Nepenthe

An extraordinary archive from the extended family of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the great English Romantic poets, has been bought by the British Library. The vast treasury of papers revealing the family's bemused if affectionate view of the maverick talent in their midst had been kept in family ownership in Ottery St Mary, the Devon village where the poet was born, for two centuries. But when the family reluctantly decided this year to sell The Chanter's House, the home acquired by Samuel's brother James in 1796, the volumes of papers and diaries had to go too. The National Heritage Memorial Fund - the fund of last resort for saving important heritage for the nation - donated £250,000, which was boosted by grants from half a dozen other bodies to secure the family's archive for an unspecified sum. Frances Harris, head of modern historical manuscripts, said its importance lay not only in the new m...

Brezo Brisa Camarina y Castañuela Cynara (abandonada por su madre está siendo criada con biberon en El Acebuche ).

... that can only be explained by a primeval reflex to show off to potential mates 1 Cycling with no hands. Why? With folded arms is particularly obnoxious. 2 Throwing things in the air and catching them in their mouths. Sweets, nuts, cigarettes. Presumably it is supposed to demonstrate coordination. If it worked, women would regularly fall in love with seals. 3 Undoing bra straps with one hand. They think it shows confidence and experience. It's just sleazy. 4 Wearing massive boxer shorts. Why do men do this? Best guess is that they flatter themselves that their giant organs need the spare capacity. 5 Whistling. Presumably once a mating call, redundant since we evolved for speech. It is never musical, except at the end of '(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay' by Otis Redding. 6 Carrying a big bunch of keys. Suggests ownership of big cave. 7 Driving around in white vans with one wireless phone headset in each ear. Suggests potential to be rugged fighter pilot. ...

Unless you are David Hasselhoff, foregoing leather trousers and jackets shouldn't be too much of a drag, but I admit it's trickier when you get to shoes. Though touted as a completely natural material, the production of conventional leather leaves an almighty ecological footprint. Processing largely involves using volatile organic solvents, fungicides, azo dyes (possibly carcinogenic), huge amounts of groundwater pumped from precious wells in developing countries, and chromium (VI) - the substance that particularly riled Erin Brockovich. These highly polluting production systems are virtually obsolete in Europe and America, but that hardly matters now that the bulk of the world's $60bn leather industry has been transferred to developing countries, particularly Asia: more than 2bn people with leather in China alone. For many consumers, it's a case of out of sight, out of mind. But not for vegans many of whom refuse to buy leather, which has traditionally left them with p...

Bet THAT got your attention: Burger King has just announced their newest burger, the BK Quad Stacker. Four hamburgers, four slices of cheese, eight strips of bacon and almost a day’s worth of calories in just one sandwich. In a rare show of corporate honesty, Burger King announced the burger with the following statement: “ We’re satisfying the serious meat lovers by leaving off the produce and letting them decide exactly how much meat and cheese they can handle. ” Now, The Guardian: You do not forget your first encounter with a Burger King Stacker Quad. Mine happened in a particularly dispiriting branch of the fast-food chain, on Eighth Avenue in New York - a windowless underground outlet, accessible via a flight of stairs, or alternatively by a stairlift capable of supporting someone weighing up to 450lb. The Stacker Quad, as you discover when you summon the nerve to order it, consists of four beef patties, four slices of cheese, and four strips of bacon in a bun, all glistening in fa...

From Leelefever

The first step was easy: sit down and use the toilet as normal. The technology only kicks in when you are perched on the seat; which, incidentally, is gently heated to the temperature of a half-bled radiator. And then I had a choice: press "bidet" or "wash". Not knowing which was which, I threw caution to the wind and experimented. The former was a more gentle affair, as a mellow jet of warm water shot up towards my bottom. The latter involved an extended, shower-like spray head and was rather more ... bracing. (...) at Saki, a Japanese restaurant in Smithfields, London, was such a revelation. Though Saki claims to be the first commercial establishment in these islands to install the paperless toilets so beloved of the Japanese (70% of households in Tokyo have one), it is probably a while before they will take the whole nation by storm. But could the mere fact that such a whizzy loo has been pioneered anywhere public in the UK be indicative of a wider social change?...

