I really don't get how Romania and Iceland got chosen.
- Anika
It's irritating. The 50% jury vote in the semis is supposed to offset bloc voting but all it's done is weight the balance in favour of bland entries. Romania were last, which helps, and weird, which helps. Iceland wasn't thrilling, but it was okay; I can see how it got through.
- Mark H
10 minutes until the first semi final. As usual, I've not checked out the performers in advance; it's far more fun to be surprised and horrified in equal measure as it's performed live on television and the web.
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
Hostess for the evening apparently wearing a dress fashioned from aluminium foil.
- Mark H
Austria first. Very 1980s look. Song is pretty unmemorable which is some achievement as it's still going.
- Mark H
Birgit from Estonia now and a singer five months pregnant just to be different. Wearing a shower curtain just to be super different. Good to see it not being sung in English. White outfit and wind machine already looks to be the theme of tonight's performances.
- Mark H
Hannah representing Slovenia now. I like the futuristic, quasi-military, quasi-avian uniform she's gone for. Quote from wife: "she's winning the shoe contest." Song's typically European disco. Not sure if I like it or not.
- Mark H
Croatia. Men! Traditional dress! A song that translates as "misery!" Could be awesome.
- Mark H
Not bad. Good harmonies. Pleasant sound, cracking-looking coats.
- Mark H
A favourite to win now with Denmark's Emily de Forest.
- Mark H
Hey! It's a white outfit and the wind machine's blowing!
- Mark H
Oh, it started already? I've been catching the videos on the site, but I'm not dazzled by anyone this year.
- Anika
First semi tonight; second on Thursday; final on Saturday. I've avoided all the videos this year as I don't think they tend to do the live performances much justice.
- Mark H
Wait. Russia is considered part of Europe?
- Anika
Dina Garipova for Russia now. As the commentators here just said: she has a certain Kardashianesque look to her but she can't be one as she has talent.
- Mark H
Yes, Russia's in Europe. All the cool countries are.
- Mark H
Pffft. Also, is it just me or does it seem like more of the contestants are singing in English nowadays? Most of the videos I watched the past few months we in English.
- Anika
I'm not a fan of English songs in Eurovision either but it all started when the post-competition race to make money took over.
- Mark H
WHOA. Is Zlata tiny or what that a giant dude?
- Anika
Ukraine entrant there being delivered on stage by a giant; he's 8 ft tall. And she's wearing white. No obvious wind machine presence but the fog machine is active.
- Mark H
She has a Celine Dion quality to her. I'm not a fan.
- Anika
Her set is pretty though. I like the bird lights, there. I also like that's not in a dress. It's so rare to see women in pants during this event.
- Anika
Yes, not a winner - or even close - but I quite liked it.
- Mark H
About as different to the last song as is possible.
- Mark H
Rapping astronauts. Now this is what Eurovision is about.
- Mark H
I still think they need to work on their flow. Their music is good though. It always makes me want to dance. They need to dump the lady though or use her sparingly.
- Anika
She looks like she's wearing an early prototype of Google Glass.
- Anika
Loved it. Apparently it's very big in the Balkans too.
- Mark H
No joy for Montenegro; the 50% jury vote would have ruled them out before this started most likely.
- Mark H
They still haven't annouced it on the web. Meaning there's a 20 second delay online. Maybe I'll try to find it on TV.
- Anika
All the former Soviet countries qualified; none of the former Yugoslavia ones. Shame.
- Mark H
Someone on Twitter mentioned that saying that Eastern Europe should have their own contest. I still can't believe Belgium ranked, though. Didn't people *see* that?
- Anika
"The three astronauts on board the International Space Station are getting a sneak peak of the latest Star Trek film just before people around the world get a chance to see it in theaters themselves."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"Anyone else" and "people around the world" being phrases that mean "Americans". Just got back from watching it; very enjoyable and Benedict Cumberbatch is twice as excellent as you imagine he might be.
- Mark H
"A new grammar and spelling test arrives in primary schools in England this week. It is the first time in a while that such emphasis has been put on grammar. Some of the questions will seem straightforward for many adults, such as where to place a comma or a colon in a sentence. But other aspects - identifying different types of adverbs or distinguishing between subordinating and co-ordinating connectives - might raise eyebrows."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"So where do you draw the line between pedantry and slovenliness? Mount says the split infinitive is perfectly acceptable. "To boldly go, sounds better than to go boldly," he argues. The word "whom" sounds archaic so there's no need to worry about who and whom, he says. But anything that damages meaning and clarity should be avoided. For instance, the apostrophe should be defended at all costs, he says."
