tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45687053799942531412024-02-19T16:09:01.968+13:00Rata WeeklyYour portal to Art, Books, and pictures of cloudsGrace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.comBlogger316125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-36758257677800509662010-12-22T15:14:00.001+13:002010-12-22T15:30:09.831+13:00Total lunar eclipse, 21 December 2011<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A lunar eclipse at midsummer, on the shortest night of the year, is pretty awesome. It also doesn't leave a lot of darkness to view the eclipse! Here in Christchurch the moon rose already in total eclipse, and wasn't visible for some time as there was cloud low in the sky. But it was worth waiting for, a spectacular pale pink disk which became rusty red as it rose higher in the darkening sky. And even as sunlight crept across the moon's surface and clouds partly obscured the moon from view, it was still a freakish and beautiful sight.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-37888538946251095252010-08-04T11:35:00.001+12:002010-08-04T11:35:00.166+12:00Meara O'Reilly's Chladni singing<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Chladni patterns were discovered by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke">Robert Hook</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chladni">Ernst Chladni</a> in the 18th and 19th centuries. They found that when they bowed a piece of glass covered in flour, (using an ordinary violin bow), the powder arranged itself in resonant patterns according to places of stillness and vibration. Today, Chladni plates are often electronically driven by tone generators and used in scientific demonstrations, but with carefully sung notes (and a transducer driving the plate), I'm able to explore the same resonances." - <a href="http://www.mearaoreilly.com/index.php?/project/chladni-plate/">Meara O'Reilly</a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Here is a video of O'Reilly making amazing, shifting geometric patterns by singing a sequence of notes:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/n-tYVjngvyo&hl=en_US&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/n-tYVjngvyo&hl=en_US&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="382" height="309"></embed></object>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-36903129332482046292010-08-03T11:48:00.000+12:002010-08-03T11:48:47.164+12:00Women directors, women screenwriters, and the Bechdel Test<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To pass the <a href="http://bechdeltest.com/">Bechdel Test</a>, a movie has to fulfill these criteria:</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>2.</b> Who talk to each other</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>3.</b> About something besides a man</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Doesn't sound too hard, does it? And yet about half of the movies in the Bechdel Test database fail the test. More than 10% failed <i>all the criteria</i>. Just to recap, that means they didn't have more than one named female character in the whole movie.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://bechdeltest.com/top250/">Here</a> is a list of some of the IMDb's top-rated films, measured against the Bechdel Test.</span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> And <a href="http://bechdeltest.com/statistics/">here</a> are some graphs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So where are all the women? Well, probably the same place all the female screenwriters and directors are.</span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> In Hollywood, 19% of screenwriters are women. In television it's 28%.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And, far from getting easier, it's actually <i>getting harder</i> for women to get writing work in Hollywood. You can read more about that <a href="http://womenandhollywood.com/2009/11/19/still-sucks-to-be-a-female-writer-in-hollywood/">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As you'd expect, there's a connection between the number of women working as writers, directors and producers, and the number of female characters onscreen. More on that <a href="http://uscnews.usc.edu/arts/women_still_fighting_for_screen_time.html">here</a>. </span><br />
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<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2003/nov/09/gender.features"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">From The Guardian:</span></a><br />
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"The irony is that women were in at the birth of cinema. The silent era was a golden age with female screenwriters writing half of all movies between 1911 and 1925. Jane Cussons, chief executive of the industry body Women in Film and Television, says: 'Just think of Alice Guy Blache, who was the first woman ever to direct a movie. She directed 400 films, produced hundreds more and ran her own studio. Then when sound came in, film making became big business. Men moved in and women just got sidelined.'"</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[you can read the whole article <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2003/nov/09/gender.features">here</a>] </div>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-72377309967761597112010-08-01T12:23:00.003+12:002010-08-01T12:42:42.275+12:00Extremely scary jobs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.scubadiving.com/files/imagecache/article_featured_image/old/contents/290/200710_tn_dangerous_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="http://www.scubadiving.com/files/imagecache/article_featured_image/old/contents/290/200710_tn_dangerous_01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"The hazardous career field of commercial diving was once largely defined by the deep-water saturation divers working the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea. But saturation diving isn't the only dangerous diving job around. Someone has to dive the 150-foot-tall water towers on the blizzard-blown Kansas prairies where it's gravity, not gas saturation, that will kill you. Someone needs to slip quietly inside the tangled gloom of a tuna net to check on great white sharks. Someone needs to make sure those scientists chasing penguins under the Antarctic ice cap don't drift away from the hole. And yes, someone has to dive inside nuclear reactors. (But hey, we hear the tan you get is just fabulous.)"