MIKE HALLOWELL SENT THIS

Jacquie Hallowell took this pic of Mike (right), Steve Jones and some fat bloke at the Unconvention on saturday morning....

A BIG THANK YOU TO STEVE JONES

A big thank you to our old friend Steve Jones at the Wakefield and West Yorkshire Pagan Meetup who comes to the Weird Weekend every year. His group agree with what we are trying to do, especially our work in instilling a love of the countryside and the world around us into the next generation, and have very kindly donated two hundred quid towards the running costs of the forthcoming Weird Weekend.


Thanks, guys.

I'm a Christian as you well know, and other members of the CFZ Organisational Body are Atheists, Agnostics, Pagans and even a Buddhist, but when it comes to doing positive stuff for the environment, animal welfare, education and science, then we are all singing from the same hymn sheet!

Check out our other sponsors...

STEVE JONES WROTE

[regarding the 1tb hard drive he so kindly donated] "...I hope you call it Steve LOL"

Well, check this out dude.

BEAST OF OSSETT REDUX

Only days after our last coverage of the Beast of Ossett, Steve Jones writes: "Here is a a scan of the latest beast of Ossett sighting from this week's (28th August) edition of The Wakefield Express."

CFZ PEOPLE: Naomi West and Steve Jones

Yesterday, totally out of the blue, we had two significant and very generous donations. I don't know whether it was because it was mine and Corinna's wedding anniversary, or just because they both are really sweet people, but they both donated on the same day, and they both donated a not inconsiderable amount.

Thank you, my dears. It is only with the help of people like you that we manage to continue. The CFZ is always teetering on the edge of financial disaster, and particularly so at the moment, but it is the kindness and generosity of people like you that prevents said disaster.

Thank you my dears from the bottom of my heart.

It almost feels crass to say this, and not in the sense of an Epping anarchopunk band. But if you want to donate, you can do so using the paypal button on the right hand side of this page. Also, whilst I am on the want, I am looking for an old but serviceable computer (preferably P4) for Doc Shiels. If anyone has an old computer they don't want, can they get in touch? Corinna, Max and I will be off to see the wizard in early September, and we would like to take him one then....

STEVE JONES: Singing Mice

It is always a pleasure to welcome a new blogger, and a double pleasure when the aforesaid new blogger is an old friend. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce Steve Jones. Not the Sex Pistols guitar hero, but the Yorkshire JP and witch, who I take pleasure in introducing to people as "my mate the Pagan Magistrate"....

I have just got around to finishing reading last years CFZ yearbook (In my defence, I have a pile of stuff to read!). I finished reading Jon's article on singing mice and thought I would turn to the trusty Google to see what else I could turn up. Cue lots of sites featuring an animation of a mouse singing "You Sexy thing" to a lump of cheese!

However, it did turn up a copy of the article in Time in 1936 on a singing mouse already mentioned by Jon in his article. More interestingly, however, I found this article from 2005, which I don't recall having come across before:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/01/research.highereducation

Not only have scientists found out that male mice do sing, but that it is a sexual response. I note that Jon's researches on the subject mentioned mainly male mice. The site has two mp3 recordings of singing mice for you all to listen too as well! It would seem, though, that as the mice are usually chirping ultra-sonically and thus beyond the normal human hearing range, the ones that became showbiz stars must have been the equivalent of mice Basso Profundo's!
I now have a mental image of a mice opera in my head!

Here is a link to the paper on singing male mice:
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030386
It turns out that there is a lot of stuff on the net about singing mice. Here is a document on their distribution and song affected by climate:
http://www.zoology.ufl.edu/courses/ip/2009Spring/Stmary/password/SX%205.doc