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kottke.org posts about David Attenborough

How Tennis Balls Became Yellow, Feat. David Attenborough

Somehow, I didn’t know that until quite recently, tennis balls were white instead of yellow (Wimbledon used white balls until 1985). Here’s a British PathΓ© film from 1961 that shows how tennis balls were made, along with Wimbledon ball boy training:

I also didn’t know that many people think tennis balls are green when they are actually a color called “optic yellow”. Oh and that David Attenborough had a hand in the switch from white to yellow.

The change in color happened due to the demands of television transmissions. In 1972 television was already in color all over the world (although in Spain it was not generalized until five or six years later). At the end of the 1960s, the person in charge of the BBC broadcasts (which, of course, was in charge of Wimbledon) was the renowned documentary filmmaker David Attenborough. And he noticed that the visibility of the traditional white ball was not perfect, especially if it approached the lines of the rectangle of play.

In that year of 1972, tennis was in full growth: the professional and amateur circuits had unified and women’s professional tennis was also growing. Tennis was becoming a great world spectacle and in this context television was fundamental. The International Tennis Federation, in charge of the rules, commissioned a study which showed that the yellow ball was more visible and therefore easier for viewers to follow. The courts, moreover, began to be multicolored once the use of synthetic materials in official tournaments was approved.

Reply Β· 2

Coming Soon: Planet Earth III

Planet Earth III will begin airing later this year on BBC and, presumably, at some later time in the US. The latest installment in the legendary series, 17 years after the first one was released, will once again be presented by Sir David Attenborough, now 97 years old and still as enthusiastic about sharing the wonders of nature as he ever was.

‘The opening of the series with David was filmed in the beautiful British countryside in exactly the location where Charles Darwin used to walk whilst thinking-over his Earth-shaking ideas about evolution. It seemed the perfect place for David to introduce Planet Earth III and remind us of both the wonders and the fragility of our planet. ….and for him, of course, the sun shined under blue skies one of the only days it did all summer!.’

The video above is a quick first look at the series and here’s a trailer as well:

Looking forward to this…the Planet Earth series is still the gold standard for nature documentaries.


The Green Planet

The Green Planet is a new 5-part nature series from the BBC and David Attenborough that focuses on the Earth’s plant life.

Using specialist cameras, this spectacular series allows us to travel beyond the power of the human eye, to look closer at the interconnected world of plants, showcasing over two decades of new discoveries. From deserts, tropical jungles and underwater worlds to seasonal lands and our own urban environment, each episode introduces a set of plants, reveals the battles they face, and the ingenious ways they’ve found to survive.

The trailer is above and here are some clips and behind-the-scenes looks at what it takes to capture some of these incredible scenes.

The Green Planet has already started airing in Britain on BBC, but we won’t be able to see it here in the US until July on PBS.


Life in Color with David Attenborough

A new three-part nature series premiered today on Netflix: Life in Color with David Attenborough.

Animals can use color for all kinds of different reasons β€” whether to win a mate or beat a rival, to warn off an enemy or to hide from one. To understand how these colors work, we need to see them from an animal’s perspective. With new cameras developed especially for this series, now we can.


The Year Earth Changed

Produced by BBC Studios Natural History Unit and narrated by David Attenborough, The Year Earth Changed is an upcoming documentary that looks at what happened to the natural world when much of the world’s human population stayed indoors for a few months.

From hearing birdsong in deserted cities, to witnessing whales communicating in new ways, to encountering capybaras in South American suburbs, people all over the world have had the chance to engage with nature like never before. In the one-hour special, viewers will witness how changes in human behavior β€” reducing cruise ship traffic, closing beaches a few days a year, identifying more harmonious ways for humans and wildlife to coexist β€” can have a profound impact on nature. The documentary, narrated by David Attenborough, is a love letter to planet Earth, highlighting the ways nature bouncing back can give us hope for the future.

The Year Earth Changed debuts on Apple+ on April 22, aka Earth Day. (I can’t believe they resisted calling this Nature Is Healing though…)


The Earthshot Prize

Earlier this month, Prince William (British royal) & David Attenborough (British royalty) announced The Earthshot Prize. Inspired by the moonshot effort of the 1960s, the initiative will award five Β£1 million (~$1.3 million) prizes each year over the next 10 years for projects that provide global solutions to pressing environmental problems in five different categories: fixing the climate, cleaning the air, protecting & restoring nature, reviving the oceans, and building a waste-free world.

