This reminds me much of a popular quote from Henry David Thoreau: "It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes."Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
:lol:
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This reminds me much of a popular quote from Henry David Thoreau: "It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes."Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
:lol:
An Israeli couple being married in India have found that you may not kiss the bride - the pair were fined $22 for indecency for their wedding embrace. A court in Rajasthan imposed the fine after Alon Orpaz and Tehila Salev had decided to get married in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Pushkar.
Priests were offended when the couple kissed and hugged during the chanting of religious verses.
The apologetic couple said they were unaware public kissing was banned. The couple, who had met in India while travelling separately, paid the 1,000-rupee fine for "committing an act of indecency" to avoid a 10-day jail sentence.
Some of the priests were upset by their actions at the wedding and filed a case claiming Hindu sentiments had been hurt.
SN Garg, president of the Priests and Pilgrimage Society, said: "It is a matter of concern for the priest community. We want the government to ensure that tourists visiting Pushkar must respect Indian culture."
Mr Garg said the couple had now been forgiven after they apologised for their behaviour.
The couple said their public embrace was done according to their own culture and was not intended to be hurtful.
Pushkar, on the banks of Pushkar Lake, is a popular pilgrimage spot for both tourists and Hindus.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4268058.stm
King Mswati of Swaziland has chosen a teenager to be his 13th wife. Phindile Nkambule, 17, was revealed to the public when she took part in a traditional Reed Dance ceremony, in which girls perform before the king.
The announcement comes just weeks after Mswati III ended an official ban on sex for women under 18. The ban was aimed at curbing the spread of HIV/Aids.
According to custom, King Mswati, 37, will marry Phindile Nkambule once she becomes pregnant.
She is reported to have caught the king's eye during the main annual Reed Dance in late August, when tens of thousands of bare-breasted girls took part in a traditional rite of Spring.
Ms Nkambule is younger than the king's first daughter, Princess Sikhanyiso, who turned 18 this month.
She will now wear royal loin cloths when she appears in public and has dropped out of school in order to be groomed as the monarch's wife.
Unpopular ban
Days earlier, the king had rescinded a ban on sexual relations for girls younger than 18.
The ban was started by the king in 2001 to fight Aids in a country where some 40% of the population is HIV positive.
But the move had been unpopular with Swazi youths and its implementation had sparked controversy.
Just two months after imposing the ban, the king fined himself a cow for breaking it by taking a 17-year-old girl as his ninth wife.
The Swazi monarch married his 12th wife, aged 18, in June.
He has one other fiancee and 27 children.
Some Swazis are critical of King Mswati - an absolute monarch whose lavish lifestyle and many wives contrast with the poverty of many of his subjects.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4283932.stm
Austria's national anthem is sexist and must be revised, the country's right wing women's minister has declared. Maria Rauch-Kallat objects to the anthem's description of Austria as a "fatherland" which is home to "great sons". She proposes several changes.
But while she has found support, one colleague called her moves "senseless".
A women's minister should work to improve the lives of women and girls, declared Uwe Scheuch, and not concern herself with such "side issues".
New identity
Mrs Rauch Kallat defended her objectives in an interview with the country's Kurier newspaper. THE FIRST VERSE
Land of mountains, land on the river
Land of fields, land of spires
Land of hammers, with a rich future
You are the home of great sons
A nation blessed by its sense of beauty
Highly-praised Austria, highly-praised Austria
"Women's politics are also the politics of language and of shaping consciousness," she said.
Her suggestions include losing a reference to a "brotherly chorus" and replacing it with a "joyful chorus" instead.
"The federal hymn should be part of every Austrian's identity," Mrs Rauch-Kallat said.
The national anthem, sung to the tune of a Mozart cantata dates from 1947 when the words were composed by female poet Paula von Preradovic.
Mrs Rauch-Kallat's proposals have met support from the opposition Social Democrats and Greens and are expected to be approved over the coming months.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4283434.stm
Mexico Indians fete disputed bones of Aztec emperor
IXCATEOPAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Decked in glittering Aztec costumes with towering feather headdresses, Mexican Indians paid tribute on Monday to what they said were the bones of the last Aztec emperor, buried in a hilltop town nearly 500 years ago.
Nahua Indian men in gold, red and green warrior dress and women in "huipil" tunics danced with bells on their ankles and wafted incense over the disputed tomb of the emperor Cuauhtemoc to mark the anniversary of the day in 1949 when his remains were exhumed in the mountains of central Mexico.
A refusal by Mexican authorities to accept the bones as authentic, and local squabbling over who should guard them, marred the annual festivities around the blackened skeleton many indigenous Mexicans consider a sacred treasure.
