The comic genius Victor Borge and the world-renowned coloratura Marilyn Mulvey team up to present a wonderful sketch. Here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2.

Posted by Amy as Music, Humour at 1:32 AM EDT

No Comments »

Historic Cities: Maps and Documents: “This site contains maps, literature, documents, books and other relevant material concerning the past, present and future of historic cities and facilitates the location of similar content on the web.”

Posted by Amy as History at 1:07 AM EDT

No Comments »

Here are some links to information on the great humanitarian Dr. Albert Schweitzer:

• Official Homepage of the International Albert Schweitzer Association
• The Albert Schweitzer Page
• New York Times Obituary
• a brief biography

Some quotations from Albert Schweitzer:

• “Don’t let your hearts grow numb. Stay alert. It is your soul which matters.”
• “Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith.”
• “Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.”
• “As long as I can remember, I have suffered because of the great misery I saw in the world. I never really knew the artless, youthful joy of living, and I believe that many children feel this way, even when outwardly they seem to be wholly happy and without a single care.”

Some more that are attributed to him:

• “Truth has not special time of its own. Its hour is now — always and indeed then most truly when it seems unsuitable to actual circumstances.”
• “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”
• “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.”

A quotation about him:

“There are no formal gardens at Lambarene: Doctor Schweitzer does not like gardens where flowers are grown for the adornment of the house. To cut a flower needlessly is a violation of his fundamental ethical principle of reverence for life.” (from The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer)

Here’s a link to one of his essays: ”The Ethics of Reverence For Life”.

Posted by Amy as Religion & Spirituality, Notable People, Social Justice & Social Welfare at 9:40 AM EDT

3 Comments »

Mstislav Rostropovich, the world-renowned Russian cellist, has died at the age of 80.

Posted by Amy as Music at 9:00 AM EDT

No Comments »

Top 5 SciFi Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Flavors: I vote for Klingon Ridge Ripple.

Via SF Signal.

Posted by Amy as Popular Culture, Television & Movies, Humour at 1:12 AM EDT

No Comments »

Mysterious Britain: A Guide to the Legends, Folklore, Myths, and Mysterious Places of Britain: “The Mysterious Britain web site is a guide to mysterious places, legends and folklore within the British Isles.” Here’s a good place to investigate Boggarts, Brownies, Will o’ The Wisp, Cait Sith, and more.

Posted by Amy as Popular Culture, Travel, Paranormal at 1:48 AM EDT

No Comments »

Ex Astris Scientia: an exhaustive glossary of all things scientific/technical on Star Trek (e.g. nanoprobe, Jefferies tube, phase shift, cryostasis, chroniton torpedo, warp nacelle).

Via A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.

Posted by Amy as Television & Movies, Technology at 1:33 AM EDT

No Comments »

31 Places To Monitor Your Reputation Online: this includes MySpace, FaceBook, Digg, Flikr, Wikipedia, and more.

Via Neat New Stuff On The Web.

Posted by Amy as Technology at 1:32 AM EDT

No Comments »

Michael P. Smith: photographer who specialises in images of jazz and blues festivals in New Orleans.

Here’s a quotation from the bio on his website:

Michael P. Smith is a New Orleans native and award-winning professional freelance photographer. His special interest for nearly 40 years has been the music, culture and folklife of New Orleans and Louisiana. He is well known for documenting New Orleans social club parades and jazz funerals, neighborhood Mardi Gras traditions, spiritual church ceremonies, and many of the city and state’s renowned jazz, blues rhythm and blues, and gospel musicians. Smith photographed at every New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since it began in 1970 until his retirement in 2004, when he was honored with a major grandstand exhibition and photo kiosks placed around the fairgrounds.

There are some wonderful photos here.

Via Metafilter.

Posted by Amy as Music, Photography at 1:49 AM EDT

No Comments »

• Every Issue of Rolling Stone To Be Released on DVD: this searchable DVD will have the contents of over 1,000 issues spanning 40 years. Wow.
• Female Conductor Hired For Manitoba Chamber Orchestra: one of only a few in North America
• A TimeLine of Jazz Compared to History (via Incoming Signals)

Posted by Amy as Music at 8:48 AM EDT

No Comments »

Purdue University is asking for responses to an online Pet Loss Survey.

