Tweets without end

The end is less nigh than we thought - or maybe not.

I read (in a newspaper) that it is possible to subscribe to a service that coverts tweets into a link, thus freeing them of the limit to 140 characters.

Apparently as the Chancellor of the Exchequer was leaving Margaret Thatcher's funeral service in St paul's Cathedral (though perhaps not quite on the steps), where he was caught on press cameras with a tear trickling down his cheeks, he felt obliged to tweet a comment on how moving the occasion was, in order to regain seeming control of the perception of things. Is there a new career path as tweet-writer for the great and mighty opening up?

"...we came across the word 'twitter', and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was." – Jack Dorsey

In my adult lifetime

50 lost each hour

A new report produced by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the British Trust for Ornithology, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Birdlife International and other organisations including government agencies estimates that the number of nesting birds in the UK has declined from 310 million in 1866 to 160 million today. That's one pair a minute, or one for every adult human in England and Wales over the whole period. The decline is especially marked in farmland birds, whose population is less than half what it was in 1970.

To anyone of my generation who walks in the country or by the sea this report will be a sad confirmation of personal observation. Rockpools no longer teem with life, beaches are no longer littered with empty shells, the stubble fields are no longer covered with lapwings. All gone. Never mind: we have more slugs than we used to, and we hear there is more oil in the ground than we thought.