"Cuauhtemoc was a martyr. He was tortured and killed defending his homeland from the invaders. For us he's more important than Jesus. He's our hero," said an Indian known as Metztli, as he adjusted his shimmering pheasant-feather headdress.
"For us these remains are very symbolic, but the authorities are crushing our culture and making a dispute out of our traditions," said Juan Ceron, one of a group of Indian activists who walked for eight days from Mexico City to Ixcateopan, to protest a local government move to seize the rights to the bones.
Cuauhtemoc led the desperate resistance to Spanish invaders who conquered the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, today's Mexico City.
According to local legend, when the Spaniards hung him in 1525, Aztec warriors slipped away with the body and partially cremated it.
They wrapped the charred skeleton in a bundle and carried it to Cuauhtemoc's birthplace, Ixcateopan, in a secret journey that took four years, traveling by night and hiding out for weeks at a time. The remains were buried in 1529 in a ceremony kept secret from the Spanish, locals say.
BODY EXHUMED
The secret was passed down from generation to generation for centuries, until in 1949 it leaked out and the federal government ordered the tomb exhumed.
Indigenous groups have marked the anniversary of the exhumation ever since with a ritual ceremony in the 16th century church that is now a shrine to Cuauhtemoc, the skeleton displayed behind glass at the altar.
After carbon-dating tests, archeologist Eulalia Guzman declared the remains were authentic, but over the years, other experts refuted the claim.
"It's very controversial, but the authorities eventually ruled that they are not Cuauhtemoc's remains," said German anthropologist Mechthild Rutsch at the National Institute of Anthropology and History.
Locals are bitter that the story is disputed. And many are angry that bickering among local politicians recently led to the town mayor stripping 69-year-old Jairo Rodriguez -- the 13th "keeper of the secret" -- of his title as guardian of the tomb.
While few tourists make the two-hour bus ride up a potholed mountain road to Ixcateopan from the bustling town of Taxco, history fans from as far away as Canada and Spain come here in February to celebrate Cuauhtemoc's birth date.
Locals say they are not interested in tourism, they just want to be taken seriously.
"Why do they deny what is in our blood? His remains must be somewhere and why not here? Aztec tradition says a king must be buried where he was born," said Claudia Sotero, who runs the cobblestoned town's telephone service.
source
MILAN, Italy - Authorities have recovered works of art worth $1.8 million that had been stolen from churches, castles and private homes throughout northern Italy since 1990, the Carabinieri paramilitary police said Tuesday.
The 19 paintings and one 18th-century kneeling stool were discovered last month at the home of a farmer near the city of Cremona, about 62 miles southwest of Milan, officials said. The 59-year-old man is charged with receiving stolen goods and has been cooperating with authorities to identify accomplices, said Capt. Andrea Ilari of the Carabinieri's art theft squad.
The art work found at the farmer's home includes two paintings by 20th-century artist Carlo Fornara, which investigators said were stolen last year.
Officials said much of the art appeared to have been stolen from the Thun Castle in the Trentino-Alto Adige region, near the Austrian border. Among the most valuable works recovered were a 17th-century painting of Saint Jeremiah by Pietro Ligari, stolen in 1995 from a church; and "Ecce Homo," by 16th-century painter Denys Calvaert, which had been stolen from a home near the northern city of Varese, officials said.
Ilari said in a statement that the Lombardy region, which includes Milan, "has the most important market for high-level stolen art."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050927/ap_en_ot/stolen_art
The Danish air force has admitted causing the death of Rudolph the reindeer and has paid compensation to Father Christmas. Olovi Nikkanoff, one of Denmark's professional Santa Clauses, says his reindeer died of shock as fighter planes flew low overhead.
The air force admitted liability and paid him 31,175 kroner (£2,850).
"We're more than happy to pay if it means children around the world will get their presents," a spokesman said.
Mr Nikkanoff said he was devastated in February when he discovered his reindeer's body.
The animal had been grazing happily, he said, when two Danish F-16s thundered overhead.
He complained to the air force, which ordered an investigation.
"We got a letter from Santa complaining about his reindeer's death and looked into it seriously," air force spokesman Captain Morten Jensen told Associated Press.
Flight data showed the jets had been in the area at the time, and a vet concluded that their deafening roar had caused Rudolph to have heart failure.
Mr Nikkanoff feared he would have only one reindeer to pull his sleigh this Christmas.
