30 agosto 2005

  • WALKING across a bridge, I saw a man on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: “Stop. Don’t do it.”
“Why not?” he asked.

“Well, there’s so much to live for!”

“Like what?”

“Are you religious?”

He said: “Yes.”

I said: “Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?”

“Christian.”

“Me, too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?”

“Protestant.”

“Me, too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”

“Baptist.”

“Me, too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Church of the Lord?”

“Baptist Church of God.”

“Me, too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or Reformed Baptist Church of God?”

“Reformed Baptist Church of God.”

“Me, too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?”

He said: “Reformation of 1915.”

I said: “Die, heretic scum,” and pushed him off.

  • JESUS came upon a small crowd who had surrounded a young woman they believed to be an adulteress. They were preparing to stone her to death. Jesus said: “Whoever is without sin among you, let them cast the first stone.”
An old lady at the back of the crowd picked up a huge rock and lobbed it at the young woman, scoring a direct hit on her head. The young lady collapsed dead.

Jesus looked over towards the old lady and said: “Do you know, mother, sometimes you really p*** me off.”

In “The Laugh Judgment” competition, more than 4,000 people voted on 700 religious jokes sent in to the satirical Christian website ShipofFools. The ten funniest and ten most offensive will be performed today at the Greenbelt Christian arts festival at Cheltenham racecourse by the comic James Carey, a scriptwriter for radio comedy shows.

Some of the jokes were so offensive that they do not bear reproduction. One of the worst, a masturbation joke about Jesus, so upset the Church in Denmark, where it was first told, that religious leaders raised money to send the comic responsible to Israel to educate him. He gave the money to charity.

But this joke was voted only the second most offensive, by 69 per cent of respondents. The most offensive, voted for by 72 per cent, was about a paedophile priest who was preparing to assault a child who had just lost both parents in a seaside clifftop tragedy. The ten most offensive jokes were about Christianity.

The jokes voted the funniest were mainly about Christianity although other religions were mentioned in some. The joke voted the funniest by 65 per cent of respondents, about a suicidal Baptist Christian, was an illustration of the extremes of religious sectarianism.

Read all in Times Online

D. Quixote pelo Teatro del Finikito (Espanha), dia 17 de Setembro, Castelo de São Jorge



Uma aldeia inteira dedicada ao Turismo em Portugal







In launching a new paperback series on important writers titled How to Read... (e.g., How to Read Shakespeare), W.W. Norton is including How to Read Hitler, by British historian Neil Gregor.


[July 18, 2005] marked the 80th anniversary of the publication of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (My Struggle), the future Nazi leader's autobiography and manifesto.
(...)
Every year, American publishers flood stores with books about Nazism, driven by authors who can't stop writing them and consumers who can't stop reading them.
(...)
But no publisher chose to add a new edition of Mein Kampf.
(...)
Yet the smallest crack in the usual silence about the Nazi leader's own writing will take place in September.
In launching a new paperback series on important writers titled How to Read... (e.g., How to Read Shakespeare), W.W. Norton is including How to Read Hitler, by British historian Neil Gregor.
(...)
Hitler preferred the title Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice. His publisher, Max Amann, knew how to edit.
Mein Kampf took off after Hitler became Reich chancellor in 1933, selling 1.5 million copies in that year alone. By 1934, it became a textbook. Soon, newly married German couples were required to buy it. In the Third Reich's remaining 11 years, it became virtually obligatory in German homes, selling nearly nine million copies by 1945.
(...)

Hitler on propaganda, for instance, sounds like a modern American political consultant going off the record:

"The receptivity of the great mass is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."
(...)

Today, as the world confronts an ideological successor to Nazism - the "Spare No One" slaughter of innocents practiced by Islamic fascism - Mein Kampf continues to be snapped up in the same Muslim societies that supported Hitler in the 1940s.
(...)

Gregor's work misses that whole dimension, but provides a slight antidote to the more sympathetic reading of Mein Kampf by its Arabic translator, Luis al-Haj. He wrote in his preface: "National Socialism did not die with the death of its herald. Rather, its seeds multiplied under each star."

Read all on Philly.com


29 agosto 2005



The Napa-fication of La Rioja


HEADING east from Santo Domingo de la Calzada, south of Bilbao, the landscape of the Rioja is covered in grape vines. There are poppies in bloom, 14th- and 15th-century towns along the way, small tractors zipping through the fields, men in white shirts bent over, tending rows, and vines planted unevenly on every available patch of land. At a Cepsa gas station just outside Logroño, the region's capital, the convenience store is stocked - not with Twix bars and Diet Coke - but with vintage Rioja wines, baguettes, chorizo, cheeses and artichoke hearts. This is a place that takes its wine and food seriously.