The Earthshot Prize is centred around five ‘Earthshots’ β€” simple but ambitious goals for our planet which if achieved by 2030 will improve life for us all, for generations to come. Each Earthshot is underpinned by scientifically agreed targets including the UN Sustainable Development Goals and other internationally recognised measures to help repair our planet.

Together, they form a unique set of challenges rooted in science, which aim to generate new ways of thinking, as well as new technologies, systems, policies and solutions. By bringing these five critical issues together, The Earthshot Prize recognises the interconnectivity between environmental challenges and the urgent need to tackle them together.

(via moss & fog)


David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

Now streaming on Netflix, David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, a documentary about the 94-year-old broadcaster, naturalist, and international treasure.

In this unique feature documentary, titled David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, the celebrated naturalist reflects upon both the defining moments of his lifetime and the devastating changes he has seen. Coming to Netflix October 4 2020, the film addresses some of the biggest challenges facing life on our planet, providing a snapshot of global nature loss in a single lifetime. With it comes a powerful message of hope for future generations as Attenborough reveals the solutions to help save our planet from disaster.

In the trailer (embedded above), Attenborough says “I had the most extraordinary life. It’s only now that I appreciate how extraordinary.” In saying that, he’s speaking not only as a living legend whose long career in television and science has brought him nearly universal acclaim, but also as someone who can look back and see how recognizably and thoroughly the Earth has changed during his lifetime. The depletion of animal populations, the changing climate, the shifting habitats β€” he’s witnessed firsthand how much humans have fucked up the planet. We should listen to his testimony and suggestions for fixing what he calls “our greatest mistake”. I hope it’s not too late.


Netflix Posts Dozens of Their Educational Programs on YouTube for Free

In the Before Times, Netflix let teachers stream their programming in the classroom. With schools not in sessions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Netflix has decided to put some of their educational programming on YouTube for free (full playlist here). For instance, they’ve put all 8 episodes of David Attenborough’s nature series Our Planet online in their entirety. Here’s the first episode:

The Our Planet website also has tons of educational information for schools and kids.

13th is a feature-length documentary by Ava DuVernay about how racial inequality in America drives our high incarceration rates:

13th is currently rated 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and NY Times reviewer Manohla Dargis called it “powerful, infuriating and at times overwhelming”. Here’s a discussion guide.

Eight full episodes of the first season of Abstract: The Art of Design are also available on YouTube (discussion guide). Here’s the episode featuring illustrator Christoph Niemann:

Several episodes of Vox’s series Explained are included, like this one on the racial wealth gap:

Also included are The White Helmets & Period. End of Sentence. (which each won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject) as well as Knock Down The House, the documentary on the 2018 Congressional campaigns of four women (including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). See the full list of included shows and the full playlist on YouTube.


David Attenborough on How to Save Our Planet

In this short video essay, David Attenborough succinctly describes the main problem of the anthropocene (that modern humans are not living sustainably as they once could as hunter gatherers), explains the effect we’ve had on the planet, and then suggests how we can fix things (italics mine):

The plan for our planet is remarkably simple. Reduce our impact by making sure that everything we do, we can do forever.

Sustainability is such a buzzword these days that I have long since stopped thinking about what it actually means; Attenborough nails it with “making sure that everything we do, we can do forever”. The Earth seems infinite in scope but not with 7, 8, or 9 billion humans hungry for food, thirsty for water, and lusty for status & entertainment.

The simple plan Attenborough describes has four parts:

1. Phase out fossil fuels and replace them with renewables.
2. Upgrading to efficient food production and reducing our consumption of meat.
3. Proper worldwide ocean management.
4. Rewilding the world.

As he allows, it’s a bit more complicated than that β€” check out Paul Hawken’s list for a more detailed list of things we can do to fight climate change.


David Attenborough Hosts “Climate Change: The Facts”

From the BBC and hosted by David Attenborough, “Climate Change: The Facts” is an hour-long program on the science of climate change and what we might be able to do about it.

