Tuesday May 28th 2024 "Stormy Daniels" or a jam doughnut? Sticky and messy either way!!!"

A nice, amusing start to mine and Lois's Tuesday - because an email came in yesterday from Steve, our American brother-in-law, with the latest of those comic Venn diagrams, the ones he monitors for us on a weekly basis from the web. And no surprise that porn-star Stormy Daniels is in there this week - yet again! 

porn-star Stormy Daniels arriving for former President 

Donald Trump's court hearing in New York earlier today

Lois and I aren't exactly sure what Venn diagram-designers would do if there were no Stormy: she seems to "fit" most Venn bubbles no matter what the caption, doesn't she!

The weird thing about the Stormy Daniels case is that Donald Trump is accused of fraud relating to alleged hush-money paid to Ms Daniels to keep quiet about their affair. And I think people had more or less assumed that any hush-money would have been much more likely to have been paid by Ms Daniels to Donald Trump to stop him going public.

After all, knowledge of their affair was potentially far more damaging to Ms Daniel's career than to Donald Trump's. Be reasonable haha !!!!

Remember what she said at the time, in the documentary "Stormy" ?

And, just to prove my point about the symbiosis of Ms Daniels and all Venn diagrams, try coming up with your own caption for this "doozy" from a couple of weeks ago.

Best answer wins 5 guineas in vouchers. But hurry! Closing date for entries is 10 am BST today May 29th, so get your thinking caps on haha !!!

And I don't suppose the world's jam doughnuts are particularly ecstatic to be in the same bubble as Donald Trump either!

some typical jam doughnuts - "not ecstatic" to be

associated with Donald Trump, do you think?

Lois and I can't help feeling rather sorry for jam doughnuts. They always get a fairly bad press, but they have their uses in combating crime, as recent research has shown:

That "doughnut report" must have given Lois ideas, or an "evil thought" as her dad Dennis used to say -  because later, when I drive her into Barnard's Green so she can pick up some plants for our shiny-new back garden, I notice she has also sneaked a snail-bun into her trayful: she thinks I won't notice it, sitting there surrounded by all those plants, but sorry, Lois, I wasn't born yesterday, you know! 

And it's kind of a rookie-error to put it right there in the front - see picture below! 

Lois sneaks a snail bun (ringed) into her plant purchases - 

she thinks I won't notice, but I'm not fooled that easily!

[That's not what I've heard! - Ed]

21:00 We wind down for bed with tonight's episode of Springwatch, the series which monitors the state of wildlife in the UK, with the help of presenters, speaking live from various parts of the country.

Who knew the real reason why moths seem attracted by artificial lights and tend to circle round them, whether it's a light bulb in our houses or a street-light outside? 

Well, moths have been around a lot longer than people - that's for sure. And it's been thought that moths, since time immemorial, i.e. way before there were any people around, have always used the moon for navigational purposes, just like people today use Googlemaps, and that they tend not to move around too much if there isn't a moon - the moths, I mean, not the people. [Glad you've cleared that one up! - Ed]

"Fluttering through the eras": the long history of little moths and butterflies, 

and the "new" creatures they successively came to share the earth with 

over the millennia, as charted by biologist Dr Douglas Boyes

And it's previously been thought that, since those crazy times, the moths, who aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the box, haven't yet "caught on" to new developments in human science and technology,  and are still mistaking our light bulbs for the moon.

Maybe that idea isn't the whole story, however. 

As tonight's programme presenters explain, new joint research from Imperial College London and the University of Florida has used the latest infrared technology to look at these circling moths in slow motion, also attaching tiny data-logging sensors to their tiny bodies. 

a typical moth, with data-logger attached [not shown]

Awwwww - poor little moth !!!!!

And the scientists have concluded that it's these little creatures' so-called "dorsal light response" that's the key factor in causing that curious "circling" action.

programme presenters Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan

speaking from a nature reserve in Dorset, explain

the new research on moths' reactions to light sources

"Dorsal light response" is  what moths and other insects do in the presence of bright lights, i.e. they instinctively turn their backs to it. 

Before there were any humans around on the earth, the brightest light would always have been the sky, the sun and the moon, ie something always coming at little moths from above. So in those crazy, but far simpler times, moths could easily fly from A to B. in a straight line. with whatever light there was to be had, shining down on their backs.

the prehistoric world, before humans ever existed,

when a moth could fly from A to B in a straight line

without any fuss - those were the days!

Now, however, when a moth encounters one of our artificial lights, it has the urge to circle round it over and over again, so that it can always keep the light shining on its back, an exhausting process for the little moth, to put it mildly.

This is especially problematic for the moth if it's approaching the light source from underneath. It will instinctively react by flying upwards and then trying to invert itself, in order to keep the light on its back. However, moths can't fly upside-down, so they often plummet to the ground, and then it's "Bye bye little moth!". 

Oh dear! 

presenter Chris Packham, with the help of one of the programme's

extraordinary "props", a huge model of a moth (not to scale),

tries to explain what happens when a moth senses a light-source from below

To make matters worse, birds and bats have of course realised that all this mayhem is going on, and they regularly visit street-lights etc to feed on these poor confused little moths.

Poor moths !!!!!!

It's no wonder that numbers of moths in the UK have declined by a third over the last 50 years, with the greatest loss being in the south (39%), compared to somewhat less in the north of the country (22%). 

And we're shown a satellite view of Europe at night, showing how "undark" it is: and presenter Chris Packham reveals that he personally "would not like to be a moth, unless I were living on Iceland, in northern Norway,  or on the northwest coast of Scotland".

a satellite view of Europe by night, 

showing how "undark" it is in most places

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it !!!

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed, and talk over the triumphs of today, to put us in a good mood, and soon I'm feeling "back in the saddle" - no question about that! And how very nice it was for me to be behind the wheel again this afternoon when we went to pick up those plants and the snail bun, and take our granddaughters' library books back to the town library.

This was my 3rd little drive since my hip replacement operation 7 weeks ago, and it's beginning to feel quite natural again, which is nice.

flashback to earlier today: me, back behind the wheel again, 

for my 3rd little drive since my hip replacement operation last month

Tomorrow Lois will be helping me to take my first real shower, after 8 weeks of Lois giving me so-called "strip washes". 

Shower or strip-wash: which is better? Well it's sticky and messy either way the way we do it, just like Stormy Daniels and jam doughnuts haha!

[Oh just go to sleep!!! - Ed]

Zzzzzz !!!!!