Gibson (rugby) tackles history again with his turn as an honest farmer drawn into the American Revolutionary War, which historian David Hackett Fischer claimed in the New York Times “is to history as Godzilla was to biology.”
“There are both types of endings, happier and unhappier. I prefer open endings. I don’t think we are living in an age of depressing, dark endings. If you look at Jacqueline Wilson, she does deal in gritty realism, but her books don’t lack aspiration.”So, I suppose her impoverished background explains why she had to go into the bears' house in search of food? Here I thought kids liked to think she was just a naughty girl.He recently changed the ending to his forthcoming book — Me and You, a retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in which Goldilocks comes from an impoverished background — so that the ending was less miserable. “My original version had Goldilocks being chased out of the bears’ house and her ending up on bleak, dark streets. I decided to give it a more ambiguous ending, so now she is running toward something that may or may not be her mother.”
Khat is popular in many countries of the Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa, but in Yemen it's a full-blown national addiction. As much as 90% of men and 1 in 4 women in Yemen are estimated to chew the leaves, storing a wad in one cheek as the khat slowly breaks down into the saliva and enters the bloodstream. The newcomer to Yemen's ancient capital can't miss the spectacle of almost an entire adult population presenting cheeks bulging with cud, leaving behind green confetti of discarded leaves and branches. ...And there are other problems, like the water it diverts from useful things, such as growing food. What a problem.
At around $5 for a bag (the amount typically consumed by a single regular user in a day) it's an expensive habit in a country where about 45% of the population lives below the poverty line. (Most families spend more money on khat than on food, according to government figures.)...
"You sit up discussing all your problems and think you've solved everything, but in fact you haven't done anything in the last four hours, because you've just been chewing khat and all your problems actually got worse," says Adel al-Shujaa, a professor of political science at Sana'a University and the head of the Yemen Without Khat Association. Plus, he says, "all the decisions you've made are bad because you've made them while on khat."
On April 19, a huge mob of St Mary’s people made a pilgrimage out of a church and into the Trades and Labor Council (TLC) building, home of the Queensland Council of Unions.As for the Church they didn't want to be told they were no longer a part of:
They walked out of the church to the TLC, 200 metres down the road in silent vigil with candles and lanterns, banners and balloons - not unlike the Jews of the Old Testament escaping from the slavery of the Egyptians to the liberation of the Promised Land (minus the balloons).
We too feel liberated from the shackles of a failing institution caught up in dogmas and creeds that belong to another age. We felt it was time to take a stand from the constant bullying we have experienced for many years.He then goes on to list the things for which they have been "bullied": blessing gays and lesbian relationships, not using "sexist" language, signing a treaty with local aborigines.
Stoners may be trading sexual highs for the chemical kind. Males who smoke marijuana daily are four times more likely to have trouble reaching orgasm than men who don't inhale, finds a new study of 8,656 Aussies...It's interesting to read the comments that follow the story, many of which are somewhat amusing:
Even though many male smokers experienced sexual problems, they reported more partners than non-smokers. Marijuana users were twice as likely to have had two or more sex partners in the previous year than men who didn't smoke pot.
Pitts' team found an even stronger trend for increased sexual activity among female smokers, who were also seven times more likely to have been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection in the last year than non-smokers. However, female smokers had no more problems in the bedroom than abstainers, Pitts' team found.
Perhaps stoners are just twats and that is why these problems occur. Yeah - from those I've known that hypothesis fits the data pretty well. I never met a stoner who wasn't a total wanker. Someone needs to do the necessary research to confirm it.And:
Here are my (unscientific) theories
1) more partners
the stoners just can't be bothered to put up with each other's crap all the time and thus split more readily
2)trouble reaching orgasm
the stoner just can't stop thinking about that new cushion recently purchased, how do they make them that fluffy!?
