animal-10animal-9animal-7animal-5animal-3animal-1Animal Earth is a 320 page book featuring extraordinary photographs of some of the world’s most obscure and eye-candiful species compiled by a panel of animal specialists and researchers.

The book, published by Thames and Hudson will be released mid November.

Above: the ‘sea angel’, Clione limacine (pic: Alexander Semenov); a toxic nudibranch sea slug Chromodoris annulata (pic: Arthur Anker); a Bougainvillia superciliris jellyfish with a hitchhiking Hyperia galba amphipod (pic: Alexander Semenov); the compound eyes of a cynipid wasp (pic: Tomas Rak); the colourful tentacles of a tube-dwelling serpulid polychaete and a segmented annelid (both pix: Alexander Semenov).

colossal

2013+44smallDon’t be alarmed no.

Further to Russel Brand’s thoughts on voting being a pointless exercise.

Robert Webb, of Peep Show {and a Brand fan] explains why he’s voting AND  re-joining the Labour Party despite their decline into Iraq invading power junkies. a centrist mish-mash.

The last Labour government didn’t do enough and bitterly disappointed many voters. But, at the risk of losing your attention, on the whole they helped. Opening Sure Start centres, introducing and raising the minimum wage, making museums free, guaranteeing nursery places, blah blah blah: nobody is going to write a folk song about this stuff and I’m aware of the basic absurdity of what I’m trying to achieve here, like getting Liberace to give a shit about the Working Tax Credit, but these policies among many others changed the real lives of millions of real people for the better.

This is exactly what the present coalition is in the business of tearing to pieces. They are not interested in helping unlucky people – they want to scapegoat and punish them. You specifically object to George Osborne’s challenge to the EU’s proposed cap on bankers’ bonuses. Labour simply wouldn’t be doing that right now. They are not all the same. ‘They’re all the same’ is what reactionaries love to hear. It leaves the status quo serenely untroubled, it cedes the floor to the easy answers of Ukip and the Daily Mail. No, if you want to be a nuisance to the people whom you most detest in public life, vote. And vote Labour.

Hmm.

Robert Webb re-joins Labour in protest at Russell Brand (New Statesman)

Previously: Viva Brandanista

Thanks John Gallen

ITjobless

CSO Live Register figures

Number of jobless below 400,000 for first time since 2009 (Irish Times)

Live Register shows another drop in October (RTÉ)

jesus“Sup?

Somewhere in Portlaoise.

Donal Moloney writes:

Here’s something you might like for the day that’s in it. True story. I have a bit of a fetish for abandoned and decayed buildings [Urbex].
I was driving through Portlaoise a few months ago and in the corner of my eye I spotted an old, burnt-out abandoned house.

The front door was chained but with a little shoulder power I managed to squeeze through, into the hallway. Nothing much downstairs so I tip-toed up the very charred stairs hoping I wouldn’t go through it.

I gently pushed open the main bedroom door and was confronted with this. Almost shit myself! Someone had gone to the trouble of strapping a 7 foot crucifix to the rafters with electrical wire and barbecuing Jesus.

I lashed out a few frames before some curse was bestowed upon me.

Anyone?

Donal Maloney

Broadsheet.ie