Peace on Earth

Video: Click on title above for link to our family Christmas greetings. Merry Christmas :)

Beards are back

(Source: The Guardian) For years, beards were shorthand for sandal-wearing hippies of a certain age. But no more! It's time to throw away your razor, writes hairy-chinned Charlie Porter

Post Modernism is the new Black

(Source: The Economist) Fascinating article on how modern retail was influenced by the Post Modernists.

The Cult of Genghis Khan

(Source: The Economist) This article shows how Genghis Khan's exploits have been re-written to become more palatable from a marketing perspective, and the growng issues between Mongolia and China over land and economic dominance.

So many lucky men, restless in the midst of abundance

(Source: The Economist) A rambling, but interesting article on economics - "the dismal science" and happiness at work. Read this with a glass of wine in hand... :)

Ponsonby

Leys Institute Community Centre and Library

Eclectic Parnell street

Painting by Michael Smither

One of my favourite NZ artists: "Rocks with Mountain"

http://outofsight.co.nz/Taranaki/michael.htm

'Breakfast at Tiffany's' dress fetches £410,000

(Source: Radio NZ) A black dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film [[Breakfast at Tiffany's]] sold for £410,000 in London on Tuesday. With a premium paid to auctioneers Christie's included, the total cost for the sleeveless, floor-length Givenchy dress rose to £467,200. It was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder in a long and tense session.

Shot of New Zealand from Space Station

Image shows bottom on North Island and top of South Island - hey, Chris and Lisa - can almost see your place :) (Hanmer Springs - for those who don't know).

Subliminal Messages Drive the Mind to Distraction

(Source: Scientific American) What you don't "see" may distract you anyway.

TROUBLE FOCUSING? Could be subliminal messages playing with your mind. A new study shows that images people don't even realize they're seeing can break their concentration. A new study shows that subconscious signals interfere with concentration, causing people to become easily distracted and falter on even the simplest of tasks. When people concentrate, they focus on the task at hand and filter out information irrelevant to what they are doing. A new report, however, published in this week's Science, says that sometimes unrelated info slips through, even if it is not consciously processed.

Ebola virus epidemic killing gorillas

(Source: Scientific American)
GORILLAS and many chimpanzees in the Republic of Congo have recently been targeted by the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus, which kills 80 percent of its victims. In parts of the Republic of Congo in equatorial Africa, nearly all the gorillas are gone. Since 2001 gorilla and chimpanzee remains have showed up near and in the Lossi Sanctuary, close to the Gabon border. Just what was killing these great apes was unclear. Now researchers finger the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus as the culprit.

Against the tide of chic climate change gloom

(Source: NZ Herald) Deborah Coddington's alternate view on global warming and the Stern Report.

Interesting Movie House Ceiling

Shot of the Day

Ponsonby shop:

Robert Fisk: Who's running Lebanon?

(Source: The Independent) Devastated by Israel's bombs, threatened by the looming might of Iran and Syria, and divided from within by its own ethnic bloodletting - Lebanon is an unfolding tragedy with little hope of salvation. As the nation rushes headlong towards civil war, Robert Fisk, who has lived in Beirut for 30 years, picks through the city's wreckage to identify the agitators, military leaders and politicians who now wield the real power.

Shot of the Day

Lisa

A coffee table shot

Office Xmas Party Shot

The theme was Scouts and Guides Jamboree - our team was the Tartan Firestarters

- call me Che McGuevara :)

Shot of the Day

Dude on the bus

Video: Christmas in the Park

Couple of 100,000 people watched this show in the Domain Sat night. We perched at our mates' apartment close by to stay out of the rain and people-watch. Fireworks were fairly impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcMlox_3pRg

Monsoon intensity increasing with Global Warming

(Source: Scientific American) The monsoon is the great life-giver and the great destroyer of the subcontinent. Without rain from these annual storms, crops wither, animals die and more than half the world's population suffers from potential famine. With too much rain, crops are inundated, animals drown and people suffer from floods and the diseases that follow in their wake. Observations of this critical climate system stretch back decades, and the overall level of rainfall has changed little over the years. But now researchers have discovered a trend within the annual measurements toward fewer, more extreme downpours--a trend that bodes ill for flooding and other natural disasters.

Ancient Meteorites from Outer Solar System May Have Provided Raw Materials for Life

(Source: Scientific American) Meteorites rich in carbon and water fall to Earth once or twice every few decades. But when a truck-size meteorite crashed on frozen Tagish Lake in western Canada in 2000, researchers received a specimen speckled with stardust that promised to offer clues about the chemistry of our early solar system.

Global Warming Could Disrupt GPS Satellites, Study Says

(Source: National Geographic) A buildup of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere could require changes in the way satellites are launched and might impact the function of global positioning systems (GPS), an international team of atmospheric scientists suggests. Networks of orbiting GPS satellites send signals back to Earth that allow everything from jetfighters to cell phones to pinpoint their exact locations.

Global Warming Already Causing Extinctions, Scientists Say

(Source: National Geographic) No matter where they look, scientists are finding that global warming is already killing species—and at a much faster rate than had originally been predicted.
"What surprises me most is that it has happened so soon," said biologist Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas, Austin, lead author of a new study of global warming's effects.Parmesan and most other scientists hadn't expected to see species extinctions from global warming until 2020.

"Alchemy" used to create great violins

(Source: National Geographic) A fascinating snippet on how tests have revealed how Antonio Stradivari made some of the great violins.