Recommended radio and television programmes.

[Gliondrach]

This is very interesting:

bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

You'll need to copy the above link, add www. to the beginning and then paste it into a browser.

Click on 'Listen Again' under 'Costing the Earth'.

Britain’s food is the cheapest it’s ever been. We spend less income on it than any other country in Europe and it’s the supermarkets that keep the prices low. But is so much cheap food taking its toll on the environment?As the supermarkets come under increasing pressure to adopt more environmentally friendly policies, Costing the Earth asks how far those policies extend down the food supply chain.
Agriculture is responsible for ‘significant’ water pollution, it costs over 200 million pounds a year to clean up our water supplies because of pollution from farming. It’s one of the government’s biggest environmental concerns. Each year the Environment Agency prosecutes farmers and food companies for water pollution, over-abstraction and other breaches of environmental law. Many of these prosecutions are against suppliers to the supermarkets. Yet all continue to supply them. The county of Herefordshire is home to many large scale potato producers who supply the supermarkets. Miriam sees evidence there of the damage intensive farming is doing to the River Wye. The runoff of soil and phosphates into the rivers is polluting the water and damaging the wildlife. The new government body, Natural England, says half of England's rivers in Sites of Special Interest (SSIs) are being damaged this way. Scotland’s rivers and lochs are being similarly threatened by large scale salmon farming. The size and scale of the industry has made salmon an easily available, affordable item in the supermarkets, but it also costs the environment. Several cases of pollution against salmon farms successfully prosecuted by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency make for unpleasant reading – sewage fungus, blood scum and fish guts discharged into marine environment and local rivers. Miriam O Reilly asks three of the big retailers what approach they take to companies who break the law and damage the environment.
The Government is committed to meeting the objectives laid down in the Water Framework Directive which says the ecology of our waters must be restored to health by 2015. But as the supermarkets come under increasing pressure to go a deeper shade of green, and that includes sourcing more of our food locally, the pressures on our land and countryside will become greater.

[thevegantwins]

I've thought about this topic a bit. I remember when I was a child, my mother used to be happy to buy a dozen eggs for 99 cents. I still see a dozen eggs advertised for 99 cents. That was 25 years ago, how could the price not go up unless they were doing horrible things to keep the price low.

[Gliondrach]

Panorama, BBC1, 8.30 pm, Monday 29th January, 2007.

Secrets of the drugs trials.

'Did Britain's biggest drug company deliberately mislead physicians into prescribing Seroxat, which it couldn't prove actually worked for depressed teenagers? Shelly Joffre reports as GlaxoSmithKline fights legal action in the US, which could seriously damage its reputation.'

And, as it also says in the Radio Times:

'...were the facts about the efficacy of this drug for teenagers deliberately not made public?'


This is the fourth time that Panorama has reported on seroxat in recent years, according to what I have found on the internet. I don't think I saw the earlier programmes.

[Gliondrach]

Panorama was very good. It showed what we all know - that GlaxoSmithKline are liars. That they hid evidence that their drug was no better than a placebo, and that it posed a risk of causing suicidal thoughts in teenagers. But they made a nice profit before their lies were found out. They must have known they would be found out but they would have known that it would take time. The more time, the more profit.

[Gliondrach]

There's something on Channel Four today at 9 PM. I think it is about some 'experts' trying to convince us that global warming is not caused mainly by greenhouse gasses. I think they will try to convince us that it is mainly the sun that is causing heating. The sun might have something to do with it but no one can convince me that we are not making things worse. Their message might be different to what I suspect, though. If they try to say that we are not having much of an adverse effect, they will obviously be lackies of the pollution-causing big businesses.

[Gliondrach]

Why did I write that 'The sun might have something to do with it....'? Of course it does.

I saw that programme but it did nothing to change my mind. I nodded off a couple of times in the last half hour but saw most of it. One of the scientists involved in the IPCC study said that he had had his name removed from the document because he didn't agree with the published conclusions. These conclusions were, I think, that human activity is most likely to have been the main cause of rising temperatures since 1950. I'm not sure if I would agree with that, either. He said that others had tried to have their names removed but failed. Other scientists, who deny that humans are having an affect on global warming, said that they don't receive money from the oil companies for saying so. I don't know if that's true. But, they seemed to think that those of us who are opposed to the profligate use of carbon fuels are blaming global warming on that source. We are not. We know that the sun controls the temperature of the earth. I don't think anyone would deny that. An increase in solar radiation will lead to an increase in temperature here. What we are saying is that we are adding to any increase in temperature. The programme said that carbon dioxide forms a tiny proportion of the earth's atmosphere. It was said that volcanoes produce much more carbon dioxide than humans ever could. That plants and all animal life and sea algae produce more of the carbon dioxide (CO2). They also said that there is a time lag between increases in CO2 and temperature rises and that CO2 increases seem to follow an increase in temperature rather than causing it. They said that the temperature has fluctuated throughout history. They said that in the first half of the twentieth century industrial output of CO2 was low but temperatures were high. Then from the end of the Second World War, when there was an industrial boom, temperatures were low for forty years despite an increase in CO2 output.

We can't do anything about volcanoes. and I fail to see how an increase in temperature could cause more CO2 from a volcanic source. It could cause more from animal and plant sources, though. This would be because more warmth would lead to more plant growth. When they die or are eaten more CO2 will eventually be released into the atmosphere. But this is a closed cycle. Whatever is produced will eventually be taken up again by new plants and animals. The burning of fossil fuels is releasing into the atmosphere CO2 that was locked up for millions of years and would remain locked up for many more millions of years if it wasn't used by us. I don't believe that industrial output was low before the war. It had been increasing for more than a hundred years. The high and low temperatures before and after the war will have been due to solar activity. They could even have been caused by fluctuating levels of CO2 and its effects on clouds. Perhaps more CO2, which encourages more plant growth, will mean more water vapour being aspirated by leaves going up to form clouds, which reflect sunlight back out to space. This is what could have happened after the War when there was more industrial output. And less CO2 emmissions before the War - if that is true - could have lead to less water vapour to form clouds. This is just my theory dreamt up a few seconds ago. But adding CO2 to the atmosphere - not the CO2 produced, released, and reabsorbed by plants and animals - will add to the effects of solar activity. The effects may be small but they will have an affect. Ha, ha, I hear you say. 'If there is more CO2 now why aren't there more clouds reflecting sunlight into space and causing global cooling?' Well, clouds can reflect sunlight and can also trap it. I think it depends on where the clouds are and other factors. It is so complex that experts can't agree. Also, we are destroying plants at an alarming rate. Perhaps there aren't enough to pump out extra water vapour.

That could be seen as an argument for burning more fossil fuels to release more CO2 to encourage plant growth to create more cloud formation. But that could only work if we allowed the plants to grow. We don't. We are cutting them down and overgrazing them. We are drying out wetlands to build more airport terminals and houses. We are cutting down the Amazon jungle to make cattle ranches and to grow short lived soya crops. And we are polluting the seas which could be killing algae. Admittedly, in some areas farm fertilisers washed into the sea will be encourgaing the growth of algae. But I think that other pollution will be killing more. I'm not sure if algae encourage water vapour cloud formation the way plants might.

Then there was an emotive appeal for the industrialisation of Africa. That they should make and use electricity. They said that rural Africans burn wood for cooking fires and that the smoke kills millions of them. This is true. I don't think anyone would try to deny Africa the use of their coal reserves to produce electricity. What many people don't want to see is the full industrial nightmare starting up in countries or continents where it is not already a curse. Let them have electricity but do they need millions of cars choking up new roads, churning out more pollutants to kill millions of them? Do they need to waste electricity to turn night into day so that shops and offices can burn useless lights all night long when no one is using them? And forcing many more millions of them to work a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week system? As for the electrification of rural Africa, it took decades for that to happen in the UK during peacetime and it will take longer in Africa where dozens of small wars are raging and corrupt governments are in charge. A quicker method, for cooking, would be to introduce more efficient, cleaner-burning stoves and cookers. Perhaps solar cookers in places with enough sunshine. Perhaps industrial units can be built where the workers already live - with as much pollution control as possible - so that they won't need cars to get to work.

