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<http://www.asylums.insanejournal.com/bbtp_challenge> for details

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Tentacled sea monster or Doctor Who alien?

LOOKING like something out of Doctor Who, they emerged from the sea at the weekend, a mass of writhing tentacles tipped with shells, each containing feeding fronds.

The extraordinary sight on the Gower beaches of Nicholaston and Oxwich at the weekend drew large, astonished crowds.

In fact the “alien-looking” tentacled creatures were spectacularly large examples of goose barnacles – known as Lepas anatifera to marine aficionados.

The barnacles, whose long slender necks topped by large shells make them resemble geese, had attached themselves to two large logs which washed up on the beaches, possibly disturbed from their usual ocean resting places by bad weather.

The shells on the tips of the barnacle “necks” open to reveal finger like feeding fronds which curl and uncurl rapidly.

One onlooker described the goose barnacles as looking like “a sea monster”.

Swansea University zoology expert Professor Paul Brain, who travelled to Gower to photograph the specimens, said: “I have never seen such big collections in one place. The logs or whatever they were beneath were absolutely covered with goose barnacles. As one viewing child said: ‘It looks like something out of Dr Who!’.

“They were probably the biggest specimens of free-floating goose barnacles I’ve seen.

“They tend to live in the oceans and can attach themselves to the bottom of ships. This odd-looking crustacean is normally found in quite deep water but occasionally they can be found on debris that has become dislodged from the sea bed and has washed up on the shore.

“I would think the bad weather caused by the jet stream in the past month has probably dislodged these barnacle infested logs from their resting places, giving people a rare look at them for free on the beach.

“They are quite a startling sight and, because they are fairly rare, they really cause a stir because people just can’t think what they are.”

The goose barnacle is white or grey and is roughly heart shaped.

Its shell plates are large and edged in brown, black or yellow and are anchored by a thick flexible stalk.

They are found in most oceans worldwide except very cold, Arctic regions. Goose barnacles feed on plankton and small crustaceans such as copepods, isopods and amphipods.

When feeding, the barnacle extends its fan-like array of limbs in order to catch plankton, and are attached to surfaces by their stalk and are unable to move from the point they are fixed to.

They will attach themselves to a variety of surfaces including wood, rock and even other species of barnacle.

Goose barnacles are hermaphrodites.

Larvae more closely resemble other crustaceans except for their long feathery legs. They are free swimming but soon metamorphose into a form which attaches itself to a suitable surface and becomes a barnacle.

Rebecca Porter, one of many holidaymakers who saw the barnacle collections as they emerged from the sea on Saturday, said they were like “a large living sea monster”.

She said: “The stalk on which the puffin-shaped head sat on was soft and rubbery and moved like a snake.

“They appeared to be attached to a piece of driftwood but it could hardly be seen as it was densely covered with these huge tentacles that opened and closed, thrusting out fronds like uncurling ferns.”

Tim Hall, marine campaigns and advocacy officer for Wildlife Trusts Wales, said of the creatures: “They tend to stick to driftwood, hulls of wrecked ships and this is when most people see them after they are washed ashore.

“The fronds described are used for feeding and I imagine that hundreds of those moving in and out must be quite a sight, hence looking like a large sea monster.

“But they are just another example of the wonderful wildlife that thrives in our seas and certainly something different for the holidaymakers in Oxwich Bay to see.”

Because of their startling appearance the goose barnacles have become mired in folklore and the Welsh chronicler-monk Giraldus Cambrensis claimed to have seen goose barnacles in the process of turning into barnacle geese – a bird with a head resembling the shells of the crustacean – in the 12th century.

This helped give rise to one of the strangest of animal beliefs.

The heart-shaped shell, or “capitulum”, is a chalky-white in colour and has black lines, which were thought to resemble the head of the barnacle goose Branta leucopsis.

Because barnacle geese rarely nest in Britain no-one had ever seen their eggs or nests.

It was supposed, therefore, that the geese “grew up on the planks of ships” and the birds finally emerged clothed in feathers and flew away.

This curious early theory also provided a convenient way round the catholic church’s ban on eating meat or flesh on Fridays.

As the barnacle goose was obviously “not born of the flesh” but from a barnacle, they could be eaten not just on Fridays but throughout Lent.

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(AP) – 1 day ago

PASADENA, Calif. — "Doctor Who" star David Tennant is bringing his portrayal of Hamlet from the stage to the small screen.

Tennant won critical acclaim for his performance in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2008 production of "Hamlet." PBS said Sunday the TV adaptation will air in 2010 as part of its "Great Performances" series and will include Patrick Stewart in the cast.

Tennant is taking on another role for the Public Broadcasting Service: This fall, he'll debut as host of "Masterpiece Contemporary." The series returns Oct. 25 with "Endgame," a drama about the final days of apartheid in South Africa, starring William Hurt and Jonny Lee Miller.

PBS announced that the film will open in select U.S. theaters starting Oct. 30.

• http://www.pbs.org/

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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He was a plumber from Somerset, in many ways an unremarkable man, but Harry Patch became the last British survivor of the carnage of the Western Front.

