London Zoo

On Saturday, I went with ewx and my new lens to visit London Zoo.

The photos are here; the extremely long lens means I can actually take portraits of animals, rather than pictures consisting of a great deal of tree with a slight leavening of monkey. It was a little tiring to walk around with three kilos of optics around my neck, and I've discovered that often one finds the whole weight of camera and lens supported on one's glasses, which transfer the weight efficiently to the nose-pieces, giving the effect of walking for four hours around London Zoo with a five-pound bag of potatoes balanced on one's nose; but I think the pictures are worth it.

Amazing molecular-biology video

http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/09/29/the-cell-is-like-tron/

It's a video of the major processses happening inside a cell: building and unbuilding of the microtubules and actin fibres that are the cell's skeleton and reinforcing rods, transcribing enzymes whizzing down a stream of DNA and writing RNA, the ribosomes of the translation machinery zipping down an RNA molecule and extruding a protein, kinesin walking down a tubule carrying a vesicle. It's pretty accurate - the proteins have the shapes which crystallographers worked out for them.

Some of you have already seen it, but while talking to aldabra after tidying up her garden this afternoon I discovered that she hadn't.