The Rioja is known for its wines - the world-famous reds and, increasingly, its crisp, modern and oak-aged whites - and has had a long time to build its reputation. Grapes were introduced by the Romans, and export to France and Italy began in the 16th century. But now some ripples of change are spreading across this small autonomous region just below the northern coast of Spain. Native chefs who have been toiling in kitchens across Europe are coming home; established wineries (or bodegas, in Spanish) experiment with new technologies, while new ones are winning awards; and some distinctly progressive architects are leaving their mark among the countryside's many church steeples, ancient ruins, sudden cliffs and rolling valleys.

Next summer, the Marqués de Riscal, the 150-year-old winery in Elciego, will open what it calls a city of wine. The bodega has managed to redirect the street through the small town so it doesn't cut through its property anymore. And now the original stone buildings (dating back to 1860) surround a pedestrian area, above which hovers a stunning stone and titanium hotel by Frank Gehry, whose gleaming Guggenheim Museum transformed the industrial city of Bilbao.

Inspired by the vines growing all around, the building sprouts from the soil; three columns support the metal canopies that spread out like grape leaves at harvest time. The titanium of the canopies is tinted to symbolize the bodega: pink for red wine, gold for the wire netting around the bottle, and silver for the capsule. When it opens, the hotel will have 14 rooms in the main building and 29 more in an annex, a wine library, tasting rooms, a Caudalie Vinotherapie spa (where guests can literally soak in a vat of wine in the name of health), meeting rooms, a cooking school and two restaurants, one of which will be overseen by Francis Paniego, the young chef at El Portal in Ezcaray, who has won the first Michelin star in the region.

Guests will be able to wander around the ivy-covered complex to visit all aspects of the winery (which produces 4.5 million bottles in the Rioja every year), from the "cathedral" - an ancient subterranean vault that stores one of every bottle Marqués de Riscal has ever produced since the first in 1862 - to the vast modern fermentation hall, with its polished wood beams, huge stainless-steel tanks and imposing computer terminal that controls the process.

Though the region is small and easily covered in a few days by car, it's a good idea to enlist the help of a local guide, because a tour requires some planning. Roads are circuitous; the hours of operation at wineries, churches and museums can be sporadic (many places require appointments); some doors will open only when strings are pulled; and while you'll find some Riojans who can converse in a charmingly approximate English, the locals generally speak only Spanish.

A good place to start is Santo Domingo de la Calzada, a quiet town in the northwestern corner of the region; it was named for an 11th-century hermit who took part in building a bridge over the Oja River to help pilgrims on their way along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. (A tributary of the Ebro, the Rio Oja is the river from which the Rioja takes its name.) These days, Santo Domingo de la Calzada is full of agricultural workers, wine people and storks. There is a huge population of storks in the northern part of the Rioja, and their awkward prehistoric gait looks like some fantastic link to the age of the dinosaur.

About 12 miles north in Haro, popularly known as the capital of Rioja wine, there are more than 20 wineries clustered together in town, many of them (Muga, C.V.N.E, Martínez Lacuesta) open for tours and tastings. In their midst, there are two renegades. The chef Juan Nales has opened Las Duelas, a remarkably sleek blond, beige and steel restaurant across from a former monastery on Monseñor Florentino Rodriguez Square. He serves sophisticated dishes based on the culinary traditions of the region. "Believe me," said Mr. Nales, "to make a good and tasteful traditional dish is not so easy for many young chefs."

The food in the Rioja is hearty - morcilla (blood sausage) at breakfast, beef stew at night, fish and game in season, and plenty of recipes made with ham, chorizo, beans, artichokes, white asparagus and red peppers in between. At Las Duelas, Mr. Nales (who cooked at Akelarre in San Sebastian where Pedro Subijana has earned two Michelin stars) takes the same local ingredients, refines them and combines them into nueva Riojan dishes like roast pigeon with new peas and Iberian ham.