The site makes it very clear who’s eligible to complete the survey:

Have you experienced the death of a pet? We are interested in hearing from you.

The survey is a tool for researchers to understand part of the human/animal bond:

The purpose of this study to understand the relationship between pet attachment and the grief owners experience when their pet dies.

It’s a short survey; although they time it at 15 minutes, I don’t think it took me that long to complete it.

Via Cute Overload.

Posted by Amy as Animals at 8:57 AM EDT

No Comments »

I’m not a big fan of the Hello Kitty merchandise, but I don’t have a huge problem with it, either—unlike the unfortunate blogger at Hello Kitty Hell whose wife is a fan.

The result is an entertaining blog that shows us the worst of the Hello Kitty phenomenon: electric guitar amplifiers, scarecrows, and bicycle tires.

Via Plep.

Posted by Amy as Popular Culture at 1:23 AM EDT

No Comments »

Here’s a site everyone can benefit from: No Nonsense Self-Defense.

It’s ambitious:

This site will provide you with free, easy-to-use information to keep you safe from crime and violence, including robbery and rape. Our goal is is to assist you achieve personal safety. The information we provide is tailored for your needs in the modern world. You will find a wide spectrum of crime prevention information, including home security, property protection, robbery prevention and self-defense.

An overwhelming majority of our recommendations are non-violent and should have no negative impact on your lifestyle. While the ability to defend yourself is important, we believe that common sense preventative actions are a far more reliable way to ensure your personal safety and the safety of your family. You don’t have to pay money, learn a martial art, buy a gun or become paranoid in order to be safe. All you need are to know the details of the problems and then use a little common sense. After that, it’s easy.

There is a lot of useful information here.

Posted by Amy as Crime at 1:30 AM EDT

No Comments »

You Have Good Manners 80% of the Time

Your manners are quite excellent. You are well versed in etiquette. Of course you have the occasional slip up, but you even apologize with grace.

Posted by Amy as Fluffy Stuff at 1:37 AM EDT

No Comments »

Paul Levinson has an interesting post on his blog Paul Levinson’s Infinite Regress; it’s called How Star Trek Liberated Television.

Levinson says that the material airing on cable today (such as The Sopranos) is a direct result of the Star Trek phenomenon and the resulting loss of influence of networks.

It’s a good read, and I haven’t been familiar with his work before. Now I’m going to put both his novels and his non-fiction work on my “to read” list (like it’s not already long enough!).

Posted by Amy as Popular Culture, Television & Movies at 1:37 AM EDT

No Comments »

Oh, I love this: Mystery Cat Takes Regular Bus To The Shops.

I agree with Garret—that’s pretty cool.

Via dangerousmeta!

Posted by Amy as Animals at 9:48 AM EDT

No Comments »

If, like me, you enjoy roaming through cemeteries and reading the gravestones, check out The Epitaph Browser.

The epitaphs collected here are from the gravestones of well-known people (e.g. Mel Blanc, John Gay, Emily Dickinson) and those who are anonymous or who are only well known for their epitaph.

One example of the latter is Mary Ann Weems of Godmanchester, England:

To the Young of both Sexes
This Stone is erected by public Subscription over the remains of MARY ANN WEEMS who at an early age became acquainted with THOMAS WEEMS formerly of this Parish this connextion [sic] terminating in a compulsory Marriage occasioned him soon to desert her and wishing to be Married to another Woman he filled up the measure of his iniquity by resolving to murder his Wife which he barbarously perpetrated at Wendy on their Journey to London toward which place he had induced her to go under the mask of reconciliation May the 7th 1819 He was taken within a few hours after the crime was committed, tried and subsequently executed at Cambridge on the 7th of August in the same Year

Ere Crime you perpetrate survey this Stone
Learn hence the God of Justice sleeps not on his Throne
But marks the Sinner with unerring Eye
The suffering Victim hears and makes the Guilty die

Not all of the epitaphs are this long; consider the following for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Steel True, Blade Straight.

Via Tech_Space.

