Gogwit's Blog

Oh how I love Opus Restaurant in the Colmore Business District part of Birmingham City Centre. I’ve always felt that this superb restaurant is a vegetarian’s friend. They delight in their ingredients and are serious about sourcing their fruit and vegetables locally. Market fresh, the humble vegetable becomes exalted with the respect and balanced flavours they deserve. How lucky we are!

So, to be invited by Opus Restaurant’s little sister Cafe Opus at the Ikon Gallery in Brindley Place to sample their ‘Meat Free Monday weekly changing supper menu was a delight myself and my wife couldn’t turn down.

Now that’s an idea I like, no meat on a Monday, even a Tuesday or a Wednesday, well you get my drift! Meat Free Monday’s are a superb idea (see previous posting) to encourage people to reduce their meat intake for one day a week, a Monday no less, a good…

via everybody loves to eat.

A great looking event at a popular local pub. What’s not to love?

Deputy Manager of Brownhills Pub The Smithy’s Forge, Matt Folan, has asked me to plug the Family Fun Day set to take place there next Monday (May 26th 2014) from 12-6pm – that’s The Smithy’s Forge Pub in Lichfield Road, Brownhills, just off the Miner Island.

There will be a bouncy castle for the kids, games, a raffle, live music and DJ, beer, food and fun – and it’s all for Cancer Research UK, a great and very important charity.

It looks like a good time is to be had by all, in a popular and friendly local pub. Why not check it out?

A popular pub in the heart of Brownhills. Imagery from Bing! Maps.

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via Blue Pueblo, Astronomical Clock, Prague, Czech Republic photo….

by Susan Irene Fox

Into Being

Perfect symmetry:

leaves, feathers, webs, DNA.

Behold Your grand works!

Master Painter

Your painter’s palette

indigo mountains, snow clouds

vermillion sunsets,

golden stalks, blood red blossoms,

jade grass, sapphire waters

Embodied

We are

masterpiece, heir

intricate, spun with care,

a woven, warp-free tapestry;

Mercy

Sandhill Pumping Station is a beautiful example of its kind.

About a decade ago, South Staffordshire Water historian Chris Pattison sent me some scans of 1921 documents he found in the archives relating to the Shire Oak Brewery owner, Geroge Boulter, who was expressing concerns about the creation of the Sandhills Pumping Station and borehole, and the possible effect on the well the brewery used at the top of Shire Oak Hill.

The Sandhills Pumping Station – built by the private concern of The South Staffordshire Waterworks Company in 1935 – still pumps fresh water to this day from two 400 foot deep boreholes drilled into the bunter pebble beds under Sandhills.

The brewery stood behind the Shire Oak Pub, and has been exhaustively documented by historian Clive Roberts in his wonderful book ‘Snippets of Local History in and around Shire Oak’.

I’m sure Clive will find this material interesting.

via Scientists Add Letters to DNA’s Alphabet, Raising Hope and Fear – NYTimes.com.

By ANDREW POLLACK MAY 7, 2014

Scientists reported Wednesday that they had taken a significant step toward altering the fundamental alphabet of life — creating an organism with an expanded artificial genetic code in its DNA.

The accomplishment might eventually lead to organisms that can make medicines or industrial products that cells with only the natural genetic code cannot.

The scientists behind the work at the Scripps Research Institute have already formed a company to try to use the technique to develop new antibiotics, vaccines and other products, though a lot more work needs to be done before this is practical.

The work also gives some support to the concept that life can exist elsewhere in the universe using genetics different from those on Earth.

“This is the first time that you have had a living…