Reviews Category
We don’t just report off-beat news, breaking news and digest the best and worst of the news media analysis and commentary. We give an original take on what happened and why. We add lols, satire, news photos and original content.
The Postman Saw Your Chicken – Notes Of Note
Saw Your Chicken
Posted: 22nd, November 2013 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Flashback: When Maggie Philbin And Keith Chegwin Had Brown Sauce
FLASHBACK uncovers a few great photos of Keith Chegwin and Maggie Philbin, who were, once upon a time, stars of BBC tea-time and morning telly.
4/9/1982 WHEN CHILDRENS TV SHOW, SWAP SHOP PRESENTERS, KEITH CHEGWIN, WED MAGGIE PHILBIN, AT THE PARISH CHURCH IN THE VILLAGE OF LITTLE STRETTON, NEAR OADBY, LEICSTERSHIRE, * THE WHOLE VILLAGE TURNED OUT TO WISH THEM WELL. THE SEVEN-YEAR-OLD BRIDAL ATTENDANT IS THE BRIDE’S SISTER NICKY.
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Posted: 22nd, November 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
Barcelona’s Neymar Used To Sell Finest Cocaine In Brazil
NEYMAR has reason to feel very proud today after learning that his face is being used by Brazilian drug sealers as a kind of ‘stamp of excellence’ which they proudly display on their very finest cocaine.
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Lambeth Slaves: Rescued By Journalism An Indian Karate Teacher And Courage
WHEN the story that three women had been rescued from a south London home, where they’d been held as slaves for at least 30 years, the news media went into overdrive.
Two arrest have been made: a 67-year-old man and a 67-year-old woman. Both have been bailed. They are forbidden from returning to their home.
It turns out they were arrested in the 1970s. But we do not know why.
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James Arthur Cancels All Engagements Thanks To ‘Exhaustion’, Which No-one Believes
HAHAHAHA! Yeah, right!
That’s the general consensus which met the statement that James Arthur is cancelling all his engagements after being diagnosed with acute exhaustion.
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Posted: 22nd, November 2013 | In: Celebrities, Reviews | Comment
Mark Caldwell Interviews Tim Curry About The Rocky Horror Picture Show 1975
PLAYING the role was physically demanding:
Spotter: The End of Being
Costco Sells The Bible As Fiction
“I NEVER, ever in my entire life had seen a Bible labelled as fiction,” says pastor Caleb Kaltenbach. He saw the Bible in the ‘fiction’ section at his local Costco store. “I just took the picture. I think really what has been revealed is a larger conversation over faith. There are people who are passionate about their faith in Christ and passionate against it.”
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Co-op Shopper Served Poo In A Bag
WITH the Co-op in the news on account of its now ex-chairman Paul Flowers’ alleged buying of crack cocaine and meth (and there are the allegations about his hiring rent-boys on company time), we turn to Caroline Byrne. She says that whilst shopping at a Co-op store in Basingstoke, Hampshire, her pizza, two cartons of milk and wet wipes were packed in a bag already containing poo.
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Posted: 22nd, November 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Rawan: The West Uses An 8-Year-Old Bride Killed On Her Wedding Day To Gain Control In Yemen
THE story of the eight-year-old Yemeni bride who died of internal injuries on the first night of a forced marriage to her 40-year-old groom is all over the web.
The Daily Mail’s Matt Blake reports on Rawan, who lived and died in the Hardh, northern Yemen.
An eight-year-old child bride has died in Yemen of internal bleeding sustained during her wedding night after being forced to marry a man five times her age, activists have claimed.
Which activists the Mail doesn’t bother to report.
Angry Man, a blogger, posted that the man was ‘an animal who deserved to be punished severely for his crime’.
Is it a crime in his country? And what crime would it be? The facts are sketchy. Still, Blake offers some background:
Child bride: The practice of marrying young girls is widespread in Yemen…
There was a law in Yemen setting the minimum age for marriage at 17 . It was repealed after some lawmakers said it was un-Islamic.
The BBC reported earlier this month:
The human rights ministry in Yemen says that one of its officials has managed to stop the wedding of a nine-year-old girl, due to take place on Friday. An official told the BBC it was the first such intervention to stop a child marriage in Yemen. The child, Hiba, was due to have been married on 8 November in the southern city of Taiz…
Fuad al-Ghaffari, a senior official in the office of the Human Rights Minister, Hooria Mashhour, said he was proud of the action taken by his colleague, as well as the police.