Posted by Amy as Death at 1:43 AM EDT

No Comments »

Along with a lot of other North Americans, I first discovered Hugh Laurie in the critically acclaimed series House.

Now I’ve had a chance to see some of his work with Stephen Fry, and it’s a delight. How can one man be so talented?

Here are a few samples for you to look at:

• Very Upset: he manages to make me laugh a great deal on a subject that I wouldn’t normally find funny at all
• Mystery and America: two quick sketches that show his talent at the piano
• Too Long Johnny: a wonderful blues parody

If you’re only familiar with Laurie’s work on House, it would be good to know that in real life he’s British and speaks with an English accent; he assumes an American accent for the character of House.

Via Centre Of The Universe (sort of).

Posted by Amy as Humour at 4:31 AM EDT

3 Comments »

North American music history lost an important landmark on Tuesday when Johnny Cash’s house burned down.

Johnny Cash, and his wife June Carter Cash, had lived in that house from some time in the 1960s until they died a few months apart in 2003.

It was in this house that Cash wrote many of his songs and entertained people ranging from performers (such as Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan) to religious leaders (Billy Graham).

The house was currently owned by Barry Gibb
of the Bee Gees.

The cause of the fire isn’t known.

Via CBC.ca.

Posted by Amy as Music at 1:52 AM EDT

No Comments »

If you haven’t already discovered them, there are two websites to check out to learn more about Tom Waits.

First, there’s the Tom Waits Web Site.

Here are a couple of the nuggets from it:

• He has said that he couldn’t laugh when watching ‘Spinal Tap’, because it was too real for him.
• He is married to Kathleen Brennan and has 3 children, Kellesimone (born 1983), Casey Xavier (born 1985), and Sullivan (born 1993?).

One drawback to this site is that it is not the “official” website, and I couldn’t find any info on here on his most recent release (Orphans).

A second site to look at is Tom Waits Library. I especially like the quotations section here; you get to read such tidbits as the following:

• “Today’s heroes are tomorrow’s service station operators. I’m lucky. I’m a pretty good mechanic.”
• “People get frightened that success is going to take them out of life. They’re no longer going to be on the corner of Bedlam and Squalor; life will only be something you can get through the mail. “But Jack Nicholson just stays in there, being himself. He’s a good ad for success.”
• Popular music is like a big party, and it’s a thrill sneaking in rather than being invited. Every once in a while, a guy with his shirt on inside out, wearing lipstick and a pillbox hat, gets a chance to speak. I’ve always been afraid I was going to tap the world on the shoulder for 20 years and when it finally turned around, I was going to forget what I had to say. I was always afraid I was going to do something in the studio and hate it, put it out, and it was going to become a hit. So I’m neurotic about it.

He’s always fun to listen to, whether performing or interviewing.

Posted by Amy as Music at 1:47 AM EDT

No Comments »

Mark Brownlow has had too much time to goof around; the result is If Ancient Rome Had The Internet.

Here are a few samples:

• The destruction of Pompeii in 79AD is the most viewed video at YouTube. The first comment is…”OMG so cool! Volcanos ROCK!”
• The soothsayer’s “Ides of March” email fails to get Caesar’s proper attention as it’s inadvertently filtered into his junk folder.
• The domain gladiator.rome sells for the record sum of 1,000,000 denarii.

An entertaining way to start the day.

Via A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.

Posted by Amy as Humour at 1:51 AM EDT

2 Comments »

If you’re in the mood for some silliness, check out Angry Alien Productions: 30-Second Bunnies Theatre.

In it, some classic movies are boiled down to 30 seconds—and re-enacted by animated bunnies.

Here are a few of my favourites:

• Casablanca
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Star Wars (especially the outtakes!)

I haven’t seen Borat, but I’ve heard enough about it to appreciate the spoof of it as well.

Via SF Signal

Posted by Amy as Television & Movies, Humour at 1:26 AM EDT

No Comments »

You Are Jelly Beans

For you, Easter is all about fun and sweet treats. None of that Jesus dying on a cross stuff!