PLUG and PLAY (this time is for real) PS: gonna stop being proud of having an ipod "Nano" as of now

When this diary was published in Russia two years ago, it was immediately, and inevitably, compared with the diary of Anne Frank. It is a very articulate record by an adolescent girl, living in an ever more threatening totalitarian environment, of her fears and frustrations, and it mingles the emotional pains of a girl going through puberty with the anguish of a trapped animal feeling the hunters getting nearer. For a girl of thirteen years old, in a society where there was no information but official propaganda and market rumour, Nina was remarkably well informed and perspicacious: she reports the famine and cannibalism that took the lives of millions of peasants in 1933, when not just the Moscow press but Moscow’s inhabitants were genuinely unaware of the disaster happening five hundred miles to the south. Andrew Bromfield speculates that she may have had access to underground Menshevik or Social Revolutionary literature, but this seems unlikely in the 1930s when all dissidence had b...

Updated for our times. And take the Chaucer quiz :) How did the modern adaptation come about? For two of the executive producers Laura Mackie and Franc Roddam, their Canterbury Tales journey began in spring 2001 in Phoenix, Arizona when they were looking for locations for Auf Wiedersehen, Pet . "I had just taken over as Head of Drama Serials and I told Franc that we were looking for a piece that reflected life in the new century" says Mackie. "Franc is a brilliant ideas man and he mentioned The Canterbury Tales and what enduring stories they were. We discussed how it might be possible to update them to the present day and that sowed the seed of the idea. Why these six Tales? "We wanted to have a good mix of stories," says Mackie. "So we balanced some of the saucier more comedic tales with the more serious and darker stories." We also wanted to match those tales with the different writers' strengths. We got together...

In New York, only a day after the towers fell, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani counselled his trembling constituents to "show you're not afraid. Go to restaurants. Go shopping." When the world's people asked how they could help, he responded, "Come here and spend money." Shopping became a patriotic duty. Buy that flat-screen TV, our leaders commanded, or the terrorists will have won. (...) We take the vow. Starting January 1 2004, my partner Paul and I will buy only necessities for sustenance, health and business - groceries, insulin for our diabetic cat, toilet paper, internet access. I am not primarily out to save money, though I'll be delighted if that happens. I have no illusion that forgoing this CD or that skirt is going to bring down consumer culture - I don't even know if I want to bring it down. (...) Materially, we will survive. That's the least of my worries. But, I ask myself, can a person have a social, community or family life, a business,...

Já sei, estamos na silly season , como se este país tivesse taramanhos para se permitir luxos de paranças e papos para o ar, francamente, e aqui estou eu, a ver George Steiner na SIC de madrugada, num programa extraordinário que a mesma Sic passou há três anos (segundo um blogue), e a quem dá os mesmíssimos tratos de polé desta vez: OF BEAUTY AND CONSOLATION Henk Hogeboom van Buggenum Programme on Dutch TV (VPRO), from 2nd January - 1st July 2000, Presented by Wim Kayzer. A series of 26 talks with 26 eminent people from various walks of life: artists, scientists, musicians, and philosophers. Participants (in alphabetical order): Karel Appel, painter; Vladimir Ashkenazy, pianist and director; Catherine Bott, soprano; John Coetzee, author; Richard Dufallo, director; Freeman Dyson, scientist; Rudi Fuchs, museum manager; Jane Goodall, author and ethologist; Stephen Jay Gould, zoologist and paleontologist; Germaine Greer, author; György Konrád, author; Rutger Kopl...

The highest court in India has demanded that Coca-Cola and Pepsi reveal the chemical composition and ingredients of their products after a study that was released on Wednesday showed that the soft drinks contain high levels of insecticides. The two presiding justices have given both Coca Cola and Pepsi just four weeks to submit a reply, otherwise the court will suspend sales in India. However, Shreyas Patel, a lawyer at Fox Mandal Little realizes that "no one is going to give away a 120-year-old secret, especially in a country like India. Someone would go and make it themselves." Obviously, he never met these ladies, who already have .