</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Read the whole article <a href="http://www.scubadiving.com/training/2007/10/dangerous-diving-jobs">here</a>. It's fascinating, but could give you nightmares!</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Thanks to the NZ Geographic for this link.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-21243589091174266782010-07-31T13:44:00.000+12:002010-07-31T13:44:28.203+12:00A lot of scary amazingness<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">65 million years ago, a meteor at least 10-km wide impacted Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, causing global catastrophe. The force of the explosion </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">was significantly bigger than any volcanic event in history and the shock waves probably triggered worldwide earthquakes, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatsunami">megatsunami</a>, a massive release of gas and dust and heating of the atmosphere which devastated the climate and caused mass extinctions, including most dinosaur species existing at that time.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The site of the impact</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_Crater">Chicxulub crater</a></span>;<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> is </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">a circle 170km across, with half on the </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Yucatan Peninsula, and the other half in the water of the Caribbean Sea.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On land, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">a trough along the outer edge of </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">the crater contains a vast semicircle of "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote">cenotes</a>", deep limestone sinkholes filled with fresh water. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This BBC clip explains:</span></span><br />
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<object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IZKuA_QZnBg&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_detailpage&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IZKuA_QZnBg&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_detailpage&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="382" height="309"></embed></object><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Many of the cenotes are connected by an even deeper network of flooded caves which leads to the sea. Freshwater percolating down from rain on the surface and seawater flowing in from the Caribbean form "haloclines", distinct layers of water which don't mix.</span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> This clip shows the strange optical illusions caused at the boundary between the layers:</span><br />
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<object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/x2caZe34mts&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_detailpage&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/x2caZe34mts&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_detailpage&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="382" height="309"></embed></object><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The first half of this clip shows another peculiar optical effect: a layer of hydrogen sulphide which appears to be the bottom of a cenote but is in fact a cloud of gas suspended deep below the surface:</span><br />
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<object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/k-UQi6NkHm8&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_detailpage&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/k-UQi6NkHm8&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_detailpage&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="382" height="309"></embed></object>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-54587642931123387742010-07-28T11:36:00.000+12:002010-07-28T11:36:09.253+12:00Shoelace fanatic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.fieggen.com/Dont_Link/SecureKnot6.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://www.fieggen.com/Dont_Link/SecureKnot6.gif" width="200" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Thanks Andrew for this wee gem, if gem is the word I want...<a href="http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/">Ian's shoelace site</a> shows you the many options available to you when lacing your shoes.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It also details why there are <a href="http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/2trillionmethods.htm">almost 2 trillion possible ways</a> of lacing a 12-eyelet boot.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And there are <a href="http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/lacingmethods.htm">some very pretty lacing patterns</a>: check out the <a href="http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/hexagramlacing.htm">hexagram</a> and <a href="http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/pentagramlacing.htm">pentagram</a>, just for starters.