For Africa, China and India to have full electric lighting and power the rest of the world must cut back on what they use to offset to some extent the increase in CO2 emissions. And to encourage these developing countries to save energy. We have street lights on from sunset to sunrise. Shops and offices have lights on all night. More and more people want to fly anywhere they want for holidays. People will use a washing machine just to wash a shirt. And then tumble it dry. No one needs to give up all non-essential electricity use. Most people don't need to give up car use for work. They just need to use things wisely. They don't need to give up holidays. I wouldn't want to stop using my computer or watching telly. I don't have a car or washing machine or vacuum cleaner. I rarely iron anything. I would like a washing machine and might buy one one day. But if I do I will use it only when there is a full load and will let the things dry naturally. I never put heating on. If I am cold I wear an old jacket. My lifestyle is not everyone's idea of a comfortable one but I am used to it and it's not difficult.

There are just too many humans and we can't go on having more and more of what we want. We need to plant thousands of millions of more trees - especially in places that have recently become deforested. We don't want to plant them in areas with low water tables, because the trees will dry the soil out. We don't want to plant trees in certain types of wetlands, because again the soil will be dried out and the plants already there will die. Some of these wetland plants are more efficient at absorbing and storing CO2. Most importantly, we need to have a vegan world.

Most of these things won't be done and they won't be done because they are inconvenient or will cut into profits.

That was all a bit chaotic but I wanted to get my thoughts down on paper, er, computer screen. It will be tidied up before I give my speech at the Ovaltinie Climate Research conference.

[Oracl]

Most of these things won't be done and they won't be done because they are inconvenient or will cut into profits.
That pretty much sums it up I think. :(

Great post G. :agree:

[Gliondrach]

I won't argue with your assessment.

I am working on the design of a peddle-powered aeroplane to take people on holiday flights. Each passenger will have to peddle. This will also prevent the formation of deep vein thromboseseses. Two solutions in one design.

[Oracl]

I am working on the design of a peddle-powered aeroplane to take people on holiday flights. Each passenger will have to peddle. This will also prevent the formation of deep vein thromboseseses. Two solutions in one design.
You know, I think it could just catch on! :rubchin: :agree: :D

[Charmagne]

Did anyone see this Boston Legal episode. They hit the nail on the head yet again especially at the end with his excellent sarcasm!! (OMG - BMW has created a video monster!:nanakiss:)

KLL95aQwBA4

[Oracl]

That is excellent, Charmagne! :thumbsup:

[Gliondrach]

For UKers - Panorama on BBC1 tonight at 9. An undercover team spent 17 months investigating and filming the illegal dogfighting world in the UK and Europe.

[Gliondrach]

BBC1 tonight at 9pm: The Nature of Britain, presented by Alan Titchmarsh. It's repeated next Sunday on BBC2 at 7pm - although in the Radio Times it says, wrongly, that it is on next Thursday.

I saw the first episode and it was very good. Beautiful countryside and fascinating animals. And Titchmarsh is good at presenting things. Last time, we saw 'boxing' hares - which will be repeated in this episode - and the aerial acrobatics of starlings as they gathered before roosting. Today's programme is about farmland.

[thevegantwins]

That show sounds very interesting. I'd like to watch a series like that.

[Gliondrach]

There's a short clip of the first episode here. It shows Titchmarsh being attacked by skuas.

bbc.co.uk/bbcone/

It has h tt p:// w w w. in front but it works without that.

[Gliondrach]

Autumn Watch starts next week on BBC2. It is possible to watch some of our television programmes over the internet.

For ITV:

.itv.com/Watchnow/default.html

If copying and pasting the above address doesn't work you'll have to add the h tt p:// ww w.

It is easy to watch things using the ITV system. Which is more than can be said for the BBC system.


For BBC:

bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

This allows you to watch many programmes from the last 7 days. You need to install the BBC IPlayer thing. I tried it. At first, it told me that I needed to update my Micro soft media player. I did so. I tried to record something. It told me that it would take over an hour to download it - the programme was only on for 30 minutes. I eventually downloaded it but it wouldn't play. I think I might need to get the updated IE7 browser. I am on !E 5.5, think. I won't bother. It says that only people in the UK should download things. But how will they know? What can they do - ban you?

[veggiesosage]

They would be able to tell you're from outside the UK from your IP address presumably.

Last I looked the BBC thing would only work on XP as well which is dumb.

[Gliondrach]

From memory, I think they were just telling people outside the UK that they shouldn't use it. The whole thing is automatic and might not have any anti-foreigner software protection. It would be worth a try for non-UKers.

[Gliondrach]

Here's a You Tube version of Alicia Silverstone being interviewed on television:

youtube.com/watch?v=zM6pB9rXU30

ht tp: // w w w. missing from front.

[Gliondrach]

Watch this. The beginning is a bit daft - there is no credible evidence to link Horus to Jesus - but part two, about the 11th September attacks and part three, about world events - including the Wall Street Crash, First and Second world wars and Vietnam war being beneficial to bankers - are very interesting. But, as they have their facts wrong about Horus, I would need to check their other facts to be satisfied. For example, it was said that the international bankers and financiers wanted the US to enter the First World War so they could make a nice profit. And that the Lusitania was encouraged to sail through German uboat-patrolled areas. But one of the victims of the sinking was Alfred Vanderbilt. Surely, the international financiers wouldn't have put one of their own at risk?

Two former US tax workers say that income tax that isn't designated is unconstitutional - that there is no law that says people have to pay it. They say that they haven't filed tax returns for years. One said he hadn't filed a complete tax return, the other said that she hasn't filed one since 1999.

It says that George DD Bush's grandfather was involved in supplying fuel to the Luftwaffe during the Second World War and that they couldn't have bombed Britain without it.

Near the end they say that all US citizens will be required to carry a radio-frequency identity card by May 2008. Has anyone heard of this?

Watch it. It stopped and went back to the beginning a few times. I kept the cursor over the sliding thing that moves along as the film progresses. When it stopped and went back to the beginning I moved it back to where it was and restarted it. I also periodically checked how long it had been on so I could start it where it finished. It is on for 1 hour and 53 minutes.


zeitgeistmovie.com You might need to add the w w w. when you paste it in a browser.

[my3labs]

Here's a You Tube version of Alicia Silverstone being interviewed on television:

youtube.com/watch?v=zM6pB9rXU30

ht tp: // w w w. missing from front.

Good for her.

[Gliondrach]

Leading Edge, on BBC Radio 4 was good this evening. They mentioned that DNA analysis shows that polar bears and brown bears became distint types 200,000 years ago. And, because of the interglacial warming during that time polar bears have survived warmer temperatures and periods of scant sea ice before. And might be able to do so again. Or that's what I think they said. I was making a cup of tea in the kitchen at the time.

They also mentioned that exercise can help to protect against Alzheimer's even in people who carry the gene for the late onset kind. I know that preventing or reducing arterial plaques can help to prevent dementia - by increasing blood flow to the brain - so there might be a similar process here. In the programme they give some other possible reasons.

There's also something about artificial neurons in an experiment to replicate the brain in silicon. And other things.

You can listen again where it says 'Listen Again'.

ht tp://ww w.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/leadingedge.shtml

Something that might interest Oracl:

h ttp://ww w.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/

[Oracl]

Something that might interest Oracl:

h ttp://ww w.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/
:agree: Some fun stuff on there! Thanks Gliondrach. :nanakiss:

[Gliondrach]

Don't forget to keep your towel handy.

[Oracl]

Of course I won't forget! ;) :D

[Gliondrach]

I've just seen a telly programme called The Man Who Lives With Bears. No, it's not about me. This retired American-type teacher - and ex-bear hunter - goes to Alaska every Summer. He stays in a cabin he built in the wilds and feeds black and grizzly bears. He feeds them by hand. One mother grizzly attacked a black bear who came too close to her cubs but this bloke was later seen walking alongside the three of them. He later went looking for a black bear and her cub and played with the cub within sight of the mother.

He was shown surrounded by black bears and the grizzly with her cubs as he fed them. Normally, bears don't congregate in such large groups.

He became very close to a young female grizzly but one day she bit his hand and pulled him to the ground. After that she became distant and then disappeared for three weeks. She turned up on his last day before going home but she had changed and didn't interact with him.

