Post something you've learnt today

[Diamond Dog]

DD: "Can't be arsed"
It was just some drunken grumbling.

I did thank that maybe...

[hippopotamus]

After getting through a rough rota the last month, and running on about 2 hours of sleep in the last 30... I'm celebrating a week off by singing through every musical soundtrack I own, and reading a wodehouse book... I wanted to look up the wikipedia entry on Musicals...
"In the 1910s, the team of P. G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, following in the footsteps of Gilbert and Sullivan, created the "Princess Theatre shows" ...""These shows built and polished the mold from which almost all later major musical comedies evolved."

I had no idea (except now I remember reading that P G Wodehouse got a telegram on his 70's birthday from Richard Rogers (of Rogers and Hart and Rogers and Hammerstein) that he owed his entire career (or something) to him.

I love it when my worlds come together.

[Geezee]

Lars Ulrich has just done a summer programme on Swedish radio - sort of like Desert Islands - and I'd never put 2 and 2 together that his father is the famous (in Scandinavia at least) tennis player Torben Ulrich, and that Lars moved to California to become a professional tennis player himself. His father seems really absolutely too cool for school - on top of being one of the best tennis players of his age, he was deeply involved in the 60s jazz scene in Denmark (which was very happening). Lars's godfather is Dexter Gordon.

The programme is in English for anyone interested - Lars himself comes across awkward as usual. He describe's Cliff Burton's death as the biggest setback of their careers.

[Fonz]

Lars Ulrich has just done a summer programme on Swedish radio - sort of like Desert Islands - and I'd never put 2 and 2 together that his father is the famous (in Scandinavia at least) tennis player Torben Ulrich, and that Lars moved to California to become a professional tennis player himself. His father seems really absolutely too cool for school - on top of being one of the best tennis players of his age, he was deeply involved in the 60s jazz scene in Denmark (which was very happening). Lars's godfather is Dexter Gordon.

The programme is in English for anyone interested - Lars himself comes across awkward as usual. He describe's Cliff Burton's death as the biggest setback of their careers.

Lars 'awkward'? He usually comes across as a motormouthed overconfident type, surely. I think he's mellowed a bit in recent years though. Less to prove, maybe.

[Geezee]

Lars Ulrich has just done a summer programme on Swedish radio - sort of like Desert Islands - and I'd never put 2 and 2 together that his father is the famous (in Scandinavia at least) tennis player Torben Ulrich, and that Lars moved to California to become a professional tennis player himself. His father seems really absolutely too cool for school - on top of being one of the best tennis players of his age, he was deeply involved in the 60s jazz scene in Denmark (which was very happening). Lars's godfather is Dexter Gordon.

The programme is in English for anyone interested - Lars himself comes across awkward as usual. He describe's Cliff Burton's death as the biggest setback of their careers.

Lars 'awkward'? He usually comes across as a motormouthed overconfident type, surely. I think he's mellowed a bit in recent years though. Less to prove, maybe.

Yes, I couldn't think of a better word. I've just generally found that the way he describes things, the words he chooses, are not appropriate - and I'm not always sure it's what he actually means (perhaps down to motormouthedness, perhaps the foreign language, but also what seems to be an instinctive defensiveness). Describing the death of Burton as a "setback" is a case in point.

[Snarfyguy]

In the 1990s, [] Kenya passed Israel to become Europe’s biggest provider of cut flowers, which now exceed coffee as its main source of export income.

A flower, like a human, is two-thirds water. The amount of water a typical floral exporter therefore ships to Europe each year equals the annual needs of a town of 20,000 people. During droughts, flower factories with production quotas stick siphons into Lake Naivasha, a papyrus-lined, freshwater bird and hippo sanctuary just downstream from the Aberdares. Along with water, they suck up entire generations of fish eggs. What trickles back whiffs of the chemical trade-off that keeps the bloom on a rose flawless all the way to Paris.

