02008-12-20 | Bicycle, News, Travel
BBC NEWS | Europe | Milan poor to get seized caviar
Beluga caviar seized by Italian customs officers is to be distributed to poor people in Milan as a Christmas gift.
About 40kg (88lb) of caviar was confiscated in November after two couriers travelling from Poland were stopped with the hidden cargo.Newspaper Corriere Della Serra says the caviar had an estimated value of $550,000 (£370,000). Tests showed the caviar to be edible, so it is to be given to canteens, hospices and shelters for the poor.
I love that line – Tests showed the caviar to be edible. Did somebody grab a crust of bread, put some caviar on it, eat and pronnounce it edible… or did they take it to a lab?
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Goa bans Christmas beach parties
Christmas and New Year beach parties in tourist resorts in the Indian state of Goa have been banned because of security concerns, say the authorities.
30 years ago you would have found me at the New Year beach party in Goa…
U.P.S. adds bikes to the fleet| TerraPass: Fight global warming, reduce your carbon footprint
Of course, each U.P.S. bike delivery system (typically a $350 mountain bike pulling a custom trailer) can haul only 15 to 20 packages per trip — a mere fraction of what a truck can deliver. Nonetheless, the company estimates that for every three bikes deployed during peak season on the West coast, it will save around 17 gallons of fuel per day and about $38,000 dollars in vehicle maintenance costs.
02008-12-09 | Copyright, Music, News
Is it just me or do these words found on a UK news site smack of music-nationalism? Does it sell ads? Is it wide-spread? Is it contagious? Does it matter? Am I too sensitive about this issue and this is just a little home-band pride and not music-nationalism?
Coldplay sued by Joe Satriani for copyright infringement
On the one hand, you have Satriani’s six-and-a-half-minute instrumental from 2004, with cheese-ball guitar wailing, moments of shredding, and long bouts of soloing. On the other hand, you have Viva La Vida: Eno-produced, Grammy-nominated, full of strings, church bells, drum rolls, chorales. And a sort of harpsichord solo. Certainly Viva La Vida is cheese-ball as well – but it feels more cheddar than Dairylea.
(Via Guardian Unlimited Music)
Not sure what Dairylea is, but this is their website.
And, just for the record, I don’t like either Satriani or Coldplay.
Damn, will this ever end? Here is another contender for the same song. (Thanks LR)
02008-10-30 | News, Photos
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Audio Slideshow: Photos compete for the Prix Pictet
A major new global prize celebrating the work of both professional and amateur photographers has been awarded in Paris.
The Prix Pictet is the first competition of its type to focus on the global issue of ‘sustainability’ – and, this year in particular, on water.
The winner of 100,000 Swiss francs (£53,000) is the Canadian photographer Benoit Aquim.
Here – the head of the Prix Pictet jury, Francis Hodgson, shows off Aquim’s work and images from some of the 17 other photographers who made the shortlist.
Watch the slideshow here.
02008-10-29 | Environment, News
World is facing a natural resources crisis worse than financial crunch | Environment | The Guardian
The world is heading for an “ecological credit crunch” far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet, an international study warns today.
The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year – double the estimated losses made by the world’s financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis – say the report’s authors, led by the conservation group WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund. The figure is based on a UN report which calculated the economic value of services provided by ecosystems destroyed annually, such as diminished rainfall for crops or reduced flood protection.
And to illustrate the urgency there is this quote:
This had led the report to predict that by 2030, if nothing changes, mankind would need two planets to sustain its lifestyle.
Unless you have another planet in mind and think we will be able to move people across space, I suggest we need to start changing the way we do things.
02008-10-28 | Environment, News
After financial meltdown, now it’s smeltdown | Björk – Times Online
The men who made Iceland go cap in hand to the IMF are now bent on ruining its landscape
– Björk
Björk writes in the TImes Online.
02008-09-10 | News, World
LR sends me this:
“If the collisions in the LHC produced a micro black hole, and this is unlikely, it would just evaporate away again, producing a characteristic pattern of particles,†Professor Hawking said.
Link to Times Online article