"When we finally get to it (Tarantino has never been one to cut to the chase when he can masturbate through endless pages of smarty-pants dialogue) , the film’s climax proves to be its downfall."This surprises me, as I hate most other cultural movements in England at the moment, but at least their critics seem well and truly "over" Tarantino.
"As it goes on and on, 'Inglorious Basterds' feels increasingly like the kind of hollow, fanboyish cinema that is all the rage these days.""Hollow" seems the perfect word when talking about Tarantino.
Microsoft Corp. is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to allow it to keep selling Word software as it fights an unfavorable patent ruling.I still get the horrors when I have to work in Word, compared to using my beloved Wordperfect.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found Microsoft infringed on a patent held by a Canadian company, i4i LLP. Last week, the judge ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million and to stop selling copies of its word processing program that use the patented technology within 60 days.
The patent relates to the way Word 2003 and 2007 let users customize document encoding.
The global ocean SST for July 2009 was the warmest on record for the second consecutive month, 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F). This broke the previous July record set in 1998. Sea surface temperatures during July 2009 were warmer than average across much of the world's oceans, with the exception of cooler-than-average conditions across parts of the North Atlantic Ocean and the southern oceans. Sea surface temperature anomalies in all Niño regions continued to warm during July 2009, where the monthly temperatures were more than 0.5°C (0.9°F) above average. If El Niño conditions continue to mature as projected by NOAA, global temperatures are likely to continue to threaten previous record highs. Please see the July 2009 ENSO discussion for additional information.Mind you, there has been discussion in at least one skeptical blog about a new paper arguing that the net flow of heat in and out of the oceans switches around quickly, which (they say) is inconsistent with the proposition that the oceans contain heat that is "in the pipeline".
The claim that the observation of a violation of a Bell inequality leads to an alleged alternative between nonlocality and non-realism is annoying because of the vagueness of the second term.Yes, this is one of the fun things about modern physics: they can't even decide what "real" means. Talk about going back to your basics.
At least 20 institutions have shown interest, “but then there’s always the elite that have a lot of money and like unique and unusual items, especially the Hollywood types,” he said. “There are a couple of major actors that are collectors of dinosauria.”
Like all the director’s work after “Jackie Brown,” the movie is pure sensation. It’s disconnected from feeling, and an eerie blankness—it’s too shallow to be called nihilism—undermines even the best scenes....I have never quite understood why the media gives such a juvenile director so much attention. For example, he gets a big spread by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic this month. (It's worth reading merely to confirm how immature Tarantino sounds.)
Moral callousness has been part of Tarantino’s style in the past. In “Pulp Fiction,” his merry roundelay set among Los Angeles lowlifes, the aggressive acts that the characters commit against one another are so abrupt and extreme that they become funny. The movie’s outrageous panache gave the audience license to enjoy the violence as lawless entertainment. But, in “Basterds,” Tarantino is mucking about with a tragic moment of history....
Tarantino’s hyper-violent narrative reveals merely that he still daydreams like a teen-ager....
The film is skillfully made, but it’s too silly to be enjoyed, even as a joke. Tarantino may think that he is doing Jews a favor by launching this revenge fantasy (in the burning theatre, working-class Jewish boys get to pump Hitler and Göring full of lead), but somehow I doubt that the gesture will be appreciated. Tarantino has become an embarrassment: his virtuosity as a maker of images has been overwhelmed by his inanity as an idiot de la cinémathèque.
When I came out of the screening room the night before our interview, I was so hopped up on righteous Jewish violence that I was almost ready to settle the West Bank—and possibly the East Bank. But when my blood cooled, I began to think about the morality of kosher porn in the context of current Middle East politics. Some of this was informed by my own experience in the Israeli army, in which I saw my fellow Jewish soldiers do moral things—such as risking their lives to prevent the murder of innocent Jews—as well as immoral things, like beating the hell out of Palestinians because they could.Well, revenge movies have never appealed to me. The only movie that I really liked that had a degree of a personal revenge as a theme was probably The Untouchables. (But even then, it was more a matter of spontaneous taking-justice-into-his-own-hands type of thing.) The whole vigilante/avenger thing with Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood never appealed.When Tarantino asked me how I thought his film would be received in Israel—he’s visiting for the first time this summer, to promote the film—I told him that Israelis, who have actual experience with physical power (in a way that most Jews over the course of the past 2,000 years did not), might not take to the film in the way that many of their American cousins might. Some Israeli liberals, including the country’s many filmmakers, might not like his movie very much at all.