The women’s rights group, Equality Now, has listed the stories of some of the young girls who have been through this experience.
Wafa, it says, was married at 11 to a 40-year-old who raped and tortured her. A lawyer hired by the group and the Yemeni Women Union managed to arrange her divorce.
Another 11-year-old, Fawziya, died in childbirth.
Salwa, a 12-year-old girl, killed herself by throwing herself off a roof.
All terrible. And all unsupported by any evidence. The BBC then adds:
A recent, widely-reported case, which was not officially corroborated, of an eight-year-old girl said to have died of internal injuries after her wedding night, prompted renewed calls for action.
Terrible, of course. The ages of those girls makes the story travel. But what is a child bride?
Millions of girls across the world end up as child brides, despite the practice being outlawed in many countries. But some girls are defying their families’ attempts to marry them off. Some 10 million girls a year are married off before the age of 18 across the world, according to a Unicef report released this year.
You can get married at 16 in the UK. And in India, for example:
While child brides in Rajasthan tend to be married off very young, it is usually to grooms of a similar age and it is not until they are older, about 15 or 16, that they actually start living together as man and wife.
Fourteen year old Bablu, left, wearing a garland made of Indian currency tries to remove the veil of his twelve-year-old bride Mata Bai, outside a temple after offering prayers in Rajgarh, about 155 kilometers (96 miles) from Bhopal, India, Friday, May 6, 2011.
The focus is on the women and girls. Nicole Bailey writes:
Girls as young as six years old are being forced into marriage in those countries, many enduring rape, physical trauma from intercourse and childbirth, and torture – several on record have died from their wounds or committed suicide. Ensuring minimum marriage laws are passed in these countries is a top priority for many supporters of human rights around the world.
The tragic stories pouring out of these countries in the present day are too numerous to count: A selfish drug addict sells his child daughter to a man four times her age. A thirteen-year-old bled out and died three days after her wedding as a result of sexual violence perpetrated by her husband. The fact that these stories can exist in 2013 is inexcusable
She adds:
Although the outcome of the proposals in both Yemen and Saudi is unclear, there is hope that the critical mass of pressure both within the region and internationally will suffice to see the measures through. We must protect our children, and especially our girls, from this most vicious abuse. Our country, world, economy, education, and humanity depend on it.
Wow. So much depends on ending a foreign culture we in the West might not like.
PBS notes:
In Southern Asia, 48%—nearly 10 million—of girls are married before the age of 18.
In Africa, 42% of girls were married before turning 18.
Should these marriage be banned? And how can they be prevented? Maybe if the media is so terrible and focuses on the abuse of minors, the UN will create laws and see that they are enforced – although how they will do this is a moot point?
“If you make a law it will not stop a tradition—especially in Yemen, where the police are basically nonexistent in some parts of the country,” said Sama’a Al-Hamdani, an independent Yemeni analyst and writer. “You don’t have the luxury to be a teenager in Yemen: you are a child, and then you are an adult.”
The EU foreign policy chief, Lady Ashton heard of the dead child bride and has urged the Sana’a authorities last week to investigate the case “without delay and to prosecute all those responsible for this crime”. One child’s alleged death is a matter of international importance. Anorak can find no words from Ashton on the Vatican’s role in the sustained abuse of children. Is it only the darker skinned, poorer people whom she seeks to bring into line?
Is the aim not only to save the children but to save Yemen, to bring it into the Western fold?
The Guardian spotted one child bride.
Ask Noora Al Shami about her wedding day and she remembers the childish delight of an 11-year-old girl playing at being an adult. She was thrilled at friends and family gathering for a three-day party in the Yemeni port city of Al Hudaydah, 140 miles west of the capital city of Sana’a.
There were traditional singers and dancers, with one musician performing love songs to the backing of a traditional oud, a pear-shaped stringed instrument. Food including spiced lamb and rice was plentiful, and the little girl wore “three really beautiful dresses” – two green and one white – for each day of the celebrations.
“I was allowed to wear adult clothes, to put on jewellery, to accept presents,” recalls Noora, who is now 35. “What had not dawned on me was that I would be abused by a violent criminal.”
The assailant was Mohammed Al Ahdam, a distant cousin who was well into his 30s when he married Noora in 1989, just after her 11th birthday. “He was three times my age and saw marriage as a means to act like a depraved animal,” said Noora, who has agreed to speak about her experiences in a bid to highlight the problem of child marriages, and ultimately to stop them. Earlier this month she visited the Sana’a parliament, and called for “awareness campaigns” across the country in front of elected officials.
