Impressive from Ukraine (no surprise) and Finland.... I thought Poland would be higher though...

Interesting............!!

I was rather surprised by Ireland. I thought they armed their police as standard. Maybe they stopped after the Good Friday Agreement? Interesting though that a goodly few are islands... I wonder if that's significant? Good to see us in the 10% that don't feel the need to arm our police!

To say that we have 'mixed' weights & measures.... is a *bit* of an understatement....! [lol]

Impressive! Although I did wonder about Sweden for a bit, until I realised that I was probably thinking about Denmark.... 

Oh, the absolute irony......

Both my gaming friend and I were *most* surprised at a 21% count for the UK. I'd have guessed less than 10% myself or even less. That's assuming the data is correct of course, considering that no date is given here. Plus, I'm rather sceptical about the quality of the data from most of Africa...  

This raises the question, naturally, of exactly *why* they're prohibited. Presumably because Atheists don't have any "morality"? I was thinking both how essentially nonsensical this was, plus the fact that it would never exist in the UK or the rest of Europe - for the simple fact that it would never occur to do this plus our Anti-Discrimination wouldn't allow it - then I remembered that this is how we, in England at least, used to treat the Catholic minority. Until recently, around the middle of the 19th century, Catholics were not allowed to run for office nor head any of the branches of the Civil Service or the Military - nor indeed VOTE in General Elections. I also remembered reading about an elected MP who refused to swear his oath of office on a Bible sometime around the end of the 19th century. That caused problems for some years, if memory serves, until MPs changed the rules and were allowed to affirm rather than swear. I'm guessing that this had a knock on effect in legal trials were the witness used to have to swear on a Bible but now swear on multiple Holy books or affirm.    

It does make me wonder how the parents of the first blue-eyed baby reacted when s/he was born... Joy, surprise, confusion, fear, horror? Plus, how was that child treated? As a gift from the Gods or something worse? Obviously blue-eyes prospered, but did they do so from the very beginning or were the first blue-eyed babes treated badly? I guess we'll never know, but I do like thinking about stuff like that. 

I *think* there's some Grey squirrels living in a neighbours tree. You see them sometimes running along the fence tops. Not sure if I've *ever* seen a Red squirrel in the wild. They're VERY rare beasts! 

Seems about right.... [grin]

A Land ‘Bridge’? 

It must have been decades ago that I first came across the idea – that England had once been physically connected to mainland Europe by a ‘land bridge’. Now in my mind at the time, and until very recently, I’d envisaged some sort of causeway, maybe a mile or two wide, connecting say Dover and Calais over which the earliest colonisers of Britain migrated. It would’ve been much easier than, say, trying to cross the Channel or the North Sea in a primitive boat before the age of sail. As many people (and potential invaders) have found to their cost, crossing the 26 miles between Britain and the European continent is no easy feat. So, land bridge.... 

As you can see from the map above the ‘bridge’ was anything but! As you can see, as recently as 16 thousand years ago the WHOLE of the British Isles as well as Ireland could be WALKED to from Belgium. To be honest this map has been totally blowing my mind since I downloaded it a few months ago. Just try to imagine what things looked like from the Normandy ‘coast’. Apparently, people lived, farmed and had communities where it’s now the North Sea. Fishing ships regularly pick up peat deposits and artifacts from the Dogger Bank area where, I’ve heard, it was possible to STAND on the surface with your head above water at certain times of the year. Yes, parts of the North Sea are that shallow still. I now appreciate why the Royal Navy doesn’t like having its submarines there – just too dammed shallow! 

Naturally, my imagination went into overdrive when I saw this map. Not only from the point of view of people 16-8 thousand years ago, but from more recent history. Imagine, if you will, the possibility that the ‘land bridge’ could have persisted into the present. Maybe to its full extent or maybe to its 7000BC limit. With Britain directly connected to Europe along a substantial front just how different would world history have been.  Would the Roman Conquest of Britain have been much easier? What about Napoleon or Hitler? Imagine no ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ but instead the Blitzkrieg rolling across the ‘Dover Straights’ right into the heart of Southeast England. Would Britain have become a great maritime power so cut off from the remnants of the North Sea and so far from the Atlantic? What a world such a place would be..... What a very STRANGE world!  

In case you ever wondered/had been previously confused....

A bit breezy out there today....!