Category Archives: Short Stories

Thank you to ZME Science and Mihai Andrei for the Headline

Why should I care about what happened to a 30 year old man, who was killed in a conflict at Sverresborg Castle, Trondheim Norway, approximately 800 years ago?

The Castle after being raided was left uninhabitable , as they threw an already deceased body of a man into it’s well and covered it with stones to poison the water supply. Good ol’ King Sverre Sigurdsson was away on a winters break in Bergen , so his unfortunate Castle Dwellers were the ones who suffered.

Today the myth has been proven, they found the skeletal remains of the corpse that was thrown into the well and they can prove his age , how he died. They even know what he ate.

Initially his skeleton appeared older than it was, but because he diet was mainly seafood they realised that their results had to be adjusted to allow for the fact that carbon from the ocean appears “older”. Once corrected the man’s demise was plump in the middle of the Sverresborg Castle siege.

What a good start to the day that a suspected Myth has been proven by good old D.N.A analysis. The Genes don’t lie.

Thanks to Sky News Online for the Headline . ( think this article is AI generated, it states the facts as if the World was factual, which it is not, strange when writing about Art)

Banksy has given us a gift a Christmas Mural on an unsightly wall above some lockups in Bayswater in Central London. Lets hope there’s no asbestos in the roofs of the lock up owners as there will be a trail of people climbing up to take selfies who might cause damage to the roof , and unleash the deadly fibres on the unsuspecting user of the garage, or at the very least cause a leak.

The Mural or perhaps we should call it Graffiti is of two children lying together on the ground ,dressed in warm coats and woolly hats (perhaps homeless) , both looking up at the sky with one pointing up at the sky or perhaps at Santa’s reindeers way up above them carrying lots of presents for children more fortunate than they.

This is definitely not the Banksy Mural.

Heaven knows what Banksy wants the populus of London to think, though no doubt someone will want to make a quick buck, as these murals are worth a fortune. Still I wonder how many will say “thank you” to Banksy for his kind and relevant thoughts .

Namaste and Thank You for Reading. 🙏

Thanks to Lauren Hadeed at BBC Online(Future Earth) for the Headline

Frankincense is the aromatic resin harvested by hand from the Boswellia Tree. As you can imagine it’s price in trade markets ( £4.2 billion) is determined by it’s rareness. It plays a role in many areas of “wellness” probably going back to ancient Chinese and Indian remedies and probably more recently for incense in Christian Churches.

One of the main geographical areas that frankincense is harvested from has been war torn for a number of years, Somaliland, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. When money is short , the temptation is to over harvest. As a result the trees cannot recover from” tapping”. The process of harvesting involves cutting the bark and letting the sap from the tree run out and form a crust which is the frankincense.

To counteract the danger of over harvesting , the growers of the Boswellia Tree are being encouraged to use a phone app which when they bring their resin to a central location and are paid a fair price for it ( cutting out the middlemen). The details of the resin are recorded, where it was harvested, the quality and the movement from the village to the warehouse ( ie. how many third parties were involved). Another app can be used to monitor the health of the trees and their sustainability.

Obviously, with famine and water shortages in the areas that the trees are grown , these situations along with the conflicts of war, threatens the survival of this industry. As a commodity it may become so rare and expensive that it will no longer be accessible to the markets where it is currently sold.