Fleshing Out I'm going to write out some stuff about some characters I have in my head and on the Interweb. If you're HARPG you might have bumped into them. If not, be prepared because a lot of it...might not make a lot of sense!

Just Having Another Abusive Conversation With My Flat mates About Americanisms It's "oxidising" not "oxidizing" "realise" not "realize" Bloody Microsoft makes me correct it in Word all the time even when I select English "U.K.".

Global Food Security And It's Impact The current population of the world is approximately 7 billion. Of this number, 2 billion are underweight and 1 billion are hungry. At the same time, 2 billion adults and children are overweight and 1 billion are considered "obese". We have enough land globally to grow enough cereal crops to sustain the current world population. But if it keeps growing we will run out of room to grow even that much. While developing continents like Asia grow richer, they are able to afford to eat more meat and dairy products. The more of this they wish to consume, the more livestock we must produce. Land space for these animals is also running out. They also produce methane, which is just as dangerous a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, if not moreso. Some people suggest cutting down forests to grow more pastureland for production species (cattle, sheep etc). This will increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as well as stripping native species of their natural habitat. By doing this, we may inadvertently kill off species that call forests home, destroying the biodiversity of the area and the local ecosystem. This will lead to more extinct species, some of which help to clean up the mess we leave behind. Another issue of increasing amounts of production animals is the waste. Already, nitrogen that leaches out of muck heaps into water systems causes weeds to thrive as they use the nitrogen to grow unusually fast, making the waterways impossible for other species to inhabit. This phenomenon is known as "algal bloom", and contributes to lowering biodiversity in our lakes and rivers. Just some of the facts on the state of the world I've learned this year at university.

Lessons From My Pony 1 My first lesson was learned the first day I met Hillie. Her owner had told me she was a small, unruly pony that didn't really inspire confidence despite looking the part of child's best friend. "Chocolate Box Pony" were the words used to describe her. We got her ready, and since her owner seemed worried about how she might behave (I don't think she'd been ridden for months) I was put on the lead rein, despite being a fairly competent rider. Within a quarter mile of setting off I hit the deck, all bones and body parts intact but pride mildly dented, as the orange devil pony darted off between gorse bushes up the icy path my cheap jodhpur boots couldn't get purchase on. Her owner managed to catch her and, if she was worried I wouldn't want to ride her anymore, she didn't show it. I jumped back on and we met my mum and her husband later, mum quickly catching sight of the big wet patch on my jodhpurs. Lessons learned: sit up when going down hills, particularly on short-necked ponies Don't judge a book by its cover, especially in the case of small cute ginger ponies. In hindsight; trust your gut, cause sticking with that pony is one of the best things I ever did.