Please note The Green Man is usually accurate however he does tend to drift into the mischievous areas of satire and parody from time to time. Such is the nature of the Green Man. In fact he is not above complete fiction when the fancy takes him.
South Knox Bubba has a photo of George W Bush's audience with the Pope and is seeking captions.
It had me chuckling at the desk. Look and perhaps contribute one of your own.
Fundamentalist Christian Alert - Another article of evolution!
Well enough of the advertising theme, if I don't stop now I'll be forced to go for a long boozy advertising lunch and it's only 10:00am.
The debate is hotting up at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara on the issue of the ascendancy of biodiversity, that is the hypothesis that the number of species is growing over time. Current records support this hypothesis but is this just a result of sampling error? After all newer fossils are nearer the top and more easily found and common sense would indicate that the older a fossil is the more likely it is to be destroyed by some event.
Correcting for sampling error John Alroy, a palaeontologist with the centre, has produced a modified estimation of biodiversity over time that shows a much more cyclical nature to the creation and extinction of species. This has been made possible by an on line database that is made freely available by the centre on their website. It contains 30,000 fossil collections currently and is still growing.
Not everyone agrees, as is the nature of science. Andrew Smith, an invertebrate palaeontologist at London's Natural History Museum says "What is it with these statistians poking their noses into our safe little world. Shouldn't they be focusing on predicting the tattslotto numbers?"
Nature has an interesting article. Read it here.
If you suspect that your neighbour, based on his intellect, is a close relative of a pre-cambrian mollusc you can interogate the database for yourself, click here.
In researching the previous entry I came across this site. Maintained by the Guardian it contains images of some of the most striking recent visual advertisements. Some make it here because they are sensational, like the Easyjet ad, but most because they are stunning examples of a contemporary art form. It is well worth a browse, click here.
Continuing with an advertising theme, the lastest Easyjet "Weapons of Mass Distraction" ad is causing much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in feminists circles. It has the 2nd highest number of complaints of any ad so far this year. No doubt Easyjet are thrilled, it will have at least doubled the impact of the ad.
The British Advertising Standards Authority don't agree that the complaints are justified and the ads can stay.
What does the Green Man think? I agree, they are distracting.
You can read the BBC take on the story here.
Here are some actual adverts for your amusement:
In the "someone just wasn't thinking it through" category:
Anxious to 'include' as many minorities, religions and disabilities as possible, the human resources department of the University of Alberta has put up a Braille poster outside its main office. The poster has been placed inside a display case with a glass front.
From the personal ads section:
Abusive, Miserly, Impotent
psychopath with webbed feet
seeks companion to join in
cross-country killing spree.
Must be eager to die in hail of
gunfire. No Weirdos.
ROM#1245
I'm glad he's excluding weirdos.
For Sale:
--------------------------------------
83 TOYOTA HUNCHBACK -- $2000
--------------------------------------
SOFT & GENITAL BATH TISSUES OR FACIAL TISSUE
89 cents
--------------------------------------
HUMMELS - LARGEST SELECTION EVER
"IF IT'S IN STOCK, WE HAVE IT!"
--------------------------------------
KELLOGG'S POT TARTS - $1.99 box
--------------------------------------
FULLY COOKED BONELESS SMOKED MAN - $2.09 lb.
--------------------------------------
From pets section:
FREE YORKSHIRE TERRIER.
8 YEARS OLD. HATEFUL LITTLE DOG.
----------------------------------
FREE PUPPIES:
1/2 COCKER SPANIEL
1/2 SNEAKY NEIGHBOR'S DOG
------------------------------
FREE PUPPIES...
PART GERMAN SHEPHERD - PART STUPID DOG
------------------------------
GERMAN SHEPHERD 85 lbs.
NEUTERED. SPEAKS GERMAN. FREE.
-------------------------------------
FOUND: DIRTY WHITE DOG.
LOOKS LIKE A RAT...
BEEN OUT AWHILE..
BETTER BE REWARD.
but this one wins:
SBF (Single Black Female) Seeks Male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I'm a svelte good looking girl who LOVES to play. I love long walks in the woods. Riding in your pickup truck. Hunting Camping Fishing trips. Cozy winter nights spent lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. Rub me the right way and watch me respond. I'll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me.
Kiss me and I'm yours. Call 555-XXXX and ask for Daisy.
(The phone number was the Humane Society and Daisy was an eight week old black Labrador Retriever.)
All ads curtesy of Harris Creative Group
It appears that the English tradition of rolling out of the pub after the consumption of countless pints of the local brew and adjurning to the local indian restaraunt to insult the waiter and consume some curries is gaining some credibility with the scientific community.
The American Physiological Society report that the damage to the liver that results from excessive alcohol consumption is significantly reduced by the ingestion of curcumin an active chemical in Indian spice tumeric.
I can just hear this pissed guy arriving home at 1am saying "I was just looking after my health love"
Read more here.
We all know there is lot of crap on the internet. There is, however, also isolated puddles of urine.
Urinal.Net has courageously picked up the bucket and mop. Here is a place where you can sate your appetite for all things urinal. Was the use of "appetite" in bad taste, oops did it again, never mind.
The task of catering for this bodily function has produced some ingenious and bizarre examples including
In the ingenious category this 100 metre (290 foot) open air urinal for the New York marathon.
This appeals to The Green Man who, by his very essence, is an outdoors sort of bloke.
In the bizarre category, this attempt at a female version in a Dairy Queen store.
Strangely, it never took off with the female patrons. Ahh the female mind, who can make sense of it.
Visit urinal.net to see examples from, amongst others, antarctica, space and the millenium dome in London. Boy this site has got something for everybody.
(via j-walk)
The level of hardship in a city has a direct inpact on the lifestyle of the city generally. It has implications for levels of crime and vandalism and is a basic subtext of life in the city.
Click here to see how your city rated. (If you live in Melbourne you are going to be a lot happier than if you live in Port Moresby)
Data comes from Economic Itelligence Unit.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that researchers in Australia and the United States have analysed survey data from about 40,000 employees and managers in six countries to determine dominant styles of management. How does Australia fare?
They found that nearly nine out of 10 Australian organisations were not performing as well as they could be, because of the culture of blame, indecision and conformity. . . "Top executives want a culture that supports excellence [but] their actions reinforce behaviours that are more consistent with coping and survival than excellence and achievement," Mr McCarthy said.
Alright, go ahead and flame me, I know it is stating the bleeding obvious, well it is to us worker bees, but it needs to be said.
This is the direct result of an economic rationalist approach to corporate management and the ascendancy of accountants in the pyramid of corporate power. The role of accountants is to manage fiscal obligations of the organisation not to set policy or interfer in the broader responsibilities of an organisation. Sadly, many accountants don't even recognise that there are other non-fiscal responsibilities.
I know of an educational institution that has an accountant as 2IC. What lunacy is that? What does he know of standing in a classroom when it is 5 degrees with students who can't focus because they are cold. The balance sheet shows a reduction in infrastructure cost per student hour delivered, that's all he cares about. The real function of the organisation is not about having a teacher standing in front of a class delivering lessons as cheaply as possible, it is about children learning.
Ever heard of Murfreesboro, Tennesse, well neither have I but it is bound to be cropping up in conversations around the water cooler over the next day or so. Afterall you can't hold the first rally of the North American Nude Bikers club and not expect it to raise the profile of your town.
Participants said the values of trust, respect and freedom are common to both nudists and bikers."It's all about living a freer lifestyle," said Turner, who has been a biker for 15 years and a nudist for five.
Not that it is a hobby for the faint hearted.
You've got to be real careful or you're liable to get something burnt or hurt"
club Vice President Allen "Anchor" Turner said.
I am afraid that I am just totally preoccupied with how he got his nickname.
So, you're not a smoker, you've worn 15+ sunscreen all your life, you've had a healthy diet. Not only do you not have cancer you feel unreasonably healthy.
Not to worry, just join up with the latest craze of full body scans. If you are in American is will be easier than ever, the centres are popping up like toadstools reports The Radiological Society of North America. There are 88 that will perform this function with no referral from a doctor required.
Not only do you get to find out that you are actually healthy but you also vastly increase the risk of cancer so that, in future scans, you can have something exciting to look at.
Of the 88, 30 are in California. At roughly US$1,000 for a scan you would think that it was cheaper and easier for Californians just to lie out in the sun without sunscreen.
Calling all of the geekdom. "2001 A Space Odyssey", that classic sci-fi that we all understood, except for that crazy bit of graphics when Dave goes into the monolith of course, and no else did, has been remade.
In the style of Book-In-A-Minute, the essence of this classic movie has been distilled to produce this thought provoking commentary on modern times.
To reflect this distillation it has been renamed "One: A Space Odyssey"
View it here. (You'll need Quicktime)
The trouble with ethics is that what starts out simple turns out to be much more complicated when all the messy facts of real life are mixed in. Here is the tale of two men for your consideration.
