monkeycrumbs

Broken Hill Dust Storm

2009-03-19T09:47:00.002+11:00

Heh! "It looks like a little Ayers Rock".

Verve again

2009-03-15T01:45:00.003+11:00

Well that was predictable. I've been favourited… by the Verve blog. Recognition for my 19 month moribund blog.

Verve

2009-03-13T16:26:00.004+11:00

Well, fancy that. I haven't updated this blog for ages. It was an experiment using some sort of clip blog tool (I forget which one now). I wasn't really happy with its implementation, hence the lack of posts. This email just arrived:

"Your blog monkeycrumbs caught our attention. I'm the founder of a recently launched startup for bloggers. We are searching the internet for the world's blogs by geography, and we found yours for Australia. I would like to invite you to our site which plots the content of the internet on an interactive map of the world. VerveEarth is an entirely new way to surf the net. It shows spatial and geographic connections that a blog search engine could never reveal.
The site is Verve."

So I registered and we'll see what happens (if anything). Might even make a few posts here again.

Exterminate

2007-08-28T15:25:00.000+10:00

Dalek Cake: "Unfortunately, no one had any video to capture the cake actually moving via wireless remote control." Shame, that's a sweet looking cake.

Atheism

2007-08-27T16:03:00.000+10:00

Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns: "Based on a careful assessment of the most recent survey data available, we find that somewhere between 500,000,000 and 750,000,000 humans currently do not believe in God. Such figures render any suggestion that theism is innate or neurologically based untenable. The nations with the highest degrees of organic atheism (atheism which is not state-enforced through totalitarian regimes but emerges naturally among free societies) include most of the nations of Europe, as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. There also exist high degrees of atheism in Japan, Vietnam, North Korea, and Taiwan. Many former Soviet nations, such as Estonia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus also contain significant levels of atheism."

Shaun Tan

2007-08-23T09:31:00.000+10:00

In ‘The Arrival’, the absence of any written description also plants the reader more firmly in the shoes of an immigrant character. There is no guidance as to how the images might be interpreted, and we must ourselves search for meaning and seek familiarity in a world where such things are either scarce or concealed.

Knights of Africa Sovereign Order

2007-08-20T13:20:00.000+10:00

His Serene Highness, Prof. Sir Vincent Abukuse Mbirikah: "Socrates was an African living in Greece. When you put a rabbit into an oven, you don't seriously think it will turn into a biscuit or an English muffin do you? Of course not. If you succeed baking it, it only becomes a baked rabbit, but certainly not a biscuit, less so an English muffin. Therefore, there was no way one could turn Socrates into a Greek philosopher, given his prominent African features such as big think lips, broad nose black skin and woolly hair."
"As this Grandmaster relaxed in his hotel suite at Baden, Austria, the Austrians were quick to remind him he was staying in a famous suite known for its African music composer who had stayed in the same suite when he composed the famous Symphony number 3, popularly referred to as "Eroica". And who else could that be but the famous Ludwig van Beethoven? He too has also been mistaken by his European admirers to have been germany, except those who knew him well, the Germans. There is a lot of material written about Beethoven's background and one of the sources is that written by Frau Fisher, an intimate friend of Beethoven,(See R.H. Schauffler, The Man Who Freed Music, Vol.I, P.18, 1929).The famous blind and deaf composer of Symphony number 9, also known as, "Ode to Joy" is one more example of how whatever is supreme in Africa, or of African origin, is always claimed, stolen, branded or adopted by non-Africans, and that includes without exception, civilization itself."

Alsengems

2007-08-16T14:43:00.000+10:00

Alsengem Found in Sweden: "Alsengems are little multilayered button-like discs of coloured glass with incised human stick-figures on one side. Archaeology became aware of them in 1871 when one was found on the Danish island of Als. These gems are pretty coarse and ugly compared to the exquisite agate and intaglio ones of Classical antiquity, but they nevertheless have their place in an archaeologist's heart."

Your History Online III

2007-08-16T13:39:00.000+10:00

1754: "Benjamin Banneker, the first African American astronomer, is credited with making the first clock to strike the hour. People come from miles around to see and hear it sound the hours. President George Washington appoints him in 1789 to the Capitol Com- mission. While on the Commission he helps l%u2019Enfant draw up the plans for the city of Washington, DC. For some reason the plans come up missing, and he draws them again, totally from memory, to the astonishment of his associates. On August 19, 1791, Banneker sent a letter to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in which he criticizes the peculiar American institution of slavery and Jefferson's hypocrisy as stated in the American Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's response to Banneker's entreaty is paternalistic and insulting."

Scientology's fight for apartheid

2007-08-16T13:17:00.000+10:00

The Rhodesian Gambit: "At this point it may be worthwhile mentioning Hubbard's attempt to 'win' Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) for Scientology. Following the severe setbacks which had been suffered in Australia in the mid-60s, when the ungrateful Australians decided that they did not after all want to be the world's first 'clear continent', Hubbard decided that southern Africa should have the privilege of being a 'safe environment' for Scientology. In 1966 he went to Rhodesia in the guise of 'a millionaire financier' (no initial mention of Scientology) to, in his words, 'find out what he needed in order to conquer a country.' He spent $80,000 on a house and a hotel 'to show his confidence in the country and its government'. They very soon became the centre of Rhodesian Scientology and proved a worthwhile investment. In the few months that he was in Harare, Hubbard made $25,000 selling Scientology courses to a white population of only some 45,000. He regarded his visit to Rhodesia as a homecoming for, so he told his personal assistant Reg Sharpe, he had been Cecil Rhodes in a previous life and hoped to return with the hidden fortune in gold and diamonds which he remembered having buried as Rhodes. Hubbard even went around wearing Rhodes' favourite kind of hat, presumably in the hope of 'restimulating' people's memories of the late founder of their country."