The head of the ministry's UFO desk wrote briefing notes in 1993 reporting a spate of sightings in southwest England and speculating whether they might be connected to Aurora, a secret U.S. spy plane whose existence has never been officially admitted.
Atop one of his letters, someone scrawled: "Thank you. I suggest you now drop this subject."
Over 250 plumes of gas have been discovered bubbling up from the sea floor to the west of the Svalbard archipelago, which lies north of Norway. The bubbles are mostly methane, which is a greenhouse gas much more powerful than carbon dioxide.Interestingly, though, the methane in this particular area is not making to the top of the ocean. Instead, it dissolves and partly contributes to ocean acidification:
I wonder, though, whether this is something that might have been going on before the waters increased in temperature by 1 degree. Maybe just no one was looking before.None of the plumes the team saw reached the surface, so the methane was not escaping into the atmosphere and thus contributing to climate change – not in that area, at least. "Bigger bubbles of methane make it all the way to the top, but smaller ones dissolve," says Minshull.
Just because it fails to reach the surface doesn't mean the methane is harmless, though, as some of it gets converted to carbon dioxide. The CO2 then dissolves in seawater and makes the oceans more acidic
.
And it is possible that other, more vigorous plumes are releasing methane into the atmosphere. The team studied only one group of plumes, which were in a small area and were erratic.
"Almost none of the Arctic has been surveyed in a way that might detect a gas release like this," Minshull says.
...with female brush turkeys laying 20 to 30 eggs a year, the population is sure to continue thriving, even though mysteriously, no-one looks after the chicks.We had a chick turn up in our yard earlier this year. Unfortunately, it became a victim of our dog, right in front of the kids too."These are very unusual animals. Basically, the eggs get laid into the bottom of a combust heap, they dig their way to the surface and simply no-one looks after them - absolutely no parental care," he said.
"There's no parents to teach them what a cat looks like or what food is, or anything.
Physicist Dave Goldberg has a fascinating Slate piece this week on how The Time Traveler's Wife stacks up against other movies with a time-travel theme. In a survey of physicists' speculations on the possibility of time travel, he mentions one theory involving "gargantuan cosmic strings […] of matter of almost unimaginable density and length." That about sums up The Time Traveler's Wife, adapted from Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling novel by Bruce Joel Rubin (who also wrote Ghost, another metaphysically inflected love story). I'll take Goldberg's word that the movie obeys the laws of Einsteinian physics (no alternate universes, you can't change history, etc.), but it's in flagrant violation of the rules of narrative logic, character development, or the most basic audience satisfaction.
In more local bird news, the Courier Mail last week ran this photo, apparently showing three pigeons co-operating to each get a drink and a bath.They found that aromatic plants, including lavender (Lavandula stoechas), apple mint (Mentha suaveolens), the curry plant (Helichrysum itlaicum) and Achillea ligustica significantly change the composition of bacterial communities living on blue tit nestlings.
"They reduce the number of different bacterial species, and the total number of bacteria, especially on chicks that are most vulnerable because they are both highly infested by blow fly larvae and carry great amounts of bacteria on their skin," says Mennarat.
More about the coming Tokai Earthquake can be found here.But thankfully it was not the much-dreaded Great Tokai Earthquake. That is the big one, the terrible tremor which hits central Japan about every 130 years.
The problem is, it is overdue.