[Gliondrach]

I saw a telly programme on Tuesday, called Nature Shock, on Channel 5. This episode was about killer elephants. In South Africa they were killing rhinoceroses, and in Kenya they were killing cattle - and at least one human.

In South Africa it all started when it was decided to move elephants from one area and relocate them in another where no elephants had lived for decades. This was about 20 years ago and they couldn't transport adults at that time. So they killed the adults and took the babies. Often, they would tie the babies to the dead bodies of their parents until they were ready to transport them.

When the male babies became adolescents they went into early must. When elephants are in must they become very aggressive and will kill. They didn't have adults to learn from and didn't have any controlling influence in their lives. Seeing their parents killed when they were babies wouldn't have helped.

When some adult elephants were able to be moved there the violence of the adolescents stopped.

In Kenya, the Masai killed some elephants. I forget why now - probably because the elephants were competing with grazing land with the cattle. The elephants then began killing cattle. It is thought that they knew how important they were to the Massai and picked on the cattle because they were easy targets. One of the most notorious 'offenders' was a female elephant whose baby was killed by Masai. She was also badly wounded by them.

One man was attacked and killed by an elephant. Then other elephants gathered around his body for a few minutes and continued to gore it. Then they threw earth over it.

In Uganda Idiot Amin, the lunatic, cannibal president, killed many of his politcial opponents, especially men. These came from a rival tribe to his. The young lads were left without any adult supervision and turned into marauding bands of killers. Just like the young elephants in Kenya who had no adult supervision and who had also witnessed their parents being killed.

[Gliondrach]

Laurence Main is on the Vegan Society committee. I remember seeing his advertisements for guided walking holidays, in their magazine, when I was a member. He was a guest on Ramblings today on Radio 4. This is a programme in which the presenter goes on walks with people who know the particular walk well. Last week she walked part of the Ridge Way - one of the oldest trackways in the world. This week she walked with Laurence and members of the Society of Ley Hunters. They were looking for leys in the Abergavenny area of Wales. There was no mention of his veganism, though.

On a site that mentions Laurence Main they say that St David was a vegan!

On the right of the page you can click on 'Listen to the latest edition'. You can listen to that at any time until the next programme is on, which will be next Friday at 3 PM.

ht tp://ww w.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/ramblings.shtml



On the Suggested Reading page of the Society of Ley Hunters, they mention a book that some people here - probably mainly the female-types - might be interested in.

Cities of Dreams-When Women Ruled the Earth - Stan Gooch
This is a work of breathtaking scope and originality. Yet Stan Gooch's reconstruction of the lost civilisation which preceded our own, and unlike other such attempts, is based at every turn on hard accepted archaeological fact - the extensive ochre mines of southern Africa, the bear skull altar of Drachenloch in Switzerland, the flower graves of Iraq. It is not just the case that we are not the first. It is the case, amazingly, that all ancient legends are true. The Minotaur did live at the centre of the maze, Sleeping Beauty did waken to the Knight's kiss, the fairy people did meet and dance in the moonlight and women once ruled the whole magical earth. 20 illus./photos.

Stan Gooch is a good writer. I read his Neanderthal book.

[Gliondrach]

In the UK. 10.35 pm, ITV1 Dating the Enemy.

'Alan gave up his job to fight for animal rights, Whilst Bella is a firm believer in the right to hunt. Can the pair find any common ground at all over four days?'

[Fauxmage]

I'm afraid I would end up going hunting with Bella and mistaking her for a squirrel. :zip:

[Gliondrach]

She was a very silly 19-year-old, who acted more like someone of 12. And, apparently, she didn't know what a vegan is.

[Gliondrach]

I meant to mention this a couple of days ago but forgot. You can watch it later on BBC iPlayer if you miss it.

BBC1, 9 o'clock tonight. What's Really in Our Food?

Tom Heap and Simon Boazman pertinently ask to what extent we can even trust the food we are eating. As they set about finding out, they reveal some of the tricks of food labelling and uncover the more sinister world of food fraud.

[Gliondrach]

A worker in meat packing companies said that he saw meat go out one day, be returned a week later when it had passed its sell-by date, and then be minced up and put into burgers to be sent out again.

They also said that pig meat, labelled as outdoors bred, usually meant it came from pigs that had been born indoors, spent their first 4 weeks out of doors and then the rest of their short lives indoors. But meat eaters will be happy to think they led happy, natural lives in the open air.

Chicken products often contain added pig or cattle tissues.

Organic salads were washed in a product that contained antifreeze.

Birdseye 'Great British Menu' meal contains chicken and vegetables. But the chicken comes from Thailand.

And a few other interesting things.

[Gliondrach]

They are repeating The Victorian Farm on BBC2. I didn't watch it the first time. Three people are living as Victorian farmers of the 1880s. Everything is from the period. They cook on a coal-fired cooking range, plant seeds with a horse-drawn seed drill, plough with a horse-drawn plough. The woman seems to have the hardest work. She's always cleaning or cooking. We saw her do the weekly wash today. It took nearly a week to do everything. She had to use a dolly to wash the clothes. You can see washing dollies on the internet if you don't know what they are. It was very hard work. When I were nobut a lad there was a wash house nearby where most women used to go on Mondays to do their washing. I don't know what was inside as I never went. I suppose there were big boilers. My mother used to do the washing at home in a gas-fired boiler. Just a big tub with a gas ring underneath. I remember stirring the clothes in it with a big wooden stick. It was like stirring a witch's cauldron. It was about the size of one, too. Them was the days.

[Vinnie]

I saw it. They had three turkeys and gave them names. The woman said the one called Ena would be the Christmas dinner. Next thing we saw Ena dead and ready for cooking. :mad:

[Gliondrach]

Yes. They delivered some piglets a couple of days ago. One was sickly and died. At least he won't have to face the trip to the slaughterhouse.

As I watch them with the various animals and hear them talking about how much profit they'll make or how nice the meat will taste, I think about slave owners and how they had the same attitude to their slaves. People now wouldn't think about other humans in that way, so there is some small hope that one day they won't think about other animals in that way.

You can learn the odd useful titbit from the programme though. The woman ground two bricks together to make brick dust. She dipped a cloth in vinegar and then in the dust and used it to clean pots and pans. They came up quite well. As she said, modern pan cleaners are a mixture of acid and an abrasive.

Then she put used tea leaves (still damp) on the stairs as she swept them. Dust mingles with the leaves and doesn't fly about as you sweep it. Good idea. I know that a damp sand mixture is used for this purpose but I never thought about using tea leaves. I throw out about a pound of damp leaves each week.

[Gliondrach]

There was a programme on telly yesterday about Gandhi. It said that when he went to study in London in 1888 he only kept to a vegetarian diet because his mother had made him promise not to eat any meat. He believed that a vegetarian diet had made Indians weak and that they would be better off if they started eating meat. There were 34 vegetarian restaurants in London during the 1880s and they were centres of political and social discussions. Through contacts and friendships he made in them he came to believe in vegetarianism. I think it was also said that many of his later ideas were formed then. I was in the kitchen at the time making a cuppa and couldn't hear properly.

There are two more parts. The Three Lives of Gandhi. Saturdays, BBC2 8.15 PM.

[Gliondrach]

I'm enjoying a series called 'Coal House War', on BBC2 at 7 PM on Mondays. The second part was this week. Seven more parts to go. Three families live the lives of wartime families. Rations, coal fires, washing by hand, blackout curtains and all that. Most of the women have to go out to work in a munitions factory where they sew ammuniton bags. The three men work in a mine, and then have Home Guard duty in the evenings. It's filmed in Wales.

And next week Wednesday, BBC2 at 9 PM is a new 6-part series: 'Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain.' This is about the period from the death of Queen Victoria to the end of the Second World War. Should be good.

[gabbles]

Coal House War is good. Very realistic. Sirens but no real bombs.

[Gliondrach]

On Ray Mears' new series, shown on BBC2 on Sunday and repeated today at 7 PM, he showed a mushroom stuck in a bush in the Canadian forest. He said a squirrel had put it there to dry before storing it away for the Winter. The clever little devils use air drying.

[gabbles]

I watch it. I wish he would make a vegan friendly programme, but he usually catches fish or rabbits. He didn't kill anything in this first one.

