Yummy Wakame

I’ve long heard stories of how Chinese families, with a government-imposed limit to how many children they are allowed to bear, would kill their newborn daughters in hopes of having another shot and bearing a son, who could then continue the family name. Now, I can’t be sure of whether or not that is true, but this report in Wired Magazine has China’s gender ratio all askew, with 15 million more males than females between the ages of 5 and 20.

Can you imagine having to compete against 14,999,999 other guys to get that last remaining girl?

I found this article in the B2B showguide:

Be very afraid

If mankind has just four emotions - happiness, sadness anger and fear - serial entrepreneur and burgeoning TV star Simon Woodroffe knows which one inhibits and engenders success. Fear.

Not that Simon is afraid of much. Charming, confident, polite, sensitive to the feelings of others, the founder of the YO! brand of companies is a happy proponent of the power of fear. While most of us go to any lengths to avoid anything painful or frightening, successful people, by contrast, embrace fear to create their own destiny. If you want to be a success, you’d be advised to set up a business that’s outside your comfort zone and stay there for a while. Simon says: “It’s like dropping a pebble in water. Your comfort zone gets bigger.” more…

Google, the other Supreme Being who’s name begins with “Go”, is making the Internet even more free.

I’ve recently created this glossy brochure site for Worldwide Sales & Marketing!
It sports an interactive Flash world map which is incredibly easy to use, but it nearly made my brain bleed.

“Adopt a wild animal for yourself or a friend, and help the WWF safeguard the future of these species and tackle some of the biggest conservation challenges facing our world today.

Our six animals are all real wild animals - located in a project area funded or run by WWF, not a sanctuary or zoo.

Adopt any of these animals from as little as £2.50 a month and we’ll send you a Welcome Pack, containing: a certificate, a print of your animal, facts about the species, a greetings card, tips on a ‘greener’ lifestyle, WWF screensavers, and a soft toy. You’ll also receive quarterly updates.”

Thanks pp!

News24: Nobel Prize-winning author JM Coetzee has likened controversial new anti-terrorism laws proposed by Australia’s government to apartheid-era human rights abuses in his native South Africa, The Australian newspaper reported on Monday.

Coetzee, who moved to Australia in 2002, “launched a thinly veiled attack” on the legislation due to go to parliament next week during a public reading at the National Library in Canberra on Sunday, the newspaper said.

Preparing to read from his 1980 anti-apartheid novel Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee said South African security police in the 1970s could arrest and detain people without explanation “and do what they wanted” with them “because special provisions of the legislation indemnified them in advance. All of this, and much more during apartheid in South Africa, was done in the name of the fight against terror,” said the 2003 Nobel laureate.

While Coetzee was not quoted specifically referring to Australia, his description of apartheid-era laws echoed details of the new anti-terrorism legislation being put forward by Prime Minister John Howard. The draft laws would expand police powers to arrest and hold suspects preventively and in secret, imposing penalties on reporters or members of the suspects’ families who publicise their situation. If the suspect was aged between 16 and 18, only one parent would be informed of the reason for his detention and they could be jailed for up to five years if they tell the other parent why the minor had been arrested. more…

“A spectacular 10 cm (4″) long male G. goliatus (wild collected in Cameroon). This beetle weighs 42 grams, and is a perfect example of what makes this species so sought after by beetle breeding hobbyists!”

via enschede a/zee

National Geographic: (photo) Live and dead dogs and cats are being used as shark bait by amateur fishers on the French-controlled island of Réunion, according to animal-welfare organizations and local authorities.

The small volcanic island off Africa’s east coast is bursting with stray dogs - upward of 150,000, says Reha Hutin, president of the Paris-based Fondation 30 Millions d’Amis. The foundation plans to finance a sterilization program on the island to reduce the stray overpopulation. But the job won’t be easy. Hutin said many locals view the strays as vermin. “There’s no value to the life of a dog there,” she said.

Fabienne Jouve of GRAAL said, “Lately, almost every week, one dog has been found with hooks on the island, not counting the cats found on the beaches partially eaten by the sharks. Once fishers capture the animals, the dogs and cats are hooked the day before, so they can bleed sufficiently.” Some escape before being tossed into the ocean. Others aren’t so lucky. After hooks are plunged into their paws and/or snouts, the animals are attached to inflatable tubes with fishing line and dumped into the ocean, Clicanoo, the newspaper, reports. To avoid detection fishers place their bait in the middle of the night, according to the newspaper account. In the morning the men return to see if a shark has been caught.

:@(

After spending at least an hour choosing the right one for me, I bought my first Tarot card deck today - the beautifully illustrated “TAROT of the Old Path”, absolutely packed with symbolic imagery. and I’ve just found a wonderful online course to learn how to properly use and read them:

LearnTarot.com - its a free online course, and you can use any deck, although its recommended you start out with the Rider-Waite Tarot, probably the most popular tarot, and it’s easy for beginners.

I desperately wanted the Buckland Romani Tarot but they have been out of print for two years.

Maybe somebody knows where I can find it second-hand for not too much?

An enormous pink bunny has been erected on an Italian mountainside of the Colletto Fava mountain in northern Italy’s Piedmont region where it will stay till 2025.

Wanna see more pictures?