Man 1: This man killed two other men. It was during an armed conflict but he did not kill them in battle or fearing for his life. They were men who stood before him bound and, in cold blood, he shot each of them in the back of the head.
Man 2: This man killed 30, including a 12 year old boy. Also during an armed conflict, he planted a terrorist bomb. He blew up a marching band that was marching along playing for the locals. He killed many of the band and quite a few locals including the 12 year boy.
Have a think about these two acts of violence and decide what you think about the two acts relative to each other then click on continue reading to put a more complete context.
Man 1 was a German soldier who executed the two Italian men in retaliation for deaths of a German even though the men in question had nothing to do with the death of the German. Before you get too indignant reflect on how the deaths in Iraq may, in part, be retaliation for Sept 11, 2001 even though Iraq had nothing to do with that event.
Man 2 was a member of the Italian resistance. In desparate circumstances they resorted to these terrorist acts as the only weapon they had against the overwhelming superiority of the facists and their German allies. Before you feel too much of a swelling of pride at how he faught and conquered in the face of a far superior force think about how you would have felt if I had said that he was a member of the Iraqi resistance fighting against the invasion of the US in his country.
By way of interest, Man 1 is imprisoned for life and Man 2 is a hero.
And a final question for you to ponder. How does whether your side won or not effect how ethical your behaviour was?
Science has always prided itself of tackling the great questions. Questions such as
"Do fish fart?"
"Why is snot green?"
"Are there more worms than people?"
"Why do I stick my tongue out whenever I do a tricky job?"
"Why do seagulls stamp their feet on wet grass in the early morning?"
Know the answers? Well bully for you! I'm thinking you have way to much time on your hands which, of course, is why you are reading this blog instead of doing something constructive, like smelling the birds or listening to the flowers.
For the rest of you, you can find the answers to lifes little mysteries at The Last Word, kindly sponsored by New Scientist magazine.
Really, it is amazing that I have this giant intellect and me without a single piano lesson when I was a kid.
Piano lessons it seems, have all sorts of ancillary benefits particularly in the area of verbal ability. Researchers believe that it is
because of a greater extent of cortical reorganization in the left temporal region. In other words, the more that music training stimulates the left brain, the better that side can handle other assigned functions, such as verbal learning. It's like cross training for the brain
Perhaps its just as well I didn't, I talk too much as it is.
Think tropical Solomons heat, think Australian soldier, think beer! Well that's what the Solomon Islands brewery is thinking anyway. They have just placed an order of 30,000 additional glass beer bottles from their supplier in Indonesia.
And for those boys who are on duty at the moment, they are also the local Coca-Cola bottler. I am thinking this is one of the few Solomons companies worth having some shares in at the moment.
The 3rd annual "Stuck At The Prom" award was won convincingly by Meg Roberts and Tyler Mickley with their spectacular outfits.
Constructed completely from duct tape their costumes beat entrants from around the US and Canada for the annual award sponsored by Duck brand duct tape. Note even the hair pieces were of duct tape. Each received a $2,500 scholarship.
(Cultural note: In the Australian vernacular "duds" means clothes)
Remember how great the world was when you were growing up and how crappy it is now. I've got bad news for you. It was just as crappy then, in its own way. The problem is in your memory. It seems our minds are much better at remembering positive aspects of the past than negative ones.
The bias towards remembering positive things, like the Pollyanna phenonemon below, is widespread. The only people for whom this is not the case is those who are suffering depression.
Both of these phenonema point to an "executive function" of the mind whose responsibility is to protect the minds wellbeing by distorting the perception of reality. Don't be too judgemental though, you'd be a lot less happy if it dropped the ball in this area.
Interested in finding out more? W Richard Walker of Winston-Salem State University has a comparative study of research into this phenonemon here.
Once upon a time there was an experimental psychologist who, not unsurprisingly, designed an experiment. This experiment, amongst other things, asked people to rate their sense of humour, i.e. did they think their sense of humour was below average, average or above average.
Interestingly around 90% of people thought they had a better sense of humour than most people. Now even the most mathematically challenged amongst you should recognise that this is not possible. It reflects what is known in psychology as the pollyanna phenonemon, which is that most people have an unrealistically positive view of themselves.
Further research and thought by minds greater than mine have decided that this is, in fact, a mark of a healthy mind. The only people who have been found to have an accurate view of themselves are manic depressives.
OK, you're right, I do have a greater mind than those pedestrian researchers locked away in their ivory towers. (Or is that just my positive self image?)
Who amongst us has not been affected in one way or another by the surreal imagery of Salvadore Dali.
Visit Virtual Dali to explore the fascinating work of this artistic genius.
(via J-Walk)
Well they've all been jewels so far today. Time for a bit of cut glass.
If you are going to curse someone you might as well do it properly, that's my motto and what better language for cursing in than Gaelic. It has that delightful gutteral component that makes even the most inane curse sound ferocious.
Click on this link to build your own Gaelic curse.
via Magpie (not a mouth piece for the Collingwood Football Club "carn the pies!")
If you are then one of the biggest loosers in the situation is you. You have the power and ability, with help, to revolutionise your life. You may not be able to imagine what it is to live in a warm loving relationship where fear is absent but it is like moving from black and white to colour.
There is a hand held out to help you, be brave enough to reach out and grab it.
In Australia contactMens Referral Service on 9428 2899 or 1800 065 973 noon to 9pm Monday to Friday.
In the UK contact Respect on 020 8563 8523
In the US contact The Nonviolence Alliance on 1.860.347.8220
Your life can be rewarding and magnificent but the first step is up to you!
If you are a woman in a violent relationship then falling pregnant "to fix things up" may not be such a great idea. Pregnancy, it appears, often triggers or increases the level of violence that a woman experiences in a violent relationship.
Here is an interesting article from "The Midwifery Digest" on the topic.
Researchers at Ohio State University have identified a "powder-keg" relationship that is most at risk of violence, a insecure male and a dismissive female.
They found violence was most likely to occur when a man showed an insecure attachment style -- he felt unsure about his partners love, and was extremely jealous and fearful of rejection, says Patrick McKenry, co-author of the study and professor of human development and family science at Ohio State Universitys College of Human Ecology. Violence was even more likely if the mans partner had an attachment style that was insecure and also dismissive -- she was less sensitive than average to his concerns about the relationship.
If we can move beyond the shock/horror aspect of couple violence we can diffuse these sort of "powder keg" relationships by teaching both partners more effective interpersonal skills and facilitating the improvement of self-confidence and self-image.
Here is some research that supports what we pretty much knew intuitively anyway.
Over 20 years Dr Miriam K. Ehrensaft of Columbia University has been following the lives of children of violent relationships. Her results highlight two important facts
1. Problem behaviour amongst children and adolescents is a good indicator of the presence of violence in the home.
2. Use of violence by a parent is often modelled and used as a form of conflict resolution by these children when they are grown and in relationships of their own.
The most significant finding is that recognising and treating problem behaviour in children from abusive families can result in a significant reduction in the use of violent conflict resolution techniques when they are adults.
New Dimensions (ABC TV) had an item on joint custody of children post divorce. As part of the segment they chose to include an interview with a woman fighting, correctly, to deny access to her ex-husband who was abusing his daughter but ignored completely the plight of men who are faced with a reciprocal situation.
Child abuse consists of far more then sexual abuse and the program was contributing to the perpetuation of the myth that men are always the abusing parent. Research by Australian Institute of Family studies shows that child abuse through neglect or physical abuse are more likely to be perpetrated by mothers. Similar research in the UK and USA comes to the same conclusion.
Imagine the mental anguish and frustration that these fathers have to deal with whilst trying to gain custody to protect their children in a court system that makes it difficult for a father to gain sole custody of his children.
The Green Man is the purveyor of pieces of cut glass of many colours. Amongst these worthless items are scattered jewels of varying value. This entry is one of the more valueable jewels.
So your doctor has recommended some tests and, being paralysed with fear, you failed to listen carefully enough to what they were actually for.
Lab Tests Online is for you.
This informative site provides clear explanations for most clinical tests your doctor is likely to request.
The purple polar bear entry that follows is an example of one of the pieces of cut glass.
Boy, it must be after lunch. I could swear polar bears used to be white. I must have slipped through that portal into the parallel universe again. Funny how that only happens after long lunch.
Read more about our purple universe hopping friend here.
Some of you may find this hard to believe but walking around one of the Queen's garden parties chatting to the other guests with no pants on is a definite no no.
I know this because a certain, unidentified 17-year-old who was unattired in such a manner is assisting the fine British constabulary with their enquiries. (What a delightful euphanism that is for getting walloped around the head with a telephone book.)
The said 17-year-old clearly did not appreciate this sublety of Royal etiquette and was pounced on by a Yeomen of the Guard (ed. note: correction to typographic error; "ponced" replaced with "pounced", come to think of it "ponced" wasn't so bad after all)
We are informed that "the incident was in the Queen's line of sight". Imagine that, her royal personage confronted with a pair of 17 year old male buttocks, or was he facing the other way. hmmmm.