He was the final physical link to a conflict that saw two armies bogged down in the mud of Flanders and northern France for more than four years.

Henry John Patch was born at Combe Down, a small village near Bath, on 17 June, 1898 in the twilight of the Victorian age.

He left school at 15 and became an apprentice plumber but within a year came the outbreak of the Great War.

His brother had been wounded at Mons so Harry had an idea what to expect when he was finally conscripted into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry at the age of 18.

He trained as a machine gunner before embarking from Folkestone in May 1917 en route to Reims. On his 19th birthday he found himself in the trenches.

Passchendaele

He arrived on the eve of what was to become the last, and one of the bloodiest, British offensives of the war, the Third Battle of Ypres, better known as Passchendaele.

The brainchild of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, it was designed to push the army north east and liberate German occupied ports on the Belgian coast.

Many soldiers spent the whole war in a network of trenches

The offensive soon became bogged down in a quagmire caused by torrential rain and the effects of the massive British artillery barrage which had preceded the move forward.

The battle lasted three months, gaining just five miles of ruined ground at the cost of more than 300,000 British lives.

Harry Patch's war came to an end on 22 September, 1917 when a German shell burst over the heads of his five man Lewis gun team. Three of them were blown to pieces while Patch was wounded in the groin by a piece of shrapnel.

He was in hospital for 12 months and was convalescing on the Isle of Wight when the Armistice was signed.

In 1919 he married Ada Billington, a girl he met while recovering from his wound and returned to work as a plumber. They had two sons, Dennis and Roy, but he outlived both of them.

Silence

Too old to fight in World War II he became a firefighter in Bath, tackling the aftermath of German air raids.

In 1980 he remarried, but his wife Jean passed away in 1984. From 2003 he had a third partner, Doris, who lived in the same retirement home and died two years ago.

For more than 80 years he would not talk about his war time experiences, refusing to attend regimental reunions and avoiding any war films which appeared on the television.

In 1998, he agreed to be interviewed for the BBC One documentary Veterans and the realisation that he was part of a fast dwindling group of veterans of "the war to end all wars" persuaded him to step into the limelight.

He accepted an honorary degree from Bristol University in 2004 in recognition of his war service and for his work on the construction of the centrepiece of the campus, the Wills Memorial building, which opened in 1925.

Harry Patch did not discuss his war time experiences until he turned 100

He returned to Passchendaele in 2007 for the 90th anniversary of the battle, laying a wreath, not only on a memorial for the British dead, but also at a cemetery for the German victims of the offensive.

On his 101st birthday he travelled to France where he was awarded the Legion d'Honneur, and subsequently made an officer of the Legion d'Honneur.

In 2008, he was also honoured by the Belgian king, Albert II, who appointed him Knight of the Order of Leopold.

One of his favourite awards however was that of the Freedom of the City of Wells, where he had lived for many years.

In 2007 he became the UK's oldest author when he collaborated with Richard van Emden to write The Last Fighting Tommy, a detailed account of his life. He also became a celebrity agony uncle for men's magazine FHM and would often speak at festivals.

But Patch had no time for the Act of Remembrance on 11 November, an event he described as "just show business".

He always maintained that his Remembrance Day was 22 September, the day he lost his three best mates and his war ended.

Harry Patch was essentially an ordinary man who led an ordinary life. Even his experiences on the Western Front were no worse than those shared by many other soldiers.

What was extraordinary was that he lived so long, bringing first hand memories into the 21st century of a battle that has passed into history.

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A massive earthquake last week has brought New Zealand closer to Australia, scientists say.

The 7.8 magnitude quake in the Tasman Sea has expanded New Zealand's South Island westwards by about 30cm (12in).

Seismologist Ken Gledhill, of GNS Science, said the shift demonstrated the huge force of the tremor.

But correspondents say that with more than 2,250km (1,400 miles) separating the countries, the narrowing will not exactly be visible.

Nor, as the New Zealand media have observed, is it likely to bring cheaper air fares.

Tsunami alert

The earthquake causes some landslip in the Fiordland region

The quake was powerful enough to generate a small tsunami with a wave of one metre (3ft) recorded on the west coast of New Zealand.

People in coastal areas were for a time advised to move to higher ground.

While the south-west of the South Island moved about 30cm towards Australia, the east coast moved only one centimetre westwards, Dr Gledhill said."Basically, New Zealand just got a little bit bigger is another way to think about it," he told AFP news agency.

Although it was New Zealand's biggest earthquake in 78 years, it caused only slight damage to buildings and property when it struck in the remote Fiordland region west of Invercargill last Thursday.

FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE More from BBC World Service

"For a very large earthquake, although it was very widely felt, there were very few areas that were severely shaken," Dr Gledhill said.

GNS Science is a research organisation run by the New Zealand government.

New Zealand frequently suffers earthquakes because it sits on the meeting point of the Australian and Pacific continental plates.

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There Are 3 Gaps in Your Knowledge

Where you have gaps in your knowledge: Philosophy Science Art Where you don't have gaps in your knowledge: Religion Economics Literature History

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