Posted by Amy as Fluffy Stuff at 1:39 AM EDT

No Comments »

I’m a few days late with a post on April Fool’s Day; I was preoccupied and missed it!

Not wanting to overlook it completely, though, I decided to post about a sobering site I came across in my surfing: The Top 10 Worst April Fool’s Jokes.

Although a couple of these “jokes” are just plain stupid (such as the woman who called her boss to say armed men were robbing the store), most are truly awful—the kind that take your breath away.

Here’s a sample:

Imagine reading that your husband or brother who has been held in a squalid Romanian prison for years is finally going to be released. You make the long journey to the prison and stand outside the prison gates, waiting desperately for the moment you’ll be reunited with your loved one, only to hear… ‘April Fools! No one’s being released!’ This experience happened to sixty people in April 2000 who read in the Opinia newspaper that their loved ones were going to be released from the Baia Mare prison in Romania.

I’m left speechless before this level of idiocy and cruelty.

Via Plep.

Posted by Amy as Special Days/Weeks at 1:16 AM EDT

No Comments »

It’s spring, and my thoughts are turning to gardening. In Canada, and especially my province (Saskatchewan), our growing season is short and the weather can be a challenge. If it’s tough for us now, I find it hard to imagine what it would have been like for the settlers.

Here’s a site that attempts to explore that concept: Cultivating Canadian Gardens: The History of Gardening In Canada.

This site is an online exhibition by Library and Archives Canada. The exhibition has a broad scope:

The exhibition, “Cultivating Canadian Gardens”, tells the story of the development of gardening in Canada through the books, periodicals, and printed materials collected, for the most part, by the National Library of Canada. It begins with the earliest recorded information on the plantings of the Hurons who had been tending their crops long before Europeans arrived in North America, and concludes with a brief look at the flood of printed material now available across the country.

There are various sections, each with subsections. For example in the “planting the seeds” section, there are explorations of 19th century seed catalogues, native plants, and other items.

Under “cultivating the garden” one of the features is Railway Station Gardening.

It’s a nice browse in this time where it’s still too early to plant.

Posted by Amy as Gardening at 11:15 AM EDT

No Comments »

If you’re ever needing to choose a number and you want a little help to make sure that you’re doing it absolutely randomly, here’s the page for you: the Random Number Generator.

It’s simple—you enter the range of numbers you want to choose between (say, between 1 and 45) and the computer gives you the number.

This is the electronic equivalent of drawing a number from a hat (and a lot less work).

Posted by Amy as Math, General at 9:42 AM EDT

No Comments »

Here’s a fun site: the Random Image Generator.

The premise is simple: you type in a word and click on the search button; the page supplies the image.

My husband and I had fun typing in “hedgehog” and “ferret” and looking at the resulting predictably cute photos.

Then we turned to more abstract notions: “confusion,” “silliness,” and “philosophy.” There were some interesting results there—especially for philosophy.

Posted by Amy as Fluffy Stuff at 1:31 AM EDT

No Comments »

If you’re interested in searching for your ancestors or looking at places of interest connected to famous people, you’ll be interested in Find A Grave.

At this site you can “Find the graves of ancestors, create virtual memorials, add ‘virtual flowers’ and a note to a loved one’s grave, etc.” You can also “See the graves of thousands of famous people from around the world.”

In the famous people section, in addition to the photos of the graves, there may also be a biography and shots of other items of interest (e.g. Jane Austen’s page also has a photo of the house where she spent her last days).

Posted by Amy as Death at 1:36 AM EDT

2 Comments »

I’ve always wondered how long certain foods are good for, and now I’ve found a webpage that helps: Surprising Expiration Dates.

Here are a few of the bits of information on the page:

• Brown sugar: Indefinite shelf life, stored in a moistureproof container in a cool, dry place.
• dried pasta: 12 months
• ketchup: Unopened: 1 year (After this time, color or flavor may be affected, but product is still generally safe to consume.); Opened or used: 4 to 6 months (After this time, color or flavor may be affected, but product is still generally safe to consume.)

This is one site I’ll bookmark and go back to as necessary.

Via A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.

Posted by Amy as Food, Health & Safety at 9:09 AM EDT

No Comments »