Airline stops all live trade for use in experiments British Airways has been accused of setting back medical research in the UK by enforcing a blanket ban on the transport of live animals for use in experiments. Government officials and leading scientists have expressed their dismay to the airline about the toughening of its stance which they fear will send the wrong message to scientists and pharmaceutical companies involved in animal testing, and could encourage s extremists who have been running a high-profile campaign to shut down the live animal trade. [At the Guardian ]
Mensagens
Russia, alongside the USA, the glorious victor of the Second World War, stands sixty years on as the great loser. After the collapse of communism and the fall of the Soviet Union, the phantasm of the Russian superpower has not only evaporated into thin air, but hopes for a better future in a civil society are still in vain. The only thing to cling onto is the old dream and its triumphant figure – Stalin. [Read on at signandsight ]
The Wired 40 1. Apple Computer 2. Google 3. Samsung Electronics 4. Amazon.com 5. Yahoo! 6. Electronic Arts 7. Genentech 8. Toyota 9. Infosys Technologies 10. eBay 11. SAP 12. Pixar 13. Cisco 14. IBM 15. Netflix 16. Dell 17. General Electric 18. Medtronic 19. Intel 20. Salesforce.com 21. Vodafone 22. Flextronics 23. EMC 24. Nvidia 25. Jetblue 26. FedEx 27. Monsanto 28. Microsoft 29. Nokia 30. Costco 31. Comcast 32. Pfizer 33. Li &Fung 34. Taiwan Semiconductor 35. Gen-probe 36. Citigroup 37. L-3 Communications 38. Ameritrade 39. Exelon 40. BP Plus 6 That Missed the Cut
From The New Yorker , very larky today :-) Buy a pie at a pie shop, carefully remove the upper crust, and then gently lower a family of live gerbils into the pie. Replace the crust and storm back into the pie shop, indignantly pointing out the five little heads poking up through the crust. Collect ten million dollars and appear with the gerbils on “Larry King Live.” Repeat in all fifty states, with different pastry-rodent combinations so as to elude detection. Go to a frozen-yogurt shop, order a medium cup of vanilla, and then punch your index finger through the bottom of the cup so there appears to be a human finger in the yogurt. After demanding to see the manager, threaten to sue the yogurt chain for ten million dollars, making sure to tell him that you know Larry King. Note: Keep your finger very still during all of this, because if it wiggles even slightly this hoax has no chance whatsoever. Order a bowl of chili at a fast-food restaurant. When the chili arriv...
he was probably young, stupid and easy to catch
When European settlers sent back a specimen of this bizarre creature, scientists were baffled and concluded it was probably a fake. It was only when more examples arrived from "Down Under" that the issue was resolved. But what happened to that original specimen that so famously bamboozled the experts? Well it's still intact in a London museum, and in surprisingly good condition. The first photographs of it were published in an Australian newspaper on Saturday. The Natural History Museum is understandably protective of the delicate specimen, but recently agreed to photograph it under special conditions. Because this was the individual used for the first scientific description of a platypus ( Ornithor...
Jared Diamond Bashing Time: "The more important reason why Diamond’s rhetoric doesn’t play well any longer is that it presents only one side of the balance-sheet: it ignores the human benefits that accompany environmental damage. You build a road, but that destroys part of the local ecosystem; there is both a cost and a benefit and you have to weigh them up. Diamond shows no sign of wanting to look at both sides of the ledger, and his responses to environmental sceptics take the form of ‘Yes, but . . .’ If someone were to point out that chemical fertilisers have increased food production dozens of times over, he would reply: ‘Yes, but they are a drain on fresh water, and what about all that phosphorus run-off?’ Diamond is like a swimmer who competes in a race using only one arm. ‘In caring for the health of our surroundings, just as of our bodies,’ he writes at one point, ‘it is cheaper and preferable to avoid getting sick than to try to cure illnesses after they have developed’ ...
Good news for kids and kidults everywhere. The first trailer for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the next instalment of the film franchise, is now available on the internet. You can see it here . You will need Quicktime to view the clip. Set to booming, epic music, the trailer begins with shots of Harry, Ron and Hermione at different ages from the previous movies, before cutting to their current incarnations. The boys are now sporting Beatles haircuts: Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) especially looks like a young George Harrison, while Ron (Rupert Grint) comes across more like a ginger Kurt Cobain, only cleaner. Meanwhile, Hermione (Emma Watson) is turning into a prom queen. There are also shots of the wizard tournament Harry participates in, including a dragon that is looking a bit feisty, a menacing underwater creature and Harry's adversaries in the tournament. And bizarrely, Dumbledore (Sir Michael Gambon) is wearing his beard as a ponytail. The fourth of JK Rowling's enormou...