[gabbles]

On Autumnwatch they said skunks are being sold in British pet shops. :mad:

One was let loose in the Forest of Dean and is now in a rescue centre.

[Gliondrach]

There's a very good drama on Woman's Hour. It is repeated at 7.45 pm on Radio 4. You can listen to it on the internet - address below. It's in 10 parts, 15 minutes each. I heard the first one on the internet because I missed it on the radio. Just listened to the second part on the radio. It is called Beyond Black, about a spiritualist medium and her assistant. It's a very nice story and well acted. Alison Steadman plays the medium. Rosie Cavallero plays her assistant. I'm glad I didn't miss it. The first episode is still available for another 6 days. Today's is available for another 7 days. These two episodes have links on the left-hand side of the address below.

h-ttp://ww-w.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qy2s

---------
Home Planet was also very good. The first item was about the creatures and other things that live in and on our bodies. One is the toxaplasmosis protozoan, which about a third of us have living in us. It's thought it can cause pschiatric disorders. I think they said that men infected with it are more likely to have car accidents and are more likely to be aggressive. I'll have to listen to it again. I'm sure they said that the total number of bacteria cells in and on us outnumber our own cells.

ht-tp://ww-w.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r0sms/Home_Planet_02_03_2010/

----------

And on BBC2 in about 15 minutes is Horizon. Did Cooking Make Us Human? I know that about 1.6 million years ago human-types were making fire and could have been cooking tubers. These will have made the tubers more nutritious and easier to digest and will have supplied starches to fuel bigger brains.

[Gliondrach]

I've just listened to the beginning of Home Planet again. They said:

Adult microbial cells in the gut outnumber human cells in the entire body by a factor of 10 to 1.

Nine percent of our DNA is viral in origin, not human.

The protozoa that cause toxoplasmosis infects about 30% of people but in France, it infects up to 88% of the people - from eating raw meat.

[Gliondrach]

There's a very good drama on Woman's Hour. It is repeated at 7.45 pm on Radio 4. You can listen to it on the internet - address below. It's in 10 parts, 15 minutes each. I heard the first one on the internet because I missed it on the radio. Just listened to the second part on the radio. It is called Beyond Black, about a spiritualist medium and her assistant. It's a very nice story and well acted. Alison Steadman plays the medium. Rosie Cavallero plays her assistant. I'm glad I didn't miss it. The first episode is still available for another 6 days. Today's is available for another 7 days. These two episodes have links on the left-hand side of the address below.

h-ttp://ww-w.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qy2s



Beyond Black is realy very good. I'm thinking of buying the book. I've heard 8 episodes so far. I'll listen to today's later this evening on the Listen Again wotsit. The last one is tomorrow.

[Blueshark]

Come dine with me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PltARQCQ-c4) with a vegan host. Its an old one - but worth the watch.

[Gliondrach]

I'll watch it later. Thanks for posting it.

Grow Your Own Drugs is on tomorrow - Tuesday - on BBC2, at 8 pm. Things for indigestion, an anti-dandruff oil and a potion to repel moths. There's also a recipe in the Radio Times for migraine. I'll post it later somewhere. Probably in the Favourite Remedies thread.

[snaffler]

On BBC Podcast from now Mon 29th
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006r9xr

Andrew Marr Start The Week

Edition 29/03/2010

Jonathan starts talking around 13mins and 15secs.

More about Jonathan
http://www.jonathanbalcombe.com/

JONATHAN BALCOMBE

For years Jonathan Balcombe has studied animal behaviour. Formerly a Senior Research Scientist with Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, his latest book, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals, argues animals are no less sentient than human beings, from the signature whistle of a dolphin to the empathy of higher moral feelings such as altruism, grief, trust, optimism, forethought and empathy. We may be the more powerful predator but Jonathan argues it is time for us to stop feeling superior and adopt instead a more humble, less oppressive relationship with animals.

Jonathan is giving a talk at the British Library on Monday 29 March and his book, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals, is published by Palgrave Macmillan

[Gliondrach]

He put his points across very well.

The woman who made the last comment made a typical meathead reply. She said she would feel less guilty about eating meat if other animals didn't eat meat. :mad: :grumble:

[gabbles]

I like the idea of that trick they play on the elephants. The trick with the urine. :D

[Gliondrach]

The third series of Ashes to Ashes finished yesterday. Very confusing at first until it all became clear.

It's given me the idea for a new thread: The Garden of Mysteries. A place to discuss your ideas about life and the universe. In the Spirituality thread. Ideas about what life is for, why it began, how it began, what the universe is, how big it is, what's beyond the end of the universe, what was there before time started - those sorts of things.

[Gliondrach]

I saw a television programme last night about children in Ethiopia who had been afflicted with Noma Disease. I had never heard of it. It is a terrible disease caused mainly by malnutrition. The body's own bacteria begin to attack tissue in the face and the victims can end up with half their lower face eaten away.

Ben Fogle presented the programme. A couple of years ago he contracted a skin eating disease in South America which left a small hole in his arm. He recovered with treatment. He went to see some of the children to recruit them for treatment to be given by a team of plastic surgeons. All the children wore scarfs over the affected side of their faces. One little girl, Mestikima aged 10, had been abandoned by her parents and was living with guardians. Many of them are abandoned or hidden away.

About 60 eventually turned up at the hospital to wait for the surgeons to arrive. One little lad had a piece of his skull removed to make a new cheek bone and lower eye socket. The bone was in 2 layers and they seperated the layers and put one back in his skull. There was some concern that Mestikima might not be able to have surgery because her injury was so bad. But she was chosen and had the first of what would be a series of surgeries. She also had the same surgery with a layer of skull bone. We saw her 5 weeks later and she looked very different. It looked as if her right eye was covered by a layer of skin which went down to her jaw. Perhaps this is only to protect that side of the face until another operation is done. Her right eye didn't have any bone underneath it and had sunk down a bit. I hope she still has sight in it.

It was a humbling experience to watch these brave children who bore their condition with dignity and courage. Anyone who complains about bad hair days or a bit of acne should watch this to see how lucky they are.

You can watch it on BBC IPlayer.
It's called: Make Me a New Face: Hope for Africa's Hidden Children.

Here's a picture of Mestikima.

[gabbles]

I hope all the operations were successful. Especially for Mestikima.

[LetsEat]

It's not tv, but on youtube is a great channel, called the Healthy Vegan Cooking show. With Heather.

I didn't read all this thread so I don't know if anybody said this yet.

I was busy laughing (as in sad laughter) at the title, we have nothing that I know of in the states veggie/vegan oriented.

[Gliondrach]

I'll have a look at that tomorrow, thanks.

[Gliondrach]

'It Shouldn't Happen at a Vets.' On Panorama, BBC1 today at 9pm.

As the Radio Times says:

'Whilst filming undercover at one of Britain's largest veterinary chains, this Panorama special finds evidence of questionable bills, animals being poorly treated and an unrepentant vet who was struck off for dishonesty. Pet owners who take best practice on trust are in for a shock.'

They mentioned it on the radio this morning. The undercover reporter said she was taken on as a trainee without any qualifications and was soon shown how to put catheters into veins.

[Gliondrach]

:mad:

Panorama tomorrow - Monday - BBC1 at 8.30 pm.

Britain's Unwanted Pets

Has the fashion for aggressive looking 'status symbol' dogs, such as staffordshire bull terriers, led to a large increase in abandoned pets that the authorities are having to deal with? Tom Heap gains access to Battersea Dogs' Home and reveals the shocking number of animals it is having to put to sleep.

[Gliondrach]

I saw a BBC Natural World programme a few days ago about the Himalayas. There was some beautiful scenery and spectacular views. The Himalayan foxes look more like wolves. And there are wolves there, too. And bears, goats, snow leopards, and some small creatures that look a bit like rabbits.

They started in the west, in Pakistan, and went to the east, in China. In Yunnan province there age gorges that are twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, and tropical rain forests at a height of 8,000 feet. The valleys and gorges act as channels for the warm air from lower down. There are monkeys up at that height.

It's repeated today, on BBC2, at 5pm.