Sir David’s new programme laid out the science behind climate change, the impact it is having right now and the steps that can be taken to fight it.

“In the 20 years since I first started talking about the impact of climate change on our world, conditions have changed far faster than I ever imagined,” Sir David stated in the film.

“It may sound frightening, but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade, we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies.”

With each successive nature series, Attenborough has become more vocal about the effects of climate change on our planet and its plant and animal populations. In his new Netflix series Our Planet, climate change takes center stage.

Compared to its predecessors, the series also frames the value of nature in a new way. Usually Attenborough’s programs establish a place or a species as a thing of remarkable beauty-this soulful orangutan, that industrious bird of paradise-before warning that it is somehow imperilled. The value of the creature is its existence. We may never see a polar bear, but we take pleasure from knowing that they’re out there. In “Our Planet,” the value of nature is presented as something much closer to home, and more practical. Attenborough reminds viewers again and again of the connections that link these far-flung ecosystems to our own species’s survival. Protect the sea otter because it’s lovely, if you like, but also because it keeps in check the sea urchins that otherwise mow down kelp forests, which act as crucial carbon sinks. “We are part of nature. We aren’t separate from nature,” Attenborough told me.


The Day the Dinosaurs Died

It’s only Monday, but I’m confident this will be my favorite read of the week. Since 2012, paleontologist Robert DePalma has been excavating a site in North Dakota that he thinks is “an incredible and unprecedented discovery”. What’s potentially so special about this site? Fossils from dinosaurs and other animals from thousands of years before the asteroid impact are very hard to come by, leading some to believe that dinosaurs died out before the impact, not because of it. DePalma believes the site preserves, as if in amber, the day, the precise and exact day (and perhaps even the exact hour), that the massive asteroid believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs hit the Earth 65 million years ago.

As DePalma carefully excavated the upper layers, he began uncovering an extraordinary array of fossils, exceedingly delicate but marvellously well preserved. “There’s amazing plant material in there, all interlaced and interlocked,” he recalled. “There are logjams of wood, fish pressed against cypress β€” tree root bundles, tree trunks smeared with amber.” Most fossils end up being squashed flat by the pressure of the overlying stone, but here everything was three-dimensional, including the fish, having been encased in sediment all at once, which acted as a support. “You see skin, you see dorsal fins literally sticking straight up in the sediments, species new to science,” he said. As he dug, the momentousness of what he had come across slowly dawned on him. If the site was what he hoped, he had made the most important paleontological discovery of the new century.

The type of evidence present at the site is almost too good to believe:

He noted that every fish he’d found in the site had died with its mouth open, which may indicate that the fish had been gasping as they suffocated in the sediment-laden water.

“Most died in a vertical position in the sediment, didn’t even tip over on their sides,” he said. “And they weren’t scavenged, because whatever would have dug them up afterward was probably gone.”

Depalma Fossil Fish

Clues from the growth stages of animals and pollen found at the site might even point to what season it was when the asteroid struck…DePalma’s current guess is in autumn. And then there’s this, about a burrow that DePalma discovered:

“Any Cretaceous mammal burrow is incredibly rare,” he said. “But this one is impossible β€” it’s dug right through the KT boundary.” Perhaps, he said, the mammal survived the impact and the flood, burrowed into the mud to escape the freezing darkness, then died. “It may have been born in the Cretaceous and died in the Paleocene,” he said.

A scientific paper is forthcoming this week. I couldn’t find it online, but this piece in Science says that it’s generating some discussion and controversy already.

“Outcrops like [this] are the reasons many of us are drawn to geology,” says David Kring, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, who wasn’t a member of the research team. “Those few meters of rock record the wrath of the Chicxulub impact and the devastation it caused.” But not everyone has fully embraced the find, perhaps in part because it was first announced to the world last week in an article in The New Yorker. The paper, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), does not include all the scientific claims mentioned in The New Yorker story, including that numerous dinosaurs as well as fish were buried at the site.

