*** FUTURE POSTS WILL ALSO APPEAR AT 'NOW AND NEXT' : https://rolfnorfolk.substack.com
Friday, October 06, 2023
FRIDAY MUSIC: Norman Blake, by JD
Monday, October 02, 2023
Ocean viruses and carbon sequestration
A new bacteria-infesting virus has been discovered in the western Pacific’s Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans.
Viruses kill 20% of the ocean’s biomass every day, breaking it down into constituents that are then taken up by other bacteria and also helping to form the ‘marine snow’ of particles falling to the ocean floor.
A link in the above article leads to another that says ‘It is estimated that there are around 10^31 viruses in the world’s oceans accounting for ~94% of all biological entities (nucleic acid containing particles). Despite their small size, the amount of carbon they contain is estimated to be the equivalent of 75 million blue whales.’
This opens a window onto a great area of science and nature of which I was previously unaware.
Friday, September 29, 2023
FRIDAY MUSIC: Albertina Walker, by JD
Perhaps not so well known here in the UK but highly regarded in the USA where she was known as the Queen of Gospel music. And the Queen of Soul music Aretha Franklin, who started her own career singing gospel in her father's Baptist church, sang at Walker's funeral.
Friday, September 22, 2023
FRIDAY MUSIC: Music for the autumn equinox, by JD
Friday, September 15, 2023
FRIDAY MUSIC: Ola Gjeilo, by JD
Friday, September 08, 2023
FRIDAY MUSIC: Samara Joy, by JD
Joy was born in 1999 into a musical family. Her paternal grandparents, Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, were founders of Philadelphia gospel group The Savettes. (A few of their videos can also be found on YouTube.)
In 2019, as Samara McLendon, she won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. Working with producer and eventual manager Matt Pierson, she recorded her self-titled debut album while still in college, Samara Joy was released on July 9, 2021, on Whirlwind Recordings. Jazz Times named her Best New Artist for 2021. In an interview, film director Regina King called her "a young woman who seems like Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald are both living in her body."
https://www.samarajoy.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samara_Joy
Sunday, September 03, 2023
COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: La Tomatina, by JD
The red of 150,000 kilos of tomatoes has coloured the central streets of the Valencian town of Buñol as every last Wednesday in August for 78 years. La Tomatina has once again been festive, international and massive.The party, whose images go around the world on television and social networks, began at noon, with the slow parade of six trucks loaded with 150 tons of tomatoes -30 more than the figure provided yesterday by the cooperative that supplies them- ripe and juicy, not suitable for consumption but ideal as ammunition in this pitched "battle", in which everyone fights everyone with a clean tomato.The President of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, followed this celebration from the balcony of the City Hall with some 20,000 participants and in which a helicopter and more than 200 Civil Guard agents, in addition to other security forces, have been deployed to monitor and attend to any incident arising from the crowding. Mazón has assured that next year he will go in a swimsuit and will live it from the street.This year many citizens of India have been seen mobilized by a Bollywood movie, although there were also those from the United States, Australia or Japan, among other nationalities.For an hour, the tomatoes have "flown" in this "war" that started almost by chance in 1945; in fact nobody really knows how it started, you can take your pick from the many tales as recounted in the Official Website pages below.