What little more detail there is of this scandalous incident can be found here.
And you thought the ethical debate on IVF was complicated already!
Scientists are close to being able to create sperm and egg cells in-vitro (which is what the IV in IVF stands for and literally means in glass - vitrum is glass in Latin).
Up until now we have relied on harvesting sperm and eggs from adult humans, either the parents or donors.
The sperm and egg are, in a way, cloned but this is not cloning because the resultant embrio does not have the same genetic blueprint as another individual and it raises a complete new set of ethical dilemmas.
Society for Women's Health Research has released a paper bemoaning the lack of spending on coronary heart disease research on women. Once again we see the dominance of the womens movement in health.
Here are some interesting statistics.
In 1900 women lived, on average, 1 year longer than men; now they live 8 years longer.
For every $12,000 spent on womens health research there is less than $1,000 spent on men's health. This is reflected in articles on gender specific health on Medline database, in a ten year period 1,372 for women, 47 for men and, of this, 50% of men's health research is on AIDs in homosexual men, not generic men's health.
Let me make this clear, I have no problem with the spending on women's health per se, but let's not try and pretend that women are the forgotten sex in medical research. The idea is so entrenched, while driving home, I heard a female professor from an Australian university comment on the radio that "If men needed hormone replacement therapy there'd be a clinic on every corner" (I nearly pranged the car) It is estimated that up to 50% of men over 50 would benefit from hormone replacement therapy but we don't know for sure because no one is researching it are they. Also HRT for women is subsidised by the government under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme, not so for men.
And one more thing that seems to have slipped by this researcher. The male death rate from heart disease is 160% that of females (190 cf 119 per 100,000). If gender specific research is undertaken I am thinking it is men that are most in need.
| YEAR | Number of Articles | |
|---|---|---|
| Women | Men | |
| 1982-1983 | 32 | 0 |
| 1984-1985 | 31 | 2 |
| 1986-1987 | 67 | 11 |
| 1988-1989 | 156 | 8 |
| 1990-1991 | 333 | 12 |
| 1992-1993 | 753 | 13 |
| YEAR | Average # of articles | Ratio | |
|---|---|---|---|
| published per year | |||
| Women | Men | Women/Men | |
| 1982-1985 | 15.8 | 0.50 | 31.5 |
| 1986-1989 | 55.8 | 4.75 | 11.7 |
| 1990-1993 | 271.5 | 6.25 | 43.4 |
| 1982-1993 | 114.3 | 3.83 | 29.8 |
I was going to post on the fact that in the USA alone there are 200 companies that will take you on a hunting trip where you get to shoot a tethered game animal. If you have done it you are pathetic! (you can tell I'm not a happy little vegemite today)
But here is a lighter story which is probably an urban myth but you just hope it isn't.
An American in Moscow hooked up, through the black market, with a guy who said he would take him hunting bears. The guy arrives on a pushbike at a forest near Moscow. There are no bears living here but the American was not to know that. Anyway, to the pleasure of the American and the surprise of the guide, they come across a bear. The American take aim, fires and misses. The bear, quite naturally, is off and the hunter and guide are in hot pursuit. They loose the bear temporarily. As it happens their pursuit has lead them in a large circle and they arrive back at where the guides bike was parked only to find the bear disappearing into the distance on the bike. Apparently the bear had escaped from a circus and was quite skilled on the push bike.
I found this via j-walk blog.
Nim Chimpsky, named after the great linguist Noam Chomsky, was the first chimpanzee to learn American sign language. Nim became famous, and was the subject of numerous books and television specials. But when the researchers had no more use for him, they opted to sell him to a hepatitis research lab, where he would have been the subject of painful experiments and eventually killed. Nim enjoyed looking at magazines, watching television, and putting on hats and shoes.Our scientists have taken this chimp and developed its sense of self-awareness to far above what it would normally have been. To an extent where it could, arguably, appreciate it's suffering more. Then tortured it and killed it. Some things make you ashamed to be a human being really.
The Australian reports the 67% of Australians believe that they are being fed bullshit by our political leaders and a third of the population believe it is deliberate. In spite of this John Howard is overwhelming favourite for PM and the opposition aren't within a bulls roar of winning government next time round.
Could it be that the opposition in general, and Simon Crean in particular, are seen as so incompetent that the bulk of people prefer a government and PM who cannot be relied upon to tell the truth?
Or is it that we have taken apathy, a well entrenched characteristic of the Australian psyche, to new levels?
That perrenial question of the existence of life elsewhere in the universe is raising it's head again at NASA. The search is being renewed without a single reference to the wealth of sitings that are documented on the net.
For example this site documents alien doctors curing people, a nice twist on the usual alien abduction line.
I have been undertaking this task for quite some time now. Mistakenly I thought this involved the purchase of significant quantities of beer which was to be consumed for the specific purpose of the development of said gut.
At around $30 a slab (that's a pack of 24 bottles for the philistines amongst my readership) this is quite an expensive exercise and requires a degree of dedication to the task.
Imagine my surprise to discover you can purchase a classic ribbed undershirt and one-piece stuffed beer gut ready made.
How much would you expect to pay? Don't ask! You also get a butt crack barely covered by drooping sweatpants. All this for only US$49.95.
Note: The unit only fits people up to 180lbs (81kgs) presumably above this weight the manufacture considers you have your own.
What is the primary objective of a country? There is hours of debate in such a simple question but one might argue that it is to facilitate the wellbeing of it's citizens.
If we accept this, which we will because I am writing the entry and I accept it, then it is possible to measure how a country is performing. Once again endless debates can be had about the relative importance of the various aspects of providing for your citizens. Dr Rchard Estes of the University of Pennsylvania has saved us the trouble by compiling a list of measures of wellbeing of a population. In summary they are concerned with:
Education of population
Health of population
Status of Women (strangely the status of men doesn't matter)
Defense Effort in protecting its citizens
Economic Strength
Age Demographics of population
Environment, that is the health of it.
Social Chaos, civil liberties, death in arm conflict, corruption etc
Cultural Diversity
Welfare Effort
(you can read the full definition of indices here.)
So how do we stack up? If you want to live in a country that really looks after you try a scandenavian country, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland took out the top four spots.
Curious about your country? Well if you are reading this there is a 67% chance you are from Australia or USA.
Australia comes in at 22nd down from 13th in 1970 well behind our trans Tasman rivals (NZ) who are 16th.
USA comes in at 27th down from 23rd in 1970, tying with Slovenia and Poland and falling just behind Canada at 26th.
You can watch the flow of the human population here.
Not very exciting page but somehow compelling just the same.
John Gurdon at Cambridge University has been working on a technique to convert normal somatic adult cells back to a stem cell state. They have discovered that when the nucleus from a normal cell is taken and injected into a frogs egg, after two or three days, it starts behaving in a stem-cell like way.
This has enormous implications for development of treatments for parkinsons disease, people with spinal injuries, and other tissue damaging diseases. Importantly, it removes the ethical dilemmas surrounding the use of embrionic stem cells derived from discarded human embryos.
Bravo channel is screening a documentary called "All The President's Movies". It is a look at the movie tastes of the various US Presidents.
Bill Clinton's favourite movie was, apparently, "American Beauty"
(It's about a middle aged man who is infatuated with a teenage girl. He comes to his senses just before he has sex with her.)
hmmmmm.
George W Bush's favourite is Austin Powers.
(Apparently he does an excellent impersonation of "Dr Evil", the power hungry baddy who wants to rule the world.)
hmmmmm
The things our movie tastes say about us.
Dr David Kelly, a respected former United Nations weapons inspector who advised the British Government on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, died on Thursday after slashing his wrist near his home in Oxfordshire, England. He had been under pressure from the British Government over allegations that he told the truth to the BBC. Predictably, those who were opposed to the war in Iraq are baying for government blood over this.
I have been alternating between being appalled and amused, in a macharbe way, over the manipulation of information to justify the Iraq war. We are not yet in a position to judge whether the war was in the long term interest of anybody but it is interesting to watch the spin in action.
The use, however, of Dr Kelly's death by the anti-war lobby as a weapon against the Blair government is equally appalling. To state the obvious, Dr Kelly's action in committing suicide was based on extremely personal reasons that we will never know. Every sane person is responsible for their own behaviour and Dr Kelly was no exception. Mr Blair may have many deaths on his conscience, that is for him to decide, but Dr Kelly's should not be one of them.
Dr Kelly may well have been a respected scientist but he was also a man in a high suicide risk group. If we are to gain from his tragic death it should not be in political pointscoring but in highlighting how at risk men in this age group are of suiciding and doing something about it.
Is it just the geek fraternity or has everybody taken pleasure in blowing things up in the science lab?