The other upstart in Haro is Bodegas Roda, a modern winery started in 1987 by Mario Rollant and Carmen Daurella, a couple of successful wine importers from Barcelona. "They wanted their own vineyard," said the manager, Gonzalo Lainez Gutierrez, as we stood among the vines, none less than 30 years old, that grow the local grape varieties tempranillo, garnacha and graciano. "And they didn't mind to spend money." Indeed, the pristine malo-lactic fermentation lounge (with a wall of windows, a catwalk and a climate that is controlled by radiant heat from the floor) looks a bit like a modern art gallery, except that it's filled with 1,000 barrels made of French oak.

The winery has already made itself known, with high marks from the wine critic Robert Parker for its 100 percent tempranillo, Cirsion, 2001; five stars from Decanter magazine for Roda I, 2001; and "best olive oil in Spain" from Gourmet magazine for its extra-virgin Dauro Emporda. A tour of Roda, by appointment, is a good lesson in contemporary winemaking and an interesting contrast to the more traditional practices at Marqués de Riscal. You also get to taste their outstanding reds, which are currently hard to find in the States.

En route east is the Bronze Age village of La Hoya. First occupied 3,400 years ago (archaeologists didn't begin to excavate until 1973), the settlement is a remarkable remnant, with houses arranged in blocks in the plain below the medieval city of Laguardia.

Perched high on a hill in the Rioja Alavesa, Laguardia was originally built as fortification against the Castilian aggression in the 12th century; its walls, towers and gates are still intact. Within the town, narrow streets are lined with little stalls and barn doors; strings of red peppers hang from the balconies of the houses above. Calle Paganos opens onto a lovely square by the bishop's tower. On one corner of the main square (Plaza Mayor) is La Vinoteca, a sister wine shop to the restaurant Marixa, just outside the Puerta San Juan, where excellent grilled meats are served in a dining room overlooking the lagoons, or salt lakes, that give way to the Sierra Cantabria mountains in the distance.

In the old section of Logroño - on the southern banks of the Ebro, where a big square is home to a Baroque cathedral, a 16th-century Parliament building that's still in use and cafes filled with townspeople drinking aperitifs - there are several narrow streets lined with bars serving tapas and smooth crianzas by the glass. La Gota de Vino at the top of Calle Traversia de Laurel is a cool new spot with white rubber chairs and a zinc bar where you can get a little bite of spinach with anchovy or a red pepper stuffed with meat and spicy tomato sauce.

Farther along is Bar Soriano, a small, skinny, more traditional place that specializes in mushrooms. The tapas to choose is the tiny tower of three champiñones, sautéed in garlic, topped with a grilled shrimp and pierced through by a toothpick. Keeping with tradition in Spanish bars, when you're finished, you just crumple up your napkin and throw it on the floor, an expanding sea of napkins, toothpicks and cigarette butts.

An hour's drive southwest, the landscape changes dramatically in Ezcaray, a modest skiing and hiking village at the foot of the Sierra de la Demanda mountain range. There are stone and wood porticoes around the main town square; a 15th-century Gothic church with a balcony over the entrance and bells that call the townsfolk to Mass at all kinds of unpredictable hours; and a blanket-maker, Hijos de Cecilio Valgañón, where you can buy the same cashmere shawls that are sold at Carolina Herrera and Loewe, only for a fraction of the price.

Across from the church sits Echaurren, an enchanted country inn, owned and run by a local family, that's housed in a 400-year-old former postal stop. While it has just 25 rooms, it has two restaurants.

One is the famous Echaurren, the main dining room overseen by the matriarch Marisa Sánchez, which serves traditional food, such as croquettes and artichokes with ham. On the other side of the shared stainless-steel kitchen is El Portal, the stylish new restaurant overseen by Francis Paniego. He studied cooking at school in France and has done apprenticeships at the Michelin three-star restaurants Arzak in San Sebastian and El Bulli in Rosas.

Mr. Paniego came home in 1994 with ideas about updating his mother's recipes and finally opened El Portal to show them off. On the strength of his pork snout on cabbage, with a cream of foie gras, and coffee couscous with a Coca Cola reduction (and other successful inventions), he won a Michelin star in November 2004 and, in turn, the top job at the new restaurant in the Gehry hotel at the Marqués de Riscal winery. His appointment is a perfect example of the mood in the region: focused on local resource and loyal to its traditions but, finally, with an eye to the future.

"I'm proud to be from the Rioja," said Mr. Paniego. "I consider it another ingredient in my food."


[From the NYT]

27 agosto 2005

The Nazi leaders' retreat is happy to welcome a new wave of visitors - tourists.

The unmarked path wanders from a small mountain road into a pine forest, and a pile of rubble covered with moss.