The last Great Tokai Earthquake was in 1854 when a massive magnitude 8.4 quake struck.
If I am not mistaken, that would be based on the underground catfish that the Japanese folklore says causes earthquakes. Cute but deadly."You can get a young girl here to do anything if you promise to marry her"strikes me as a very special form of depravity.
The budget would delay the first Ares I flight until December 2018. That is almost three years after NASA currently plans to send the International Space Station careening towards Earth to burn up in the atmosphere and plunge into the ocean. The current budget projections have also not set aside money for the space station's end-of-life plans.Bloody hell. The thing seems barely to have been finished (in fact, is it really finished now, it's hard to keep track) and it is only supposed to last another 5 years?
Well, I suppose this means that the next time a stranger approaches you in the car park and offers a really cheap price on a rare 19th century stuffed spangled drongo from the back of his van, you should immediately call the police.Thieves have stolen a priceless collection of tropical birds from the Natural History Museum.
Curators said almost 300 brightly-coloured specimens were taken from a collection in Tring, Hertfordshire.
They said the birds, some of which are more than a century old, are a priceless part of the world's ornithological heritage.
750,000 stuffed birds?! Maybe a few more live ones would be around today if the collectors of the past were a little less enthusiastic.The Natural History Museum holds 70 million specimens brought together over 350 years. The majority are held at its South Kensington headquarters.
The ornithological collection in Tring is one of the world's largest and holds 750,000 birds representing 95% of known species.
Existing sky surveys miss many asteroids smaller than 1 kilometre across, leaving the door open to damaging impacts on Earth with little or no warning, a panel of scientists reports. Doing better will require devoting more powerful telescopes to asteroid hunting, but no one has committed the funds needed to do so, it says.
“I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy”was not apparently motivated by faith, the idea of not immediately abandoning a relationship for that reason has obvious appeal to those who believe marriage is truly "til death do us part".
Eight Pakistani Christians were killed, 50 homes destroyed and two churches burned when a rampaging mob of up to 3,000 Muslims tore through the town of Gojra, in eastern Pakistan, last Saturday.I missed a lot of media over the weekend, but I don't know that this got widely reported.
The victims, who included two young children, were either burned alive or shot. ...
The mob gathered after rumours had spread that children had cut up a schoolbook which included verses from the Koran. The children had supposedly been making confetti for a local wedding.
As well as those killed, more than 20 people were injured in the attack as the mob, carrying sticks, clubs and a small number of firearms, took to the streets last weekend.
The attacks came two days after a related incident in the nearby village of Korian where gangs set fire to more than 70 Christian homes and two small Protestant churches.
Based on experiments with a simulated lunar rock developed by NASA, the researchers calculate that three one-meter-tall reactors could generate one tonne of oxygen per year on the Moon. Each tonne of oxygen would require three tonnes of rock to produce. Fray noted that three reactors would require about 4.5 kilowatts of power, which could be supplied by solar panels or possibly a small nuclear reactor on the Moon.I wonder, how long does a tonne of oxygen last for, say, a dozen people?
Why would the priest even recognise her? Unless she gave warning of her attendance (and why would she bother doing that?) I would be quite surprised that she would otherwise be known to him.The priest, obviously drawn by the unusual sight of new people, approached us to welcome us to his flock. I shot out my hand. "Hi, I'm Catherine."
All the blood drained from his face. "You're that writer?" "Yes," I replied. I happily introduced my sons, who, in an uncharacteristic display of manners, shook the priest's hand and said, "Nice to meet you." The priest wandered off in a daze. Or was it a trance? Maybe it was religious melancholy.
After surveying the ''good news'' of carnage and damnation on the wall, the 11-year-old asked what a virgin was. I explained. Then he said, "Is there something wrong with sex?"We know what her answer would be. One gets the impression from previous columns that she intends to be terribly non-judgemental and open-minded to the point of quasi-encouragement to experiment, probably as a continuation of her resentment of her parents trying to set some boundaries for her. (Just a guess, there, but she does write in her column today how a comment made in the car by her father, about another family, made her want "to jump over the front seat and ram my father's head into the windscreen".)