You can also watch on the link below - the one with the snow leopard on the screen. It's on for 59 minutes. It will be available for another 2 weeks or so. If not in the UK, you might be able to download some software that allows you to watch iPlayer. I've heard that a UK proxy address will allow you to do so. This will cost money.

ht--tp://w--ww.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnnh

[Vinnie]

I saw it. He said that western Asia would be a desert without the Himalayas.

I missed something about mountain gorillas last sunday. Part 2 is on next Sunday at 8 pm on BBC2. Natural World next thurdsay is called Africa's Dragon Mountain. That's on at 7 pm.

[Gliondrach]

The gorilla one should be good.

[gabbles]

I watched the Dragon Mountain one. When the elands reached the top of the mountain they must've thought they'd reached the promised land.

[Gliondrach]

There was a good telly programme on this evening on Channel Five. Nature Shock: India's Silent Killer.

They started by saying that leopards are prowling the streets of cities, that vultures are dying out and India is facing ecological disaster. I immediately shouted at the telly: 'Humans will be to blame!'

They said leopards are attacking people in cities and that people are killing them. In one year, 126 leopards were killed. They think the main reason the cats are in cities is because of the explosion in the dog population. The leopards hunt the dogs. Any humans who get in the way get taken instead.

The dogs are on the increase because over 90 per cent of vultures in India have disappeared. Hindus don't kill their cows. When they die, they are taken to dumping grounds. About 15 million tons of them a year. The vultures eat them and pick the bones clean. I think they eat the bones as well. As there aren't enough vultures, there's lots of meat for dogs and their numbers are increasing.

Another increasing problem is rabies. I think they said 20,000 people die from rabies each year in India. It might have been 2,000. But it is 36 percent of the world total. This is contracted from dog bites. Vultures have very strong stomach acid and it kills every microbe they ingest. Now that they are almost non-existent disease is rampant in the corpse dumping grounds. The dogs contract all sorts of disease and their stomach acid is obviously not strong enough to kill everything.

Even the Parsees - Zoroastrians - in Bombay are being affected. They practice 'sky burials.' They leave dead bodies in a certain enclosure and vultures devour them completely within an hour or so. Now, dead bodies are piling up and rotting. Crows and other birds can't make them completely disappear like the vultures can.

Some researchers noticed that many of the few vultures left were sickly. They examined some and found liver or kidney damage. They couldn't find any viruses or bacteria that could be responsible.

To cut a long story short-ish, they thought something in the dead cows must be causing the disease. There were no signs or heavy metals or other pollution but they eventually discovered that farmers often gave their old cows diclofenac when they were older to ease pain. That was it. The drug was killing the vultures. They examined the putrid corpses in the dumping grounds and found 10 per cent had the drug in their livers. Just 1 per cent would be enough to affect the vulture populations.

It took 2 1/2 years to get the drug banned for cattle. But some farmers still use it. It's a drug made for humans so it's difficult to stop people using it.

A breeding programme is trying to increase the numbers of vultures. But they don't breed until they are 5 years old and only lay 1 egg a year.

And, some of the Parsee bodies contain that damned drug. Why don't they stop using it? Find something else, you fools or you'll kill the vultures off and the bodies of your loved ones will pile up again.

You can probably watch the programme again on Channel Five's demand.five.tv

[Gliondrach]

How to grow younger.

There's a new series starting today on BBC1 at 9 pm. It's called The Young Ones. Parts 2 and 3 are on tomorrow and the next day. It is based on the work of Ellen Langer who found out that elderly people could be made younger by living as they did when they were younger. Tonight, some well known British people who are in their 70s and 80s take part in a similar experiment. They will live as they did in 1975 to see if they become younger.

There was a programme about Ellen Langer's work which I mentioned in post 19 on the following thread:
http://www.thesaucyvegan.com/showthread.php?p=71891&highlight=Langer#post71891

I will watch it on iPlayer later because I want to watch something else on BBC2 about a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain.

[Gliondrach]

I watched The Young Ones on iPlayer just now. It's very good. They've only shown them on the first two days. On the first day they settled in. Some of them took two minutes or more to carry their suitcases up fourteen stairs. Surprisingly, Lionel Blair wasn't as fit as he looks. But, after the first night they all seemed to be a bit more active. I'll be watching the second episode this evening on telly.

The participants are Sylvia Simms, Lionel Blair, Dickie Bird, Liz Smith, Derek Jameson and Kenneth Kendall.

If living as you did thirty-five years ago can keep you young, I will be young forever because I do live as I did then. The only difference is that I have a computer and the internet. And a telephone. Although I wasn't vegan thirty-five years ago.

I have a sort of false nostalgia for the 1970s. When I see old television programmes or films from that time I wish it was those days again. But it wasn't really that good for me. It was good but not that good. Not as good as the old programmes make me think it was.

Oh, and I watched the Battle of Britain programme, First Light, yesterday. That was very good, too. It is available on iPlayer. I think I have the book it is based on. But haven't read it yet. After it I watched something live on BBC4, on the internet. The first time I've seen BBC4 as my telly doesn't get it. That was about the Battle of Britain, too. Today is Battle of Britain Day. 'Never in the field of human conflict...' and so on, as Churchill said.

[Gliondrach]

In the second episode most of the people had shown quite a bit of improvement. Liz Smith, who had been confined to a wheelchair most of the time after a series of strokes - but who could walk short distances with two sticks - managed to walk around the kitchen with one stick. She even managed a bit of dancing. Silvia Simms was running around the garden with two dogs, and she really came alive when some young children came into the garden and she was tasked with entertaining them.

I'm looking forward to the third episode. The experiment only lasts seven days. I'm sure they will all have shown great improvement by the end.

[Gliondrach]

In the third and final part it was evident that all of them were much better at doing various things than they had been just 7 days earlier. They all had better balance, flexibility, upper and lower body strength and outlook on life. Liz Smith, aged 88, who had been unable to walk more than a few paces even with two sticks, was able to walk more than 140 paces across the garden with just one stick. She did hold on to Lionel Blair's arm but he wasn't supporting her. In the final physical examination, she was able to stand on one leg without holding on to anything. She even went out dancing when she returned home.

Lionel Blair, at the age of 78 danced with some tap dancing chaps and looked very agile. I think he is going to work with young dancers.

Silvia Simms, aged about 74, is now helping with some charity that helps older people. She said that when she first started on the experiment, her back was hurting and she had no energy. She was running about by the end of it and said she had no back pain.

Derek Jameson, aged 80, could hardly get up the stairs at the beginning but was doing step ups on a low step half-way through the experiment. He couldn't even put his own socks on, so bad was his flexibility. He could by the end. He is going to help aspiring journalists.

Kenneth Kendall, aged about 83, had much better balance and was able to walk quickly. He had had a fall a couple of days before the experiment but was walking confidently after it.

Dickie Bird, aged 77, felt as if he had a new lease of life. His strength, memory and agility improved. He had been living as almost a recluse but is determined to take part in life again.

It was heart warming to see the joy on their faces as they realised how much they had improved.

If you act old, you will be. If you act younger, you will be. It's important to have interests and to keep moving.

There's another programme on Wednesday 23rd September, on BBC1 at 10.45 pm. The Science of The Young Ones. As next week's Radio Times says:

'This follow up to last week's televised experiment to see if ageing is a state of mind uses members of the public to explore the science involved and challenge preconceptions about old people. Can we really control how we age?'

[Gliondrach]

I watched two wildlife programmes today. Nature Shock: The Crocs That Turned to Rubber, on Channel Five at 8pm, and Lost Land of the Tiger, on BBC1 at 9pm.

The crocodile one was about death of crocs in Kruger National Park in South Africa. In 2008 they started to notice lots of dead crocs. Their body fat had hardened. The condition is caused by pansteatitis. As soon as they said crocs were dying without a known cause I once again said that humans were to blame. And they were. The cause is probably the completion of a dam which has changed the flow of the river in the gorge in which the crocs live. There are mines and farms all along the river and the water is polluted with about 1,500 poisons from these places. But the water samples didn't show any of them to be above danger levels.

Eventually, it was discoverd that catfish also had the disease. Crocs eat them. The catfish are bottom feeders and get a lot of food from the river bed. Because the river flow had changed, poisons were building up on the river bed. This was one cause of the crocs' condition. Another is stress. The dam has resulted in different water levels and fewer sandbanks where the crocs like to sunbathe to regulate their temperature. This changes the way they use fat in their bodies. I don't know what can be done. One of the rangers said that the crocodiles have been on the planet for millions of years but we have nearly killed off the crocs in that river in just over 2 years.