“I hope this is all legit-I’m just not 100% convinced yet,” says Thomas Tobin, a geologist at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Tobin says the PNAS paper is densely packed with detail from paleontology, sedimentology, geochemistry, and more. “No one is an expert on all of those subjects,” he says, so it’s going to take a few months for the research community to digest the findings and evaluate whether they support such extraordinary conclusions.

I’m eager to follow the progress of this story as more of the results are released and analyzed by the scientific community.

Update: The BBC has made a documentary narrated by David Attenborough about the Tanis site and the discoveries that have been made there so far. There’s evidence that they’ve discovered fragments of the actual asteroid impactor.

The sturgeon and paddlefish in this fossil tangle are key. They have small particles stuck in their gills. These are the spherules of molten rock kicked out from the impact that then fell back across the planet. The fish would have breathed in the particles as they entered the river.

The spherules have been linked chemically and by radiometric dating to the Mexican impact location, and in two of the particles recovered from preserved tree resin there are also tiny inclusions that imply an extra-terrestrial origin.

“When we noticed there were inclusions within these little glass spherules, we chemically analysed them at the Diamond X-ray synchrotron near Oxford,” explains Prof Phil Manning, who is Mr DePalma’s PhD supervisor at Manchester.

“We were able to pull apart the chemistry and identify the composition of that material. All the evidence, all of the chemical data, from that study suggests strongly that we’re looking at a piece of the impactor; of the asteroid that ended it for the dinosaurs.”

The program will air on BBC on April 15 and sometime later this year on PBS.


BBC Earth Announces Five New Nature Documentaries, Including “Planet Earth III”

The team at BBC Earth have announced that they’re working on five new nature documentary series set to air in the next few years, including Planet Earth III and One Planet: Seven Worlds, narrated by David Attenborough. Here’s a teaser trailer:

Fantastic news…Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II are two of the best documentaries I’ve seen in recent years. There’s more information about the new shows in these two BBC press release.

Perfect Planet will be a unique fusion of blue chip natural history and earth sciences explaining how the living planet operates. This five part series will show how the forces of nature β€” weather, ocean currents, solar energy and volcanoes β€” drive, shape and support Earth’s great diversity of life. It will broadcast in 2020.

Frozen Planet II will take audiences back to the wildernesses of the Arctic and Antarctica. Ten years on from the original Frozen Planet, this series tells the complete story of the entire frozen quarter of our planet that’s locked in ice and blanketed in snow. It will broadcast in 2021.

Planet Earth III will be the most ambitious natural history landmark ever undertaken by the BBC. Combining the awe and wonder of the original Planet Earth, the new science and discoveries of Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II, and the immersive character-led storytelling of Dynasties, the series will take the Planet Earth experience to new heights. It will broadcast in 2022.

One Planet: Seven Worlds, airing sometime later this year, will consist of seven episodes, one for each of the world’s seven continents.

Millions of years ago incredible forces ripped apart the Earth’s crust creating seven extraordinary continents. This series will reveal how each distinct continent has shaped the unique animal life found there.

We will discover why Australasia is full of peculiar and venomous wildlife; why North America is a land of opportunity where pioneers succeed; and what the consequences are for life racing to compete on the richest of all continents, South America.

Attenborough is narrating this series but it’s not clear whether he’ll be doing the same for Frozen Planet II or Planet Earth III. For one thing, the man is 92 years old and for another, Netflix is luring the BBC’s talent with promises of bigger budgets and wider reach.


Watch How Hermit Crabs All Line Up to Exchange Their Shells

Hermit crabs use the scavenged shells of other animals as their homes. As the crabs grow, they periodically need to upgrade their housing to bigger shells. When a new shell appears on the beach, the cramped crabs will form a orderly queue nearby and then change shells all at once, with each crab moving into the next biggest shell just abandoned by its former occupant. This is possibly the most British thing I’ve ever seen an animal do…and the David Attenborough narration is the icing on top.


A Lion Fighting Off a Pack of Hyenas

David Attenborough’s new nature series, Dynasties, is already airing in the UK and Canada (we have to wait until January 19 in the US) and they’ve also been posting some video clips on YouTube. Perhaps the most compelling is the video above, of a young male lion being attacked by a pack of hyenas.

You can check out some of the other clips in this playlist, including painted wolves fighting off honey badgers to protect their young and emperor penguins practicing parenthood with a snowball.