The best political news for the president remains the Republicans. It’s a measure of how out of touch G.O.P. leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are that they keep trying to scare voters by calling Obama a socialist. They have it backward. The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy. If anything, the most unexpected — and challenging — event that could rock the White House this August would be if the opposition actually woke up.
Boom — as Beauchamp was known, ostensibly because of his foghorn voice — was said to have “exquisite taste in footmen”. His interviewing style was unique. He would pass his hands over their buttocks, making a similar hissing noise to the one made by stable lads when rubbing their horses down. If the young man was handsome and pleasant, the earl would remark: “He’ll do well. Very nice indeed!”The true life story was much more scandalous than what goes on in Brideshead, though.
THE ruling faction of the Palestinian Authority has formally blamed Israel for the "assassination" of Yasser Arafat, one of the founders of the Fatah party.Well, that'll help things move forward. Maybe they are just annoyed that a significant part of the world believe the rumours that it was AIDS.At the party's conference in Bethlehem yesterday, delegates unanimously passed a resolution blaming Israel for Arafat's death and setting up a committee to investigate the death.
Saudi King Abdullah said: "Even if the whole world agreed to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with all the needed support and backing, it will not be established as long as the Palestinian house is divided."Over at Gulf News, there was an opinion column earlier this week (I can no longer see it) which urged Palestinians to make alternative plans for what happens if a two state solution is never achieved. The writer did not give any clue as to what the alternative for the Palestinians might be.And referring to Israel as "the criminal enemy", King Abdullah wrote: "I'll be honest, brothers. The criminal enemy could not over long years of continued aggression have inflicted as much damage to the Palestinian cause as did the Palestinians themselves in a matter of a few months."
3,500 kg of steam? That's how you measure steam?India already had the previous world's largest solar-powered cooking system, serving 15,000 pilgrims daily at the Tirumala temple in Andhra Pradesh. But now that one has been been one-upped, Taragana reports. The new system has been installed at the shrine of 19th century saint Sai Baba in Shridi and can feed up to 20,000 people per day:
The system generates some 3,500 kg of steam daily, which replaces on a yearly basis 100,000 kg of cooking gas.
...most honest journalists would have to admit that, presented with Grech and his document, they would have thought they had a pretty watertight story. Especially given that the evidence points to a long relationship with the Opposition.The worst commentary on this is from Guy Rundle in Crikey (which is the subject of a LP post here), yet because it is a silly exercise in psychoanalysing all the major players and condemns Turnbull and everyone around him, the people at Larvatus Prodeo think it's great.
It should have been obvious to anyone who came into contact with him that Godwin Grech was not a man whose robustness could be assumed. Apparently frail and ill from childhood, a solitary type who joined the CPS directly from university, he clearly found in public service a framework for his existence, and a meaning for a life he reasonably assumed would be foreshortened.He can also tell how meetings he never saw must have gone:
Most people would have spotted instantly that someone like Grech was out of his element, in crisis, that there was a point at which to stop.And Turnbull's decision to run with the issue:
...contributed to the ruination of a man whose one hope for a meaningful and rounded life, for a life that made sense, was to have been, and been remembered as, a dutiful and effective public servant. Turnbull was the stronger man. It was his fault.As for Turnbull and Abbott:
Like many of a certain type of Roman Catholic, and Turnbull is the same, Abbott is a man without a soul who outsources its provisioning to the most dependable outfit around — and one that, unlike protestantism or Islam, doesn’t demand that you make much of an effort to change your nature.You can bet your bottom dollar that Bahnisch, if reading some equivalent armchair psychoanalysis of Labor figures would be calling it as overheated rubbish and pathetic as an exercise of alleged serious political analysis.