The Tiger programme was in Bhutan. They found tigers in the forests as high as 15,000 feet. As there are only about 3.000 tigers in the world and they are all scattered in small pockets separated by hundreds of miles, there's not much chance for their survival. Especially not with all the people who think the Chinese medicinal products made from their bones will help them.

The plan is to set up a tiger corridor along the foothills of the Himalayas and they need it to go through Bhutan. They need to prove tot he Bhutanese government that enough tigers live in the area. Parts 2 and 3 are on Wednesday and Thursday this week.

[Gliondrach]

I watched the follow up programme to The Young Ones last night. The first experiment was about a psychological phenomenon called priming. This is where we subconsciously absorb messages in our environment which can affect how we behave. They asked people to make sentences out of words to test their language proficiency. The first group were given words that are usually associated with old age. Such as 'obedient', 'accepting', 'wise', 'courteous', 'alone', 'sentimental' and 'careful'. They had filmed the people as they entered the building and walked along a corridor. After the test they told them the test had finished. They filmed them as they walked along the corridor again. Most of them walked more slowly, some 10 or 20 per cent slower - as if using words associated with old age had made them behave older.

Next, they did the same test with other people but used words usually associated with youth. Such as 'ambition', 'freedom'. attractive' 'fashion' and 'passion'. Most of them walked more quickly afterwards - as much as 10 or 15 per cent faster. One woman bounded up some steps.

In another test, some other people were told they were going to be tested to see if they would be good fighter pilots. They wore pilot overalls and were tested in a flight simulator of a Harrier jump jet. Their eyesight was tested before and afterwards. Most of them could read more letters on the eye chart afterwards than before. Their eyes hadn't improved but it is thought their brains were working harder - as if they were still trying to be like fighter pilots. Fighter pilots have excellent vision so their brains were trying to give them that.

In another experiment, some ambulance workers took part in 'laughter yoga'. They pretended to laugh until they actually did start laughing. Their cortisol and blood pressure levels were tested before and afterwards. Afterwards, their blood pressure was the same but their cortisol levels had dropped.

In another experiment, three groups did a memory and mental flexibility test. Then some did salsa dancing, some did soduko puzzles and some did exercise on exercise bikes. Afterwards, the soduko people hadn't improved, the salsa people improved a bit on mental flexibility but the bikers improved the most on further tests of memory and mental flexibility. The extra blood flow from their increased heart rate carried more oxygen and nutrients to their brains.

[Gliondrach]

This week's Nature Shock, on Tuesday, was called 'The Seal Ripper'. Seals on an island near Greenland have been found with distinctive wounds. Marine biologists were puzzled as to how they could have been made. Once again, as soon as I started watching, I said that humans were to blame. It turns out that Greenland sharks are the culprits. They've started attacking seals because humans have taken all the fish.

[Harley_Quinn]

I'm not too much of a TV watcher
I like movies better
But usually i end up watching cartoons (90s Batman cartoons - DC Animated cartoons - etc). News (but even the news is unreliable), and Globe Trekker (awh man! Wouldnt it be awesome to get paid to travel the world?!)

[Gliondrach]

But usually i end up watching cartoons (90s Batman cartoons

I would never have guessed. :whistle:

Wouldnt it be awesome to get paid to travel the world?!) :agree: I travelled overland to India once. Very interesting seeing all the different countries. It's only a coincidence that wars and civil unrest broke out in most of them shortly after.

[Gliondrach]

I watched a telly programme yesterday (Thursday) called Spitfire Women, about the women of the Air Transport Auxillary. They ferried aircraft from the factories to the RAF airfields during the Second World War. Very interesting. There were men in the ATA (I didn't know that) but this was about the women - there were two pools that were entirely of women. Nearly one in ten members of the ATA were killed. One of them said they sometimes flew many aeroplanes in one day. They might have had to fly a Lancaster bomber, then a Spitfire, then a Mosquito. They were paid about two-thirds of what the men earned until one of their leaders fought for and won equal pay for them. They were probably the first women (at least in the UK) who were paid the same as men for the same job.

[Gliondrach]

I watched a telly programme last night in which four families of shopkeepers lived and worked as Victorian shopkeepers. We were told that bakers often adulterated flour to make it go further as their profit margins were so low. They would add sawdust, allum, plaster of paris, clay or chalk. Very tasty.

And grocers would add all sorts of nasties to their products. They would put red lead in red Gloucester cheese. Iron sulphate in pickles, to make them look greener. Sulphuric acid in old vinegar. Prussian blue in tea leaves. Mercury in children's sweets to make them more colourful.

h--ttp://ww--w.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v7p71

Next week, they are in Edwardian times. Then the 1940s, and then the 1960s.

[Bowwowmeow]

I watched a telly programme last night in which four families of shopkeepers lived and worked as Victorian shopkeepers. We were told that bakers often adulterated flour to make it go further as their profit margins were so low. They would add sawdust, allum, plaster of paris, clay or chalk. Very tasty.

And grocers would add all sorts of nasties to their products. They would put red lead in red Gloucester cheese. Iron sulphate in pickles, to make them look greener. Sulphuric acid in old vinegar. Prussian blue in tea leaves. Mercury in children's sweets to make them more colourful.

h--ttp://ww--w.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v7p71

Next week, they are in Edwardian times. Then the 1940s, and then the 1960s.
Yes, I've read about brick dust in cocoa too.

[Gliondrach]

Dispatches, Channel Four, was very good last night. 'Riding Europe's Gravy Train.' It was made by the team who made a video I saw on you tube a few weeks ago, which showed some MEPs turning up at 7 o'clock on a Friday moring to register their attendance so they could get their £260 attendance fee. And then clearing off home for a long weekend. The damned thieves were taking money fraudulently and they should be taken to court. It also showed how many pocket the profit they make from travelling expenses, office expenses and attendance allowance (when they actually do attend). Just like the corrupt UK MPs, they can buy property using their expenses and then sell it when they leave office. And keep the money. This is on top of their very generous wages and other money paid to them for various things.

Twenty-nine days left to watch it:

ht--tp://ww--w.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#3139895

These corrupt politicians want to make it harder for people on invalidity benefit and job seeker's allowance to claim their money. They skim thousands of pounds a year - sometimes tens of thousands - from the taxpayers but they want to prevent someone in need from getting a few quid a week. They deregulated the banks, let them run pyramid schemes to fleece people of their money and pensions and then used tax payers' money to reward (I mean bail out) the banks. In the USA, where thousands of people have had their homes repossessed because they couldn't pay their mortgages after the banks destroyed their jobs, the stupid government reward the banks for doing so by paying them millions of pounds. And the banks sell the repossessed houses and pocket the money. I saw a video where David Icke was saying the government should have paid off the outstanding mortgages which would have resulted in the people keeping their homes and the money would still have gone to the banks - as mortgage payments instead of direct handouts from the taxpayer. As far as I can tell, the banks don't lose anything when someone defaults on a mortgage because the bank has already sold some of the risk to some other investment organisation in the form of a bond.

Where's Guy Fawkes when you need him?

[Gliondrach]

There's a good three-part series on telly. Started yesterday. The Bear Family and Me, BBC2 9 pm. Second part today and third tomorrow. Black bears in Minnesota. A camerman follows Lily and her cub Hope. Yesterday we saw Lily abandon Hope to go off looking for a new mate. She shouldn't have done that until Hope was a year old. Hope is still so young that her eyes are still blue. Hope was alone for five days without food. Someone saw her and reported her to Lynn Rogers the biologist in charge and they managed to catch her. She fought like a wild cat. Or a wild bear. They knew where her mother was because she was wearing a collar with a radio transmitter. They took Hope to find her mother but Hope escaped from the cat carrier she was in and ran off. They found Lily a few hundred yards away and led her to Hope. I think she followd the smell on the biologist's hand. The two bears were really happy to see each other.