The remains of a wall, broken metal pipes and crumbling steps leading nowhere have an air of neglect and melancholy, as if trees crowding around them were trying to hide dark memories.



This is close to the truth: the ruins are of the inner sanctum of an alpine fortress where Adolf Hitler unleashed the dogs of war on Europe.

It was here in the Berghof, a Bavarian country house guarded by 2,000 SS commandos, that he argued with Chamberlain over Sudetenland, and ordered blitzkriegs against Poland and Czechoslovakia.

"Those were the best times of my life," he said later. "My great plans were forged there."

Like the Bavarian royal family and Viennese high society before him, Hitler had been drawn to the hamlet of Obersalzberg on Mount Kehlstein by the bracing air and spectacular vistas of 6,000 ft peaks above emerald green lakes.

From a gigantic window in his Berghof, he gazed across a valley to the Untersberg massif, a sheer wall of mountains that looms large in Teutonic myths.

According to one, the emperor Charlemagne lies sleeping beneath it with an army of heroes, awaiting a clarion call by ravens to rise and save the German people.

Hitler was deeply affected by the legend and remarked to Albert Speer, his architect and armaments minister: "Look at the Untersberg over there. It is not just by chance that I have my seat across from it."

On the morning of April 25, 1945, the skies above his mountain lair darkened and reverberated with a vengeful roar when 359 RAF Lancasters rained more than 1,000 tons of bombs on the residences of high-ranking Nazi Party of?cials, military barracks and security police headquarters.

Of?cial records said mist and snow on the ground made it dif?cult to identify targets, but the bombing "appeared to be accurate and effective".

For almost a decade Kehlstein had been the Holy Mountain of the Third Reich, drawing thousands of pilgrims to pay homage to their Führer. In less than an hour, the RAF transformed it into a Mountain of Doom.

Hitler was in Berlin, where he killed himself ?ve days later.

In 1952, army sappers blew up what was left of his Berghof. The former Nazi compound became a US army recreation centre, and it was only when the Americans left in 1995 that the Bavarian state government devised plans to bring tourists back to an area of outstanding natural beauty.

It was felt that the past had to be acknowledged, so the ruins of a VIP guest house were transformed into a "documentation centre" that chronicles wartime events at Obersalzberg and Nazi atrocities in Europe.

Curators had hoped for 30,000 visitors a year, and found the centre being inundated by four times as many. The next step came last March with the opening of a ?ve-star InterContinental hotel that boasts views of mountain summits from each of its 138 bedrooms.

What guests won't see are the villas next door once occupied by Martin Bormann and Hermann Goering, of which no trace remains, and the SS barracks, which became a sports ?eld.

But one building to survive the war is a star attraction - the Eagle's Nest. Perched on the summit of Kehlstein at more than 6,000 ft, it was intended for VIP receptions and presented to Hitler on his 50th birthday in 1939.

An impressive feat of civil engineering, it is reached by a switchback road from Obersalzberg that comes close to defying gravity, and then a brass-lined elevator that climbs more than 400 ft through the heart of the mountain.

Hitler rarely visited it because he suffered from claustrophobia and vertigo, but his lover, Eva Braun, often came up for tea. It was in a large room like a medieval banqueting hall, with marble ?oors beneath a ceiling of heavy oak beams, that she celebrated the wedding of her sister to an SS of?cer in 1944.

Now it is a popular restaurant serving beer and burgers to tourists who stroll outside in summer to sunbathe and admire panoramas of the Bavarian and Austrian alps.

There is no evidence of the building's Nazi past, but late in the season, when the crowds have gone and autumn mists swirl around the rocky promontory, it is easy to conjure images of a familiar ?gure in a military coat surveying the horizons of his short-lived Reich.

There are more graphic images in the documentation centre. Many of its visitors are German, from a generation that learned little of the war at school, and a dozen guest books are ?lled with comments of appreciation.

But it can be an emotional experience. Linda Pfnur, director of the centre, says: "We have tears. The history is so awful."

The most haunting part of the exhibition is below ground, a warren of tunnels and chambers that was a political and military command headquarters.

In a cavern that served as Martin Bormann's of?ce, a massive iron safe lies with a bazooka hole in its back. On a corridor wall, an unknown soldier of the French 2nd Armoured Division has etched the cross of Lorraine.

At the end of the corridor, a dank lift shaft disappears into the bowels of a mountain, like a scene from Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum.