This is where Chemistry was always so much cooler than Biology. There were disections of course, but these more a case of practicing disrespect on the corpse of some unsuspecting creature. They just didn't have the same charisma as a good explosion or some rotten egg gas loosed in the corridor.
Biology has recently taken a giant step forward in credibility when it comes to irresponsibility in the classroom. The introduction of molecular biology to the curriculum means that even the nerdiest teenager can create life in classroom "pass me the electrodes Igor, ha ha ha ha ha"
The workshop is financed by the European Commission as part of the initiative 'Continuing Education for European Biology Teachers (CeeBT)'. As they say
As teachers can ignite interest for science in young people, this is one way for them to transfer this knowledge. Students after all, are the ones from which up-and coming [mad] scientists will be recruited.
My problem is financial credibility and I have discovered I have been labouring under a misapprehension all these years, I thought it was a lack of money that was the problem. Now I discover it is the cheque stationary that is causing me all this grief.
If only I had known earlier, Xena could have been providing me with financial credibility for years now.
For those of you who are less financially aggressive and looking for more wisdom in your dealings perhaps Dr Spock is for you.
This is a picture of a statue of Tara that I purchased in Patan, Nepal. Patan has been known for 800 years as a city of sculptors and artisans, much of the world’s great Buddhist sculpture originated here. It is a short taxi ride from the centre of Kathmandu.
The real Tara is a Bodhisattvas or enlightened being. She has attained enlightenment yet choses to forego nirvana to attend humans in the eternal cycle of suffering, birth, death and rebirth. She is the Buddhist personification of feminine sexuality. The statue is a typical stylised stance in which you commonly see Tara portrayed.
I had been climbing in the mountains of the Solo Khumbu, which are approximately 100kms, and 8 hours drive east of Kathmandu. They are the children of Everest, dwarfed by its massive stature and yet still 5 times taller than the highest mountain in Australia. The trip had lasted a bit over a month and I had 10 days to kill in Kathmandu before my return flight to Australia. The rest of the party had departed for Chitwan, a wild game reserve in the tropical lowlands in the south of Nepal, seeking tigers and rhinos but, having been before, I elected not to go. The trip had been the hardest I had undertaken yet and I was quite tired, returning with a substantially bigger beard and a substantially smaller waistline.
I was staying at a Royal Palace in the Kathmandu suburb of Lazimpat that had been converted into a grand hotel, well at least by Kathmandu standards. It was contained within a large wall with a magnificent garden scattered with tables and chairs that were attended by listless waiters. The drinks were limited in variety and slow coming but it is a metaphor for Nepal generally. If you are prepared to like what is on offer and display patience then there are many joys to be had. If you try to impose western standards you will be both frustrated and disappointed. Time runs slower here and all things happen in due course.
One day during my recuperation I decided to visit Kathmandu’s sister city of Patan. It has a relationship to Kathmandu somewhat like that of Dandenong to Melbourne. Once separate cities, the urban sprawl has partially fused them now. I left the sanctuary of the hotel grounds to be accosted by a swarm of taxi and rickshaw drivers. I selected a taxi that was prepared to use the meter in his car. They prefer to bargain for the fare but this is their profession and I am a mere amateur. We hurtled through the narrow streets at around 30 kph. Sounds slow? Try it in a narrow cobble stoned street with rickshaws, pedestrians and other taxis going in all directions. After some 20 minutes we arrived at the central market in Durbar Square.
The square is surrounded by shops selling bronze sculptures often extremely old and usually very expensive. Outside there are numerous street stalls selling cheaper wares. My budget dictated that my Tara was of this poorer quality.
Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University, Isreal has developed a program that can tell the gender of the author by the structure and words used in the text. It is about 80% accurate. "Yawn" you say (or more correctly do). Well the interesting thing is what it tells us about the way we interpret and represent the world.
Females, according to Koppel, use far more pronouns (I, you, she, their, myself) in their writing. Males on the other hand use words that define nouns (a, that, the) and quantify nouns (one, two, many). Men are object focused in their writing whilst women are person focused.
The software can also destinguish fiction from non-fiction. I can think of a few recent political speaches I would like to try it on.
Consulting one of Melbourne's leading social commentary publications, the Herald Sun, I discover to my amazement that beards are in and not those amateur gottee efforts, Darren of the LivingRoom springs to mind, but a real mans beard. The kind that Billy Connelly eloquently referred to as "looking like you'd eaten a bear and left it's arse hanging out of your mouth" (he certainly has a way with the words does Billy)
"It's about time too" I say. It took a long while for fashion to catch up with me, around 25 years if my memory serves me correctly.
Fortunately, at this stage, it seems the fashion is restricted to men.
It's an addictive sort of thing, popping bubble wrap. If you've not tried it please don't start on my account.
To prove that the virtual world panders to even the most inane of addictions you can click here to pop some virtual bubble wrap.
Enter at your own risk, you may never look at a piece of bubble wrap the same way again!
"Joanne" by Michael Nesmith
Her name was Joanne
And she lived near a meadow
By a pond
And she touched me for a moment
With a look that spoke to me
Of her sweet long
Then the woman that she was
Drove her on with desperation
And I saw, as she went
A most hopeless situation
For Joanne and the man
And the time that made them both run
In case you didn't realise the Joanne referred to above is a cow. Yep, people get awefully hooked up with cows. Here is some other people who are into cows, in a purely metaphorical way of course.
Cow Collecting
Vermont Living
Cow Talk
Udderly Devine
Crazy For Cows
to name but a few. Have fun!
In 1905 the man who was to become Dean of Education at Stanford University, Elwood Cubberly said
in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."
children were seen as fodder for the factories. The needed to be educated in such a way that they would be suitable for the mind deadening factory work to which they were destined. So how have things changed in 100 years. Clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine wrote in 2001
I once consulted with a teacher of an extremely bright eight-year-old boy labeled with oppositional defiant disorder. I suggested that perhaps the boy didn't have a disease, but was just bored. His teacher, a pleasant woman, agreed with me. However, she added, "They told us at the state conference that our job is to get them ready for the work world…that the children have to get used to not being stimulated all the time or they will lose their jobs in the real world."
hmmmm. The role of the public school system seems still to be to prepare the students for factory work even if they have the makings of brilliant thinkers.
A bit sad really, all that potential wasted because their parents are not wealthy. At the same time we see some senior executives of limited intellect who have moved through the private school system without managing to acquire either a basic understanding of financial management or ethical behaviour bringing major corporations to their knees.
It would be easy to look at this with amused detachment, not being a citizen of the USA, but the decline of ethical standards and prudential behaviour in their senior executives drags the world economy to it's knees. We can't do much but we should all be concerned.
When I started programming, all those years ago, printing was done by large lineprinters on continuous computer paper. Some clever soul wrote a program to take an image and reproduce it by overprinting alphabetic characters on this paper.
No self respecting mainframe computer room was complete without large image of a naked woman printed and sticky taped together this way. (These being the days prior to a) women being involved in computing to any significant extent and b) computer rooms being completely isolated and inaccessible to all but an elite few.) Click here if you would like to see some samples, both naked women and other things. They date from the mid 1980's and what is so quaint is how clever we thought they were at the time.
Now someone has taken this old and quaint technique for image generation to produce a movie. Click her to watch it. To get the full effect you need to be back from the PC to let your eyes merge the characters into an image.
(via j-walk)
Yes, I am going to use a very naughty word in this article, evolution! There, you read it and I told you not to. Definitely don't read any further though.
Cornell University researchers have been looking at rapid evolution in prey when preditors push them to the verge of extinction. The theory behind this is that the rate of evolutionary change is a consequence of the evolutionary pressure placed on an organism.
To study this phenonemon researchers are using a water-dwelling rotifer (Brachionas calyciflorus), here is a picture:
It chases it's prey, algae, around its tank in a "pac-man" like fashion. Numbers of rotifers and algae fluctuated dramatically and inversely in their small artificial ecosystems. As the prey was eaten almost to extinction it developed ways of making inself indigestible and flourished again and the population of rotifers declined.
This interesting work may lead to a greater understanding of how diseases evolve and establish resistance. You can read more here.
After persistent pressure from Mrs Green Man I weakened and joined her at a water aerobics class on Wednesday. My mind, after dealing with the trauma of physical exercise, moved to the topic of body image, well there were images of lots of bodies at the pool.
Changing room construction gives us a pointer to differing attitudes to body image between males and females. The male changing room and showers are all open with men of all ages, including boys, showering naked quite comfortably together. Female changing room showers on the other hand are cubicles where women shower separately. (I know this from interogating Mrs Green Man. Strangely I have been unsuccessful in gaining entry into the female change rooms even though it was for purely scientific purposes. I think the big grey beard might have something to do with it.)
Women, it appears, are just not comfortable being naked around one another. Teenage girls are even worse, apparently they are not even comfortable in changing in front of one another.