Wrinkled was not one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up. So many stupid people, and so few asteroids. Never believe generalizations. Avoid alliterations always. Dyslexics are teople poo. I used to have a handle on life, but it broke. The control key on the keyboard does not work. Lawyers have feelings too (allegedly). On your mark, get set, go away! I didn't climb to the top of the food chain to become a vegetarian! What would Scooby do? I am not infantile, you stinky poopyhead. I have a degree in Liberal Arts - do you want fries with that? Suburbia: Where they tear out the trees and name streets after them. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell? My mother is a travel agent for guilt trips. Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you weren't asleep. Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it? Cover Me! I'm Changing Lanes How do I set a laser printer to stun? The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list. The trouble with the gene pool i...

Took a while but found it. You can download Gedo Senki’s Trailer here (real audio) Have fun...

My phone rings: it is Old-School Boss. I am nervous, but no more than usual. His formal, headmasterly tone always manages to unnerve me, and when I replace the receiver after one of our exchanges I often feel I have slipped back into the skin of the painfully shy and inarticulate schoolgirl I thought I had left far behind. “Can you come down to my office for five minutes please?” Something in his voice, coupled with the way in which my boss averts his eyes when I mutter that I have been summoned, alerts me to the fact that something is very wrong. Old School Boss motions for me to close the door behind me. He doesn’t wait until I am seated to deliver the first line of his speech. “I’m afraid I have called you here to tell you that I am obliged to terminate your employment with the firm.” I sit. My mouth forms a perfect “O” of astonishment. “This is because of your internet site.” Somehow he manages to make “internet” sound like an unspeakably filthy word. He doesn’t care t...

Rock'n'Roll , Duke of York's Theatre, London WC2 There were times during Tom Stoppard's epic and unruly play, Rock'n'Roll, when the words 'Alas, poor Syd' kept jumping into my head. What would the late Syd Barrett - who was still alive when this play premiered at the Royal Court last month - have made of this messy, sprawling political drama which uses him so freely as a symbol of loss - lost dreams, lost youth, lost idealism? That Barrett, the Pink Floyd singer who became a rock's most famous recluse, should be resurrected in these unlikely circumstances seemed curious enough even before his death, but has an added poignancy and perhaps even deeper symbolism now. 'I wanted to write about somebody who simply got off the train,' Stoppard has said, but Syd didn't so much 'get off the train' as fall headlong on to the tracks. A Sixties acid casualty, he remained fragile and unbalanced for the remainder of his life, hiding from the wo...

In the introduction to my book Skeptics and True Believers, I defined two frames of mind: Skeptics are children of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. They are always a little lost in the vastness of the cosmos, but they trust the ability of the human mind to make sense of the world. They accept the evolving nature of truth, and are willing to live with a measure of uncertainty. Their world is colored in shades of gray. They tend to be socially optimistic, creative and confident of progress. Since they hold their truths tentatively, Skeptics are tolerant of cultural and religious diversity. They are more interested in refining their own views than in proselytizing others. If they are theists, they wrestle with their God in a continuing struggle of faith. They are often plagued by personal doubts and prone to depression. True Believers are less confident that humans can sort things out for themselves. They look for help from outside -- from God, spirits or extraterrestrials...

Just one metre square of a new super-sticky material inspired by gecko feet could suspend the weight of an average family car, say its inventors. The plastic, known as Synthetic Gecko, has been developed by researchers at aerospace and defence firm BAE Systems. Like the reptile's foot, the reusable polymer is covered in millions of tiny mushroom-like hairs that provide grip. Future applications could include an adhesive to repair aircraft, skin grafts or even a Spiderman-style suit. "It would mean that your local window cleaner could dispense with his ladders and climb up the side of your house," says Dr Sajad Haq, a principal research scientist at the company's Advanced Technology Centre in Filton, Bristol. "There's a whole...