Another building restored after the war offers a more homely welcome. The Hotel zum Türken in Berchtesgaden was appropriated by the SS when its owner was persuaded to sell after a three-week "taster" of life in Dachau.

It is now run by Frau Ingrid Scharfenberg, his granddaughter, as a family guest house for a regular clientele who enjoy the peace of the mountains and a cosy ambience reminiscent of the 1950s. She can't say for certain, but she thinks her guests have included the RAF crew who bombed the place in 1945.

In the old days, guests at the Hotel zum Türken included Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria, Johannes Brahms and the pianist Clara Schumann.

A few years later, the playwright Arthur Schnitzler visited Sigmund Freud in a nearby pension, where they discussed Gustav Mahler's marital woes.

It is hardly surprising they were drawn to this alpine retreat, barely 15 miles from the social whirl of Salzburg. At the foot of Kehlstein, the village of Berchtesgaden is back on the map as a base for roaming a pristine wilderness of lakes and mountains as magical as any in the Alps.

The most popular seasons are spring and summer, when walkers take to paths through forests and meadows carpeted with alpine roses and edelweiss.

I prefer winter, when the high valleys are silent under a deep mantle of snow and mists wreathe around icy peaks, like scenes from a fairy tale.

Berchtesgaden boasts a small ski resort, but with snowshoes and a mountain guide such as Thomas Huber, an old climbing pal of Chris Bonnington, it takes only minutes to leave the piste behind and enter a world of deep snow barely touched by man or beast.

Occasionally there are tracks of deer and hare, as well as a few back-country skiers seeking virgin slopes, but from a ridge overlooking the Konigstal, the Valley of Kings, the only sign of life was the distant speck of a golden eagle hovering above the crags.

All else was white and still, and our steps crunched through a frozen masterpiece of nature.

The jewel in this alpine crown is Königsee, a narrow stretch of emerald water enclosed by abrupt mountains that is the stuff of myths and romantic paintings.

In winter mists and low cloud, the landscape is a jumble of icy monsters dominated by the jagged pro?le of the Watzmann, at almost 9,000 ft the second highest peak in Germany. It takes its name - Cruel Man - from the legend of an oppressive king who was turned to stone by the gods, and it continues to live up to its reputation. Its fearsome east wall overlooking the lake attracts climbers, and so far 96 of them have died on it.

I admired it from a safe distance in one of the battery-powered launches that ply the lake to the small peninsula of St Bartholoma, where the red onion domes of a 17th-century church are mirrored in calm waters.

In the old days the boatmen used to ?re guns to demonstrate an echo in a particular part of the lake; now they play trumpet solos. The dogs of war are long gone from Berchtesgaden, and today the haunting notes of the Brautmelodie, a song for a bride, echo in peaceful mountains.

Bavarian flags have replaced the swastikas, but otherwise the great baronial hall is much as it was in the 1930s. The difference is outside, where a Hard Rock Café trades under a slogan in golden letters that would make Nazis turn in their graves: "Love All, Serve All".

Berchtesgaden basics

Getting there
A week's b & b in Berchtesgaden with ?ights from London to Munich and car hire costs £489, a week's half board from £669, through Dertour (0870 403 5442, www.dertour.co.uk). Prices on request for ?ight only from Stansted to Salzburg (15 miles from Berchtesgaden).

Where to stay
Berchtesgaden is the liveliest centre in the area. In Obersalzberg, the new InterContinental Hotel (0049 8652 976460, www.intercontinental.com) has rooms from £100 per person, and the Hotel zum Türken (0049 8652 2428, www.hotel-zum-tuerken.com) does b & b from £23 pp.

When to go
There are summer and winter attractions, but the Eagle's Nest is open from May to October only. Guided tours for £28 from Eagle's Nest Tours (0049 8652 64971, www.eagles-nest-tours.com).


From The Telegraph






Japonisme - 1872 (Philippe Burty) - "to designate a new field of study of artistic, historic and ethnographic borrowings from the arts of Japan.

«Vincent van Gogh, an avid collector and admirer of Japanese artists, would have felt a kinship with Hokusai (creator of the masterful "Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji") had he known how little money Hokusai made during his lifetime.»

Learn more on how van Gogh, Manet, Whistler et al were seduced by Japanese art in

The Allure of Japanese Art,

from The Washington Post


and know that

«The Origins of L'Art Nouveau is a catalogue raisonné of an exhibition that will open in Barcelona next month (Sept. 6 until Jan. 29, 2006).»