One could suppose that body image is a major factor here. A study by Center for the Advancement of Health shows that teenage girls view themselves as being, on average, 11 pounds (5kg) over their ideal weight. Boys in the same group believed their actual weight and their ideal weight were roughly the same. We can see the genesis of anorexia and bolemia in the girls attitudes to their bodies.
This, it appears, is an area where boys have a much healthier attitude than girls. Conversely, obescity is a growing problem for both boys and girls but it is much easier to treat responsibly when the individual has a positive self image.
Long term readers of this blog, and I live under the delusion that such a person exists, will recall the entry on the asteroid that was due to hit the earth on March 16th, 2880. (Here is a link if you want to refresh your memory.)
A new study by Philip Bland, of Imperial College in London, and Natalia Artemieva, of the Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres in Moscow suggest that leaving a note to your great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren to wax the malibu may be premature.
Their study suggests that large bodies approaching the earth are more likely to break up as they enter the atmosphere rather than hit the earth intact. Most asteroids, they say, are large collections of rubble held together by gravity rather than a single large piece of rock.
The bad news is that we don't know whether a billion tonnes of smaller particles spread through our atmosphere are going to be more or less devastating than one large one.
Thanks to JMRoth for this pointer to another song of The Green Man by Jethro Tull. I used to be a fan of their music in my young and ignorant days, I'll have to revisit it.
This is from the "Songs From The Wood" album.
Jack In The Green, by Jethro Tull
Have you seen?
- With his long tail hanging down.
He sits quietly under every tree
In the folds of his velvet gown.
He drinks from the empty acorn cup.
The dew that dawn sweetly bestows.
And taps his cane upon the ground -
Signals the snow drops, it's time to grow
It's no fun being:
No place to dance, no time for song.
He wears the colours of the summer soldier;
And carries the green flag all the winter long.
Jack do you never sleep - does the green still run deep in your heart?
Or will these changing times, motorways, powerlines, keep us apart?
Well, I don't think so.
I saw some grass growing through the pavements today.
The Rowan, the Oak and the Holly tree
Are the charges left for him to groom.
Each blade of grass whispers, "Jack-in-the-Green."
"Oh Jack, please help me through my winter's night."
And - "We are the berries on the Holly tree:
Oh, the Mistle Thrush is coming. Jack, put out the light!"
Continuing on from the PlayCow entry of yesterday here is a picture of some cows you should find appealling
Feel some affinity with them? It must be those human genes they are carrying. They possess part of the human genome concerned with the immune system and that makes disease-fighting antibodies. Scientists believe cows could eventually be used to produce medicines to treat multiple sclerosis, infections and even cancer
On the other hand it might be their delightful purple earrings.
Read more here.
Numerous requests have been flooding into the Green Man vis-a-vis air sickness bags, for example, "Green Man, in your wisdom, tell me what did the Qantas air sickness bags look like in 1995."
Well ask no more, The Air Sickness Bag Virual Museum can provide you with an answer to this question and many more in your quest for the meaning of life, the universe and everything.
A lengthy and delicate operation on researcher Beth Montemurro of Penn State University has been successful in completely removing all traces of a sense of humour that were remaining after her conversion to radical feminism.
A positive, but unexpected, side effect was a huge boost in her academic productivity. Academic associates have marvelled at a her ability to identify a piece of sexual harrassment in a half hour sitcom in under two months! That's right, it only took her six years to analyse 11 episodes each of 5 popular sitcoms.
Sadly, no one has explained to her that it is the political incorrectness of these shows that makes them funny and that no one of normal intellect takes them seriously.
You can read about this waste of American tax payers funds here.
My doctor is polite and supportive. She will talk to me for hours about my medical condition without a concern for any patients in the waiting room. Her advice is always well thought out and consistent. Well it would be wouldn't it? She's a computer.
Well she's not actually my doctor yet, but trials are underway at the Center for Health Improvement and Prevention Studies at the University of California San Francisco for a computer controlled video doctor. She is capable of understanding questions asked of her and supplying appropriate and correct answers. She intended for use initially for use in treating smoking and alcoholism. She has the time to work with these patients that a normal, human, doctor simply doesn't have.
You can read more about her here.
Well, well. My second Britney post. Anybody would think I was interested in her or something.
At the risk of giving this impression, whether or not it is true, I include this reference to the "Britney Exposed" site.
Trust me, it's worth a visit, but not for the reasons you are imagining.
"Where are the cows?" I hear you ask. Well I admit I have been a bit lax in the cow appreciation department but it is never too late to start.
The Green Man has never been shy about referring to risque sites and today is no different. I am talking, of course, about PlayCow.
PlayCow's babe of the month is Jenny McCowthy who has an impressive bra size of 159D and delivers 3.5 litres of milk a day.
She lists her ambitions as
Short term, I may endeavour to eat some hay or grass; long term, I hope to moo a bit, lick some saltblock and find a suitable bull.
Click her image to visit PlayCow.
Well girls/ladies/women/females (please select gender specific term least value-laden for you)
Take a look at the photo below and choose the face that looks most attractive:
They range from least masculine on the left to most masculine on the right and the one that is most attractive to you depends on how fertile you are at the moment. In general, women who are at the most fertile part of their cycle prefer the more masculine face on the right. Those who are in the low fertility part of their cycle prefer the less masculine face on the left.
Taking of birth control pill upsets this cycle and women on the pill tend to generally favour the more masculine face all the time.
Since men are fertile all the time, and can't tell when a women is, they tend to favour the more feminine female face all the time.
The USA has a population of 281 million people and 200 million guns, of which 65 million are hand guns. I know many Americans have this pathological fear of being attacked and/or invaded by a foriegn power that necessitates the possession of significant fire power but one has to wonder how this perceived need for personal protection translates to a rejection of firearm safety.
Firearm injury is one of the leading causes of injury related deaths in the USA, last year killing 28,663 people, and yet little seems to be being done about increasing firearm safety. Today the technology exists to:
1. Prevent a hand gun discharging accidently when dropped.
2. Prevent a hand gun discharging when the magazine is removed even if there is a bullet left in the chamber
3. Prevent the gun being fired by someone with a grip different to the owner.
These features appear to be unacceptible to the gun buying community. It is a mystery to me how increasing gun saftey is seen to violate the constitutional right to bear arms.
There are several serious contenders for the award.
"Most tasteless and crass exploitation of the suffering in Iraq"
Current contenders are
Sony Playstation with "Shock and Awe"
Gotham Games with "Conflict Desert Storm II: Back to Baghdad" for Xbox
MystGames with "Axis of Evil" the boardgame.
And the winner is:
"Operation Iraqi Freedom" Fireworks.
Yes you too can blow up a small piece of the world with this "guaranteed to blow up things" set of fireworks.
Have fun making miniture Iraqi citizens to blow up later.
For an extra challenge, make models of valuable oil installations that you have to carefully avoid whilst you are blowing up everything else.
An important fact seems to have escaped the notice of some people. Harry Potter books are fiction.
This fact had clearly escaped the notice of a 21-year-old woman in Madrid when she burned down half her house trying to brew a potion "Harry Potter style".
Lacking access to ingredients mentioned in the books she concocted a potion of water, oil, alcohol and toothpaste. Upon heating it, unsurprisingly, it caught fire. The fire had spread through half of the house before firemen managed to extinguish the blaze.
Back in my geekish adolescence many hours were consumed by a computer game called SimCity. It was a simulation game where you could construct yourself a city and cope with the implications of your planning decisions.
Over the years this game has evolved into a fully blown MUD (multi-user domain) with thousands of players world wide.
Electronic Arts, the games makers, are set to release a Harry Potter like version in which characters
perform mind-boggling tricks and discover secret recipes for spells and charms. Back home, transform everyday objects into helpful minions, hypnotize your so-called friends, or turn that annoying neighbor into a frog.
Confirm your membership of the geekdom by clicking here to find out more.
Well I've finished "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" below is my Book In A Minute contribution.
I suggest you don't click "Continue Reading" if you actually want to read the real book.
Harry
I don't care if half the school hates me!
Ron and Hermione
We don't hate you.
Professor Snape
I do.
Professor Umbridge (new Protection Against the Dark Arts teacher)
So do I
Harry fights Voldemort and the Dark Wizards (again) and survives (again).
Dumbledore
Sorry I did tell you earlier Harry but, in one of next few books, you and Voldemort will have to fight to the death.
Nature reports that scientist, like criminals, do their best work when they are young and single. Psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science found that 65% of eminent scientists published their most significant work before they were 35. Similarly, criminals, do their most audacious crimes when they are younger than 30.
It seems that once you get a wife and settle down that old fire in the belly tends to reduce to a bit of a smoulder.
Of course this research has limited credibility as Satoshi Kanazawa was 40 at the time it was published.
Now, now. I thought I had a more sophisticated readership than that!