“Our Planet”, a Nature Documentary Series from David Attenborough & Netflix

It looks like Netflix has sifted through their data and determined subscribers cannot get enough of the Planet Earth and Blue Planet nature series, so they’re making their own. With David Attenborough. The teaser trailer for Our Planet borrows heavily from Planet Earth (fonts & music are similar) but is light on the details, aside from the launch date: April 5, 2019.

Update: The full trailer is out, which I’ve embedded above. Here’s the previous teaser trailer:

The Our Planet series will consist of 8 episodes filmed across 50 countries. April 5 is soooon!


Dynasties, a New Nature Documentary Series from BBC & David Attenborough

After the triumphs of Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II, 92-year-old David Attenborough is back with a new BBC nature series called Dynasties. The five-part series will follow five “celebrated, yet endangered” groups of animals β€” emperor penguins, tigers, lions, painted wolves, and chimpanzees β€” as they fight for survival. From the trailer, it looks as though Dynasties will be heavily narrative, perhaps even more so than Planet Earth and Blue Planet. No word on when this is airing yet.

See also 10 hours of extremely relaxing ocean scenes and 40 hours of relaxing Planet Earth II sounds.


Blue Planet II, another massively entertaining Attenborough/BBC nature documentary

Blue Planet II, the latest BBC nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough, is finally set to air in the US this Saturday on BBC America, AMC, and other networks. Here’s a five-minute preview…if this doesn’t pique your interest, you might actually be dead:

In a review of the program at The Atlantic, Ed Yong makes a bold declaration:

Blue Planet II is the greatest nature series that the BBC has ever produced.

Coming on the heels of Planet Earth II, which I thought was the best thing I watched last year, that’s really saying something. Here’s Yong on the difference between the two:

Who can forget the marine iguanas of Planet Earth II, escaping from the jaws of hungry racer snakes? But in chasing drama, some of the shows became thinner and messier. Many episodes of Planet Earth II felt like glorious visual listicles β€” selections of (admittedly awesome) set pieces woven together by the flimsiest of narrative gossamer.

By contrast, the threads that hold Blue Planet II together are thick and tightly woven. Each episode flows. For example, the second episode, on the deep ocean, achieves narrative depth through actual depth, sinking deeper and deeper so that each new spectacle is anchored in space. Where previous series felt like they sacrificed the storytelling craft and educational density for technical wizardry and emotional punch, Blue Planet II finally marries all of that together.

Blue Planet II was watched by more people in the UK than Planet Earth II and has seemingly influenced the UK government’s stance on pollution:

Cutting plastic pollution is the focus of a series of proposals being considered by the UK environment secretary, Michael Gove, who has said he was “haunted” by images of the damage done to the world’s oceans shown in David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II TV series.

The government is due to announce a 25-year plan to improve the UK’s environmental record in the new year. Gove is understood to be planning to introduce refundable deposits on plastic drinks bottles, alongside other measures.

I got a sneak peek at the first few episodes of Blue Planet II, and it certainly is a great program. I watched it with my kids and they were riveted the entire time. After the fourth or fifth episode, my son said, “I think I like this better than Planet Earth II.” I’m not quite sure it’s peak Attenborough β€” I’m still partial to Planet Earth II β€” but it’s still a must-see and I’m certainly not going to argue with Ed Yong and my son about it.


Blue Planet II

Having achieved spectacular success with Planet Earth II, the BBC and David Attenborough are revisiting another of their previous nature documentaries, the 2001 series The Blue Planet, “a comprehensive series on the natural history of the world’s oceans”. Blue Planet II, Attenborough promises, will use new technology and our increased understanding of the natural world to great advantage in telling the story of the animal and plant life β€” dancing yeti crabs! dolphins spitting to trick prey! TurtleCam! β€” that dwells in our oceans.