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh50U3chcEdX_3Z2Yid2m9DAwjTsCjldNSiqxVYUgUnJHyKkUCbspgkSYJAHg-Y_TtUmgPAHUdZsN22dWxBE51Z7hrnOBq45ErOaam2WiYJ0f7gLIWX4JxXoFRS4zG1lLBTiDBopV7h6hs/s1600/hexagram+lacing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh50U3chcEdX_3Z2Yid2m9DAwjTsCjldNSiqxVYUgUnJHyKkUCbspgkSYJAHg-Y_TtUmgPAHUdZsN22dWxBE51Z7hrnOBq45ErOaam2WiYJ0f7gLIWX4JxXoFRS4zG1lLBTiDBopV7h6hs/s320/hexagram+lacing.jpg" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXgjMzDSKd4vG4cr6Ev151oLQIKAn431o6kj1LqwNodc7kibvfSzDMgB3hVkA7-OiouHVAwVVaxQVAUm0xWiIKwDefyXyvUNbPwXbrjsQr-tF1A9_b0o5c-TMysE7UmqMsBaNc3LSLhhU/s1600/pentagram+lacing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXgjMzDSKd4vG4cr6Ev151oLQIKAn431o6kj1LqwNodc7kibvfSzDMgB3hVkA7-OiouHVAwVVaxQVAUm0xWiIKwDefyXyvUNbPwXbrjsQr-tF1A9_b0o5c-TMysE7UmqMsBaNc3LSLhhU/s320/pentagram+lacing.jpg" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And for those among us who struggle with the basics, there is <a href="http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/slipping.htm">help to avoid slipping knots and crooked bows!</a> </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What a wonderful site. :-)</div>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-61672086846623903492010-06-15T21:40:00.001+12:002010-06-15T21:40:00.797+12:00Whales, Tuberculosis, Monarchs, etc.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizrXj8_el247fKoMAB3OFuuSURw9vnO4KOQd_VYw-XGg6LWyLjMhgXO9UbnuQqYK0SDFeYj3YdZoLCKGZ2_KxFK7bOVIYZJAvBolqipzhWFXlbb8v9ZEHv8lI1g7sOJKQ5ElQuMisX24U/s1600/Balsam+of+spermaceti+web.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizrXj8_el247fKoMAB3OFuuSURw9vnO4KOQd_VYw-XGg6LWyLjMhgXO9UbnuQqYK0SDFeYj3YdZoLCKGZ2_KxFK7bOVIYZJAvBolqipzhWFXlbb8v9ZEHv8lI1g7sOJKQ5ElQuMisX24U/s400/Balsam+of+spermaceti+web.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481077981707058066" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">This is also from the 1886 Goldsmith book, this time the outside back cover.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The text reads : <span style="font-weight: bold;">Woodhouse's Balsam of Spermaceti or Pectoral Cough Drops</span> for Consumptive or Other Coughs, also for Colds, Shortness of Breath, Asthma, Wheezing and other Afflictions of the Chest.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Spermaceti is produced by whales, you can read about it </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermaceti">here</a><span style="font-family:arial;">. If swallowing bits of whale for the sake of your chest sounds silly, the discovery of streptomycin (the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis) had to wait until 1944. If you'd like to read about the history of tuberculosis and its treatments, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tuberculosis">the Wikipedia article</a> is interesting.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:arial;">In former times, the touch of your King or Queen was thought to be efficacious:</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"Persons of royal blood were thought to have the 'God given' power of healing by this condition by touch, and sovereigns of England and France practiced this power to cure sufferers of </span><span class="mw-redirect" style="font-family:arial;">scrofula</span><span style="font-family:arial;">,</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> a form of tuberculosis of the bones and lymph nodes, commonly known as the "King's or Queen's Evil"</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> or "Morbus Regius". In France it was called the "Mal De Roi".</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> Curiously </span><span class="mw-redirect" style="font-family:arial;">William the Lion</span><span style="font-family:arial;">, King of Scotland is recorded in 1206 as curing a case of Scrofula by his touching and blessing a child who had the ailment</span><span style="font-family:arial;">. Charles I touched around 100 people shortly after his coronation at Holyrood in 1630.</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> It was only rarely fatal and was naturally given to spontaneous cure and lengthy periods of remission. Many miraculous cures were recorded and failures were put down to a lack of faith in the sufferer. </span>The original <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Common_Prayer" title="Book of Common Prayer">Book of Common Prayer</a> of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_Church" title="Anglican Church" class="mw-redirect">Anglican Church</a> contained this ceremony.<span style="font-family:arial;">"</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"The custom lasted from the time of Edward the Confessor to the reign of Queen Anne, although her predecessor, William III refused to believe in the tradition and did not carry out the ceremony."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"Queen Anne, amongst many others, touched the 2 year old infant </span><span class="mw-redirect" style="font-family:arial;">Dr. Samuel Johnson</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> in 1712 to no effect, for although he eventually recovered he was left badly scarred and blind in one eye.</span><sup style="font-family: arial;" id="cite_ref-Coin_News03_11-0" class="reference"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_Pieces#cite_note-Coin_News03-11"><span></span><span></span></a></sup><span style="font-family:arial;"> He wore the medal around his neck all of his life and it is now preserved in the British Museum. It was believed that if the touch piece was not worn then the condition would return. Queen Anne last performed the ceremony on 30 March 1712. George I put an end to the practice as being "too Catholic."'</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"The monarch himself / herself hung these touch piece amulets around the necks of sufferers. In later years Charles II only touched the medalet as he unsurprisingly disliked touching diseased people directly. He 'touched' 92,107 people in the 21 years from 1661 to 1682, performing the function 8,500 times in 1682 alone." [<span style="font-weight: bold;">Wikipedia</span>]</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So now you know. The whole bizarre Wikipedia article on "touch pieces" (=healing talismans) is </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_Pieces">here</a><span style="font-family:arial;">.</span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_Pieces#cite_note-Coin_News99-5"><span></span></a>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-76358093402228106612010-06-13T12:36:00.001+12:002010-06-13T12:36:01.052+12:00Piglet squid. No really.