Human Rights Watch says 14% of girls in Yemen are married by the time they are 15, and more than 50% before the age of 18. The motivation is money – the family get a dowry for the bride.
Physical and psychological problems last a lifetime, however, and recently there have been unconfirmed reports of an eight-year-old bride dying from her injuries on her wedding night. That has led to calls for the legal age of marriage to be raised from 15 to 18. But even if the law was changed, there is no minimum age for marriage in Islamic law, and Yemeni clerics regularly argue against legal restrictions.
“It’s not really something that the law has been able to control, especially not in tribal communities,” said Noora. “The legal marriage age has been 15 for some time, but my mother was first married at nine, and divorced by 10, before going through another two marriages. She had me in her early teens.
As for the dead child:
“The government is informing us that the Rawan is in their custody and still alive, while other local sources are saying that she was secretly buried,” said Al-Qureshi, who heads up Seyaj, one of Yemen’s leading children’s rights groups. “The government is refusing to allow us to visit the girl in their custody,” he said. “The evidence we have now cannot prove that Rawan was killed, and that is why we need the government’s cooperation.”
Such are the facts in reporting on a country where the Islamists are attacked by unmanned American drones. The Culture Wars are well underway…
Lead photo: Nujood Ali, a 10-year old Yemeni girl, and her lawyer Shada Nasser leave the stage after being honoured at the Glamour Women of the Year awards Monday, Nov. 10, 2008 in New York. Ali, a former child bride, was able to get a divorce from her abusive husband with the help of Nasser. Date: 10/11/2008
Posted: 22nd, November 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Stoke Woman Gets Shoe Caught In Moving Staircase
ONCE upon a time, local newspapers could, on occasion, outsell the national titles. No longer is that true. But can they make a splash on the internet? Stoke’s The Sentinel has news:
Stoke-on-Trent woman puts intu Potteries shopping centre escalator out of action – by catching her shoe in it!
The Sentinel’s own Ange Hopwood accidentally halted an escalator at the Potteries Centre by jamming her high-heeled shoe in it.
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Did Christian Teachers Michael And Debi Pearl Train Parents To Kill Four Children?
DOES reading and adhering to the book To Train Up a Child by Tennessee-based Christian preachers Michael and Debi Pearl make your a child killer? Larry and Carri Williams have been found guilty of beating and starving their adopted daughter Hana to death. They adopted Hana from Ethiopia in 2008.
The Pearls run a Christian ministry called No Greater Joy.
He looks a bit like Santa. (That’s them in the above photo). Their website states:
No Greater Joy is the ministry of Michael & Debi Pearl under the auspices of No Greater Joy Ministries Inc. Michael has been a pastor, missionary, and evangelist for over 40 years. The Pearls’ five children were all homeschooled, and have grown up to become missionaries and church leaders. Though holding a degree from the Mid-South Bible College (now Victory University), when Michael is asked for his credentials on child training he points to his five children. Read more!
We do read more:
In a section called Is a Child Too Young To Spank? He outlines the plan:
While we can reasonably agree that the small child is too young to be punished, and we can understand that he is too immature to profit from reproof, are we to leave the child to himself until he gets old enough to discuss his fleshly actions and riotous ways? “…a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (Proverbs 29:15). Too young for corporal punishment and too immature for reproof? What’s left to us is “Training.” “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). Biblical training will incorporate the principle of the rod as a reinforcement to parental commands. By the term “rod,” I mean spanking. The Bible never uses the word “spank,” but it is bold in its use of the word “rod” in regard to child training. “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15). Notice, it is a rod of correction, not a rod of punishment. The rod that corrects is the rod that trains.
We have made the point here that children under three (give or take six months or so) cannot profit from corporal punishment, but we have made the point elsewhere that small children do profit from the application of the training rod. How are they different? In both cases, the child is being swatted with an instrument. There is a great deal of difference in both the severity and the number of “licks,” and also in the parents’ expectations and perspective. For that reason, we cannot arbitrarily specify a suitable age and declare that it is fitting to spank a child beginning at that point. Children differ, spankings differ, circumstances differ, and parents differ.
Meet the Pearls.