You can remove your mind from the gutter now. Jerking is a carribean method of preparing meat. My first experience of jerked meat was at the SandBox restaraunt in the small carribean caye of Caye Caulker. We had arrived in Belize City the previous day by bus from Mexico, one of those old US school buses that are reincarnated as public transport in Central and South America.
Belize City is run down and dangerous, particularly after dark, and one night was sufficient there. We hopped onto a water taxi and headed for Caye Caulker. First we settled into our cell at Tom's Hotel, the steal door and heavily barred windows are reassuring in this dangerous country. Then we took a walk down the main street, Front Street. It is named such to distinguish it from Back Street, the only other street on the caye.
The sandbox box was a restaraunt with a sand floor, inside and out, which would have been completely intolerable without insect repellant, sand flies also eating at the venue. I had a Jerked Chicken Burger and a Beliken Beer (the local brew).
You can find a recipe for Jerk marinade by clicking continue reading.
Jerk Marinade
1˝ cup scallions,chopped
2 habanero chiles, seeded
2 tablespoons soy sauce
4 tablespoons lime juice
1 teaspoon lime zest
5 teaspoons ground allspice
1 tablespoon dry mustard
2 bay leaves, crumbled
2 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon salt
4 teaspoons sugar
1˝ teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon cinnamon
ž cup rum, preferably dark
Puree in blender, coat meat and refrigerate, preferably overnight.
Warning: habanero chilies are super super hot. I suggest jalapeno chilies if you are not into really hot food or even anahiem chilies if you are not into hot food at all.
At least 2% of American women have no taste in men what so ever.
Now hang on, before you start firing up the flame thrower, l would like to make one statement. When asked in a poll who they would like to be stranded on a desert island with
two percent of ladies say they'd like Donald Rumsfeld to be their island mate.
I rest my case.
So, 2% fancied Donald Rumsfeld, who did the others go for. Interestingly, romping it in with 32% of the votes and no clear rival was Sean Connery.
Men were also polled.
Their top choice for island companions are the baby-faced stars of "Charlies Angels:" Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz.
By choosing all three of them the men were clearly aiming for, cumulatively, a normal level of human intelligence.
The yard bird is an interesting species. Whilst it is completely comfortable in the suburban backyard of the Green Man, any student of morphology will recognise the influences of the automotive and building construction ecologies on its evolution.
Click continue reading below for images.
Mr Kenneth Sankoh writes
Dear Friend,Permit me to inform you that after reading your address in the net,i became interested in disclosing every thing about myself to you. .... We inherited a total sum of $15 million US dollars, from my late beloved father ....help us get this money transfered to your account
If it wasn't for my plutophobia I'd be in like Flinn. In the last month alone I could have collected roughly 1/2 billion dollars.
(and before you cynics try and accuse poor Mr Sankoh of being a scam artist I point to the fact that his letter is in lower case and we all know the scammers only use uppercase don't we)
Well it was a big night last night. We (me, long suffering wife and in-laws) all went to see Les Girls which was being hosted by a theatre restaraunt somewhat prophetically named "The Looney Bin". Les Girls is a group of female impersonators with a couple of men as men thrown in for good measure. I can hear you all thinking "My, that's a bit sophisticated for the Green Man isn't it?" and I have to agree. It was a level of, well let's call it sophistication for want of a more appropriate term, that I rarely experience.
My assessment you ask! Well it was pathetic and magnificent in equal quantities.
Pathetic if you were expecting any semblance of artistic merit in the show. The performers, and I use the term loosely, seemed to believe that their ability to pass as credible females relieved them of any obligation to choreograph acts or, at a simpler level, lip-sync with the song they were attempting to mime. They demonstrated the ability to, similtaneously, look completely like a female and behave in a completely masculine way.
Magnificent in that it was a group of men doing something that they quite clearly enjoyed. It was a view into an Australian male subculture so rarely glimpsed from the suburban cultural desert. You may not be comfortable with the occupants of this fringe group but they are in their element. If you can look past your discomfort and their external appearance you will find men being men.
Existing in a lymbo world which parodies both the table top dancing venues and the Melbourne Theatre Company they provide us with a kind of carnival mirror view of our culture, a distorted reality but a reality never the less.
This is a must night out if you are looking for the crass and the obscene or to participate in a fringe subculture for a brief moment. Not being offended by crassness or obscenity and being interested in what it means to be a man in todays Australia, in all its forms, I quite enjoyed myself. Mrs Green Man, on the other hand, got hung up on the fact that the performance was complete crap and had a much less enjoyable time.
The Australian reports the outcome of a trial where a man has been forced to pay child support payments for a child that he obligingly agreed to father on behalf of his ex-wife and her lesbian girl friend.
He seemed to feel that he was not the father because the woman agreed he would not be the father. That their amateur IVF clinic approach had some sort of standing in the law.
Men, both morally and legally it is simple; if you father a child you are the father of that child. This is not nuclear physics, if you are unprepared to be a proper father and accept the responsibilities of being a father, both financially and emotionally, then don't deliberately get a woman pregnant.
Wake up people! This is an extremely emotion charged area where unwritten rules change by the day. I need only to point to the recent tragic suicide/murder of a lesbian woman and her child when the father saught and was granted access.
The Lancet reports that each year over 10 million children under 5 die. The causes are primarily diarrhoea, pneumonia, measles, malaria, HIV/AIDS, as well as malnutrition of course.
To reduce mortality for some of these causes expensive drugs are required often with poor efficacy. Deaths from diarrhoea and pneumonia however can be significantly reduced by the mother adopting the practice of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life. One has to seriously question the morality of drug companies that market infant formula into third world countries implying that it is better for the baby than mothers milk.
Are you one of those kinds of people who feel you should read the book before seeing the film, I know I am. The trouble is some of them are so long. What is it with all those words?
Well look no further, Book In A Minute has done all that reading for you and created the ultimate precis of many all time favourites.
To all of you who are over 17 and have not read Lord of the Rings I say, "What are you doing with your life. Get your priorities correct please"
Never the less continue reading to see Book In A Minute's take on one of the greatest epic tales of the modern era.
(via J-Walk)
The Fellowship Of The Ring
Gandalf
Bilbo Baggins, your Ring is evil. In a couple decades, we'll try to destroy it. In the meantime, leave it for Frodo to play with.
Bilbo Baggins
It's not evil. It's mine. My precious. Mine! MINE, I TELL YOU!! MOOHOOHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
(Frodo takes it to RIVENDELL. Some FRIENDS come with him. They are attacked by black riders a LOT, and it is SCARY.)
Elrond
Frodo Baggins, if Sauron ever gets this Ring, the world will be destroyed, and evil will reign forever. We must act quickly. Take the Ring to where he lives.
(They do some travelling. Some more FRIENDS come with him. Gandalf DIES in the mines of Moria, but will later be RESURRECTED in GLORIFIED form having triumphed over EVIL, an obvious literary ALLUSION to that movie where the guy comes back as a DOG.)
Boromir
Frodo Baggins, give me the Ring.
Frodo
No.
Boromir
What have I done? (dies)
THE END
The Two Towers
(Gandalf frees THEODEN and overthrows SARUMAN. A bunch of IRRELEVANT stuff happens. Then the PLOT starts up again.)
THE END
The Return Of The King
Aragorn
We must travel the Paths of the Dead.
Eowyn
You'll die.
(They don't.)
Gandalf
The Hordes of Mordor will destroy Minis Tirith.
(They don't.)
Gandalf
We must attack Mordor. We'll all be killed.
(They aren't.)
Gollum
Mmmm, yummy finger! (dies)
Frodo
The Ring has been destroyed, but now we will die in Mordor.
Sam
Buck up, Master Frodo.
(A bunch of feathered DEUS EX MACHINAS come out of NOWHERE and save EVERYBODY.)
THE END
After years of painstaking research by the US Geological Survey a good use has finally been found for those evil creatures most effectively combated by Dr Who.
Once thought to be a threat to mankind they are now being harnessed to track the movement of coral larvae as they drift though the ocean of Maui.
One of the principal corals for building reefs in Hawaii, "rice coral" (Montipora capitata), releases packets of eggs and sperm at about 9 p.m. each evening from May through August. These drift through the oceans in their millions combining to form fertilized eggs and then larvae that fall to the ocean floor to form new reefs. Until now their movements have been a mystery, but not for much longer thanks to our dalek friends.
When I was growing up there used to be this idea that, to westerners, all south east asian faces looked alike.
Research has shown that this is not an illusion and has even pinpointed the area of the brain responsible, it is called the fusiform face area or FFA. It is responsible for developing expertise in recognising other things as well, such as the bird watchers ability to distinguish very similar birds.
Elizabeth Phelps, a social psychologist at New York University is researching this phenonemon
Same-race recognition is consistent with the expertise idea; most people have greater contact and experience with faces of their own race. Studies of children to determine when the preference emerges may help to tackle this question.