26 agosto 2005

And of course, this Scottish fold kitten so fofoooooooo:

Always adored this one, all the amazing animals involved :-)


Late, late, late posting, about The War of the Worlds:

The original script, as performed by Orson Welles, HERE

To download the programme itselfo, go HERE

Para conhecer A Grande Pedrada do Charco de José Matos Maia aos microfones da Rádio Renascença em 1958, visitem Os Clássicos da Rádio

23 agosto 2005

Thank you Penguin 70 years for sneaking up on me and letting me know
Roger McGough's The State of Poetry.
Who is this poet?

There are Fascists

There are
fascists
pretending
to be
humanitarians
like
cannibals
on a health kick
eating only
vegetarians.

Fame

The best thing
about being famous

is when you walk
down the street

and people turn round
to look at you

and bump into things.

italic

ONCE I LIVED IN CAPITALS
MY LIFE INTENSELY PHALLIC

but now i'm sadly lowercase
with the occasional italic


I also bought Antony Beevor's Christmas at Stalingrad (an excerpt from the opus), H. G. Wells's The Country of the Blind (old favourite), and W.G. Sebald's Young Austerlitz (another excerpt from the opus).



and do take the Penguin Quizzzzzz

22 agosto 2005

A NÃO PERDER:


até 30 de Setembro :-)

12 agosto 2005

When meat is not murder

It is the ultimate conundrum for vegetarians who think that meat is murder: a revolution in processed food that will see fresh meat grown from animal cells without a single cow, sheep or pig being killed.

Researchers have published details in a biotechnology journal describing a new technique which they hailed as the answer to the world's food shortage. Lumps of meat would be cultured in laboratory vats rather than carved from livestock reared on a farm.

Scientists have adapted the cutting-edge medical technique of tissue engineering, where individual cells are multiplied into whole tissues, and applied them to food production. "With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply," said Jason Matheny, an agricultural scientist at the University of Maryland.

According to researchers, meat grown in laboratories would be more environmentally friendly and could be tailored to be healthier than farm-reared meat by controlling its nutrient content and screening it for food-borne diseases.

Vegetarians might also be tempted because the cells needed to grow chunks of meat can be taken without harming the donor animal.

Experiments for Nasa, the US space agency, have already shown that morsels of edible fish can be grown in petri dishes, though no one has yet eaten the food.

Mr Matheny and his colleagues have taken the prospect of "cultured meat" a step further by working out how to produce it on an industrial scale. They envisage muscle cells growing on huge sheets that would be regularly stretched to exercise the cells as they grow. Once enough cells had grown, they would be scraped off and shaped into processed meat products such as chicken nuggets.

"If you didn't stretch them, you would be eating mush," said Mr Matheny.

The idea of doing away with traditional livestock and growing steaks from scratch dates back at least 70 years. In a horizon-scanning essay from 1932, Winston Churchill said: "Fifty years hence we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium."

Several decades too late, Churchill's vision finally looks set to become a reality.

Lab-raised steaks will be off the menu for some time though. Scientists believe that while tissue engineering is advanced enough to grow bland, homogeneous meat, tasty and textured cuts will have to wait.

"Right now, it would be possible to produce something like spam at an incredibly high cost, but the know-how to grow something that has structure, such as a steak, is a long way off," said Mr Matheny.

Kerry Bennett, of the Vegetarian Society, said: "This is certainly an interesting development, and one that is bound to prompt many different responses from individual vegetarians - largely depending on why those individuals have chosen vegetarianism.

"The Vegetarian Society is concerned that while this has the potential to decrease the number of meat-producing animals in factory farms, there are still a number of question marks regarding the origins of the cells and the method of harvesting.

"It won't appeal to someone who gave up meat because they think it's morally wrong to eat flesh or someone who doesn't want to eat anything unnatural," Ms Bennett added.

"Personally I wouldn't want to, but I suppose if they're going to make chicken nuggets with it, then it's probably not going to taste much different."

[from The Guardian]

08 agosto 2005

Mum was right. You will feel a whole lot better after a cuddle

Some turn to yoga or t'ai chi, others swear by red wine. No stone has been left unturned in the age-old pursuit of a long and healthy life. But now medical researchers have concluded that the secret of longevity may lie in nothing more outlandish than what comes naturally to mothers the world over.

A good old-fashioned cuddle, say the scientists, can reduce heart disease, cut down stress and promote longevity. The researchers even advise nervous public speakers to indulge in a bit of hugging before they go on stage to face their audience.

