Urban Swans

Sod London with its urban foxes - in Plymouth we have urban swans. Taken on Friday whilst waiting for my ferry home. They are a bit grubby and one of them glares at dogs whilst the other tidies up the nest.

Why Nikola Tesla is the first superhero

This is from the great BBC series Shock and Awe The Story of Electricity. A visual demonstration of just how extraordinary Tesla was - this is science as adventurer or explorer. He shot lightning from his fingertips! I actually had a go with one of the light tubes when I was at the Tesla museum in Belgrade (god bless Serbian lack of health and safety rules...). This series also had some amazing early electricity experiments in it - when it was science as wonder, more mysterious than any magicians trick (though actually there are links between the history of electricity scientists and magicians - there were certainly electricity parlour tricks - maybe another post..) - I will post the whole first episode here too - I like the experiment involving levitating gold and a swing...
Tesla as superhero:

Episode one on early electricity scientists: