far off in sunlit places,
sad are the Scottish faces,
yearning to feel the kiss
of sweet Scottish rain.-- trad.
We interrupt our (sort of) regular blogging to announce that there will be no blogging tonight.
Apart from this. Which doesn't count as a true blog entry. It's more like a Public Service Announcement.
Got a phone call from my sister. Their Internet connection is bollixed and my niece, Emily, needs some help with some research for a school project. Seems simple enough. She needs to know about the climate and vegetation of Scotland.
OK. I soon enough found a good page on the climate.
But vegetation? You'd think that somewhere on the Internet there'd be a nice little map that you could click on and the flora of Scotland would dance for you in full animated glory. You would be wrong.
The CIA Factbook, Wikipedia, the UN Food and Agriculture Office. The British Government, the Scottish Government.
Greenpeace.
Either nothing, or comingled with the total U.K. stats, or analyses of small woodlots attached to estates or -- the few botanical surveys that really looked useful -- in the JSTOR database, which you can't access without a university subscription.
So I had to harvest the few scraps I found here and there:
"Wot's this? 'The Medicinal Herbs of Scotland'? Inna the hopper wit ye, me lad!"
Two hours later I had assembled enough random data to, I think, salvage Emily's junior high academic career.
It wasn't a total waste of time. I did find a lot of really quite fascinating information, and if you'd like to know a bit more about it, well, look it up yourself.
Sheesh.