In the section Dogs Cats And Kids we read:
I just got through feeding the dogs and cats. They are nearly as stupid as humans, controlled by their impulses and prejudices. I scatter dry dog food along the driveway so the two cats and two dogs can eat without being too close to each other. But the two dogs think it is their life’s calling to starve cats to death. One dog, whom I call “Useless,” is the worst cat hater. He will prevent the cats from eating, to his own detriment. I can put a quart of dog food on the driveway and throw a handful under the car where the cats can get to it, and Useless will run around the car, here and there lying on his side, pushing his head up under the car with his tongue stretched to the limit, and scraping up gravel and crushed leaves, all with one purpose: trying to deprive the cat of a single pellet of dog food. Meanwhile, the other dog will be gobbling up all the readily available food assigned to both of them. By the time the cat has eaten and the dog has rescued three or four morsels of food, the other dog will have finished off the first dog’s portion, leaving Stupid Useless with nothing to eat. But, at least the cat knew who was boss!
Now, I have seen kids act the same way, and it makes no sense at all. A child has a room full of toys, and another child comes over to visit. When the visitor picks up a single toy that has not felt the hands of its owner in six months, suddenly it is the very toy Snotty wants to play with. It is disheartening to see your child with no more sense than a useless mutt saved from the dog pound’s gas chamber—unthankful, selfish, self-centered, pouty, and downright mean-spirited. Need I point out that all children are descendents of fallen Adam, born into the world without God, possessed of selfish drives that will most certainly result in sinful attitudes and actions?
He talks of The Rod:
When a parent is prepared and willing to use the rod to enforce his word, there is never an occasion when tensions build and tempers flare. The child knows that the parent is going to speak once, and if there is not immediate obedience, the rod will fall. The sure application of the rod will sober a child and cause him to give very serious thought to his conduct and attitude…
Training is done on the spot, without much discussion or hesitation. The rod falls within three seconds of the disobedience. You don’t even break stride. Onlookers hardly notice it, whereas chastisement is more involved and demanding…
The soul of your child needs to be punished. He feels the need to suffer for his misdeeds…
As a rule, do not use your hand. Hands are for loving and helping. If an adult swings his or her hand fast enough to cause pain to the surface of the skin, there is a danger of damaging bones and joints. The most painful nerves are just under the surface of the skin. A swift swat with a light, flexible instrument will sting without bruising or causing internal damage. Many people are using a section of ¼ inch plumber’s supply line as a spanking instrument. It will fit in your purse or hang around you neck. You can buy them for under $1.00 at Home Depot or any hardware store. They come cheaper by the dozen and can be widely distributed in every room and vehicle. Just the high profile of their accessibility keeps the kids in line…
A proper spanking leaves children without breath to complain.
The Pearls are not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. But is their advice a call to kill? No. It’s not.
But Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment, is no fan:
Pearl’s methods include making children who are challenged with potty training take cold baths, denying food to disobedient children, and whipping them with quarter-inch plumbing line. Pearl sees nothing wrong with applying his techniques to infants. One expert recently denounced Pearl’s techniques as interfering with child development. Most alarming, some children have been seriously abused by adults who were followers of Pearl. Three children have been killed.
She recounts an episode from the couple’s blog:
Pearl recounts riding in the family’s car late at night when the family’s toddler son becomes upset. He was not sitting near his mother and wanted to sit in her lap. The preacher describes the boy as having “a tough hide that at times absolutely resisted all control. He would whine, and whine, and cry, and plead, and demand.” Then Pearl writes,
Mother was reaching for her baby when the father turned to me and asked, “What should I do?” Again I explained the principle: by allowing the child to dictate terms through his whining and crying, you are confirming his habit of whining and consenting to his technique of control. So I told the daddy to tell the boy that he would not be allowed to sit in his mother’s lap, and that he was to stop crying. Of course, according to former protocol, he intensified his crying to express the sincerity of his desires. . . . I told the father to stop the car and without recourse give him three to five licks with a switch. After doing so the child only screamed a louder protest. This is not the time to give in. After two or three minutes driving down the road listening to his background wails, I told the father to COMMAND the child to stop crying. He only cried more loudly.