It ended with a note of concern. After a few days they noticed that the cub was not feeding properly. I've read today's entry in the Radio Times and it says that Hope is abandoned by her mother and the camerman decides to become a surrogate parent. In tomorrow's programme Hope is accepted again by her mother. But hunters are in the woods. The cameraman decides to stay with them to offer them some protection.

In the first programme Lynn Rogers, who has been studying bears for forty years and lives with them for part of each year, put a new radio collar on Lily. Gordon Buchanan, the cameraman, kept her occupied by feeding her grapes. That was the first time he'd been close to a bear. Little Hope stayed well clear of the humans. Later, Buchanan went looking for the bears and fed Lily. Hope came closer and closer and finally sniffed Buchanan's outstretched hand. He continued to concentrate on Hope and was then bitten on the leg by Lily. She was warning him. It wasn't a real bite. He said she just took hold of his leg but didn't cause any damage. So he backed off.

If you can watch BBC iPlayer, you can watch it again:
ht--tp://ww--w.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x9yfv

[Gliondrach]

As I mentioned in the above post, the information about the second programme said that little Hope was abandoned by her mother. She was only five or six months old. They didn't see her for a few days. They set up cameras in the area where she usually stayed but no pictures were recorded. Then there was a brief bit of film which showed her. The cameraman and the biologist's assistant decided to wait for her in the woods. They had milk, nuts and grapes spread around. She came to them and had some food. They wanted to put a transmitter collar on her so they could track her but they needed her to get used to being touched before they could do that.

The next time we saw her the cameraman was on his own sitting under a tree. She came and took food out his hand and drank some milk. Then she crawled on him and pawed at his hand looking for food.

At another time - which might have been before this - they examined some of her droppings and discovered she'd been eating crayfish. She had learnt to find her own food.

Then the cameraman and the two biologists waited for her with a transmitter collar. The male biologist - Lynn - held some food as Hope ate it. He kept putting a collar under her neck and tried to do it up at the back but she kept growling and pulling away. It took him six or seven attempts to get it on.

The cameraman's wife and two young children came to visit him from Scotland and he took them to see Hope's mother. She was sleeping when he approached and she looked round to see who it was. When she saw it was no one dangerous she lay down again. He sat beside her for a while.

Later, he and his family were by a lake and they saw Hope in a tree. She ran away. She didn't recognise his wife or children, which was good because they wanted her to be wary of humans she didn't know.

Before his family came out, the cameraman and the two biologists were in a cabin when two big male bears came for some food. They went out to them and fed them by hand. Wild male bears eating out of their hands! Then we saw a hunter who said he wanted to shoot a bear.

They think Hope's mother abandoned her because she only had one cub. She didn't need to produce so much milk just for one cub and this might not have been enough to keep her maternal hormones high enough to counteract her desire to find a new mate.

The third part is tomorrow. We saw Buchanan putting on some body armour in case some hunter thinks he is a bear.

Some idiot in the nearby town said they shouldn't have intervened to help Hope. He said they should have let Nature take its course. I wonder if he is seriously injured one day if he would say the same thing or would he want someone to intervene to help him?

[gabbles]

I saw that. Hope is very clever and could survive on her own. Cubs stay with their mothers until they are over a year old so she must be a quick learner.

[Gliondrach]

Yes, she's obviously a bright little thing. That other bear had two cubs who were a year old but they still depended on her for everything. The main danger is all the predators - wolves, foxes, human killers.

[Gliondrach]

In the third programme, Buchanan returned to the forest after being away for a few months. It was Autumn. His tracking device showed that both Hope and Lily were in the same area and he went looking for them. They were together again. Hope was much bigger but still smaller than she should've been. Her long time away from her mother had slowed her growth. They both recognised him and Hope played with him.

We saw a couple of times when another bear strayed into Lily's territory and Lily chased her away. This other bear was wearing a tracking collar and was called Sarah. She must have been desperate for food to keep going into another bear's territory.

They were worried that Hope wouldn't have put on enough weight to survive hibernation. The days were getting frosty. And hunting season had started. Hunters are asked not to shoot bears with collars but sometimes they do. Buchanan found a shooting platform in an area where Lily and Hope had been quite often. There was also a hunters' camp about a mile away. The biologists put high visibilty ribbons on the collared bears to make them easy to recognise as bears being researched.

Buchanan started walking around with Lily and Hope to offer some protection from hunters. One morning he received a 'phone call that a bear's collar had been handed in anonymously. It was Sarah's - the bear Lily had chased. She had been shot.

Hope had put on quite a bit of extra weight and Lily was thought to be constructing a den. Buchanan went to see a local hunter and his wife and son. They gave him a bear buger to eat. He invited the hunter to meet Lily and Hope. It was the closest the hunter had ever been to a live bear. He fed one of them by hand. Let's hope he changes his ways and develops some compassion.

We saw a small community called Eagle's Nest where many of the people feed bears. They never have any trouble with the bears because the bears never go hungry. The people who feed the bears feel safe with them

Buchanan left as the colder weather set in. I forget if Lily and Hope had gone into hibernation. I'll watch the ending again on the internet. The series is repeated on Saturday. First episode at 6.30 on BBC2.

[Blueshark]

The Biggest Loser (http://www.itv.com/lifestyle/biggestloser/)

Motivating people to lose weight. I can't watch it.

[Gliondrach]

In David Attenborough's new telly series, Madagascar, which is about Madagascar, he showed some lemurs. There are three types of them that eat only bamboo leaves. But the leaves contain cyanide. Two of them eat the older leaves which have lower concentrations of cyanide, but the other type eats only the young leaves, which contain higher concentrations. He said they contain about 12 times the amount that should kill them.

BBC2 8 pm, Wednesdays.

h--ttp://ww--w.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pd2fk

ht--tp://ww--w.bbc.co.uk/nature/collections/p00db3n8

[Bowwowmeow]

Well humph I don't have TV so I can't recommend any, and I don't listen to anything but music on the radio. I don't get many good stations out here in the boonies either.

[Gliondrach]

I thought you had telly. You might be able to watch somethings on iPlayer or you tube.

[Gliondrach]

On Costing the Earth, they were talking about fur and asking if it is coming back into fashion. Some idiots were saying it's green and environmentally friendly. Others were saying it's not as it uses heavy metals in processing.

It's repeated today, Thursday, at 1.30 pm, BBC Radio 4. Probably on iPlayer as well.

[Gliondrach]

Shadowline is the best thing on telly just now. I missed the first episode but saw a trailer for the second. After seeing that I had to watch it. I watched the first episode on iPlayer and then the second and subsequent ones as they were broadcast.

[Gliondrach]

Two good things on BBC telly on Thursday the 23rd. At 8 pm on BBC1 is Planet of the Apemen: Battle for Earth.

'1/2. Homo erectus. This documentary explores how, millennia ago, we shared this planet with other species of hominid, and offers a dramatised account of how Homo sapiens overturned the established order to reign supreme.

About 75,000 years ago, on the Indian subcontinent, the catastrophic eruption of a super-volcano forces a showdown betwen our own ancestors and a quite different species of human, Homo erectus - which up until that point had been dominant.'


Then, at 9 pm, on BBC2, we have History Cold Case.

'New series. 1/4. The Bodies in the Well. When the remains of 17 peole werer discovered recently in a dry well shaft in Norwich city centre, members of the local community were keen for answers about who these people were and what had hapended to them. Piecing together the evidence from what appears to be a mediaeval murder mystery are facial reconstruction expert Caroline Wilkinson and forensic pathologists Sue Black and Xanthe Mallett, all of Dundee University. What they find out in the course of their investigations is a shock to all concerned.'

I saw the first series. They did computer reconstructions of the face and body of a 14th century knight, some Victorian children, and some other people.

[Gliondrach]

The title of the BBC Radio 5 'phone-in this morning was: 'Do Brits over sentimentalise animals?'

Christina Odone 'phoned in. She is a Catholic journalist. I saw her on some Sunday morning discussion a few months ago. She said then that she could never give up eating meat. Today, she said that 'ALL drugs are due to animal experimentation'. Very ignorant. She also said that humans are made in God's image and so are special. She said animal rights people talk about holocausts and genocides when referring to our treatment of other animals but that there was a real, historical holocaust of humans not so long ago and that AR people liken it to the deaths of a few cows. The ignorant woman ignores the fact that millions of cattle are slaughtered every year. And millions of other mammals and birds. And countless numbers of fish. That is real and both historical and happening now.