Woody Allen ha confirmado en Oviedo, donde se encuentra para pronunciar una conferencia, que trabaja en una "fantasía muy cómica y muy romántica", que tendrá la ciudad de Barcelona como escenario, y precisó que sus productores "ya tienen muy avanzadas " las negociaciones para concretar el proyecto. El director y escritor, nacido en Nueva York (EEUU) hace 68 años, ha ofrecido una rueda de prensa en la ciudad ovetense, donde va a participar en los actos conmemorativos del 25 aniversario de la Fundación Príncipe de Asturias , que le distinguió en 2002 con el Premio de las Artes. El autor de 'Manhattan' o 'Match point' , que acaba de presentar con gran éxito en Cannes, no quiso adelantar más sobre el posible rodaje en España, porque afirma que le cuesta mucho hablar de sus proyectos, pero sí recalcó que la idea que tiene en la cabeza "se adaptaría muy bien a Barcelona", ciudad por la confesó sentir predilección. Si este proyecto finalment...
We Germans confront the guilt and shame of our past daily, and more thoroughly and obsessively than probably any other nation on earth has done. Even 60 years after the end of the horrors, we are still preoccupied, perhaps even more so now than before. In the heart of the capital a Holocaust memorial in the shape of a forest of grey cement posts has just been inaugurated. Every German schoolchild knows the tales of German atrocities. But in England, Prince Harry parties with a swastika arm band. Eighty per cent of youngsters don't know what Auschwitz was about, but each one will be familiar enough with heroic films about the "Battle of Britain" to believe they had personally kicked the Hun up the backside. Where does this giddy pride come from - and the lack of sensitivity toward the victims? The Russians in the meantime consider us friends, even though they lost 25 million people in the fight against the Nazi horde. They respect us as a hard-working, peace-loving people...
English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In wh...
Assorted quotes: "I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called 'brightness,' but it doesn't work." Gallagher Q: How do you tell if you're making love to a nurse, a schoolteacher, or an airline stewardess? A: A nurse says: " This won't hurt a bit. " A schoolteacher says: " We're going to have to do this over and over again until we get it right. " An airline stewardess says: " Just hold this over your mouth and nose, and breath normally. " "The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival , Inquiry and Sophistication , otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question ' How can we eat?' the second by the question ' Why do we eat? ' and the third by the question ' Where shall we have lunch?' " Douglas ...
El presidente de las víctimas españolas en Mauthausen confiesa que nunca fue preso de los nazis Enric Marco, de 84 años, ha pasado los últimos 30 años contando un dramático pasado como víctima del nazismo en el campo de concentración de Flossenburg. Tres décadas después ha confesado , para consternación de los deportados españoles, que inventó este relato en 1978 porque "así la gente le escuchaba más y su trabajo divulgativo era más eficaz". La asociación que presidía, Amical de Mauthausen , le forzó esta semana a presentar su dimisión . [Already-battered national pride flushed online at El Mundo website]
" Most parents stop reading aloud to their kids when they are six or seven. We never did. Our many hospital stays kept us in good practice. Of course, our son is an avid reader himself, but you try reading while you're flat on your back with drainage tubes, heart monitor wires, and an IV in your arm. Just after dawn, I opened the pages of The Fellowship Of The Ring. Josh had read the series before, but that didn't matter a wit. I launched into the story and we were pulled into the adventure. Never did we need Middle Earth more than we did then. The book took us from Bilbo's birthday party in Hobbiton, to the Council of Elrond, and onward with Frodo and company to the golden wood of Lothlorien." [ How we turned a hospital into Hobbiton ]
"More Frenchmen collaborated than resisted, and during the course of the war more Frenchmen bore arms on the Axis than on the Allied side. Against those grim truths, Charles de Gaulle consciously and brilliantly constructed a nourishing myth of Free France and Resistance that helped heal wounds and rebuild the country. Other myths about the war have grown up less deliberately. For Americans, the first national legend concerns the very definition of World War II. In recent decades it has come more and more to mean the war against Hitler’s Germany. But for the American people at the time, ‘‘the war’’ meant the Pacific war. That was where the first and last American blood was spilled, where America was engaged in combat the longest, and where Americans for most of the time watched the war unfold." [ How good was the Good War? from the Boston Globe]
Barcelona The summer sun sets a vicious circus when shadows held the world in place But today I felt a chill in my apartment's coolest place "Fuggi Regal Fantasima" The village larks cannot be heard 'cause all the crows got panderers I can't esape these velvet drapes, don't want my rings to fall off my fingers "Fuggi Regal Fantasima" The mirror I find hard to face 'Cause I fear its a long way down Got to get away from hre, I think I know which hemisphere Crazy me don't think there's pain in Barcelona They dance you 'round a waltz confound But I fear it's a long way down Even if that straw I pull and I got to fight that bull Nothing really compares to Barcelona Besides in Spain Don Juan's to blame But I fear it's a long way down And I fear I won't be around Make sure I have all my papers laying out my summer clothes Search for traps in vain like scratching so my suitcase I can close "Fuggi Regal Fan...