The crying and stopping the car and spanking continue with Pearl’s approval. “This was repeated for about twenty miles down a lonesome highway at 11:00 on a winter night,” he writes. Meanwhile, no one heeds the concerns of the mother, whom Pearl describes as a woman who had been emotionally and physically abused as a child and who was, as he puts it, “a very ‘sensitive’ person”. She tells the men that the boy “doesn’t understand”. She had also remarked that he was hungry, sleepy, and cold. Pearl then writes:
I told the father to command the boy to stop crying immediately or he would again be spanked. The boy ignored him until Father took his foot off the gas, preparatory to stopping. In the midst of his crying, he understood the issues well enough to understand that the slowing of the car was a response to his crying. The family was relieved to have him stop and the father started to resume his drive.
But, according to Pearl, the child had not yet been properly trained. In his view, the boy’s behavior still required more spanking.
I said “No; you told him he was to stop crying immediately or you would spank him; he waited until you began stopping. He has not obeyed; he is just beginning to show confidence in your resolve. Spank him again and tell him that you will continue to stop and continue to spank until you get instant compliance.” He did. . . . This time, after the spanking, when Daddy gave his command, the boy dried it up like a paper towel. The parents had won, and the boy was the beneficiary.
They don’t advocate killing. But they do support controlled violence.
The New York Times reports on the aforesaid Hana:
Late one night in May this year, the adopted girl, Hana, was found face down, naked and emaciated in the backyard; her death was caused by hypothermia and malnutrition, officials determined. According to the sheriff’s report, the parents had deprived her of food for days at a time and had made her sleep in a cold barn or a closet and shower outside with a hose. And they often whipped her, leaving marks on her legs. The mother had praised the Pearls’ book and given a copy to a friend, the sheriff’s report said. Hana had been beaten the day of her death, the report said, with the 15-inch plastic tube recommended by Mr. Pearl.
Michael Pearl confronts the issue:
Hana Williams’ parents were given the maximum prison sentences. Articles are appearing in blogs and newspapers across the country that are full of fabrications, lies and misstatements about To Train Up a Child. It should not be taken as fact just because it is written somewhere.
Oh, the irony from a man who cites the Bible as reason for hitting children. Go on:
It is alleged that Hana’s parents owned a copy of the book; they either did not read it or totally ignored the content. The book repeatedly warns parents against abuse, and emphasizes the parents’ responsibility to love and properly care for their children. There are hundreds of thousands of parents who have and are properly applying the philosophy of the book with the joyous results of happy, productive, and well-adjusted children.
The proper application of the book could have corrected their poor parenting and prevented the abuse and death of Hana Williams.
What else has been written about them?
After the death of 7 year-old Lydia Schatz, family friend Paul Mathers wrote on his blog (via Alicia Bayer):
“The Schatzes followed, to a “t”, a system of child rearing which came from Michael and Debi Pearl… The Pearls are not professionally trained or educated in child development. They came up with this darkness out of the abundance of their hearts… It is one of the most hate-filled, wicked and evil systems I’ve encountered in my life, all with a sheen of ‘Christian’ and ‘happy families.'”
Mathers told Salon.com:
“I would love to see the people rise up and say no to the Pearls, that this will not stand. I would love to see the Pearl system become anathema, disgusting, and shunned by the world. I would love to see the Pearls out of a job. Before another child dies.”
There there was the death of 4-year-old Sean Paddock of North Carolina.
Lynn Paddock surfed the Internet, said her attorney, Michael Reece. She found literature by an evangelical minister and his wife who recommended using plumbing supply lines to spank misbehaving children. Paddock ordered Michael and Debi Pearl’s books and started spanking her adopted children as suggested. After Sean, the youngest of Paddock’s six adopted children, died last month, his older sister and brother told investigators about Paddock’s spankings.Sean’s 9-year-old brother was beaten so badly he limped, a prosecutor said. Bruises marred Sean’s backside, too, doctors found.
Sean died after being wrapped so tightly in blankets he suffocated. That, too, was a form of punishment, Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell said.
In 2011, the Seattle Times added:
Sean Paddock suffocated when he was wrapped too tightly in blankets.
Lydia Schatz died after being spanked for several hours.
And Hana Grace-Rose Williams, of Sedro-Woolley, was left out in the cold, where she died naked, face down in the mud.
The deaths of the three children occurred in different parts of the country — North Carolina, California and Washington — but each allegedly happened at the hands of their parents, all of whom were charged with murder.
The parents had several things in common: They adopted children, home-schooled them and lashed them with quarter-inch-diameter plastic tubes. They also used the child-rearing teachings of a Tennessee evangelist, Michael Pearl, and his wife, Debi.