- Mark H
"They may not be around any longer but their posters remain in perpetuity for us all to admire. TWA, once the glamour-pusses of the airline world, were flying here, there and everywhere and their ad campaigns weren’t afraid to show it either. Even the posters advertising their cargo routes rocked."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"Perfect as a wine accessory for home or travel, the elegant wand, made with Swarovski crystals, uses natural frequencies to aerate wine in minutes rather than hours. Tested and appreciated by Sommeliers, this breakthrough collection creates the ultimate experience for wine aficionado and connoisseur alike."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
And via http://shop.philipstein.co.uk/Wine-Wa... - "The elegant wand with encapsulated glass jewels uses natural frequencies to perfectly aerate wine. [...] Philip Stein® is the leader in mind-body wellness using natural frequency-based technologies in luxury products. The Wine Wand has been created to accelerate the aerating process of wine by replicating the natural...
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- Mark H
"You know who mucked up the economy, don’t you? It’s obvious from the laws proposed in the Queen’s Speech. It’s immigrants who don’t have their papers in order, that’s who. It was Somali refugees, popping out from their hostel to the local council to say: “Yesterday, on the way home from the Jobcentre, I whiled away the afternoon by speculating on the American loans market. So this week, as well as my £24 social security, I need a £20bn bailout as I seem to have lost the lot. And a £3m bonus, otherwise I’ll leave the country.”"
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"Then there’s the £90bn a year lost through tax avoidance schemes, most of which is down to Polish strawberry-pickers. It’s about £8m a strawberry they’re paid, and then they put it all in special accounts in the Cayman Islands and we don’t get a penny. No wonder Ukip is becoming so popular. And of all those cockle-pickers who brought the banking system to its knees – not one has voluntarily given back their knighthood."
- Mark H
"Janhunen (Finnish Meteorological Institute) is the developer of the electric sail concept soon to be tested by the ESTCube-1 satellite, which launched last night aboard a Vega rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. [...] The ESTCube-1 satellite, the work of Estonian students testing out Janhunen’s ideas, uses a long wire that maintains a steady electric potential as its means of interacting with the solar wind. [...] ESTCube-1’s tether is a 50 micrometer wide, 10 meter long wire made out of four strands of aluminum that will gradually be deployed from the satellite in a process that could take as much as a week. Once deployed, the tether will be charged and variations in the satellite’s rotation rate will, if all goes well, reveal the interactions between it and atmospheric ions. But future electric sails will soon be deploying longer wires."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"Assuming the concept passes its initial muster, we can look forward to upsized missions using tethers up to 20 kilometers long, deploying as many as a hundred of these from a single spacecraft. This is the design that, in computer simulations, yields potential speeds of 100 kilometers per second, fast enough to get a payload into the nearby interstellar medium in about fifteen years....
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- Mark H
"Watchers of the Prenda Law saga have been waiting for United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II to issue an order in the wake of his apocalyptic hearing on proposed sanctions against Prenda Law, its putative client entities, and its lawyers. During that wait, doubt has set in. Could Judge Wright's order, after all this drama, possibly live up to expectations? Could any dry memorandum capture the jaw-dropping antics that have come before?"
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"This afternoon Judge Wright issued an annihilating, hull-breaching order against Prenda Law, its principals, and its plaintiff entities. How does a federal judge assure that an already-dramatic situation is even more popcorn-worthy for an internet obsessed with it? He starts it with a Wrath of Khan quote: 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.' From there, the Star Trek...
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- Mark H
"It’s the thousand papercuts that really hurt. You start to notice friends drifting away. Every conversation you have is about some new medication you’re on. You don’t get invited out anymore because people just assume you’re too sick to go out. You stop feeling like a person and start feeling like a disease or a disability. It’s not any one person’s fault, and I very much doubt they have malicious intent. The most common thing I hear is, “I just don’t know how to talk to you anymore.” Just because I’m disabled doesn’t mean I’m not a person! What did we talk about before I was Officially A Disabled Person?"
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"The last known rhinoceroses in Mozambique have been wiped out by poachers apparently working in cahoots with the game rangers responsible for protecting them, it has emerged."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"The 15 threatened animals were shot dead for their horns last month in the Mozambican part of Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which also covers South Africa and Zimbabwe. They were thought to be the last of an estimated 300 that roamed through the special conservation area when it was established as "the world's greatest animal kingdom" in a treaty signed by the three countries' then...
more...