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD6UufumigH1ZeiVN-ISphVta_qVDDorfQZUDpJyDKujtz9TnVKMani_8CHNIi5pDwsd9szqX0Xe5_P28cIITbw4GvJG-dMHAoPVZOreOHlWk24OLw15ZgPGVTi6ksIfb1y1a92Wu7QII/s1600/piglet+squid.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 145px; height: 99px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD6UufumigH1ZeiVN-ISphVta_qVDDorfQZUDpJyDKujtz9TnVKMani_8CHNIi5pDwsd9szqX0Xe5_P28cIITbw4GvJG-dMHAoPVZOreOHlWk24OLw15ZgPGVTi6ksIfb1y1a92Wu7QII/s400/piglet+squid.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481774004640295890" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Sometimes nature comes up with something so funny-looking you can't quite believe it. Funny-looking to us, anyway. I wonder what we look like to them?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Check out <a href="http://boingboing.net/2008/10/24/piglet-squid-is-cute.html">this item on piglet squid</a>. And Google offers <a href="http://www.google.co.nz/images?q=piglet+squid&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=SS0TTNa4Fpq0cLbXqPgL&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CB8QsAQwAA">a range of other images almost as funny</a>.<br /><br />In other crazy nature news, <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/3793104/Calvin-Klein-cologne-used-to-lure-jaguars">jaguars are attracted to Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men fragrance</a>. This is a boon for animal biologists trying to study the elusive big cats, but you might want to think twice before wearing it on your rainforest holiday.<br /></span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-2858382429336191002010-06-12T11:51:00.005+12:002010-06-15T16:06:57.294+12:00Fascinating story on NZ Scrabble genius<span style="font-family:arial;">Ever heard of Nigel Richards? Neither had I, but he's the reclusive Kiwi who's been world champion in Scrabble for the last 12 years.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">'"Without a doubt he's the greatest player in our sport, ever," says national Scrabble representative Warner, who, like many serious exponents of the game, considers it a sport."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">'"You go to international tournaments and everyone's sitting around at the end of the day telling Nigel-stories," says Warner. "Of course, he's never there, so the legend grows."'</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"Richards' only two interests are obsessions: Scrabble, and cycling. He cycles 600km a week, including long rides before the 8am start of each day of tournament play. Everyone in Scrabble knows the story of Richards' first appearance at a New Zealand championship, when he knocked off his job in the Christchurch City Council's water department at 5pm, cycled for 14 hours to Dunedin in atrocious conditions overnight, played all his games over the weekend, then cycled home having won his division, spurning offers of a lift."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Read the whole Stuff article </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/3782304/Kiwi-world-champ-you-ve-never-heard-of">here</a><span style="font-family:arial;">.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-69164830907548228232010-06-10T21:29:00.002+12:002010-06-10T21:35:20.017+12:00Head Soap - now there's an idea<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd22Wj7RZ4Wqnm2-1CdFu0dNgdMI4Qtj0OP_ZJUfdCdLFg12TZx8YLPKSP1S-NRRXbu0KopIftIssC17B6kC7zarK2i8iSWV9Us6YLWydlJQ7DQYerAt0LGuEcpldE1Iu3eDzPYhGPjek/s1600/Head+soap+web.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 201px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd22Wj7RZ4Wqnm2-1CdFu0dNgdMI4Qtj0OP_ZJUfdCdLFg12TZx8YLPKSP1S-NRRXbu0KopIftIssC17B6kC7zarK2i8iSWV9Us6YLWydlJQ7DQYerAt0LGuEcpldE1Iu3eDzPYhGPjek/s400/Head+soap+web.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481075138512939170" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">This is from the inside cover of an edition of Goldsmith's plays dated 1886.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-67319014238896512762010-06-01T10:42:00.002+12:002010-07-17T23:16:47.254+12:00Carnivale<span style="font-family:arial;">Cult TV series Carnivale is movie-like in its complexity and attention to detail: you need to watch every episode in order to have any idea </span><span style="font-family:arial;">what's going on, and even then there are mysteries.</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> But it's hugely rewarding if you pay attention.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family:arial;">Here is the Season 1 trailer (try and ignore the Spanish subtitles!):</span><br />
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<object style="height: 344px; width: 425px;"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Io3qEXfuc2s"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Io3qEXfuc2s" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="382" height="309"></embed></object><br />
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<span style="font-family:arial;">And here are the award-winning opening credits:</span><br />
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<object style="height: 344px; width: 425px;"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0CYMXoX-b0o"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0CYMXoX-b0o" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="382" height="309"></embed></object><br />
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<span style="font-family:arial;">Amazon has a good deal on box sets of the whole series. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FL7C8C?ie=UTF8&tag=gracedalleyco-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B000FL7C8C">Click here</a> to see them.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-23244062749368628472010-05-31T13:05:00.006+12:002010-07-17T23:17:57.850+12:00Swindon's Magic Roundabout<span style="font-family:arial;">OK I'm posting this here because I try to describe this to people and they either don't believe me or I can't explain it properly. Swindon boasts the original Magic Roundabout, built in 1972, which consists of one counter-clockwise roundabout fed by 5 clockwise roundabouts. That's hard to picture, so have a look at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Swindon-Magic-Roundabout.svg">the Wikipedia diagram</a>.<br />