Amnesty International report, since 1990, the following countries have carried out state sanctioned execution of child criminals:
Democratic Republic of Congo (1 child)
Iran (7 children)
Nigeria (1 child)
Pakistan (3 children)
Saudi Arabia (1 child)
United States of America (18 children)
Yemen (1 child)
At least two of these countries, Pakistan and Yemen, have since changed their laws to exclude the practice. The country which has carried out the greatest number of known executions is the USA.
Since this report was published Scott Hain was executed in Oklahoma on 23 April 2003.
Note, because of the length of time involved in prosecuting a case in the USA most were adults by the time they were executed.
Many of you may have thought that the concept of a US based pharmaceutical company that was not interested primarily in the generation of profits fell quite safely into the realms of Science Fantasy. How wrong you are, One World Health is the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the United States and they are focused on production of pharmaceutical products that are financially accessible for the whole world not just an elite few western nations.
They have recently licensed a novel class of high-potency compounds from Yale University and the University of Washington that could result in highly effective medicines that will be affortable to the whole world. First cab off the rank is a range of drugs to treat parasitic diseases.
So, even if you regard the US as falling into roughly into the same category as the evil empire of Star Wars fame, you can take heart that, tucked away in a forgotten corner of the Death Star, some highly moral scientists are beavering away for the overall good of mankind.
As part of NAIDOC week New Dimensions (ABC TV program) is focusing on Australian Indigenous issues this week. Last night it contained an interview with a man who was "half-caste" and had been taken from his mother to be raised in an orphanage in Alice Springs. Interestingly he had nothing but good things to say about how he had been treated and love and care he received in the orphanage.
Clearly many aboriginals fared a lot worse and their removal was not warranted, however, we cannot ignore the fact that in many aboriginal communities of the time "half-caste" children were pariahs and neglected. Other children had mothers who, because of alcohol or other reasons, were neglecting their children. The state has had and always should have an obligation to protect children and this is nothing we should apologise for.
Although many children were removed for entirely the wrong reason, particularly those that were of fairer skin, some were removed because they were at real risk. Let's just keep in mind that a number of the people suffering emotional problems today because of their removal may not have survived childhood if they had not been removed from their mother. One might argue emotional problems are the lesser of the two evils.
Like so many situations this is not a black and white issue (no pun intended). It is full of grey and is best served if it is not hijacked by radicals trying to pursue an agenda apart from the welfare of a child.
This is not a solely race issue, children have been and continue to be removed today where their safety is at risk, regardless of race. I support this and am encouraged that it is now being undertaken in a more culturally sensitive manner.
The Green Man, being a young blog, and not prone to too much sucking up to get itself blogrolled on other blogs, has relatively few links. Amongst the febble few blogrolls on which The Green Man appears, two are unashamedly Christian blogs (Signposts , LivingRoom) and one that is about as far from Christian blog as you can get (Raving Atheist)
All of them have their part to play in Battleground God.
Here is a chance to battle the forces of logic to see how well your beliefs, or otherwise, stand up.
I didn't take a single hit, although, in their words
However, you have bitten a number of bullets, which suggests that some of your beliefs will be considered strange, incredible or unpalatable by many people.
Somehow that won't surprise many who know me.
(via j-walk)
Australia is just starting to see the phenonemon of using words in the place of numbers in phone numbers, you know the sort of thing 1800-you-stink
Here is a site where you can find out what your phone number spells
simply type in your phone number and it gives you a list of possible anagrams. Ah, the small things that occupy our minds when there are so many deep and meaningful topics in the world to think about.
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
Bilbo Baggins
(as recited to JRR Tolkien)
So, it looks like Australia will be joining a US lead alliance to interdict nations trafficing in WMD.
I take it we are not talking about the ecclesiastical use of the word "interdict" here and praying that they don't do it.
If our Prime Minister is going to get ideas that are arguably well above our position in the ranking of world powers he could at least present them in language that the ordinary Australian is capable of comprehending without resort to a dictionary. I suspect however that a fully comprehending public is the last thing he wants.
Many people are faced with a bit of a dilemma when confronted with the challenge of describing what they do to "earn a crust". Well spare a thought for Dr Gary Smith, associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School. He spends his day sorting sperm.
It might be just me but it would seem mighty hard to maintain a balanced view of the world in a job like that.
In a breakthrough for fertility, as well as his own mental health, he has invented a new, more efficient method for separating healthy motile sperm in the semen of men with a very low sperm count.
Two members of the Lothian and Borders traffic police were recently having a pleasant time out on the Scottish moors, trapping speeding motorists with a radar gun. Suddenly their equipment went crazy, registering a speed of over 300 miles per hour. It then locked up completely. Seconds later the startled boys in blue understood why, as a low-flying Harrier jet screamed over their heads. Upset that their radar gun had been broken, the policemen put in a complaint to the Royal Air Force-only to discover that the damage could easily have been much worse. The RAF informed them that the Harrier's target-seeker had locked on to what it had interpreted as enemy radar. This immediately triggered an automatic air-to-surface missile attack. Fortunately for the two policemen, the Harrier was operating unarmed.
From New Scientist
Product Warnings are important, as is catering to the lowest common demoninator. I just didn't think the bar was set quite so low.
Kenner Toy Company's "Batman Returns" costume: "CAUTION-FOR PLAY ONLY: Cape does not enable user to fly."
Acme ultrasonic dog whistle warns purchasers: "This product will be ineffective if your dog is deaf."
A gallon container of the laboratory disinfectant Hibitane. "Avoid contact with brain," (I usually keep mine tucked safely inside my skull thank you)
On a Husqvarna Chainsaw owner's manual -
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO STOP CHAIN WITH YOUR HANDS OR GENITALS. (Whew, talk about the bad translation...Those Swedish lumberjacks must be real tough.)
In a Honda Motorcycle owner's manual -
REMEMBER, OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE ACTUALLY BEHIND YOU.
At 95 Buddy Ebsen has died. As if I need tell you, Buddy played Jed Clampett, one time hillbilly and oil tycoon who moves his family to Beverly Hills. The culture shock of moving from a hillbilly farm to pretentious Beverly Hills being the source of the humour of the show.
Jed, and I suspect Buddy, always approached life with a good natured optimism that we could all do to emulate.
Time now to say your farewell by visiting the Beverly Hillbillies World Wide Website.
Recognise this drawing? If you have watched any movies of mediaeval times you should, he is the archetypical knight. In fact he is of the order of religious knights called "Knights Templar" or "The Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon" to give them their full title.
(I can't remember where this image came from. If it is yours and you want acknowledgement let me know.)
Founded in Jerusalem in 1118 and best known for accompanying Richard the Lionheart on the crusades to the middle east, they rose from nothing to be one of the most powerful institutions in western Europe, challenging the power of kings and even the pope.
The Knights Templar were the first group of knights to take religious/monastic vows and at the time of their foundation were know for their poverty. Individual knights had no money and would take some to pay for food on travels but return any left over when they returned to the monastary.
They were known for their ferosity particularly during their participation in the crusades. Over time the order grew extremely wealthy and powerful. Over the 200 years that they existed they came to become so powerful that they answered to no one, no even the kings of the countries in which they lived. Utilising their vast wealth, they are attributed with founding the banking system as we know it today.
Needless to say, the powerful of Europe were not at all comfortable with this situation and in 1307 the King of France moved against the Order. By 1314 the Order had been disbanded, culminating in the burning the Grand Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, at the stake. As he stood tied to the stake he is rumoured to have to have cursed King Philip of France and Pope Clement asking both men to join him within a year. Interestingly Pope Clement died one month later, and King Philip 7 months later.
Let's play a little game of virtual chance. I toss a virtual coin that you know to be equally likely to come up heads or tails and it comes up heads. I toss it again, it comes up heads. Again, heads. After 8 tosses every one is heads.
The chances of this are one in 256. To toss 9 heads in a row is a 1 in 512 event. So what are the chances of another head being thrown. Well all geekmiesters, like myself, who did probability theory, know it is 1 in 2. Since chance has no memory the previous 8 throws do not affect the chances on this throw.
How many of you could resist betting on tails after such a long run of heads? It is this human flaw that provides casinos with most of their revenue.
One interesting aspect of this phenonemon is the irrational fear of highly unlikely events. We see events that have a high emotive value as more likely than what they are.
Let's take, for example, the terrorist attack in the US on September 11, 2001. This was clearly a very emotional event, not only for the US, but most western countries. Three thousand innocent lives were lost needlessly but has the risk of terrorism increased or decreased because of the attack.
My thinking is that it has probably decreased. Although potential terrorists may be spured on by this success, this is probably more than outweighed by the tightened security measures that have been put in place post-September 11. Because terrorism is more salient these days does not make it more likely. Sadly it has always been around and always will be but you should be more concerned about that MacDonalds hamburger than an Iraqi terrorist. Heart disease from obesity is a far greater killer.
Ophidiophobia is a phobia of snakes.
(You can find with the other phobias here)
If you have it don't click the continue reading below.