- Mark H
"Conservationists say the poorly-paid rangers were vulnerable to corruption by organised poaching gangs, who target rhinoceroses for their horns which are prized in Asia for their reputed aphrodisiac and cancer-curing properties. The trade in rhino horn has seen the numbers of rhino killed spiral in recent years. Over the border in Kruger, the South African part of the transfrontier...
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- Mark H
"Earlier today, the Pew Forum has released a survey of Muslims in 39 countries. The report is titled The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society and provides a fascinating look into the complex ways Muslims are negotiating the modern world. [...] What does the new report says? Well, a lot of focus will be on opinions on sharia, opinions on women's rights, and extremism etc. I will also have later posts on that. But let me focus here on the question on human evolution."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"Interestingly, most Muslims around the world (median 53%) agree with the statement that humans and other living things have evolved over time. There is a large variation amongst countries, with Muslims in Kazakhstan (79%) and Lebanon (78%) having the highest levels of evolution acceptance and Iraq (27%) and Afghanistan (26%) having the lowest rates."
- Mark H
It's odd that the Roman Catholic Church has recognized Darwinian evolution for the past 60 years, yet only 58% of US Catholics believe.
- Ken Morley
It would be interesting to see how much truck those Catholics have with evangelical Protestants. I grew up in a strict Catholic household but one that had no doubts about evolution as science. When the anti-choice movement geared up in the Reagan era, alliances were made between Catholics and sects they wouldn't normally hang out much with (when talking religion, anyway). I wonder how much of this stems from that.
- Spidra Webster
"From March 7 – April 7, I documented everything blatantly sexist anyone has said to me. None of these comments were provoked, none of them were replies to something I said, none of them were at all out of the ordinary and the vast majority of them (an original count of 77 images) have been taken out so that this post isn’t as long as it probably should be. This is a 10-picture indication of what it’s like to be a woman who endorses game culture, every single month."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
Is the model of the pimply male living in his mom's basement still the standard template for idiots like this or has this rot spilled over into mainstream culture? I ask because I fear that it's the latter. This is disgusting.
- MoTO #TeamMonique
well, this is the sort of thing that may end up happening in that yammer site
- Halil
At least from my vantage, this is part of the mainstream culture - and women are generally expected to ignore it, or at the very least, not make a big fuss since that makes other people feel bad. I've seen this crop up all sorts of places, though it seems to have been given a free pass in certain arenas more than others.
- Jennifer Dittrich
Are you saying these comments come from people following you via the internet?...not from anyone you work for or with? If that's the case you are wasting your time complaining about it----you will never cure or reform all the assorted low lifes and raised under rocks assholes out in the world population...just hit the delete button and ignore them----these types have always been around...
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- American
"Like that, what would become infamous as the Battle of the Overpass was on. Forty of Bennett’s men charged the union organizers. Kilpatrick called out a warning, but the security men pounced, beating the union leaders while reporters and clergy looked on. Kilpatrick and the other photographers began snapping away. Reporters accompanying them took notes on what they were seeing."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"Reuther was kicked, stomped, lifted into the air, thrown to the ground repeatedly, and tossed down two flights of stairs. Frankensteen, a 30-year-old, hulking former football player, go it worse because he tried to fight back. Bennett’s men swarmed him, pulled his jacket over his head and beat him senseless. “It was the worst licking I’ve ever taken,” he later told reporters. “They...
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- Mark H
"I continue to have a soft spot in my heart (and head) for the 1980 Crown International comedy Galaxina. I honestly don't know why, except that it's part of the post-Star Wars space opera boom, and that, as awful as it is, I can't help but enjoy the damned thing. Anyway, here's a selection of Galaxina lobby cards that showcase the film's more interesting visuals, including Chris Walas' alien "rockbiter," the funky spaceship miniatures... and the admittedly stellar Dorothy Stratten as the titular android."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
"Fundamentally, tap water across the UK is highly regulated and among the safest in Europe. But that doesn't necessarily cover taste. The reason why tap water tastes different is a heady mix of geography, science and subjectivity. [...] So most water [...] will contain certain ions, such as calcium and magnesium, even if it's just a trace amount. These minerals are the main ones that define whether water is hard or soft, and they play a role in the taste."
- Mark H
from Bookmarklet
soft water = cheaper, when it comes to soaps. I can't remember what tea tasted like in Wales, I just remembered taking forever to wash away the soap.
- Halil