.....scientists say it could be years, if ever, before the collider runs at full strength, stretching out the time it should take to achieve the collider’s main goals, like producing a particle known as the Higgs boson thought to be responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass, or identifying the dark matter that astronomers say makes up 25 percent of the cosmos.The report goes on to explain the technical nature of the problem, for those interested.
.....over the two decades of observation, the surface ocean grew more acidic at exactly the rate expected from chemical equilibration with the atmosphere. However, that rate of change varied considerably on seasonal and inter-annual timescales, and even reversed for one period of nearly five years. The year-to-year changes appear to be driven by climate-induced changes in ocean mixing and attendant biological responses to mixing events.This seems to me to be a pretty important study, as it is confirmation from long term measurements that the predicted rate of ocean acidification is correct. (The fact that there are bumps along the way is, I suppose, like the difference between weather and climate.)The authors also found distinct layers at depth in which pH declines were actually faster than at the surface. Dore and colleagues attribute these strata of elevated acidification rates to increases in biological activity and to the intrusion at Station ALOHA of remotely formed water masses with different chemical histories.
With North Sea oil and gas production in steep decline, Mr Wicks is expected to call for the UK to boost the share of electricity generated from nuclear stations to as much as 30-40 per cent of the total, up from only 13 per cent last year.
He will also propose that the Government should adopt a more interventionist approach to ensure new reactors are built — and in greater numbers — than currently planned.
page 101: ...when I returned to Treasury in September 2008 it soon became clear that the 'normal’ rules of direction, reporting and accountability had changed significantly and were oftentimes confused and chaotic.And here's the section which indicates how completely thoughtless Treasury was in failing to provide significant assistance to Grech:
page 102: My essential point is that the environment I found myself in from late 2008, involved confused lines of accountability, poor overall management and frankly an almost anything goes attitude as long as the relevant policy initiative was delivered on time and the Prime Minister kept satisfied....
page 103: The normal policy development disciplines had broken down, with many policy options, certainly those that I had exposure to, being developed without any real opportunity by the Department of Finance and Deregulation to undertake proper costings, if at all. Relevant portfolio departments were either not involved in the policy development process or were given very limited information or opportunity to contribute.
page 111: I did raise resourcing issues with Treasury Deputy Secretary, Mr Jim Murphy on a number of occasions – both in mid to late December 2008 and again in early January 2009. I was told that options would be explored – but nothing happened. Indeed, the overall resource effort diminished especially after the 5 December 2008 public launch of OzCar by the Prime Minister and Treasurer in Sydney.
page 111 - 112: In addition to the very significant work load pressures that were placed on me, it was well known to senior Treasury management, including Dr Ken Henry, the relevant Deputy Secretary, Mr Jim Murphy, and the relevant immediate supervisor, Mr David Martine, that I was physically impaired and suffered from a complex array of serious medical conditions. This included the loss of my colon, advanced dysmotility and malrotation of my small bowel that resulted in 7 small bowel obstructions since March 2005.
Treasury management were aware that I had a near fatal episode in late 2006 when a blockage resulted in an intestinal haemorrhage which led to septicaemia and acute renal failure. I never fully recovered from this episode having since developed stage 3 chronic kidney disease and metabolic bone disease including osteoporosis. I have suffered a further 3 small bowel obstructions since the near fatal 2006 episode – the most recent in February 2009. Treasury is aware of all of this and was at the time.
Unbeknown to Treasury management – or to me – I was also suffering from chronic clinical depression which doctors believe has been present and untreated for some years.
Given this complex medical condition, and the stark reminder of my vulnerability following my hospitalisation in both February and March 2009, senior Treasury management could – and I say should‐ have taken action to ensure that I got the support that I needed. This did not happen.
Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaida's second-in-command, said on Monday that Israel should be wiped off the map and described the Jewish state as a crime against Muslims.Zawahri also accused US President Barack Obama of conducting a policy on Israeli-Palestinian issues that was bound to end in failure for the Palestinians, Reuters reported, saying that Obama wanted a Palestinian state that would serve as "an extension of the CIA."
"Israel is a crime that should be removed," the news agency quoted Zawahri as saying in an interview with al Qaida's media arm As-Sahab, posted on an Islamist website on Monday.
...the most exciting and potentially worrying possibility is that there exists a previously unseen population of near Earth asteroids that orbit the Sun at approximately the same distance as the Earth. These have gone unnoticed because they are smaller or darker than other asteroids, say Ito and Malhotra.
"We found that in fish that do have temperature-dependent sex determination [TSD], a rise in water temperature of just 1.5 degrees Celsius can change the male-to-female ratio from 1:1 to 3:1," says Piferrer, the study's co-author. In especially sensitive fish, a greater increase can throw the balance even more out of whack. Ospina-Alvarez and Piferrer have found that in the South American pejerrey, for example, an increase of 4 degrees Celsius can result in a population that is 98% male.
What makes these findings especially troubling, of course, is that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that ocean-water temperatures are likely to rise by 1.5 degrees over the course of this century — and they may even go up a few degrees more. "If climate change really does result in a rise of 4 degrees, which is the maximum the IPCC predicts, and if species can't adapt in time or migrate, then in the most sensitive cases of TSD, we're looking at extinction," says Piferrer.
The domestication of guinea pigs dates back to around 5000 B.C., when the native people of Peru and Bolivia started breeding the beasts for food or religious ceremonies. (Or both: One famous Peruvian painting from 1753 shows Jesus Christ and his disciples dining on guinea pig at the Last Supper.)The link will take you to the painting in question.
...another key part of the Reading Plan are thousands of "book squadrons".What a fun job title that could be: "Commander of No.103 Brown Book Squadron". If it comes with a good uniform, I'd be in that, as long as I am allowed to smack people on the head with (soft cover) publications until they like them.These are basically roving book clubs that are intended to encourage reading on the metro, in public squares and in parks.
Each squadron wears a different colour to identify their type of book. For example, the red team promotes autobiographies while the black team discusses books on "militant resistance".
The government say they will spread the word of the benefits of reading to the rest of the community. The opposition say they are the thought police.
AUSTRALIANS are willing to take a second chance at love, with almost one-fifth of weddings involving a partner who has been married before. However, while only a third of first marriages end in divorce, the figure rises to 60 per cent for second marriages.
Last year, France's oyster industry – Europe's largest – was hit by its worst crisis since the native European or "Portuguese" oyster was all but wiped out 30 years ago. Since then almost all oyster farms in Europe have been restocked with the Pacific "creuse" oyster from Japan and British Columbia.So the oysters I can get from France are exactly the same species as those farmed in much of Australia. (However, I generally go for Sydney Rock oysters over Pacific, as I don't really like the larger size of the latter.)
It is strange, but in a law abiding and supremely polite place like Japan, it is still generally a good rule of thumb that foreigners should avoid approaching the police (in their neighbourhood bases known as "koban") for assistance unless absolutely necessary.On July 2 in Shinjuku, a 74-year-old American tourist walked into a police box to ask directions. Inside the koban were an older (senior) officer and his younger (rookie?) colleague.
The American asked where Kinokuniya bookstore was, and the older police officer responded by asking the tourist if he had a pocket knife. The American, being the law-abiding citizen that he is, said "yes" and handed it to the senior officer. After a quick measurement of the blade, the officer arrested the 74-year-old for having a pocket knife 1 cm over the legal limit.
The most shocking part to the story is that a new revision of a law regarding pocket knives was subject to a moratorium until July 5, meaning those possessing knives that violate the new rules had until July 4 to dispose of them! Moreover, two other American tourists were arrested that same day at the same koban.
The conclusion to this man's story was nine days in a holding cell. Welcome to Japan!