At the heart of it is a so-called "cuddle hormone", oxytocin, a chemical associated with a range of health benefits, which shows a marked increase in the blood supply after just 10 minutes of warm, supportive touching. The finding might explain why married couples enjoy better health than singletons.

Some studies have suggested that divorce, bereavement and social isolation damage health. But what it is about marriage that is protective, and the mechanisms involved, have been unclear.

However, the scientists also found that the quality of the hug is crucial - and, for example, the celebrity embrace performed in the glare of flashlights might not count. Instead the cuddle is at its strongest in a warm, supportive relationship.

Volunteer partners taking part in the experiment were first put into separate rooms. Their blood pressure and levels of oxytocin and cortisol, the stress hormone, were tested.

Then they were seated on a loveseat in a quiet room and told to sit close together, holding hands. They watched a five-minute segment of a romantic video, followed by two minutes talking about a time when they felt close as a couple. At the end of the session, partners stood for a half-minute hug.

"Our findings suggest that when the relationship is supportive and strong, time spent with the partner may be beneficial by reducing blood pressure and protecting against future heart disease," said the researchers, whose findings appear in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine this week. "These are the first findings in humans linking oxytocin to the strength of the partner relationship, and it was seen in both men and women.''
The latest research suggests that oxytocin is the chemical that gives marriage its beneficial effect. Its role is to calm and destress, and it is thought that touch triggers the body into producing the hormone. Touch stimulates production of oxytocin which, in turn, promotes a desire to touch and be touched.

In another study, the same researchers from the University of North Carolina told couples they would have to give speeches. Before they did so, 100 of the couples sat holding hands for a short time, then they embraced for 20 seconds. Another group of couples rested quietly and were separated from their partners. During their speeches, heart rates and blood pressure rose twice as high in the second group compared to the hand-holders.

Some turn to yoga or t'ai chi, others swear by red wine. No stone has been left unturned in the age-old pursuit of a long and healthy life. But now medical researchers have concluded that the secret of longevity may lie in nothing more outlandish than what comes naturally to mothers the world over.

A good old-fashioned cuddle, say the scientists, can reduce heart disease, cut down stress and promote longevity. The researchers even advise nervous public speakers to indulge in a bit of hugging before they go on stage to face their audience.

At the heart of it is a so-called "cuddle hormone", oxytocin, a chemical associated with a range of health benefits, which shows a marked increase in the blood supply after just 10 minutes of warm, supportive touching. The finding might explain why married couples enjoy better health than singletons.

Some studies have suggested that divorce, bereavement and social isolation damage health. But what it is about marriage that is protective, and the mechanisms involved, have been unclear.

However, the scientists also found that the quality of the hug is crucial - and, for example, the celebrity embrace performed in the glare of flashlights might not count. Instead the cuddle is at its strongest in a warm, supportive relationship.

Volunteer partners taking part in the experiment were first put into separate rooms. Their blood pressure and levels of oxytocin and cortisol, the stress hormone, were tested.

Then they were seated on a loveseat in a quiet room and told to sit close together, holding hands. They watched a five-minute segment of a romantic video, followed by two minutes talking about a time when they felt close as a couple. At the end of the session, partners stood for a half-minute hug.

"Our findings suggest that when the relationship is supportive and strong, time spent with the partner may be beneficial by reducing blood pressure and protecting against future heart disease," said the researchers, whose findings appear in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine this week. "These are the first findings in humans linking oxytocin to the strength of the partner relationship, and it was seen in both men and women.''

The latest research suggests that oxytocin is the chemical that gives marriage its beneficial effect. Its role is to calm and destress, and it is thought that touch triggers the body into producing the hormone. Touch stimulates production of oxytocin which, in turn, promotes a desire to touch and be touched.

In another study, the same researchers from the University of North Carolina told couples they would have to give speeches. Before they did so, 100 of the couples sat holding hands for a short time, then they embraced for 20 seconds. Another group of couples rested quietly and were separated from their partners. During their speeches, heart rates and blood pressure rose twice as high in the second group compared to the hand-holders.

07 agosto 2005



Ponte Hercílio Luz, Floripa, Brasil

¿Cuáles son las diez palabras más lindas, más hermosas, más bellas, más sonoras, más evocadoras del castellano o español?

Este sitio reúne las diez palabras elegidas por personas del mundo entero. ¿Cuáles son las suyas?