<br />
Or watch the animation:<br />
</span><br />
<object style="height: 344px; width: 425px;"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kPANKRHL9HU"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kPANKRHL9HU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="382" height="309"></embed></object>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-88885080855249892342010-05-25T10:15:00.002+12:002010-05-24T19:08:42.499+12:00Seed banks and biodiversity<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU7USxnFQkp98H2Vc4pGNdIwztiTSC_W71lhn4rHp_3MGSd2pRWW8fIJStFIc3b8n0Sx6UT1cidM6X9ZReFca3aP1iHP57nJqAvAWnsLK8laaP6KIFC9mZ33YDNfaA5FLK4cVEKv1EQJM/s1600/waterlily.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 96px; height: 145px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU7USxnFQkp98H2Vc4pGNdIwztiTSC_W71lhn4rHp_3MGSd2pRWW8fIJStFIc3b8n0Sx6UT1cidM6X9ZReFca3aP1iHP57nJqAvAWnsLK8laaP6KIFC9mZ33YDNfaA5FLK4cVEKv1EQJM/s400/waterlily.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474728175016684338" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >The BBC recently had this nice story of a minute waterlily brought back from extinction through stored seed: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"Two years ago, this delicate bloom went extinct in the wild due to over-exploitation of its habitat. </span> <p style="font-family: arial;">Luckily its seeds were kept in storage - and were used by Carlos Magdalena to regrow the plant at Kew Gardens - just outside London. </p> <p><span style="font-family:arial;">It took him months to find the ideal conditions for growth. He hopes now that the Thermal Lily will flourish once again in the hot springs of Rwanda...." (</span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10124250.stm">read more</a><span style="font-family:arial;">) </span> </p><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >There is also a passionate piece</span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> on the urgency of banking seed as a way of safeguarding species for the future:</span><br /><br />"Kew's Millennium Seed Bank is a unique, global asset. It is the largest facility of its kind in the world and contains the world's most diverse seed collections. </span><p style="font-family: arial;">Over the past 10 years, more than 3.5 billion seeds from 25,000 species have been collected and stored in their country of origin and in Kew. </p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Species are chosen by country partners according to whether they are rare or endangered or of particular potential use - for example as medicine, food, animal fodder or shelter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Described by Sir David Attenborough as "perhaps the most ambitious conservation initiative ever", the partnership will announce on 15 October the banking and conservation of 10% of the world's plant species." (<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8303753.stm">read more</a>)</span><br /><br /></p><span style="font-family:arial;"> <span style="font-weight: bold;">And if you thought cities were a desert, in terms of biodiversity, you couldn't be more wrong:</span><br /><br />"There are four bodies lying and crouching in our tiny back garden. The ecologists from the Natural History Museum (NHM) got here only minutes ago, but, while the kettle boils, they are already grubbing about behind our bins, under our windowsills, in the lawn, flowerbed and log pile.<br /><br />They are doing a "bioblitz" – trying to find as many species of animal and plant as possible in this small, suburban south-west </span><span style="font-family:arial;">London</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> garden. Our back garden is only 12 paces long and seven wide, with, now I look at it through the eyes of ecologists, pitifully few flowers. Happily, they appear undaunted. "The great thing is, even with </span><span style="font-family:arial;">gardens</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> like this that look fairly sterile, there's always something there," says the museum's insect specialist, Stuart Hine. "We'll move plant pots, and we'll have a look through your log pile . . . Lots of spiders, centipedes, woodlice, slugs – they'll all be there."" (</span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/18/secret-life-suburban-garden?&CMP=EMCENVEML1003">read more</a><span style="font-family:arial;">)</span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-77086850372672302712010-05-21T10:41:00.007+12:002010-07-17T23:25:07.459+12:00Gogoyoko<span style="font-family:arial;">You'd think that online music sales would be more financially rewarding for artists than traditional music sales involving a physical product such as a CD, record or tape. Unfortunately, that's mostly not how it works. <a href="http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Information is Beautiful</span> has statistics and a graph</a>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family:arial;">Here is a video of Georg from Sigur Ros talking about <span style="font-weight: bold;">Gogoyoko</span>, a new music store designed for artists to sell directly to their fans.</span><br />
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<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/G8OTRWEGMmw&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_GB&feature=player_profilepage&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/G8OTRWEGMmw&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_GB&feature=player_profilepage&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="382" height="309"></embed></object><br />