The score is by Hans Zimmer, who also collaborated with Radiohead to rework an old song of theirs for the series. Bloom, off of King of Limbs, was originally inspired by the first Blue Planet series, so it’s come full circle with its inclusion in the new series. Vox examines how Zimmer and the band adapted the song:

If you listen closely enough to Radiohead and Hans Zimmer’s rework of “Bloom” for Blue Planet II, you can hear a really fascinating orchestral trick at work. They call it the “tidal orchestra” β€” it’s a musical effect created by instructing each player to play their notes only if the person next to them isn’t playing. The result is a randomly swelling and fading musical bed for the entire series that captures the feeling of ocean waves. It’s a captivating way to score a soundtrack for the ocean β€” but it also fits in with a long history of capturing randomness in music composition.

The “tidal orchestra” technique was inspired by pointillism and randomness: using small individual sounds to build a soundscape rather than starting with a specific tune. For some reason, it also reminds me of Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing 797. (No idea what inspired Yorke’s pants though. MC Hammer? Wow.)

Planet Earth II was probably my favorite movie/show/media from the past year, so I am really looking forward to Blue Planet II.


A Talented Pufferfish Creates an Underwater “Crop Circle”

The elaborate courtship rituals of animals from around the world are featured heavily in every BBC nature documentary series. (See, for instance, these birds of paradise…if you haven’t seen this before, wait for the giant clicking smile.) In the video above featuring a scene from the 2014 series Life Story, watch a Japanese puffer fish create an elaborate pattern in the sand in order to attract a mate. Narrator David Attenborough calls the puffer fish “probably nature’s greatest artist” and I gasped at the full reveal of his creation.


Mesmerizing Mushroom Time Lapse From Planet Earth II

Damn the Brits! First Brexit paves the way for Trump (ok, not entirely accurate) and now they are currently enjoying Planet Earth II with the sublime David Attenborough while we Americans have to wait until late January 2017, at which point there might not even be a planet Earth on which to watch nature frolic on our living room high-definition displays. But β€” Jesus where was I? Oh yes: for now we can watch this clip from the Jungles episode of Planet Earth II about fungi, including some great time lapse footage of mushrooms growing, some of which glow in the dark! Also from Planet Earth II: the incredible iguana/snake chase scene and bears scratching themselves on trees. (via colossal)


Planet Earth II

I reported back in February that the BBC was doing another season of Planet Earth with David Attenborough (aka the voice of nature). Now there’s a trailer out (with a Sigur Ros soundtrack) and the show is set to debut in the UK on BBC One later this month. In US? Who knows… probably in 8 months with Ellen Degeneres narrating.

Update: Planet Earth II, a massive hit in Britain already, will debut on US television tomorrow (Feb 18). You can catch the first episode on AMC, BBC America, and Sundance TV. And unlike the original Planet Earth, they’ve thankfully kept the original Attenborough narration for the US version of Planet Earth II.


David Attenborough narrates Pokemon Go

Will I ever get tired of this trope? Apple should make David Attenborough the Siri voice…I would immediately start using it more.


Perhaps Britain won’t leave the EU after all?

Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking or the social media filter bubble I’m in, but there seems to be a more-than-zero chance that Britain won’t actually leave the European Union, despite last Thursday’s vote. For one thing, as I mentioned in my Friday AM post about Brexit, the vote is not legally binding. The Prime Minister needs to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, which has not happened yet.

But there’s no requirement that the UK invoke Article 50 in a timely fashion. Indeed, both Cameron and Johnson have said they think it’s appropriate to dawdle; Cameron says he’ll leave the decision to invoke to his successor, and Johnson has said there’s no rush.

It wouldn’t be tenable for the government to just completely ignore the vote forever, even though that is legally permissible.

But perhaps not untenable. A Guardian commenter speculates that Cameron did something politically canny when he passed the buck to his successor. As the full ramifications of Leave become apparent, it may be that the consequences of leaving will be transferred from the voters to the person who decides to invoke Article 50…i.e. it may become politically untenable to leave.

Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.

And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legistlation to be torn up and rewritten … the list grew and grew.

The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.

The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?

Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?

There’s also been talk that Scotland could veto Brexit.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has told the BBC that Holyrood could try to block the UK’s exit from the EU.

She was speaking following a referendum on Thursday which saw Britain vote by 52% to 48% to leave Europe.

However, in Scotland the picture was different with 62% backing Remain and 38% wanting to go.

SNP leader Ms Sturgeon said that “of course” she would ask MSPs to refuse to give their “legislative consent”.

