In other news... (April)

Taken from Bruce

From time to time I bump into news items that I would like to comment on without elaborating at length, making it plainly not worthy of its own post. So I will just list them up, here are the items that caught my attention during the past week:

Neanderthals at discount price!

Maybe for in the living room?
Photo by Belga

The Gallo-Roman Museum in Tongeren, Belgium, has twenty replicas from Neanderthal Men for sale. They are lifelike statues used in a traveling exhibition. Now that the exhibition is over, the museum does not know what to do with them and hopes to recover 25% of the purchase price (being between 7000 and 12000 euros a piece).

Article in Dutch (VRT)

Brainscan during meditation

Taken from BBC

Neuroscientist Zoran Josipovic (New York University) has been placing Tibetan Buddhist monks into a brain scanner to better understand the ancient practice of meditation. Data collected could also give more insight in improving understanding of autism or Alzheimer's.

Article (BBC)

Heart Sutra:

Schild en vriend!

Not a news article, just a curiosity: shibboleth, which Wikipedia explains as follows, "any distinguishing practice that is indicative of one's social or regional origin. It usually refers to features of language, and particularly to a word whose pronunciation identifies its speaker as being a member or not a member of a particular group".

As a Fleming, a well known example is "schild en vriend" which was used prior to the 'Guldensporenslag' (1302) to identify the Frenchmen staying in the city of Bruges.
Today I learned that the Frisians have "Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries", used during a Frisian rebellion (1515-1523).

Found through a BBC-article.

The show must go on!

I must have been about 12 years old when my tutor of "Music Education" played a recording of Bohemian Rhapsody as part of the class. It was probably my first contact with rock music and I have been a fan ever since. I am still grateful to that teacher, so if you are listening, Mr. Whatshisname, "thank you, seriously".

40 years of Queen!

Bang Bang

Taken from Ballyfermot

Bang Bang (real name Thomas Dudley) was an eccentric elderly gentleman in Dublin in the 1950s and 1960s who achieved fame as a character of Dublin City. He carried an old church key, which he used as a 'gun' and would shoot at people passing by (hence his nickname). Dubliners enjoyed his good natured antics, used to participate in his games, sometimes 'returning fire' by pretending they had a gun in their hands and shouting "bang bang" back at him, or by falling down 'dead' on the city streets. "Bang Bang" died in 1981 but is remembered by some of the older Dubliners. [Source]

Seems to me he was an interesting fellow.

Links:

• Flickr
• JSTOR
• Dublin City Public Libraries
• Wikipedia

"Remember when we used to play?"