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<span style="font-family:arial;">Check out <a href="http://www.gogoyoko.com/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gogoyoko</span> here</a>. It looks very smart.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Update:</span></span> The <span style="font-weight: bold;">Information Is Beautiful</span> figures have been questioned as they exclude a number of important factors, such as marketing costs, recording costs (if these are paid for by the artist they get a much bigger share of the final proceeds, if not costs may be recouped before any royalies go to the artist). And a statutory royalty payment is always made to the writer(s) of a song whether or not the performers receive one. So remuneration in the music business is really very complicated!<br />
<br />
The good news is that the Internet offers a multiplicity of options for artists. Some that seem to offer a very good return to artists are: <a href="http://www.amplifier.co.nz/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">CDBaby</span></a>, which charges artists a flat $4 per CD sold, and allows them to set the retail price as they wish; <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://bandcamp.com/">Bandcamp</a>, a site which currently delivers 100% of the digital download fee to artists who own their own recordings, less PayPal transaction fees; and <a href="http://www.amplifier.co.nz/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Amplifier</span></a>, which takes a 20% cut on music sold (this compares with the about 85% cut taken by itunes)<br />
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I'm indebted to <a href="http://publicaddress.net/default,6641,musics-emerging-digital-market.sm#post6641">Russell Brown</a>, <a href="http://www.simongrigg.info/">Simon Grigg</a>, and Samuel Scott for explaining some of these matters to me.<br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family:arial;">If you're interested, <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/the-death-of-the-album-in-handy-graph-form.ars">this ars technica article</a> graphs the market shift from albums to individual tracks and from download to streaming content. Things are changing in the music business, that's for sure.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-49577784124454567862010-05-17T23:56:00.006+12:002010-07-17T23:26:27.907+12:00Snap, crackle, pop!<span style="font-family:arial;">Thanks to Andrew for pointing me to this wonderful electrical rendition of the Doctor Who theme. </span><br />
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<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/slim_go5im4&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/slim_go5im4&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="382" height="309"></embed></object><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family:arial;">The device used here is sometimes known as a "Zeusaphone", because of the, uh, lightning bolts!<br />
<br />
According to Wikipedia:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family:arial;">"</span><b style="font-family: arial;">Zeusaphone</b><span style="font-family:arial;">, also called a </span><b style="font-family: arial;">Thoremin</b><span style="font-family:arial;">, is trademark for a high-frequency, solid state Tesla coil, when its spark discharge is digitally modulated so as to produce musical tones. The high-frequency signal acts in effect as a carrier wave; its frequency is significantly above human-audible sound frequencies, so that digital modulation is able to reproduce a recognizable pitch. The musical tone results directly from the passage of the spark through the air.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family:arial;">This is a variant of the plasma arc loudspeaker, designed for public spectacle and sheer volume rather than fidelity."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family:arial;">If you fancy the musical sparks, you can buy one, </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.zeusaphone.com/index.html">here</a><span style="font-family:arial;">.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-24507055052181124092010-05-11T11:24:00.002+12:002010-07-17T23:24:16.942+12:00Now *there's* an eruption!!<object style="height: 344px; width: 425px;"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Lmm3J0WAres"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Lmm3J0WAres" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="382" height="309"></embed></object>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-15714361995288298022010-04-05T11:45:00.001+12:002010-04-05T11:45:00.290+12:00The hungry sheep look up<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCG9h3LD2UyX6djeZzyOb-cRR3rni7zsVoRTsAKpIJu_WoO_I3BcZBea0BfqTMrclWpiPiA2DV5Un_taW4SMZv_j69Rs0H3eIdmTngOri6lzZBcs3KxLJMdGPDkh3005TqhNyBGpEvQHU/s1600/telephone+sheep+jean+luc+cornec.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 145px; height: 109px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCG9h3LD2UyX6djeZzyOb-cRR3rni7zsVoRTsAKpIJu_WoO_I3BcZBea0BfqTMrclWpiPiA2DV5Un_taW4SMZv_j69Rs0H3eIdmTngOri6lzZBcs3KxLJMdGPDkh3005TqhNyBGpEvQHU/s400/telephone+sheep+jean+luc+cornec.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455321270470574626" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Thanks to Mekayla for sending me pictures from the Museum for Communication in Frankfurt. By Jean Luc Cornec,These sheep are <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/phone-sheep.php">re-purposed telephones</a>.<br />You can see more of the telephone sheep on Flickr, </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanneorla/296806737/in/pool-mfk-frankfurt">here</a><span style="font-family:arial;">.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-63792676835928955862010-04-04T19:26:00.000+12:002010-04-04T19:26:00.339+12:00Setting us straight!<span style="font-family:arial;">A lot of physics as taught in school and printed in textbooks is not just oversimplified but actually wrong. If you want your illusions shattered, read <a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#meth">this page</a>! Highlights include:<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><li><a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#meth">SCIENTISTS USE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD?</a> not quite. </li><li><a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#watclr">LAKES AND OCEANS ARE BLUE BECAUSE THEY REFLECT THE BLUE SKY?</a> No. </li><li><a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#cld">CLOUDS REMAIN ALOFT BECAUSE WATER DROPLETS ARE TINY?</a> Wrong! </li><li><a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#blue">THE SKY IS BLUE BECAUSE OF COMPLICATED PHYSICS</a> No, it's simple. </li><li><a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#lemon">A LEMON-BATTERY CAN LIGHT A FLASHLIGHT BULB?</a> doesn't work! </li><li><a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#sound">SOUND TRAVELS BETTER THROUGH SOLIDS & LIQUIDS?</a> No it doesn't. </li><li><a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#grav">GRAVITY IN SPACE IS ZERO?</a> It's actually strong. </li><span style="font-size:100%;"><li><a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#wing">A WING'S LIFTING FORCE IS CAUSED BY ITS SHAPE?</a>, no, by trailing edge angle. </li><li><a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#newt">FOR EVERY ACTION, THERE IS AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE REACTION?</a> Newton said otherwise. </li><li><a href="http://www.amasci.com/miscon/miscon4.html#ben">BEN FRANKLIN'S KITE WAS STRUCK BY LIGHTNING?</a> He'd have died. </li></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">These and many other points are discussed and explained. Some take a while to get your head around, but it's worth the effort! Thanks to Niels for the link.</span><br /></span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-32389509061642561662010-04-03T14:02:00.000+13:002010-04-03T14:02:00.397+13:00<a href="http://www.fishpond.co.nz/product_info.php?ref=619&id=9781869419189&affiliate_banner_id=1" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.fishpond.co.nz/affiliate_show_banner.php?ref=619&affiliate_pbanner_id=11483916" alt="The Kindness of Strangers: (Kitchen Memoirs)" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /><a href="http://www.fishpond.co.nz/product_info.php?ref=619&id=9781869419189&affiliate_banner_id=1" target="_blank">The Kindness of Strangers: (Kitchen Memoirs) </a> by Shonagh Koea<br /><br />I have been savouring this wonderful book in which Shonagh Koea's essays about food allow her to discuss many other things about her life, writing, and experiences. Sometimes she is frivolous, sometimes deadly serious; often she makes droll anecdotes out of horrifying things, and finds amusing details even in the saddest parts of her story. Many of the recipes she includes make something good out of unpromising ingredients, and the same goes for her life story: she makes a witty and magnificent tale out of adversity and hardship.<br /><br />And the recipes are wonderful! Her "Air India" samosas are the best I've ever had.<br /><br />Here are some samples:<br /><br />"When I was in High School my mother sometimes used to make marmalade. There were grapefruit trees growing out the back of the house we lived in and they fruited generously, but the fruit was a pale colour, thin-skinned and possibly not suitable for marmalade. She used to mince the fruit using and old metal mincer that screwed on to the kitchen table and I think she added grated carrot to make the mixture more orange. the results were stiff, extremely opaque and they sat in jars with a sort of grimly globular intensity that was almost alarming. I never ate any of it but my mother would spread it dutifully on her toast, saying meanwhile, 'You don't know what you're missing.' In a culinary sense I do not think I missed much, but the point I missed at the time was that there was nothing else for her to do but make the best of what she had and she did so with scant encouragement."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"I have cultivated quite wild and spreading plants so there is an atmosphere of largess and tropical wildness in my garden and through this I walk carefully with a cup of coffee in one hand an a doorstep of homemade bran loaf spread with marmalade in the other, once I tripped on a low-lying leaf of my big flax plant and fell flat on my face, so I have walked through my garden with greater care since then. I had thought, as it was my very own garden, that I would be able to do anything there and be unharmed but this was just a fanciful thought -- I am apt to have such fancies and think that because it is me that everything with be all right. it mostly is but sometimes not, like the time I tripped over the flax leaf."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"If you are a writer people always imagine that what you write is true, particularly if they know you. Of course it is not because fiction is fiction and can be manipulated to make a good story, and truth often has no resolution of horrors and terrors so is useless to place upon a page masquerading as a tale simply because there is not one. The truth is mostly a jumble of unresolved and sometimes very unrelated facts that collide in a meaningless way. People would not pay good money to read it. They have difficulty enough living it, I imagine. After I wrote <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lonely Margins of the Sea</span> I lost count of the number of times people sidled up to me and said, in a hasty aside, 'You can tell me who you stabbed -- I won't tell a soul' The novel was about a woman who had stabbed her married lover and had gone to prison. [...] It was flattering, I suppose, to be considered so dangerous when I cannot, in real life, even dismember a chicken from the supermarket. My carving of meat is so inexpert that once, in the days when I used to make some pretence of having people to dinner, I hacked at a piece of beef with such a blunt knife that the candles fell out of the candlesticks and nearly set fire to the tablecloth."