Pond Skater and Trump send ripples through media

With the sun shining strongly today into the 'office', the door to the garden was open and I would break occasionally to wander over to the new mini-pond. A flash of movement on the surface and I saw our first coloniser, a pond skater.

Their apparently miraculous ability to skate on the water is due to a combination of two factors. The first is the incredible strength of water's surface tension at the water air interface. The second factor is the way the body weight is distributed via the long legs on the water surface, aided by fine hairs along the limbs. More important than this combination of straight physics, is the body covering in very fine hair, around a million hairs per square millimetre. These make the pond-skater's body water repellent, so if a raindrop falls directly on it or even pushes it into the water, it can emerge totally dry.

Other fascinating features of pond skaters are: The longer middle legs are used for propulsion, the hind legs for steering and the shorter front legs can spear and puncture prey via claws along the leg. To move forward, the middle legs push down and back on the water surface, creating a circular wave behind - the pond skater then pushes against the crest of this wave and shoots forward at up to a meter per second. Pond skaters communicate with each other through vibrations on the water surface. 25 Hz signals 'Go Away!', 10 Hz signals a threat and a sexy slow 3 Hz is used in courtship.

President Trump defended his decision to 'Terminate' FBI Director James Comey, stating that he was not doing a good job. Republicans think its OK, Democrats have deep concerns, the visiting Russian foreign Minister expresses surprise, and the press in the US, the UK and Germany have this as their main news item and speculation today.

We have not really had any major brexit news, but there has been a steady drip drip of banking companies letting it be known that they are setting up offices in Europe and getting ready to relocate staff out of the UK. Other news has been excitement about the domesticity of the Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband in an appearance on the BBC 'ONE Show', followed by an impending feeding frenzy after Labour's draft manifesto for the upcoming election was leaked, with lots of nationalisation mentioned.