I have decided to pull out a classic clip for a Friday afternoon as a bit of a welcome distraction to end the week.

This week - The Beatles and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

"Where are we? I dunno. Looks like the foothills. The foothills to the headlands......"

Classic! This version comes from the intense acid movie "Yellow Submarine". Would you believe our class was actually shown this movie at Primary School. I was under 10yrs old. Cant really remember exactly how old I was to be honest, but I do remember watching it. Weird. Who would show this to a bunch of young school kids these days????

There has been alot of talk in the media over the last couple of days in New Zealand regarding the topic of whaling as anti whaling activist Pete Bethune comes up for trial in Japan.
This has in turn raised an issue wherethere has been suggestion that perhaps we ought to consider a ban on hunting whales and dolphins as they really deserved to be given the same rights as humans based upon their intelligence.

OSLO (Reuters) - Whales and dolphins should get "human rights" to life and liberty because of mounting evidence of their intelligence, a group of conservationists and experts in philosophy, law and ethics said on Sunday.

This brings up a whole lot of questions about self determinisation and how we choose to equate intelligence with the right to exist happily without fear of death just for not being as worthy to life as someone else.

If we take this concept further then the same can be applied to humans cant it?

Mahatma Ghandi once said " the best way to measure the wealth of a country is by how it treats it's animals"

It pays to research products thoroughly before submitting massive claims like having an "unbreakable product" to the media for their thoughts........

This is just plain cool. A bear that rocks out some cool martial arts moves looking for ways to reduce boredom with a stick whilst sitting around all day in a Japanese zoo.
I dont really like the idea of zoo's but we always go to them whilst visiting a new place, so we can throw some positivity and love towards the animals and hope that they can feel our sympathy for their situation.

We are all in a zoo in reality anyway.........

I was doing some online research for a project today, and got a little sidetracked once I stumbled across some fascinating articles regarding the ability to survive for long periods on just one breath of air.

I was under the impression that anything over 4 or 5 minutes usually eventuated in a lack of oxygen to the brain and some serious long term problems unless there were extenuating circumstances. But over 17 minutes? What about over 20 minutes?
When I found this series of clips I was amazed.

It all started with the soty of the little boy that fell through some ice and was resuscitated after being under the freezing water for around 45 minutes. He recovered with no apparent issues, except perhaps a fear of ice skating.

Then there are those that do it for 'sport' and break records. There is a trick to it using pure oxygen beforehand but still, this has to be seen to be believed.

A hotel in Abu Dhabi has reveled the ultimate vending machine - a gold plated little number that dispenses pure gold. How cool is that!
If you are into gold this has to be the ultimate form of bling, carrying way too much cash on you, no problem, just stop by the hotel and change that instantly into pure gold.

The brand new concept was unveiled to the perfect market recently in a swanky hotal in Adu Dhabi, it seems that in these still unstable financial times there is a lot of certainty in gold, so investors are rapidly driving the price up.

Ashton Kutcher really is the master of the new online media empire.

He has got it totally sorted when it comes to using one form to direct traffic to another form to then sell you on something, whether it be a social cause or his latest movie.
ChatRoulette gained so much momentum when Ashton was attached to it early on, and here he is recycling that same situation to his advantage.

Ashton has a new project. It is a game using all forms of social media to win access to his 8 million followers.

Just a real quick entry as deadline beckons.....

Found this great TradeMe auction just now - an Invisible Ute .

This auction is much in the same vein as similar opportunistic auctions on Trade Me over the past couple of months. Remember the Ghosts in the jar, the Washing machine that was a portal into the time of the dinosaurs, the dude that sold his soul to Hell Pizza, and more recently the destiny church commitment ring circus.

All of these auctions show us one thing. There are still great ideas out there, and you can still make money out of them. Trade Me is a fantastic vehicle for guerilla marketing, and if you are clever about it you can get a great deal of publicity for free.

We always seem to be running out of storage space in our house. The kids seem to grow clothes. It is weird. Every time I turn around there is another new storage box full of clothes to deal with.

This email came my way and it was too awesome not to share.
Some of these interior design concepts on the clever multi-use of stairs are very inspiring.
In some ways I wish we had stairs so I could replace them with one of these very clever designs.

Maybe in the next house......

Hit the read more link to see the full set, and get to thinking how you can make clever use of space the next time you build or renovate.

I have just been sent a very interesting story which continues the whole archeology theme of the last blog.

According to New Zealand author Ross Wiseman in his 2001 book "New Zealand's Hidden Past" there was a settlement of people in New Zealand prior to the last major volcanic eruption of Lake Taupo in 18oAD.
These people were, by his reasonings, Phoenicians and they left behind carvings in rock which were discovered after a slip on Mt Tauhara (in Taupo) in the 1970's.

I personally have not seen these carvings, but I do know people that have, and during our time in Taupo a few years back the story was even published in tourist guides as a bit of a novelty. This is a very interesting development in a part of our history that I have been studying over the last 20 years.

Taupo features very heavily in all of this because of the volcanic lake that was once a mountain. Around 25,000 years ago (there is that magic date again) the mountain exploded resulting in a massive 800 cubic kilometres of pumice and ash ejected into the sky. The Oruanui eruption as it is called, probably occurred over a period of a few days or even weeks, with enough pumice expelled to bury the entire North Island by 10 metres.

A very interesting article was published on May 7th in the journal "Science" regarding the gene study on some 40,000 year old Neanderthal bones from Croatia. This information has been abuzz on the blogsphere over the last couple of days, and it deeply interests me, so it is time to throw my 5 cents worth into the mix.

There has been alot to read regarding this topic to give an informed opinion about this rather than just react to some article or another.
In some ways it effects us all greatly. Infact there are a couple of really key things to be gained from this article and related posts, that are seemingly quite unrelated.

The general thread of the article discusses findings resulting from a detailed analysis from a comprehensive genome study of the neanderthal bodyparts. By all accounts this is the first time that this has been done, and the results surprised the researchers.

"We can now say that, in all probability, there was gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans," said Richard Green of the University of California, Santa Cruz, one of the leaders of the research.

Gene flow is a nice way of putting it! Both species it appear did a little more than just tolerate each other whilst co-existing. But what all of this research doesn't answer is why did the Neanderthals suddenly die out about 25,000 years ago.

This is so cool for those of you out there that grew up with Tron........ now in 3D.
I for one will be going.... this will hopefully be a great advancement on the original because it was so reliant on the graphics, which of course are now soooo much better, oh and 3D

Say no more, just watch the clip. My ears hurt.

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. Pity the poor people that have to learn it as a second language. However, here we must use it everyday so why not get to grips with it's little quirks.....

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a  pig.......

Found another article about a major book recall by the publishers amidst allegations of plagiarism and copyright infringements due to some dodgy cutting and pasting from primarily the internet.

This is yet another NZ published book coming under fire and being recalled due to questions about origin of information. Hit the read more to read the entire article from the NZPA on the topic.

Publishing anything these days is made more complicated as there is so much access to so much information. This relates to all of us when it comes to publishing content on our websites, or our blogs. More and more websites are being pulled up for blatant copy and pasting and trying to suggest that the content was self generated.

This is the key, you can copy and paste to your hearts content as long as you give credit where credit is due, and publish your sources if you have indeed done some shortcut copy and pasting. Sometimes this is the quickest way to achieve an article, or even necessary to ascertain validity....

Here is a series of wee brain tests to end the week on.

By all accounts it pays to exercise your brain as well with simple strength work........

The first lot are all optical tests, and are all real tests. See how you do, and see how your mind can sometimes play tricks........