Azahar
Mar
Siesta
Tempestad
Albahaca
Resaca
Azumbre
Hiedra
Almohada
Brisa

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!"

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Animals in Translation

About one in every 500 people has autism, a condition characterised by severely impaired social and communication skills and by repetitive interests and activities. The author of this eye-opening book, Temple Grandin, believes that such people have an especially close affinity with animals and are better placed than others to empathise with animals and to understand their behaviour. Many experts ridicule such generalisations, but Grandin is utterly confident that she is right, and she speaks with authority: not only is she a professor of Animal Science but she is autistic.


Grandin deserves to be taken seriously since she has unequivocally demonstrated her special understanding of animals. Hard-nosed accountants in the fast-food industry pay her considerable sums to advise them on how best to treat the cattle in their slaughterhouses. By dramatically improving the conditions in abattoirs, often through insightful but inexpensive changes to conventional practices, she may well have done more for animal welfare than anyone else in recent history.

In Animals in Translation, Grandin explains why she believes autistic people have so much common with animals. The answer lies in their brains: "Autistic people's frontal lobes almost never work as normal people's do, so our brain function ends up being somewhere between human and animal," she writes. The frontal lobes, in the front of the skull, are the parts of the brain involved in planning, organisation, speech and voluntary motor movements.

Whereas most humans are good at viewing the "big picture" of their surroundings, autistic people, Grandin believes, tend to be much more sensitive to the details. This hypersensitivity led her to notice things that have evidently been traumatising animals for centuries in human-imposed environments but that other experts had missed. Her checklist of 18 "tiny details that scare farm animals" includes sparkling reflections in puddles, hissing and high pitched-noises, moving pieces of plastic and even a piece of clothing hanging on a fence.

Grandin has improved the lives of millions of animals by removing these irritants. Churlish critics, however, point out that Grandin has done much of her most effective and lucrative work in slaughterhouses, where her employers send animals to an early death. This is undoubtedly true, but the animals would die whether or not Grandin were involved, so anything she does is surely a bonus.

Her book gives many fascinating examples of how human beings mistreat animals through a lack of understanding and empathy rather than through unkindness. She explains, for example, why collies are getting less intelligent. The answer is that breeders like these dogs to have a thin nose and so selectively breed collies with the narrowest skulls, leading to a distortion of their brains and to a lessening of their intelligence. The result is that the breed once symbolised by Lassie is now, in Grandin's rather cruel description, a bunch of "brainless ice picks".

In another case, a farmer noticed that many of his roosters had unaccountably formed a gang of rapists. When Grandin looked closely at their surroundings, she saw that the problem was that there was not nearly enough room for the chickens to practise their instinctive mating ritual, leading the male to take the short-cut to have his way. When the farmer gave his chickens more space, the rapes ceased.

Animals in Translation is full of such examples, sufficient to convince us that Grandin indeed has special insights into the way animals think, feel and behave. This is a strange book - a cross between a memoir, a layperson's guide to autism and a how-to guide to animal welfare. Though readable and intriguing, it is 50 pages too long and burdened with too much pseudo-scientific hokum.

Nevertheless, we have much to learn from this real-life Dr Dolittle. After reading Grandin's book I could not help thinking that Rex Harrison should have played Dolittle in the 1967 Hollywood film as an autistic uncle. Or perhaps it would have been better to cast Dustin Hoffman in the role, in his "Rain Man" persona?

[From The Telegraph]

Why Truman Dropped the Bomb

The sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima seems to be shaping up as a subdued affair--though not for any lack of significance. A survey of news editors in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, first among the top one hundred stories of the twentieth century. And any thoughtful list of controversies in American history would place it near the top again. It was not always so. In 1945, an overwhelming majority of Americans regarded as a matter of course that the United States had used atomic bombs to end the Pacific war. They further believed that those bombs had actually ended the war and saved countless lives. This set of beliefs is now sometimes labeled by academic historians the "traditionalist" view. One unkindly dubbed it the "patriotic orthodoxy."

But in the 1960s, what were previously modest and scattered challenges of the decision to use the bombs began to crystallize into a rival canon. The challengers were branded "revisionists," but this is inapt. Any historian who gains possession of significant new evidence has a duty to revise his appreciation of the relevant events. These challengers are better termed critics.

[Read on at The Weekly Standard]

06 agosto 2005






"Y la luz brilla en las tinieblas, pero las tinieblas no la han acogido"
(Juan, 1, 5)

"And the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it"
(John, 1, 5)