Noah and the Whale - Give it All Back

IT'S ONLY NOAH AND THE BLOODY BLOOMIN WHALE!!!


Noah and the Whale - Give it All Back

VIVA STEVE WRIGHT!!!

Found this page on t'tinterweb. Gold!

Steve Wright's one liners

10 Rites of Passage, from Listverse

Fascinating, surreal and sometimes painful - 10 rites of passage for children to become adults, from various places in the world.

10 Bizarre Rites of Passage

MORE Faces

3 newies that I thought were funny.

Pengu!ns - Warm Up

A song by Zak Starkey's new band. I think it's with his daughter. He is, of course, the son of Ringo Starr (real name Richard Starkey) and his first wife Maureen. It sounds like a really promising band. I heard a track called Hate Male too, but it's not on Youtube I don't think.

Pengu!ns - Warm Up

Oh! I just found a clip of Hate Male.

Hate Male

For the Clown

A poem I thought of about a cartoon type painting I'm doing.

For the clown

you see, it's hard

finding words

to fix a heart.

A haiku style poem by Francis Howell and a TuNe by LCD Soundsystem

Not at all related, but juxtaposition is the spice of life.

LCD Soundsystem - Yr City's a Sucker (London Session)

Cloud maps shift across

a windy sky, as unknown

countries ebb and flow.

By Francis Howell

It reminds me of looking through an aeroplane window. My favourite place to be - above the clouds!

Pumpkin Carving and Veggie Animals

I can't say how much I love these. I love all kinds of art and these are creative and beautifully made. The first link shows pumpkins carved by Ray Villafane and the second shows veggie and fruit animals. I'm not sure who by but they're very lovable like vintage toys. Not everything in the second link is great, but the ones that are are double-great.

http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2010/10/26/scary-halloween-pumpkin-carvings/

http://www.funzug.com/index.php/artwork/even-vegetables-can-be-interesting.html

Babies 'cry in mother's tongue'

I was sitting here at the school I work at, wondering what to do, when I suddenly thought "I wonder if the crying sounds of babies are different in different countries?". "I bet they are!" I thought. And I was right! Hooray for me! Here's an article from the BBC about some tests that a German scientist did.

I know that at some of the schools around here (language schools) mothers and fathers take their babies and the foreign teachers talk to the babies for about 45 minutes. And get paid. Super! I imagine it does help though, as crazy as it sounds.

Here's the link, but I'll copy and paste it any way.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8346058.stm

German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents' accents while still in the womb.

The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking French and German.

The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German babies' cries had a falling inflection. 

Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them. 

The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb. 

Cry melodies

It was already known that foetuses could memorise sounds from the outside world in the last three months of pregnancy and were particularly sensitive to the contour of the melody in both music and human voices. 

Earlier studies had shown that infants could match vowel sounds presented to them by adult speakers, but only from 12 weeks of age. 

Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the research, said: "The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their foetal life. 

"Contrary to orthodox interpretations, these data support the importance of human infants' crying for seeding language development." 

Dr Wermke's team recorded and analysed the cries of 60 healthy newborns when they were three to five days old. 

Their analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the infants' cry melodies that corresponded to their mother tongue. 

They say the babies need only well-co-ordinated respiratory-laryngeal systems to imitate melody contours and not the vocal control that develops later. 

Dr Wermke said: "Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding. 

"Because melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother's speech that newborns are able to imitate, this might explain why we found melody contour imitation at that early age." 

Debbie Mills, a reader in developmental cognitive neuroscience at Bangor University, said: "This is really interesting because it suggests that they are producing sounds they have heard in the womb and that means learning and that it is not an innate behaviour. 

"Many of the early infant behaviours are almost like reflexes that go away after the first month and then come back later in a different form. 

"It would be interesting to look at these babies after a month and see if their ability to follow the melodic contours of their language is still there."

Interesting!

Gorgeous!

Massive Attack vs Burial - Paradise Circus. Introduced by May Anne Hobbs from BBC Radio 1.