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Suddihirat will get a new driver's license....
From THE NATION, Bangkok, Thailand June 30, 2007
The Constitution Drafting Assembly (CDA) yesterday voted to include a clause to recognise homosexuals and transsexual individuals and assure they would "enjoy equal rights", however it rejected making Buddhism the official state religion.
Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.
The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.
At least five females of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis silvestris lybica accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village. And from these five matriarchs all the world’s 600 million house cats are descended. ....
From the New York Times Movie Review
The moral of “Ratatouille” is delivered by a critic: a gaunt, unsmiling fellow named Anton Ego who composes his acidic notices in a coffin-shaped room and who speaks in the parched baritone of Peter O’Toole. “Not everyone can be a great artist,” Mr. Ego muses. “But a great artist can come from anywhere.”
Quite so. Written and directed by Brad Bird and displaying the usual meticulousness associated with the Pixar brand, “Ratatouille” is a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. It provides the kind of deep, transporting pleasure, at once simple and sophisticated, that movies at their best have always promised.
Hitchens Book Debunking
The Deity Is Surprise Hit
Summer beach-reading season is just beginning, and already several books have broken out from the pack, such as Walter Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein, and Conn and Hal Iggulden's "The Dangerous Book for Boys."
But the biggest surprise is a blazing attack on God and religion that is flying off bookshelves, even in the Bible Belt. "
: How Religion Poisons Everything," by Christopher Hitchens, wasn't expected to be a blockbuster. Its publisher, Twelve, a fledgling imprint owned by France's Lagardère SCA, initially printed a modest 40,000 copies. Today, seven weeks after the book went on sale, there are 296,000 copies in print. Demand has been so strong that booksellers and wholesalers were unable to get copies a short time after it hit stores, creating what the publishing industry calls a "dark week." One experienced publishing veteran suggests that Mr. Hitchens will likely earn more than $1 million on this book. .....
And can he turn a phrase!: "monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents."
Mystery solved: Mars had large oceans
Warping of Martian rock has hidden clear evidence of oceans
Since 1991, planetary scientists have floated the idea that Mars once harbored vast oceans that covered roughly one-third of the planet. Two long shore-like lips of rock in the planet's northern hemisphere were thought to be the best evidence, but experts argued that they were too "hilly" to describe the smooth edges of ancient oceans.
The view just changed dramatically with a surprisingly simple breakthrough.
The once-flat shorelines were disfigured by a massive toppling over of the planet, scientists announced today. The warping of the Martian rock has hidden clear evidence of the oceans, which in any case have been gone for at least 2 billion years.
"This really confirms that there was an ocean on Mars," said Mark Richards, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and co-author of the study, which is detailed in the June 14 issue of the journal Nature.
Twin shores
Two major shorelines exist on Mars, each thousands of miles long — one remaining from the older Arabia Ocean, and another from the younger Deuteronilus Ocean, said study co-author Taylor Perron of UC Berkeley.
"The Arabia would have contained two to three times the volume of water than in the ice that covers Antarctica," Perron told SPACE.com.
Somewhere along the way to toppling over 50 degrees to the north, Mars probably lost some of its water, leaving the Deuteronilus Ocean's shoreline exposed. "The volume of water was too large to simply evaporate into space, so we think there is still some subterranean reservoirs on Mars," Perron said.
The remaining sea would have been located in the same lowland plain as the Arabia Ocean, but almost 40 degrees to the north. ....
STREET HABITS DIE HARD
Chiang Rai, Thailand- 06 June 2007
Drug sniffer dogs sacked from airport duty, sent back to the farm after behaving badly
Old habits die hard, for two dogs, Mok and Lai. Bad behaviour picked up on the street changed the fortunes of Mok and Lai, who were demoted from a prestigious job at Chiang Rai airport.Their skills in handling drug cases had earned much praise, but they could no longer serve police because they could not leave their street habits behind, police said.
Mok, eight, and Lai, six, were welcomed by Chiang Rai police when the pair, local breeds, were sent to help them at the northern international airport. Authorities needed well-trained sniffer dogs to prevent any attempts by passengers to smuggle illegal drugs into the country.
Mok and Lai became favourites. They obeyed the rules and did not make any serious mistakes. They made small errors, though _ and that was enough to get them barred.
''He liked to pee on luggage while searching for drugs inside,'' said Mok's former buddy Pol L/C Jakapop Kamhom.
''He also liked to hold on to women's legs,'' he added.
Scientists find 24 species in Suriname
PARAMARIBO Suriname - A frog with fluorescent purple markings and 12 kinds of dung beetles were among two dozen new species discovered in the remote plateaus of eastern Suriname, scientists said Monday.
Scientists discovered the species during a 2005 expedition led by the U.S.-based nonprofit Conservation International in rainforests and swamps about 80 miles southeast of Paramaribo, the capital of the South American country, organization spokesman Tom Cohen said.
Among the species found were the atelopus frog, which has distinctive purple markings; six types of fish. . .
So why was this old man dancing around his computer at two o'clock in the morning? I had just discovered "MANELE". a type of Romanian music that had caused a neuronal explosion and resulted in my spontaneous, and joyful physical movement in the middle of the night. It had all begun quite innocently when I was searching for some Romanian music on YouTube. I noticed that many of the Romanian videos contained the word 'Manele', and checked Wikipedia to see it it had any information. Long article which explained that 'manele' was a contemporary genre of Romanian music based on borrowed rhythms and instrumentation, primarily Turkish.
Aha. Turkish roots and so this 'manele' had evidently tweeked my latent Turkish genetic structure. Though I had never actually known him, my great grandfather had arrived in Bratislava from Turkey, via the Danube River, and stayed.
ALINA si COSTI - TARI STRAINE ! MANELE !!!
STANA IZBASA - DIAMANTE, BRILLIANTE ..ROMANIAN MUSIC MANELE
Guta Nicolae - Haide Hai Saruta Ma ...Romania muzica manele
And if you want to listen to manele songs via the internet there are a number of stations available:
http://www.live-tv-radio.com/radio/manele.shtml