The term "mirroring" is used to describe the practice of copying the behavour of the person you are interacting with. It is well established that mirroring can created a sense of connectedness between yourself and the other person.
You can use this factoid in two ways. Firstly, if you want the other person to feel at ease and connected with you, you can deliberately mirror their behaviour. So for example if they cross their arms then casually, in a moment or two, you cross your arms. If they put their hand to their face, you do the same. It is quite uncanny how comfortable this makes people feel.
Secondly, you can observe them. If they are mirroring you they are feeling connected and warm towards you. (unless they are trying the experiment on you at the same time of course)
Think this is just pyschological hocus pocus? Well researchers in Holland have found that waitresses that mirror the customers they are serving receive, on average, almost double the tip.
Monopoly has just released a Broadmeadows version. Click continue reading below to see an image of the board. For those who are not from Melbourne, Broadmeadows is one of our less solubrious suburbs, as I think you will guess.
Note: This entry is rated PI, please don't click the link if you are incapable of appreciating politically incorrect humour.
Well it's the 4th of July and happy birthday, or something, to those of American persuasion who read this blog.
Now for those of you who are not American, like myself, it turns out that this is a big day for BBQs in the US with 76% of BBQ owners utilising their device today. What's more, in an interesting synergy, 76% of American homes have a BBQ.
So what are the implications, as well as saying "Happy July 4th" you can say good-bye to 2,300 acres of forest and hello to 225,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The amount of energy used for BBQing on this one day could power a city of 60,000 people for a year.
I rather enjoy a BBQ myself but it makes you think doesn't it?
With all this focus on the war in Iraq the mainstream press seems to have missed this important press release by cryptozoologist Loren Coleman.
Coleman points to the epic poem of Gilgamesh as evidence that Iraq was the ancient home of Bigfoot, and, as if this wasn't startling enough, he was gay and indulged in cross species sexual daliences with humans. Coleman says
ancient cultures used myths to explain factual events, which means that Iraq could be chock full of artifacts proving the existence of Bigfoot's gay past.
As these revelations were coming to light in early-April the war on Iraq was in full swing. Where was the front page outrage at the possible slaughter of innocent Bigfoots I want to know. (or should that be Bigfeet?)
Here is a picture for a new version of a book that most of you will be familiar with.
I have removed the title to let you guest which book it is. Once you have decided on your guess click on continue reading below an find out if you are correct.
Did you guest the New Testament. Well very good if you did, I wouldn't have picked it.
Here is a link to the publishers if you want to read more.
I suppose that there are some philistines reading this blog who think that semiconductor physics is a boring subject. Well Britney does not agree with you!
Be amazed as Britney explains the Finite Barrier Quantum Well as only she can. I expect it will appear in one of her songs shortly. Unless I am mistake her songs have been deeper and more meaningful of late, if that is at all possible.
J-Walk blog points us to Westboro Baptist Church who assert that Osama Bin-Laden was, in fact, correct that
America now - formally and finally - has announced its hatred of God and can expect the severest of Devine retrobution.
This is, of course, in response to the Supreme Court overturning the Texas Law under which sodomy is illegal. One cannot help but be impressed by the cogency of their argument. After all, if you include two dancing skeletons on your flier how could it possibly by wrong?
More news from the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.
Professor Susan Golombok of City University, UK reports that a long term study into the emotional wellbeing of surrogate mothers found that
.. none of the 34 surrogate mothers interviewed for the study reported any misgivings about handing over the baby ... The majority of surrogate mothers enjoyed good relations with their commissioning couples and did not suffer adverse reactions from their own friends and family.
Of the 34 interviewed five women had been a surrogate mother more than once. The overwhelming reason for becoming a surrogate mother (91%) was "to help a childless couple".
It appears that, in the UK at least, surrogacy is undertaken in a mature and responsible fashion and, accordingly, the outcomes are almost always positive.
So you want to be scared? Well the big decision is to be scared of what.
Well worry not, PhobiaList.com has a complete list of phobias from which you can choose.
Consulting by bank balance I think I must have "Plutophobia- Fear of wealth".
Click continue reading below for a graph of George W Bush's approval rating since coming to power (courtesy of J-Walk)
I have no idea when the next US presidential election is but, if no one obliges with another terrorist attack on the US, I wouldn't like to be in a country that the US has problems with at about that time.
Yes it's all sex today on The Green Man, well fertility actually but "Fertility! Fertility! Fertility!" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Anyway, if you are interested in the latest in IVF and fertility technology read on.
If the problem with becoming pregnant is a problem the womb then help may not be long away.
A team from Sahlgrenska University, Göteborg, Sweden have successfully carried out experiments in mice transfering a womb from one mouse to another and successfully achieving live births.
There are still significant issues with organ rejection that are being addressed however this is not a problem if you happen to have an identical twin sister who is prepared to donate her womb.
Well now you are pregnant, how do you stay that way?
Yes, gender does play a role, not of the person who is pregnant, that is usually a woman, but in the gender of the first born child.
Woman who have a male child first are significantly more likely to suffer from SRM (Secondary Recurrent Miscarriages) than those who have a female child first. Us boys are trouble right from the start it seems.
"Giving birth to a son is known already to be a prognostically negative factor in many obstetrical complications. Therefore we wanted to assess the impact of the gender of the first child on the outcome of subsequent pregnancies among patients with unexplained secondary recurrent miscarriages" says Dr Ole Christiansen, a consultant registrar at the Rigshospitalet Fertility Clinic in Copenhagen, Denmark
If you are one of the unfortunate women who is suseptible to miscarriages then you are far less likely to carry a boy full term and if you do you may never have another child.
If you are not depressed enough already you can read more here.
Well enough of sperm and onto eggs.
Dr Peter Nagy, from Reproductive Biology Associates, Atlanta is reporting some success in the artificial creation of a human egg cell from a somatic cell, i.e. a normal cell from the body. The technique is not complete yet with some misalignment of chromosomes occuring however the team are confident that they can overcome this problem.
This technique, when finalised, will enable women with a viable womb but who are incapable of egg formation to conceive using their own genetic material.
Nope, we are not talking tomatos here. We are talking sperm.
Continuing todays theme of grossing you all out with news of IVF technology, in a paper presented to 19th Annual Meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction & Embryology Dr Imoedemhe, from Erfan and Bagedo Hospitals, Centre for Assisted Reproduction, Jeddah reports success in the utilisation of air dried sperm to fertilize human eggs.
Sperm in semen that has been air dried loses its motility, i.e. it can't swim anymore, and consequently can't breach the cell wall of the egg. New techology, however, that implants the head of the sperm inside the egg is demonstrating that this sperm is still capable of combining with the egg to create a viable embrio.
The current method for storing of sperm is in liquid nitrogen which is complicated and expensive.
"our simple technique of air-drying that just requires re-suspension before use," said Dr Imoedemhe. "The process can be further simplified by allowing patients to take responsibility for storing their air-dried sperm at home."
European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology report that the acceptance of IVF procedures in the muslim world is spreading rapidly with IVF clinics being opened in 20 middle eastern countries.
Sunni Muslims can only access the technology where the sperm and egg are from the husband and wife, no donors are allowed as this is regarded as a form of adultery within their flavour of Islam. Shi-ite muslims on the other hand have access to donor sperm and eggs in certain circumstances.
The report states "both Sunnis and Shi'ites embrace assisted reproductive technology as a means of overcoming the suffering caused by fertility"
Imagine that, middle eastern muslims appear to experience the same fertility problems as couples in the west and it causes them the same suffering as in the west. Next they will be claiming they are human as well. The "coalition of the willing" will have to put a stop to that!
The following quote comes from Time magazine.
Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn't his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. "Who?" Bush asked.
So there is no one stationed in Iraq actually responsible for locating WMD. Well that partly explains why they may not have found them, if they exist.
A more troubling question is "Why, if these things are so terrible and there is still substantial resistance within Iraq, is it not deemed important enough to have someone on the ground in Iraq responsible for looking for them."
In related news (related to the previous entry that is) Nature reports on new software technology that has been developed that drastically improves download performance from the net. Running at 3,500 times faster than traditional broadband this software achieves download speeds of up to 7 gigabytes per minute.
This accomplished through changing the way that computers monitor and respond to online traffic conditions.
The software has been developed by Steven Low, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and should be available within a month or so and is free of charge.
Silvia Pfeiffer, little known sister of Michelle and currently of the CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences Division, announced the release of a new browser that will revolutionise the management of multimedia material arriving from the internet.
The new browser, called Annodex, will allow for much more sophisticated management and searching of multimedia files for content.
Annodex allows users to divide files to into chunks - scenes of a film, for example - label them, and add links to each chunk. Sections, labels and links must currently be made by hand. The CSIRO team is working on ways to automate the process, such as with speech-recognition software.
It's first release will in a few weeks on Macintosh with Linux and Windows to follow.
err: only joking about the "sister of Michelle" bit