

It isn't just the Unicorns. Like Werewolves and the moon, British people become insane as soon as they see sunshine. Oblivious to the fact it is still actually rather cold, as soon as that pale yellow watery thing shines in their palid blue sky they switch off the heating and open all the windows. This must surely be a contributing factor to why we are presently not merely working from home, but working from bed. With 'flu. Still, it's not all bad. It is actually truly sunny and warm in Kamakura, and it is surely a good idea to get 'flu every decade or so to keep one's immunity up.

Here's some of that dangerous so called "sunshine".

River

Inner city housing If you prefer postcardism to buddhism, you might prefer this one.

Temple

Read more...

Ringfencing the Unicorn

It's golden week, a very busy time for travel and tourism in Japan. So we felt quite lucky to get the last two places on the West of England Unicorn Safari. It turns out that unicorns in the UK aren't much more rare than dragons in Kamakura.

Read more...