Wednesday, 21 February 2007

Good Media: 100 Centre Street

Something reminded me how much I really regret there not being a substantial set of DVD, or even VHS episodes of 100 Centre Street (the address of the central criminal courts in New York City). I remember it dealing with some of the reasons why things work out as they tend to do in the US courts, and other related parts of the system. If it had got beyond 2 seasons, maybe there'd be more chance of it getting repeated. even tho' the Sidney Lumet sympathies have been unfashionable for some years.

[Note, if anyone, anywhere sees it on a TV schedule, spread the word wide, and for goshsakes, start recording it ASAP, before it disappears. Bugger the legalities. It would be sad to have another 'O! What a Lovely War' situation.]

Tuesday, 13 February 2007

Ready for St Valentine's Day?

Order your own 'personalised' romance novel - free sample on this page - I suspect you could do some creative work on the system to get rather amusing results.
http://www.bookbyyou.com/lovesnextdoor/demo.asp

These could be useful in the case of painful Customs inspections (www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/05/immigration_search/)
The Yugoslav lexicon of swear words --
http://www.ce-review.org/00/41/nezmah41.html
"At the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, people working on a dictionary of the literary language threw all of the notes they had containing swear words into a special box. There was actually a directive which read: 'If you come across a swear word, throw it into the yellow box.' Linguists of course are on the hunt for this mysterious yellow box."

Similarly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French_profanity

Some possible uses for melaleuca paperbark, as done by older Russian cultures with birchbark.
http://gramoty.ru/

List of birchbark documents, translation from Cyrillic to English by Google.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2tukh6 ( or http://tinyurl.com/2tukh6)

Original list
http://gramoty.ru/index.php?key=bb&date%5B%5D=all&city%5B%5D=all&excav%5B%5D=all&safety%5B%5D=all&cath%5B%5D=all (OR http://tinyurl.com/3d9dq8)

Monday, 12 February 2007

Richard Sweeny and his Paper Sculptures

American Inventor Spot Inventive Art: Richard Sweeny and his Paper Sculptures
Some very nice photos of some fascinating objects, and explanations.

Monday, 5 February 2007

Scary Mary

A trailer for 'Mary Poppins' that brings out the darker side. The books are rather scarier than the film, so this redresses the balance.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic
This is the original version, made by Chris Rule, with assistance by Nick Eckert.

Saturday, 3 February 2007

Women in Science - a study in progress

Found elsewhere. Just spreading the news for the moment.
there's an author writing a book with a tentative title of Where the Girls Aren't: What's Holding Women Back from Careers in Science? who is looking for interview subjects: both women who have left science-related disciplines and those who are still there.

More details at www.nasw.org/users/lhall/wtga.html