3 April: Starfish

Today is World Aquatic Animal day, so I’m taking this opportunity to present 10 facts about an animal I’ve not had the chance to cover yet, the starfish.

1. First of all, they are not Fish. They are part of a group of animals known as echinoderms, which also includes sea cucumbers, sea urchins and Sand Dollars. Because they are not fish, scientists prefer to call them "sea stars."

2. They don’t have Brains or Blood. They use sea water to pump nutrients through their bodies.

3. Their mouths are on their underside. They can however eat things that won’t fit in their mouths by essentially turning themselves inside out, so that their stomachs are on the outside and can digest the food before ingesting it.

4. There are about 2,000 species of sea stars. While we tend to visualise them with five arms, some species have as many as 40.

5. Their rudimentary Eyes are situated on the ends of their arms, so depending on the species, they can have as many as 40 eyes. Each arm also has hundreds of little feet to help them move on the sea floor.

6. If a starfish loses one of its arms it’s not the end of the world, because they can grow another one. However, it’s not something they’d do lightly as an arm will take about a year to grow back. In addition, the severed arm, provided it’s not eaten by something, can grow into a whole new starfish.

7. Starfish can weigh up to 11lbs and live for up to 35 years.

8. Their skin is made from calcium carbonate, which is tough like armour and difficult for predators to break down. Some species add spines as an extra defence as well.

9. Starfish are easy to study in a lab because they are easy to handle in seawater at room temperature, and they develop quickly. They are of particular interest to scientists because of their ability to regenerate. However, studies involving tracking them are a bit more tricky. Starfish also have an unusual ability to expel foreign objects from their bodies, so they will spit out any tracking devices people might try to attach.

10. The most famous fictional starfish is probably Patrick Star, the best friend of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

2 April: Sir Alec Guinness

Sir Alec Guinness was born on this date in 1914. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. He was born in Maida Vale, London, and was registered as Alec Guinness de Cuffe. His mother was Agnes de Cuffe; the name of his father was not recorded and has never been officially confirmed. One theory is that it was one of the sons of Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, who would have met Agnes while she was working as a barmaid at the Royal Yacht Squadron clubhouse at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Members of the Guinness family claimed a "distinct resemblance" between Alec and members of the family, and one of the earl’s sons had a bit of a reputation as a womaniser. Also, why did his mother give him Guinness as a middle name? Alec himself preferred to believe that his father was a Scottish banker called Andrew Geddes, who he also resembled, and who occasionally visited, posing as an uncle.

2. Before he started acting, Guinness worked at an advertising agency.

3. He made his stage debut in 1934 as an extra at the King’s Theatre in Hammersmith, London. His screen role was as Pip’s friend Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations, an adaptation of the novel by Charles Dickens. Guinness was reluctant to appear on TV, but accepted the part of George Smiley in the serialisation of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy after meeting the author.

4. Guinness served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in the Second World War, initially as a seaman before receiving a commission as a temporary Sub-lieutenant and later a promotion to Temporary Lieutenant. He commanded a Landing Craft Infantry at the Allied invasion of Sicily.

5. He’s well known to many as Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi in Star Wars, and was the only person to receive a best acting nomination in any of the Star Wars movies. That said, he didn’t like the role at all. When he first saw the script for Star Wars he described it as “fairytale rubbish” although he did like the sense of morality in the movie, and the fact that the studio doubled his salary to get him on board no doubt helped. Even so, he only agreed on the strict condition that he would not be required to take part in any publicity. He later asked George Lucas to kill off his character, because “I just couldn’t go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I’d had enough of the mumbo jumbo.” Talking of lines, he never uttered the line "May the force be with you" in any of the Star Wars films. "The force will be with you" was the nearest he got.

6. He met James Dean, just days before his fatal car crash, and on seeing Dean’s new car, made the chilling prediction, "Get rid of that car, or you will be dead in a week!" Evidence of psychic powers? Not necessarily. In subsequent interviews, Guinness recalled that all Dean's friends had given similar warnings because Dean drove too fast.

7. When working in theatre, Guinness preferred new plays to the classics, because he didn’t like having his performance compared to that of previous actors in those roles.

8. While serving in the Royal Navy, Guinness planned to become an Anglican priest. He would eventually convert to Catholicism, influenced in part by having been mistaken for a real priest by a local child when playing one in a movie. Before he converted, the actor spent time in a monastery so as to experience the typical routines of practising Catholics. Every morning, Guinness recited verse eight from Psalm 143, "Cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning".

9. His name is an anagram of "genuine class".

10. In his last book of memoirs, A Positively Final Appearance, he admitted to being a huge fan of the television series The Simpsons.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book