Noting:
The Pearls, however, issue a warning to parents: Never spank in anger. And they say many people have “misconstrued” their words.
Critics claim the couple’s advice amounts to a prescription for child abuse.
“It’s truly an evil book,” said Michael Ramsey, the district attorney for Butte County, Calif.
Michael Pearl is far from media ignorant: He noted in 2010:
You may have noticed No Greater Joy and Michael Pearl receiving a lot of negative press lately over advocating corporal discipline as part of a comprehensive child training program. Television reporters came out to the office. We were in newspapers from coast to coast. Even CBS, after running an uninformed criticism of us, offered to fly us to New York to answer their unfounded charges on The Morning Show. I was eager to answer, and readily agreed. Those of you on our email list were immediately informed and many of you prayed for the will of God to be done. CBS called for a pre-interview and then canceled the afternoon before the show. I think they discovered in the pre-interview that I was not the Bible-thumping caricature they had hoped. One news outlet reviewed our website and gave a very positive review, saying there was nothing in our material that would ever lead to child abuse. On the bright side, our sales skyrocketed this month. Even before this recent publicity, one out of every 75 Americans have been introduced to our ministry.
It’s free speech. The Pearls are breaking no laws. They cannot be held accountable of any children’s deaths. But anyone who reads their books and thinks hitting a child with a length of pipe a good idea is, in our opinion, a nutcase who has lost the plot. And if that’s not good enough for you to eschew the Pearls, then why not take God’s advice?
Posted: 21st, November 2013 | In: Books, Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
The Grande Collecte: Photographs Found On Killed Enemy Soldiers In World War 1
FACE of the day: Dominique Thuillier shows a postcard that her grandfather, Maurice Emile Day, found during WWI on the corpse of an enemy soldier he had just killed. Paris’ National Library is one of dozens of collection points across France that opened their doors from November 9 to 16 for the Grande Collecte. Donors were invited to tell the stories behind their mementos, which the library’s experts used to annotate the entries in the archive. Contributors watched as the library’s technical staff digitized their items before returning them to the donor.
Letter To Paul Gaugin From Vincent van Gogh
A LETTER to Paul Gaugin from Vincent van Gogh dated 17 October 1888:
* Eagerly anticipating Gauguin’s impending visit, van Gogh promised that en route from Pont-Aven to Arles his friend would see “miles and miles of countryside of different kinds with autumn splendors.” Van Gogh reported that a recent bout of eyestrain forced him to remain indoors and paint an interior “with a simplicity à la Seurat.” This painting was The Bedroom—sketched and vividly described here—in which he “had wished to express utter repose with all these very different tones.” Van Gogh expressed his desire to talk with Gauguin about this and other paintings, admitting that “I often don’t know what I’m doing, working almost like a sleepwalker.” Two months after Gauguin’s arrival, their fierce quarrels about art ended the painters’ intense friendship.
The Making Of The Mini: Factory Tour Film And Photos 1959 To 2013
THE new Mini has been launched. The latest BMW version of Sir Alec Issigonis’ classic is bigger than ever before. The original car built by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and its successors from 1959 until 2000 were manufactured at the Longbridge and Cowley plants in England.
Let’s compare then and now:
NOW:
The car is built at the BMW factory in Oxford.
The production line at the BMW Mini plant in Oxford.
THEN:
A view of the mini assembly lines in the new factory of Austin works in Longbridge, Birmingham. Date: 25/08/1959
Sir Leonard Lord, Chairman of the British Motor Corporation, at the Longbridge works in Birmingham as he gets into the driving seat of the BMC’s revolutionary new small car, announced today, as the Austin Seven and Morris Mini-Minor. Date: 25/08/1959
Sir Leonard Lord, chairman of the British Motor Corporation, inspects an exhibition of the Austin Seven and Morris Mini-Minor at Longbridge in Birmingham. Date: 25/08/1959
At its height the Longbridge plant closed in 1985.