The Viennese art group Gelatin designed the giant soft toy and say it was “knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool”. They also say: more…

Ooh look - another yummy-wakame!

Aardman Animations produced a series of short films in stop motion animation for the UK’s Channel 4 that matched audio recordings from real life interviews - like ordinary British housewives talking about their lives, children at the zoo etc - to absurd animated scenarios. The results are hilarious.

I found this Creature Comforts clip on Atom Films that’s really worth watching! And here’s the official Creature Comforts website with even more trailers!

Aardman Animations is a British stop motion animation studio founded by Peter Lord and David Sproxton in 1972. Nick Park joined Aardman in 1986, bringing his creations Wallace and Gromit with him. The company is based in Bristol and is the centre of a sizeable animation and film special effects industry in the City.

Lord and Sproxton went on to create the character of Morph for the children’s art programme Tony Hart, who went on to have a series of his own. That was one of my all time favourite TV shows.
Did you know Morph is on DVD? Yep!
The Morf Files - All 13 episodes / 121mins It’s only £5!!!

Aardman produced their first feature-length film, Chicken Run, in 2000.

Most or all of the props and scenery used in Aardman productions since 1972 were destroyed in a warehouse fire just a few days ago. The models and sets used for Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit were undamaged, as they were on display at a different location. The same case applies to the master copies of finished prints of the company’s work. The original models of Wallace and Gromit were spared however, as they were with Nick Park on his publicity tour at the time. The rocket from a Grand Day Out was also spared as it was on display at the company’s studio at the time.

Photograph by Xilia Faye

Wow. This guy is absolutely useless at breaking up!

Spinning Girl says:
It really bothers me when people, especially women, apologize for no reason. For example, yesterday I was at the gym and I sat down on a bench to take off my sneakers, and the woman next to me said. “oh, I’m sorry.” I looked at her and said, “for what?” and she said, “for taking up so much room.” She wasn’t; only the amount of room that her rearend covered, which was average-sized.

I started noticing a few years ago how often women do this, and it pisses me off.

My standard answer has become, “for what? Don’t apologize!” Maybe I can change the world, one woman at a time. But I doubt it.

Women apologize for taking up space. Even the way they – we – sit is apologetic, arms & legs folded to as small a shape as possible. I notice that men, when they sit, sit with their legs apart & take up as much space as possible. Without apology… read the rest

The water game will enlighten you.

So I log into internet banking today to see the damage, and this is my balance. It’s obvious who is to blame for this mess just 3 weeks before I leave, and I hold him fully responsible. My people will be invoicing his people forthwith.

Nathan, get that pencil from behind your ear and start sharpening! You’re on stabbing duty.

I’ve gone on about it a few times here on yummy, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to make sure that when you’re shelling out a lot of dough for a new website that its built with longevity in mind. More and more handhelds and mobile phones are able to connect to the web and its so important that your site is completely accessible by any device that can connect to the web (even if it’s WAP2).

If your site is build with CSS (cascading stylesheets) instead of tables, you can define a look and feel not only for screen, but a completely different one for your website printouts, overhead projector, Braille, handhelds, the list goes on. Yummy Wakame has two stylesheets for font size, two stylesheets defined for screen, one of which is plain and simple if that’s your preference, a print stylesheet and now a very simple handheld stylesheet. Most handheld devices are really basic so I’ll keep it plain for now.

So you’re a web designer or you’re a client about to have your site built. What do you need to know about website longevity? more…

I have been known to kick and scream to get what I want.

But sometimes it would be nice to just have it handed to me instead.

~ ClickNathan, quote of the day

A Malaysian politician has announced a lullaby competition for women to sing their husbands to sleep.

The politician in question, Nik Aziz, says the Kelantan state government will hold the contest to encourage wives “to give their best in taking care of their husbands”. He said: “The husband returns home tired. The wife will sing the lullaby for him to sleep soundly and, when he awakes, he will be at peace. This contributes to the happiness of the husband and wife.”

Aziz added that there would be a similar contest for mothers to sing lullabies for their children.

Well I don’t know if you’re aware but today is the day Saddam Hussein finally gets his day in court. Its about time really, considering he’s been held for 2 years!! In any case the trial is likely to be adjourned for weeks, perhaps into next year, after Saddam and his co-defendants make an initial appearance.

Saddam Hussein could face a death sentence if the Iraqi tribunal convicts him at the end of his trial. Amnesty International said yesterday it has sent three delegates to Baghdad to ensure that the trial of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is fair and that it is opposed to applying the death penalty if he is convicted.

Whatever your feelings are on Saddam, do you really think its possible for him and his top aides to get a fair trial? The tribunal was set up in December 2003 by the US-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The parliament elected in January 2005 is due to legitimize the court and rename it the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court. There is already controversy over the legality of this special tribunal which may undermine the legitimacy of any trial outcome. Also the evidence against him was not protected after the US-led invasion and a lot of it has been compromised. For example, mass graves were dug up with heavy equipment by relatives desperate to find remains of their loved ones, and key documents went missing in the chaotic days after Saddam’s fall.

Wow this film is just amazing!!! It had me itching and bouncing in my chair. Haven’t you always wanted to do this?

Yay! I feel so happy!