NewsInt Summer Event

Tim Minchin - 'e's a funny geezer

Tim Minchin, from Perth, Australia, is a funny geezer. Wiity, smart, piano-playing, ginger, irreverent, articulate. Not mainstream yet, but worthing checking out on Channel 4 (UK).

View partial source: Tim Minchin.com, Tim Minchin YouTube channel

Waldo in the woods

"The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine" Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), the transcendentalist preacher, philosopher and poet. Quote courtesy of my lunchtime smoked salmon bagel from Daily Bread ('By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen, Maker of Quality Sandwiches'), supplier of sandwiches to The Times (and other fine papers, I'm sure).

Moral of the story: never look too closely at your sandwich wrapper (or you'll end up looking at Linda McCartney's vegetarian food website, interrogating Dictionary.com and generally wasting your lunch hour), nor take a rain-sodden walk through woods (like Waldo did) or you'll end up dying of pneumonia (like Waldo did...).

Dictionary.com: Torpid - inactive, sluggish, slow, dull, apathetic or lethargic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: biography

Daily Bread: http://www.hain-celestial.co.uk/

IWOOT #7

A Virgin Media Freedom Netbook. It's Virgin Wireless-N compatible (plus Intel Atom processor, 10.2in screen, Windows XP, 1GB of RAM and 120GB HDD), as is the rest of our abode - enough said? Yes, please, I Want One Of Those, Santa.

Virgin Media has completed the rollout of its fibre optic broadband network. At the same time the operator has reduced the price to below £30 and announced its own branded laptop. Although the 50 Mbps speeds Virgin has deployed through DOCSIS 3 are half that found in continental European networks it is still the fastest such service in the UK. The Virgin network covers 12 million homes. From Sep 1 2009 the cost is being reduced to £28 when taken with a phoneline and £38 as a standalone product. Story here.

Quote...Unquote

'The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions' - Oliver Wendell Holmes(1809-94), the American author, physician and Unitarian Universalist.

'Rules are there to be broken' - NEJ (1954-)

Unitarianism affirms the unity of God (as opposed to the Trinity) and emphasises reason as a test for theological truth. Universalism proclaims universal salvation for all humans. Not to be confused with Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church ('the 'Moonies'). Too many 'U's...

'It's all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back' - the one and only Mick Jagger (1943-).

'Too far gone' - NEJ (1954-)

Lemon or lime in your G&T?

From the Daily Telegraph: Breathing in the aroma of the citrus fruit reduces stress because it contains a chemical compound that can physically calm and relax people, scientists have found ... Tests using linalool, a compound found in the smell of plants and fruits like lemon, showed it reversed the effects of stress on 109 different genes in the human body and also had a beneficial on the blood chemistry. When a person gets stressed, nervous or afraid, related genes go 'into overdrive’ and white blood cell count goes up ... The findings, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, believes the scent of lemons as well as lavender, mango and other fragrant plants, could make a real difference.

So, it's the lemon in the end-of-day gin and tonic that's good for the body and soul - but I prefer a nice lime to soothe the nerves after a stressful day at the office.

* The Perfect Cocktail from The Guardian

Second Ashes Test - lest we forget

Just in case we forget - England won the Second Ashes Test Match.

Tom Daley dives into record books

15-year-old Brit, Tom Daley, became Britain’s first diving world champion when he beat his Olympic rivals in the final round of the Swimming World Championships held in Rome. Something to celebrate (because Kevin Pietersen has been ruled out of the three remaining Ashes tests).

Fantastic Freddie Flintoff

England win second Test to go 1-0 up in The Ashes. Freddie struggled through his obvious knee injury to pick up a 'fivefor' (Katich, Hughes, Haddin, Hauritz, Siddle), his first at Lord's, finishing with figures of 27-4-92-5. It was the first Ashes win for England at Lord's in 75 years.

* Telegraph.co.uk: ...Herculean performance...

* Sydney Morning Herald: Beaten by the man on one knee

* Times Online: Flintoff brings Australia to their knees

'This will be remembered as Flintoff's match. He began it by announcing his retirement from Test cricket; he finished it by revealing, if we didn't already know, how much he will be missed.'

Operation Valkyrie - save the fatherland

Valkyrie (2008) - IMDB: 7.4/10 Link here.

Guardian review (2/5) here: 'Director Bryan Singer opts to frame Valkyrie as a high-concept wartime suspense thriller, inviting us to suspend our disbelief and go along for the ride...'

Difficult sometimes to take the likes of Bill Nighy and Eddie Izzard seriously as Nazi traitors in this blockbuster, but Tom Cruise's quiff and 'natty eye-patch', Ken Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp and Theo's Dad as Hitler (NYT: 'Hitler (David Bamber) doesn’t need spooky music or low camera angles to be villainous: he just has to show up') make it all an interesting way to pass a Sunday evening. Makes one want to know more about the real assassination plot of July 20, 1944 and Colonel von Stauffenberg - one of 15 attempts on Hitler's life.

The [newspapers'] online [revenue] model is broken...

Rupert ­Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation’s newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a ­”malfunctioning” business model.

Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an “epochal” debate over whether to charge. “That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal’s experience,” he said.

Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: “We’re absolutely looking at that.” Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin “within the next 12 months‚” adding: “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”

View partial source: MediaWeek, Paid Content & The Daily Beast

Doubt - Did he, didn't he?

Doubt - IMDB 7.8/10

An engaging tale of a courageous, distrusting nun (Meryl Streep) who confronts a possibly wayward Catholic priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Our ultimate doubts about her judgmental approach and rigid beliefs might leave you with similar self-questioning ... or not (after all, it's only Saturday-night entertainment). Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations all round, but no gongs. I 'enjoyed' the movie.

Partial source: NYT 'gratifying nunsense': 'Ms. Streep appears to be in a Gothic horror thriller while everyone else looks and sounds closer to life or at least dramatic realism'

Tuffers goes mental over The Ashes

140 characters

* Sun Valley: 'People will pay for "internet addictions" ': The Guardian
* Murdoch won't buy Twitter: Reuters
* The Grauniad's Twitter April Fool: The Grauniad
* Twitter blog

IWOOT #6 - CrunchPad

The CrunchPad protoype is hyped by the New York Times. An iPhone without the phone but with a useful screensize for web browsing... Yes, I would pay for a subscription to my favourite newspaper if they gave me one of these to read it on. But what would we use to make bedding for pets and wrapping up broken glasses?

View partial source (and more photos): TechCrunch