Workers spray the body of a car on the assembly line at the British Motor Corporation’s Longbridge site in Birmingham, where the Austin Seven and Morris Mini-Minors are being produced. Date: 25/08/1959
The Austin Seven and Morris Mini-Minors are driven off the production line at the British Motor Corporation’s Longbridge site in Birmingham. Date: 25/08/1959
A promotional event for the Austin Seven and Morris Mini Minor. Five adults, one baby, two dogs and luggage were loaded into the small car at the British Motor Corporation’s Longbridge site in Birmingham. Date: 25/08/1959
Catholics For Fatima: Cardinal Says God Sent Illinois Tornado To Punish Homosexuals
ROBERT Richie is Executive Director of America Needs Fatima, a campaign of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP). He links to the website of America Needs Fatima:
America urgently needs the prophetic messages of Our Lady at Fatima. Above all, America needs a clear direction, a great purpose, and the means to achieve it. The admonitions, requests, and warnings of Mary Most Holy can rightly be called a heaven-sent survival manual…
To fulfill this desire in spreading our Lady’s message, America Needs Fatima has organized pro-life rallies, anti-blasphemy protests, the distribution of millions of fliers nationwide, a home visitation program enthroning statues of Our Lady of Fatima, and the promotion of books and devotional items. All seek to draw people closer to God and His Blessed Mother.
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Posted: 20th, November 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)
Jimmy Wales sets the lawyers on meat-puppets
Marketing meatpuppets must desist from editing Wikipedia or face legal action, lawyers acting for the parent company of Wikipedia said last night, banning anyone in the Wikipedia editing company Wiki-PR from editing Wikipedia in any way.
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Dukakis And The Tank: Never Put Your Candidate In A Hat
IN 1988. Democrat Michael Dukakis rode an M1A1 tank in 1988. He wanted to be President. He looked like a fool.
Vice President George H.W. Bush laughed his socks off. And his team went to work.
Roger Ailes, now at Fox News, ran Bush’s media team. The Boston Globe wrote on The Brains Of The Bush Offensive Strategist Roger Ailes Remade The Candidate:
The idea came to Roger Ailes in the middle of the night, an apt moment of inspiration for a media Prince of Darkness. Why not use footage from one of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis’ most maligned campaign photo opportunities in an advertisement for Vice President George Bush?
Thus, the most recent negative television commercial produced by the Bush campaign shows a helmeted Dukakis riding in a tank, looking like Snoopy, as Elizabeth Drew of the New Yorker put it. The ad ends with a tight shot of Dukakis, wearing the helmet and a silly grin, and the words: “Now he wants to be our commander in chief. America can’t afford that risk.”
Ailes laughs with pride when told the ad is brutal in its contempt for Dukakis.
He knew and his son knew, too:
Posted: 20th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, Politicians | Comment
Lee Rigby: Anti-Muslim Brigade Call For Death Penalty And Monoculture (Oh, The Irony)
AT the Old Bailey, Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, who are charged with the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, south-east London on May 22. They both stood in the dock. Adebolajo, of Romford, Essex, asked to be known as Mujaahid Abu Hamza. Adebowale, of south-east London, asked to be called Ismail Ibn Abdullah
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London Hipperdrome Wants Dwarf Doormen For New Tiny Entrance
ARE you an angry dwarf who enjoys to look down on people? If you answered ‘yes’ and ‘yes’, then the Hippodrome Casino in London wants you. The venue is looking for door dwarfs. An advert says:
“The Hippodrome is seeking to create a team of Britain’s smallest bouncers – Door Dwarfs – for its new entrance in Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square. Duties include door control and customer relations. We welcome applications from those under 4ft 10 inches.”
How big is the entrance? And is it that small to allow only true celebrtities to pass through, it being a fact that everyone on the telly is tiny?
Says Hippodrome Casino owner Simon Thomas: “We wanted to add some extra spectacle to Leicester Square. The Hippodrome is a building with a rich tradition of theatrical innovation with a history of dwarf acts appearing here. It fits perfectly with the way we do things here – differently, with a lot of fun involved, and we think they will be very effective on the door.”
Got to keep the wrong sort of dwarfs out some how.
And if look like a cross between Gordon Ramsay and an Ewok, so much the better.
Posted: 20th, November 2013 | In: Money, Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address In Photo
THE Gettysburg Address happened 150 years ago. On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made his speech at a dedication to the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, where thousands of Union soldiers were laid to rest. The Gettysburg battle saw federal forces fighting back a Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania.
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Posted: 19th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, Politicians | Comment
Martin Bashir Apologises For Inviting Men To Poo In Sarah Palin’s Mouth
MARTIN Bashir apologises for his comment on Sarah Palin. Bashir works for MSNBC. He’s not a journalist. He’s an opinion massager blessed with all the circumspection of a dog eyeing a lamppost. Bashjir said Palin has the “well-established reputation as a world class idiot”.
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Posted: 19th, November 2013 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