</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-66322742265027565922010-04-02T10:22:00.000+13:002010-04-02T10:22:00.727+13:00Victorian women surveyed on sexuality<span style="font-family:arial;">The value of primary historical sources is that they can correct wrong assumptions and interpretations made by scholars in a later era. Stanford professor Clelia Mosher conducted surveys </span><span style="font-family:arial;">from </span><span style="font-family: arial;">1892 to 1920 </span><span style="font-family:arial;">asking women for their views on sex and reproduction </span><span style="font-family: arial;">. The results seem surprising to modern eyes:<br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">"</span>The Mosher Survey recorded not only women's sexual habits and appetites, but also their thinking about spousal relationships, children and contraception. Perhaps, it hinted, Victorian women weren't so Victorian after all. Indeed, many of the surveyed women were decidedly unshrinking."<br /><br />Stanford Magazine has a fascinating article about both the survey and the woman who compiled it, <a href="http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2010/marapr/features/mosher.html">here</a>. It concludes:<br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">"</span>In her own writings, Mosher was acutely aware of her foresight, and of the possibilities that lay ahead for women once sex became less of a secret and gender less of a burden. "Born into a world of unlimited opportunity, the woman of the rising generation will answer the question of what woman's real capacities are," Mosher wrote in 1923. "She will have physical, economic, racial and civic freedom. What will she do with it?""</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Thanks to N for the link.<br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"></span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-16803607992382110822010-04-01T17:56:00.003+13:002010-04-01T18:19:43.105+13:00Marvellous Missie Moffat<span style="font-family:arial;">Check out this video of Taranaki singer-songwriter Missie performing live with The Gentle Kings.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> And there are more tracks on <a href="http://www.myspace.com/missiemoffat">her MySpace page</a>, including the brilliant <span style="font-style: italic;">For You</span>.</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="" href="http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=102425830">missie & the gentle kings- live at spiegeltent</a><br /><object width="425px" height="360px"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="movie" value="http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=102425830,t=1,mt=video"><embed src="http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=102425830,t=1,mt=video" allowfullscreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="360"></embed></object><br /><a style="" href="http://www.myspace.com/missiemoffat">missie</a> | <a style="" href="http://www.myspace.com/music/videos">MySpace Music Videos</a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Hey, Missie, you rock :-) Let us know when we can buy the CD.</span><br /></span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-56114761741384281742010-03-26T20:43:00.001+13:002010-07-17T23:27:28.203+12:00Classic Hugh Laurie, "Mystery"<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/__DrJI7mTHQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/__DrJI7mTHQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="382" height="309"></embed></object>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-39026744628507568692010-03-22T13:05:00.003+13:002010-03-22T13:09:27.685+13:00Kingfishers in action<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2KmWSxdQzpjrdLxZY0c-RAR3ZmGqp-LwBj1ZRFOLd8MXl2a19X3dNxqu_2NIcV88lxMkuTxaDJzUnjWLZqU-f-wu4Koxj48C2zEXNNVlV22IpFwAnk64P-xQKtuQbDilLSjRDsMnVP4/s1600-h/kingfisher+joe+petersburger.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 145px; height: 98px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2KmWSxdQzpjrdLxZY0c-RAR3ZmGqp-LwBj1ZRFOLd8MXl2a19X3dNxqu_2NIcV88lxMkuTxaDJzUnjWLZqU-f-wu4Koxj48C2zEXNNVlV22IpFwAnk64P-xQKtuQbDilLSjRDsMnVP4/s400/kingfisher+joe+petersburger.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451243402995446114" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The Telegraph has </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/7481641/Kingfishers-in-action-pictures-by-Joe-Petersburger.html">these incredible shots of kingfishers fishing</a><span style="font-family:arial;">, taken by National Geographic photographer Joe Petersburger.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-75427276873516950142010-02-04T13:17:00.002+13:002010-02-04T13:19:27.095+13:00Migratory birds (the aluminium kind)<span style="font-family: arial;">check out <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5055160/24-hour-air-traffic-around-the-world-blows-minds-eyeballs">this scary little video</a> tracking global air traffic! Thanks for the link, John.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4568705379994253141.post-17454369501039030792010-01-29T17:02:00.000+13:002010-01-29T17:02:00.294+13:00On disability and caring<span style="font-family: arial;">Philip Patson writes in a guest post on Public Address:</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://diversitynz.com/wise-species/" target="_blank">"A wise society</a><span style="font-family: arial;"> would accept the potential inevitability that through birth, accident, illness or aging we're all functionally incompetent or incapacitated at some point in our lives. We would design environments, systems and structures that accommodate </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://diversitynz.com/wise-species/functional-diversity/" target="_blank">functional diversity</a><span style="font-family: arial;">.</span>"<br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Read the whole post <a href="http://publicaddress.net/6439#post">here</a>. And Patson's own website, Diversity New Zealand, is <a href="http://diversitynz.com/">here</a>.</span>Grace Dalleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11184423873725462269noreply@blogger.com0