Friday, April 15, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Bipolar Disorder to become the must have mental illness of 2011, reveals Catherine Zeta Jones’ publicist
via newsthump.com
Catherine Zeta Jones has defied all the odds by being diagnosed and recovering from Bipolar Disorder in just five days after spending time in an unnamed mental health clinic.
It is believed that the speed of the Swansea born Oscar winner’s recovery will open the floodgates for other celebrities to be diagnosed and recover from the illness in time for their own upcoming work commitments.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Secrets of the universe | Secrets of the universe | The Australian
In a clear sky from a dark location at the right time, a faint band of light is visible across the sky, as shown in this half of a 360 degree panorama photo. The band is the disk of our spiral galaxy, The Milky Way. Picture: NASA
The Brand New Whiz Bang Swim Centre in Marion
Monday, April 11, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
"The Sun has Got His Hat On" (Ambrose & his Orchestra, 1932)
via youtube.com
Ace. Another Ed Stewart Junior Choice Special.Saturday, April 09, 2011
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.I always assumed this had something to do with Australia.
Hello Mr Abbott. Australia does not look so bad after all.
Photojournalist Peter Menzel's visual anthropology captures the striking span of humanity’s socioeconomic and cultural spectrum. His Hungry Planet and What I Eat portrayed the world’s sustenance with remarkable graphic eloquence, and today we’re turning to some of his earliest work, doing the same for the world’s shelter: Material World: A Global Family Portrait — an engrossing visual time-capsule of life in 30 countries, captured by 16 of the world’s leading photographers.
In each of the 30 countries, Menzel found a statistically average family and photographed them outside their home, with all of their belongings. The result is an incredible cross-cultural quilt of possessions, from the utilitarian to the sentimental, revealing the faceted and varied ways in which we use “stuff” to make sense of the world and our place in it.
Read more: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/04/08/material-world-peter-menzel...
Friday, April 08, 2011
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Johnny Preston - Running Bear Hero finally runs out of steam.
via telegraph.co.uk
The song had been written by Preston’s friend, the disc jockey and singer JP Richardson, better known as The Big Bopper. But Richardson thought the number was too gloomy and unsuitable for his own onstage persona. When he offered it to Preston, his friend also had doubts: it was based on the Romeo and Juliet story but featured American Indians, and told of an ill-fated romance between Running Bear, an “Indian brave,” and Little White Dove, an “Indian maid”. The pair were from different, warring tribes and separated by a raging river, which eventually sealed their doom.
At the recording sessions at the Gold Star studios in Houston in 1958, Richardson joined the country singer George Jones in providing the “oog-a-chooga” background vocals, supplemented by assorted war-cries.
Despite Preston’s reservations, the record became a million-seller for him in 1959, after Richardson died in the plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. It topped the British charts in March 1960, and earned him a gold disc.
India's sex ratio: Sons and daughters | The Economist
via economist.com
NEW data from the 2011 Indian census show that there are now 914 girls aged 0-6 years old for every 1,000 boys of the same age, or 75.8m girls and 82.9m boys. A cultural preference for sons and the increasing availability of prenatal screening to determine a baby's sex have helped contribute to a worsening in the ratio (from 927 in the previous census in 2001), which has been deteriorating rapidly even as the ratio for the population as a whole has improved. A decline was recorded in 28 of the country's 35 states and territories, among which there is wide variation; from 830 in the northern state of Haryana to 973 Meghalaya in the east. And such imbalances are not confined to India. Last year the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences warned that by 2020 one in five young Chinese men would be unable to find a bride because of the dearth of young women.Technology enhances the human condition? Predictable but very very sad.
Czech Mate - First homosexual caveman found.
via telegraph.co.uk
he male body – said to date back to between 2900-2500BC – was discovered buried in a way normally reserved only for women of the Corded Ware culture in the Copper Age.
The skeleton was found in a Prague suburb in the Czech Republic with its head pointing eastwards and surrounded by domestic jugs, rituals only previously seen in female graves.
"From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took funeral rites very seriously so it is highly unlikely that this positioning was a mistake," said lead archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova.
"Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual," she added.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Eddie Snyder, who wrote Frank Sinatras most hated song dies aged 92
via telegraph.co.uk
One of the most recorded songs in history, Strangers In The Night reached No 1 in the UK charts in June 1966 and remained there for three weeks. It had a complicated history, the melody having originally been written by a Croatian composer, Ivo Robic, for a song festival in Split. When it failed to impress, Robic sold the rights to the German bandleader and composer Bert Kaempfert for the spoof spy film A Man Could Get Killed. Although Snyder is credited with writing the English words with the lyricist Charles Singleton, he insisted that he also had a hand in the music; ultimately the song would appear to have been a joint production by all four. Sinatra himself hated the song, and repeatedly offered expletive-filled invective when asked his opinion. He suggested that it was "about two fags [homosexuals] in a bar". Then, in 1975, he told an audience in Jerusalem: "Here's a song I cannot stand, but what the hell ... " Most bluntly, he once said: "It's the worst ------- song I ever heard."
Friday, April 01, 2011
The 4 Seasons of Seattle Weather - The Oatmeal
via theoatmeal.com
I have lived or spent time in all these places. Many years ago I was seduced to move to Seattle after spending a glorious summer day there. Little did I know that was the one sunny day of the year.
Growing up in Scotland, this is just about right. I am lucky, living here in Adelaide, where it is exactly the opposite. Locals whinge when it gets below 20 degrees. A fine day I say.
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