She also said some other things about people treating their dogs better than they treat their children. Possibly, but those people are very few. She said that British people are not used to 'real' animals - cattle, sheep and pigs - but people in Italy and France are. In Europe, people are used to seeing farm animals and how they 'help' farmers. She comes from Greece or Italy. She could go back there if she doesn't like things here. Another thing she said is that she once had an English boyfriend who invited her to stay one weekend in his large country house. There was no heating and he expected that she would let his dog sleep in the same bed as them. Now, why was a supposedly good Catholic girl in bed with a man she wasn't married to? She bangs on about humans being created in God's image but breaks the rules of her church. She accepts one of the teachings but not the other.

She said some other things I don't recall but they were along the lines that we can do what we want to other animals because we are more important.

Nicky Campbell, the host, at one point asked a man why we have double standards and will eat pigs but not dogs. I wonder what Campbell's answer is? He must have thought about it or he wouldn't have brought it up. He has a dog and he presumably eats pigs. Can't he develop a bit more compassion? He must suspect that there's something wrong in eating pigs.

One of them brought up the case of the Animal Rights Militia people who were accused of digging up the body of a woman whose relatives breed guinea pigs for torture. Campbell said that was a case of man's inhumanity to man. So digging up a dead body is worse than torturing sentient guinea pigs, causing them terror and pain? Digging up a dead human body causes no harm to that body. It will have been very distressing for the relatives (if such a thing actually happened) but not as much distress as the guinea pigs they breed have to suffer.

Near the end of the programme someone sent a text which said something like: 'That woman you had on is mad.' He was called Martin. You can usually rely on Martins to talk sense.

After hearing Odone say she could never give up meat and after seeing her in quite a few television debates I knew she lacked something. I now know her beliefs are very twisted. Or perhaps she just tries to be controversial to gain publicity. Or it might be a combination of both.

[Gliondrach]

That programme about the bear family (see post 76 at the top of this page)
is being repeated. It starts tomorrow, Friday, 12th August, on BBC2 at 7.30 pm.

[Gliondrach]

I've started watching the Lovejoy series on youtub. This was a series shown on British telly in the late 1980s and 1990s. Lovejoy is an antiques dealer - a bit of a rogue but essentially decent. He's played by Ian McShane. There are lots of views of the Suffolk countryside and some lovely old cottages. And the odd bit of antiques knowledge. Each episode is 50 minutes so they are shown on youtub in 5 10-minutes clips.

[Gliondrach]

A new telly series started today. It's called' The Food Hospital', 8pm, Channel Four. It's on for the next 7 weeks. The idea is to see if a change of diet will cure people's ills. A woman with polycistic ovary syndrome, who has a lot of facial and body hair was put on a diet that exchanged wholemeal bread for white and eliminated crisps and other things. She also started doing exercise. After 9 weeks she had lost a stone and a half in weight and her hair growth was reduced and didn't grow back so quickly. A man with diabetes type 2 lost 2.5 stone in 12 weeks and his blood sugar levels went from very high to the lower end of normal. He lived on a diet of 3 meal replacement drinks a day, which gave him just 800 calories. After a few weeks he was allowed to have some vegetables with it. After the 12 weeks he was told he could gradually increase his food intake. A young lad who used to get severe migraine 4 or 5 times a week had no attacks in 12 weeks except when he went back to school and had his meals there. But he only had mild headaches. He cut out various things, including full-fat milk, peanuts, cheese and artificial additives, and had added magnesium, vitamin B2 and Co-enzyme Q10.

[Gliondrach]

Just watched part 4 of The Food Hospital on Channel 4. A bloke with hereditary gout was told to change his diet. He was advised to give up red meat, alcohol and fried foods. The dietitian cooked him a meal of tofu, pasta (or it might have been noodles) and mixed veg. He found it very tasty after saying he didn't like tofu. As well as having high purine levels in his blood - this is what causes the pain and swelling of gout - he also had high cholesterol. A few weeks later he said he had experienced less pain. His blood was tested again. Much lower purine levels and his cholesterol had gone from over 7 to about 5.5.

A woman suffering from depression, who scored 14 on the depression test they gave her, was advised to eat foods that would raise her serotonin levels. These included lots of carbs. I think she was advised to cut down on meat as well but I'm not sure. That would make sense because, as they said, the amino acids in meat would compete with tryptophan for entry through the blood-brain barrier. Tryptophan is used to make serotonin. A few weeks later her score on the depression test was 1, and she felt much better - no crying and better control of her temper.

You can watch all the programmes on Channel Four's 4oD section.

[ChiliPeppa]

Wow, impressive. :)

[Gliondrach]

In post 92, where I wrote 'purine', I should have written 'urea'. Purines in food lead to excess urea.

Thank you, Nitram Nagev, for pointing this out.

[Gliondrach]

Further to post 34 in this thread, they are repeating Victorian Farm Christmas, the follow-on to the series about the Victorian farm. They mixed clay for the floor of a blacksmith's forge today. The clay had pebbles, lime and bull's blood mixed in with it.

[manzana]

I have been watching ballet. :applause:

srhnaTNt0is

[Gliondrach]

I've been watching a telly series about Lenny da Vinci. They made a glider based on his design. It was unstable. So they added a tail and it flew perfectly. They think he would have added a tail if he had built it and found it was unstable as he knew that birds use their tails in flight.

Then they built a diving suit. It received air from a long tube that went up to a cork float on the surface of the sea. As well as just floating there the float could be pulled under the water and the air trapped inside it would become compressed and pass along the pipe more easily.

They also tried a parachute based on his design. At first, they were concerned that it would turn over because it didn't have a hole in the top. But the material used allowed air to percolate through it. They tested it from a balloon at 10,000 feet.

His experiments and dissections of dead human bodies suggested to him that some people die because something in the blood puts a coating inside the arteries. His discovery of hardening of the arteries was lost until after other investigators discovered the proecess centuries later.

The third part of the series is on now but it's just about the Mona Lisa, which doesn't interest me.

[Gliondrach]

I watched a telly programme, 'Rogue Baboon: an Inside Nature's Giants Special,' about a troop of baboons on the outskirts of Cape Town. They have become cut off from the rest of their natural range by the encroachement of the city. Now they raid houses and cars every day to get food. Their former leader, named Fred (I wonder how they knew he was called Fred?) could open car doors to steal food. He would also take bags and then open them. He became such a danger - he bit two people - that he was killed. They did a post mortem dissection on his body and found over 50 shotgun pellets in him, from his tail to his skull. He had been shot many times over the years. His stomach contents contained almost only human food. He was also infected with human worms.

The idiots build houses on baboon land and then complain when the baboons continue looking for food.

[Gliondrach]

I am a fan of the BBC radio 4 Pilgrim series. There have been two series and now a new one starts next week on the 26th at 2.15 pm. I think it will be available on iPlayer for later listening.

In 1185, William Palmer was making pilgrimage to Canterbury. Unbeknownst to him his fellow pilgrim was the King of the Greyfolk. When William claimed that the Church would wipe out the belief in the Faerie world, he was cursed by the Faerie King and condemned forever to walk between our world and theirs.

The plays in PILGRIM are thrilling, dark and contemporary. They're set in a very recognisable, very real present, but a present haunted by the folktales of these islands: forest spirits, changeling children, Merlin...
ht--tp://ww--w.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b1lk2

His appearance never ages beyond that of someone in his late 30s.

Just checked - three episodes of the previous series are available on iPlayer. But things on iPlayer can only be heard in the UK. Some fancy proxy wotsits allow listening and viewing in other countries.

4. Hope Springs The roaming immortal reunites with daughter Doris, but learns an old foe is on his trail.

Play this episode 3. The Lady in the Lake The ageless wanderer is drawn to a magical fiddle player, and finds a tragic love triangle

Play this episode 2. The Lost Hotel The mystical, timeless man finds himself an unwilling guest at a sinister hotel.

[Gliondrach]

There was a good telly programme on earlier - The Last Explorers. This week it was about John Muir who explored Yosemite Valley. We saw some beautiful scenery. No wonder that BWM is so fond of the place.