This too is translation and interpretation: Natalia Dmytruk did not have to learn sign language at school. Her first words had to be mimed. Both her parents are deaf. On Nov. 25, she walked into her studio for the 11 a.m. broadcast. "I was sure I would tell people the truth that day," she said. "I just felt this was the moment to do it." Under her long silk sleeve, she had tied an orange ribbon to her wrist, the color of the opposition and a powerful symbol in what would become known as the Orange Revolution. She knew that when she raised her arm, the ribbon would show. The newscaster was reading the officially scripted text about the results of the election, and Dmytruk was signing along. But then, "I was not listening anymore," she said. In her own daring protest, she signed: "I am addressing everybody who is deaf in the Ukraine. Our president is Victor Yushchenko. Do not trust the results of the central election committee. They are all lies....
Judging a Book by its Contents Name that famous book from just these phrases: "pagan harpooneers," "stricken whale," "ivory leg." Or how about this one: "old sport." Yes, it's Herman Melville's Moby Dick and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby , respectively, but the words aren't just a game. They are Statistically Improbable Phrases, the result of a new Amazon.com feature that compares the text of hundreds of thousands of books to reveal an author's signature constructions. The haiku-like SIPs are not the only word toys on the site. Customers can also see the 100 most common words in a book. Penny pinchers -- or those with back problems -- can check stats on how many words a volume delivers per dollar or per ounce. (Bargain hunters will love the Penguin Classics edition of War and Peace that delivers 51,707 words per dollar.) Customers can also see how complicated the writing is (yes, post-structuralist ...
Booker Prize to award translators A new award honouring translators has been announced by the organisers of the international Booker Prize. The £15,000 honour has been created to recognise the role translators play in bringing fiction to a world audience. The author of a work translated into English will collect the new award, and decide who should win if several people were involved in the translation. Potential recipients of the first prize include Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Czech writer Milan Kundera. 'Unsung hero' The majority of this year's shortlist have been translated into English and will...
Definition of irony : irony A statement that, when taken in context, may actually mean the opposite of what is written literally Colloq. The quality or state of an event being both coincidental and contradictory in a humorous or poignant and extremely improbable way. [60th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen camp ]
President Merkin Muffley : [to Kissoff] Hello?... Ah... I can't hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?... Oh-ho, that's much better... yeah... huh... yes... Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri... Clear and plain and coming through fine... I'm coming through fine, too, eh?... Good, then... well, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine... Good... Well, it's good that you're fine and... and I'm fine... I agree with you, it's great to be fine... a-ha-ha-ha-ha... Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb... The Bomb , Dmitri... The hydrogen bomb!... Well now, what happened is... ah... one of our base commanders, he had a sort of... well, he went a little funny in the head... you know... just a little... funny. And, ah... he went and did a silly thing... Well, I'll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes... to attack your cou...
Die Zeit publishes a comment by Nobel Prize winning author Günter Grass on theme of "liberation" . "I experienced May 8 in Marienbad, as a seventeen year old dummkopf who believed in the final victory right up to the end. So mine was not feeling of liberation, but of total defeat." The feeling of liberation only came slowly: "When the anniversary of the end of the war is celebrated in fine speeches as a day of liberation, this can only be retrospectively, especially as we Germans did little or nothing for our freedom." But Grass, taking up the recent "critique of capitalism" launched by Social Democratic Party chairman Franz Müntefering, sees in today's economic context only the illusion of freedom. "What has become of the freedom given to us sixty years ago? Is it only to be calculated in stock market takings? The highest values enshrined in our constitution do not primarily serve our civil rights, but rather the ma...
The Second World War is still being fought. Sixty years after it ended, almost every anniversary stirs up arguments and emotions: D-Day, the Warsaw Uprising, the liberation of Auschwitz, the bombing of Dresden, Yalta, the taking of Berlin, and Potsdam. There can be no single version of this war. When the heads of state stand side by side at the ceremony in Moscow on May 9, each of them will be remembering something different. As many wars as nations , originally published in Polish and in German, here in English courtesy of Sign and Sight.
El Quijote de José Saramago Cuando Sancho oyó las palabras de su amo... “Mi favorita –explica José Saramago – es la escena de los batanes, que está en el capítulo XX. Por el miedo de Sancho, por la simulada valentía de Quijote, por creer que la cosa es una y al final es otra; por la carcajada que di cuando la leí por primera vez. Y también por la noche, por la soledad de los dos pobres diablos de quienes la realidad se está riendo.” “ Cuando Sancho oyó las palabras de su amo, comenzó a llorar con la mayor ternura del mundo, y a decirle: Señor, yo no sé porque quiere vuestra merced acometer esta tan tenebrosa aventura; ahora es de noche, aquí no nos ve nadie, bien podemos torcer el camino y desviarnos del peligro, aunque no bebamos en tres días; y pues no hay quien nos vea, menos habrá quien nos note de cobardes: cuanto más que yo he oído muchas vece...