WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...




Monday, February 23, 2015

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

News and stories from the remoter fringes of the CFZ blogosphere...

From Nick Redfern's World of Whatever:
From CFZ-USA:
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THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN IS IN THE EAST


The Gonzo Daily - Monday
www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/about.html
 
Graham here again, as Jon and Corinna are still on their family-visiting travels in Eastern England. 

On Saturday, Jon described how we'd had a bird rescue brought to us - a baby pigeon that had been caught by a cat. Although there was little sign of injuries, it didn't survive the night, which is often the way with bird rescues.  The rest of our menagerie is in good shape, though.
 
I'm reasonably fueled-up as I did a casserole (hotdish) that was intended to last for several days but which is tasty enough to be shrinking fast... alarmingly fast, in fact! Still, I suppose there's always eggs on toast as an emergency backup.
 
And today's musical stew on the Gonzo Blog is:

 
And a reminder that the latest Gonzo Weekly (#118) is at
www.gonzoweekly.com
Hawkwind, Tempest, Eliza Carthy, Daevid Allen, Jon Anderson, and Yes fans had better look out!
 

Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
 
 

All issues from #70 can be downloaded at www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly dropbox. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is power chaps, we have to share it!
 
You can download the magazine in pdf form HERE:
http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/
 

* The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...
 
* The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/…/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit…
 
* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!
 

* Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 55 who - together with an infantile orange cat named after a song by Frank Zappa puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the infantile orange cat?
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News link - Solving a Museum’s Bug Display Problem With Lego

An entomologist from London is using his favorite childhood toy to build a device that holds fragile insect specimens.
The Natural History Museum in London has a gargantuan task ahead: the mass digitization of its sprawling collections. Over the next five years, the museum plans to scan more than 20 million pinned specimens. The job will require imaging an inordinate variety of insects, from metallic-green beetles and butterflies as colorful as a Monet, to tropical parasitic wasps and grasshoppers from Mount Everest.

But photographing tiny bugs can be tricky. Meaningful images must capture minutiae such as leg hairs, wing tips, and antennae. And gathering those details is challenging for museum researchers dealing with fragile specimens, some of which are more than 300 years old. “Every time you pick one of these up on a pin, there’s a chance they will break because they are very brittle,” said Steen Dupont, an entomologist at the museum. “But we still want to image the insects to make them available.”

Though there are several commercial devices that allow entomologists to manipulate pinned insects without touching them, most are often bulky and expensive. Dupont wanted something that was cheap, portable, and customizable so that he could observe the wings of his moths easier. So he turned to Legos, his favorite childhood toy, to construct something new. 

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FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

What has Corinna's column of Fortean bird news got to do with cryptozoology?

Well, everything, actually!

In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out-of-place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in.


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NEWS FROM NOWHERE - Monday

ON THIS DAY IN 1919, Benito Mussolini formed a new party and named it the Fascist Party.

And now the more recent news...

AND TO WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK... (Music that may have some relevance to items also on this page, or may just reflect my mood on the day)
Lemmy of Motorhead joins Hawkwind onstage for "Silver Machine" in July 2004 - the most recent date that Lemmy did that.

 
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