But perhaps the most heartening bit of information comes courtesy of David Allen Green: that boat never did get named “Boaty McBoatface”, vote or no vote. Prime Minister David Attenborough anyone?

Update: From Gideon Rachman at the FT: I do not believe Brexit will happen.

Any long-term observer of the EU should be familiar with the shock referendum result. In 1992 the Danes voted to reject the Maastricht treaty. The Irish voted to reject both the Nice treaty in 2001 and the Lisbon treaty in 2008.

And what happened in each case? The EU rolled ever onwards. The Danes and the Irish were granted some concessions by their EU partners. They staged a second referendum. And the second time around they voted to accept the treaty. So why, knowing this history, should anyone believe that Britain’s referendum decision is definitive?

Update: John Cassidy writing for the New Yorker:

As reality sets in, E.U. leaders may well be content to let the Brits stew in their own juices for a while. Initial talk of forcing the U.K. to begin the process of leaving straight away has been replaced by calls for patience. Monday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal quoted Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, as saying, “Politicians in London should have the possibility to think again about the fallout from an exit.” To leave now, he added, “would be a deep cut with far-reaching consequences.” A majority of the politicians at Westminster probably agree with Altmaier’s analysis. But what, if anything, can they do to reverse the march toward Brexit?


The fashionable peacocks of Pitti Uomo

Aaron Christian shot footage of the fashionably dressed gentlemen attending the Pitti Uomo menswear trade show and paired it with David Attenborough-esque commentary about peacocks.

Unlike the cues outside of the city shows, where photographers have a few seconds to snap their favourite look. Pitti Uomo is a four day long menswear trade show, in Florence, Italy.

It’s a vast space where attendees spend all day walking around, visiting stands, eating in the sun or catching up with fellow fashion colleagues β€” and so consequently it has become a prime spot for the worlds top street style photographers to document and shoot some of the most stylish men on the planet.

It’s become a peacock parade where the men show off their outfits in all their glory hoping to get snapped by the top photographers.

It’s quite comical, the way the fully grown men pace around subtly trying their best to get snapped, and it’s the perfect location for this wildlife style mockumentary to take place.


A new season of Planet Earth is coming

Ten years after the debut of the original show, the BBC is doing a six-episode second season of Planet Earth. They’ve been shooting it for the last three years using ultra-HD cameras and David Attenborough will return as host.

“I am very excited to once again be working with the Natural History Unit on its latest landmark series and am especially looking forward to getting out on location in the next month or so,” said Attenborough.

Charlotte Moore, controller of BBC TV channels and the iPlayer, said that the new series has taken three years to shoot taking advantage of significant advances in filming technology since Planet Earth aired a decade ago.

The first season of Planet Earth is on Netflix in the US, but the Blu-ray is only $40 and the picture is so much better…worth it if you somehow haven’t seen it and still have a BR player.1

  1. I still buy Blu-ray for a few things, stuff that needs crisp 1080p w/o streaming compression artifacts. Last purchase was Princess Mononoke.↩


David Attenborough being awesome

Here are some clips taken from Life on Air, a 2002 BBC documentary celebrating David Attenborough’s 50 years on television. The entire show is available here. (via @dunstan)


David Attenborough narrates Adele’s Hello

BBC Radio One got David Attenborough to narrate the first minute or so of Adele’s video for Hello as if it were a nature documentary. Solid gold. Although I am a little cross they made Attenborough say the words “hashtag flip phone”. :|

Bonus pseudo-Attenborough: the episode of Human Planet on The Douche.


David Attenborough narrates curling

BBC Radio 1 recorded David Attenborough doing nature-style commentary for curling:

For the curious, here are the rules of and other assorted information about curling.


Planet Earth, narrated by kids

This is great…BBC America made this promo of kids narrating the Planet Earth nature documentary in place of David Attenborough.

(via boing boing)


Life

I’d really like to watch Life, the newest multi-part nature documentary from the BBC, but the version showing on Discovery in the US is narrated by Oprah Winfrey and not David Attenborough. Guess I’ll wait for the Blu-ray version for the full English experience. Or maybe they’ll release a German version narrated by Herzog? Pretty please? In English?