Freedom of speach but not of music

In 1940 Igor Stravinsky re-orchestrated 'The Star Spangled Banner' for the Boston Symphony. Someone alerted the Boston police, who arrived at Symphony Hall, confiscated the instrumental parts to the Stravinsky orchestration and arrested Stravinsky for 'tampering with public property.

Igor Stravinsky

The Hunch back of Notre Dame, fact or fiction?

New evidence suggests that the iconic character of Quasimodo was not entirely the brainchild of Victor Hugo, author of the famed 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame).

Historians recently found references to a "hunchback sculptor" working at the cathedral in British sculptor Henry Sibson's memoirs, now in the Tate Archive. From The Telegraph:

In one entry, he writes:

"the French government had given orders for the repairing of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and it was now in progress ... I applied at the Government studios, where they were executing the large figures for Notre Dame and here I met with a Mons. Trajan, a most worthy, fatherly and amiable man as ever existed – he was the carver under the Government sculptor whose name I forget as I had no intercourse (no this does not mean sex) with him, all that I know is that he was humpbacked and he did not like to mix with carvers."

In a later entry, Sibson writes about working with the same group of sculptors on another project outside Paris, where he again mentions the reclusive government sculptor, this time recalling his name as "Mon. Le Bossu". Le Bossu is French for "the hunchback".

He writes: "Mon Le Bossu (the Hunchback) a nickname given to him and I scarcely ever heard any other. "

William Dieterle's 1939 version of the Hunch back

See its out to get us one by one

The Akansha Food Products unit in Lucknow, India has claimed its 6th victim.
A worker slipped into a 6 foot vat of Tomato Ketchup. The woman was unable to swin to the top so five other workers jumped in to save her, these workers were overcome by the fumes and also died. Two workers are still critical in hospital.

Moral of this story is donteat Tomato Ketchup as you are killing innocent people.

A little geek history

The idea for a laptop was first developed in the late '60s, Alan Kay of Xerox then wrote about coming up with a 'personal, portable information manipulator' in a 1972 paper, calling it the 'Dynabook'.

Alan is credited for conceiving the idea of a portable computer in 1968, when computers still weighed over 100 pounds and ate punch cards.

His concept was a very thin, highly dynamic device that weighed no more than 2 pounds, which would be an ideal tool for children to learn programming and science. Alan’s Dynabook was never made, but characteristics of his concept can be seen in the mobile computers we have today.

Steve Jobs (mr apple) took a tour of Xerox PARC in 1979, and some say that his visit is still unfolding with the release of the iPad, which resembles Alan Kay’s description of the Dynabook.

Steve Jobs this month personally mailed an iPad to Alan, who praised Apple’s tablet as “fantastically good” for drawing, painting and typing.

The first commercially available portable computer was the IBM 5100. The first flip laptop appeared in 1982 and was the GRiD Compass 1100, which was used by NASA scientists and cost $8,150.




IBM 5100



GRiD Compass 1100

Thank you Mr Alan Kay

Light speed!

Light doesn’t always travel at ‘the speed of light’ (299,792,458 metres per second). It only travels at that speed when travelling through a vacuum; when it passes through matter, it slows down. The slowest light has ever been recorded moving at is a 38mph, while passing through an ultracold gas of sodium atoms.

So if you have been down the M1 you van say you have travelled travled faster than light!

Twins!

Twins are always born at about the same time.

But the world record for the longest gap between one twin being born and its sibling emerging is held by American Peggy Lynn, who gave birth to twins on November 11 1995, and February 2 1996 - an incredible 84 days apart.

I have been away for a week so a small catch up

According to MBT a shoe company, flip-flops 'injure 200,000 people a year'.


The injuries range from trips and falls, joint pain and other conditions linked to long-term use, and it costs the NHS £40m a year! Yes these innocuous looking pieces of cheap, flimsy plastic are death traps in disguise.