Lake Naivasha, however, doesn’t look quite so alluring... The rotting tissues of hippo carcasses reveal the secret to perfect bouquets: DDT and, 40 times more toxic, Dieldrin—pesticides banned in countries whose markets have made Kenya the world’s number-one rose exporter.

http://www.worldwithoutus.com/about_book.html

[Charlie O.]

That none of the four dictionary.com definitions for "voluptuous" refer to, or even imply a reference to, the largesse of a woman's bosom... which is the context in which I have most often heard the word.

[Fonz]

In the 1990s, [] Kenya passed Israel to become Europe’s biggest provider of cut flowers, which now exceed coffee as its main source of export income.

A flower, like a human, is two-thirds water. The amount of water a typical floral exporter therefore ships to Europe each year equals the annual needs of a town of 20,000 people. During droughts, flower factories with production quotas stick siphons into Lake Naivasha, a papyrus-lined, freshwater bird and hippo sanctuary just downstream from the Aberdares. Along with water, they suck up entire generations of fish eggs. What trickles back whiffs of the chemical trade-off that keeps the bloom on a rose flawless all the way to Paris.

Lake Naivasha, however, doesn’t look quite so alluring... The rotting tissues of hippo carcasses reveal the secret to perfect bouquets: DDT and, 40 times more toxic, Dieldrin—pesticides banned in countries whose markets have made Kenya the world’s number-one rose exporter.

http://www.worldwithoutus.com/about_book.html

That's grim. I assumed all our flowers came from Holland because all the big flower lorries seem like they're Dutch.

[KeithPratt]

"Neorxnawang" is a word in the English language.

Old English.

It's the Anglo-Saxon for the translation of "paradise".

Similarly, the actual word "paradise" actually comes from the Persian, which was used to describe huge reserves of game created by the Kings.

[Deebank]

"Neorxnawang" is a word in the English language.

Old English.

It's the Anglo-Saxon for the translation of "paradise".

Similarly, the actual word "paradise" actually comes from the Persian, which was used to describe huge reserves of game created by the Kings.

I thought it was a similar root to garden?
Not too dissimilar from game reserve I suppose.

[Snarfyguy]

Los Angeles County had more Republican voters in 2012 than all of Mississippi.

http://thebaffler.com/blog/beverly-hill ... gy-johnson

[clive gash]

Facepacks, just wow. I'm gleaming.

[Geezee]

Until today, on the anniversary, I had never heard of the Aberfan disaster. What an awful, awful event.
I'm a bit surprised I hadn't heard of it, doesn't seem to have been discussed much in media, which itself is a scandal - or perhaps I have just missed or been ignorant of the coverage.

[Rayge]

Until today, on the anniversary, I had never heard of the Aberfan disaster. What an awful, awful event. .

It happened just after I had started at University. I had been billeted sharing a room with a guy called Roger, who had grown up in Abercanaid, the next village up the valley from Aberfan: his little brother knew many of the kids who died. It was seen as an appalling event at the time, dominating the news for the latter half of that year. I'm not sure why the anniversary is so little marked.

[Geezee]

Until today, on the anniversary, I had never heard of the Aberfan disaster. What an awful, awful event. .

It happened just after I had started at University. I had been billeted sharing a room with a guy called Roger, who had grown up in Abercanaid, the next village up the valley from Aberfan: his little brother knew many of the kids who died. It was seen as an appalling event at the time, dominating the news for the latter half of that year. I'm not sure why the anniversary is so little marked.

Well this anniversary seems to be covered in quite a lot of detail, which is normal as it's the 50th anniversary, but yes I don't recall it before at all.

I'm sickened by it.

[Diamond Dog]

Some self confessed Bowie fans actually have little or no understanding of the man and his music whatsoever.

[clive gash]

Fact.

[Diamond Dog]

Or maybe



Or even

[naughty boy]

60 years today since the start of the Hungarian Uprising.

Flags flying all over the city with a hole cut out of the middle. I've only just found out this was flown in '56 by revolutionaries who'd cut the Commie red star out.

[Fonz]

Send my regards to Budapest!

We'll be back one day. Nice folks.