But after the air force's decision he declared himself happy with the payout and said he was looking forward to this year's festive season with a new animal on his team.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4295968.stm
Organisers have stoutly defended the Miss Tibet contest even though all the contestants bar one have pulled out, creating a walkover for the winner. Organiser Lobsang Wangyal said the name of the "lone brave contestant" would be kept secret until the 8 October gala.
The contest is set to take place in the Indian Himalayan resort of Dharamsala, which houses exiled Tibetan leaders.
The four-year-old contest has struggled to find its feet amid staunch opposition from conservative Buddhists.
Tiara
The BBC's Baldev Chauhan in Dharamsala says seven young women pulled out at the last moment.
This is the second time in the contest's brief history that a walkover has been awarded.
But Mr Wangyal told the BBC this was not the end of the road for the pageant.
"Absolutely not, a time will come soon when the conservative Tibetan society will break out of its traditional shackles and accept such shows with open arms," he said.
"The girls also have to give a lecture on Tibetan culture, history and current affairs. It is a Tibet beauty pageant, not aping Western culture."
The winner will get a tiara and a cheque for 100,000 rupees ($2,200).
Conservative Tibetan Buddhist society and the Tibetan government in exile are both opposed to the beauty contest.
A spokesman for the exiled leaders, Thupten Samphel, said: "Exhibiting of the female body in this manner is against Tibetan Buddhism and culture."
Our correspondent says commentators suspect the lone woman's name is not being disclosed by the organisers as pressure may be exerted on her to also opt out of the contest.
Tens of thousands of Tibetans, including spiritual leader the Dalai Lama have taken refuge in India since a failed uprising against China in 1959.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4299686.stm
A female chimpanzee in a Chinese zoo has managed to kick the habit after smoking for 16 years, Xinhua news agency reported. Ai Ai, 27, first took up smoking after her mate died in 1989.
After a second spouse died in 1997 and her daughter was moved to another zoo, the broken-hearted chimp's health reportedly started deteriorating.
Zoo keepers say they are giving her mouth-watering food and playing pop music to improve her mood.
"In the first few days, she squealed for cigarettes every now and then," Xinhua reported one zookeeper at the safari park in the Shaanxi province, north-west China, as saying.
"But as her life became more colourful, she gradually forgot about them altogether."
Her new, busy lifestyle includes walking after breakfast, exercising in the evening and being served "fried dishes and dumplings at every meal" on top of bananas, rice and milk, he said.
Now and then, she can also borrow her human friend's walkman to listen to music.
It is not clear how Ai Ai developed her addiction, and whether she was first given cigarettes from the same guardians who have helped her quit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/4305600.stm
An unusual clash between a 6-foot (1.8m) alligator and a 13-foot (3.9m) python has left two of the deadliest predators dead in Florida's swamps. The Burmese python tried to swallow its fearsome rival whole but then exploded.
The remains of the two giant reptiles were found by astonished rangers in the Everglades National Park.
The rangers say the find suggests that non-native Burmese pythons might even challenge alligators' leading position in the food chain in the swamps.
The python's remains with the victim's tail protruding from its burst midsection were found last week. The head of the python was missing.
"Encounters like that are almost never seen in the wild... And here we are," Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
"They were probably evenly matched in size. If the python got a good grip on the alligator before the alligator got a good grip on him, he could win," Professor Mazzotti said.
He said the alligator may have clawed at the python's stomach, leading it to burst.
"Clearly, if they can kill an alligator they can kill other species," Prof Mazzotti said.
He said that there had been four known encounters between the two species in the past. In the other cases, the alligator won or the battle was an apparent draw.
Burmese pythons - many of whom have been dumped by their owners - have thrived in the wet and hot climate of Florida's swamps over the past 20 years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4313978.stm
By Jacqueline Blais, USA TODAY
Thu Oct 6, 6:52 AM ET
Kurt Vonnegut opens an interview at La Mediterranée, a pretty Manhattan restaurant, this way;
"What do you want to talk about? Politics? Our president is a complete twit. I'll talk about the death of the novel. I'll talk about anything you want."
And so it goes.
For all those who have lived with Vonnegut in their imaginations - with the listless soldier Billy Pilgrim in 1969's Slaughterhouse-Five, with the religious Bokononists whispering "busy, busy, busy" in 1963's Cat's Cradle- this is what he is like in person.
Polite, courtly even. He has thick, light brownish hair. He was born left-handed but taught, as they did back in the day, to write with his right. He says Law & Order on TV is "absolutely first-rate" - as long as the episode has Sam Waterston or Jerry Orbach in it. And at 82, this hero of the left is as unafraid as ever to speak out.
His new book is A Man Without a Country (Seven Stories Press, $23.95; edited by Daniel Simon). It is part commentary (some material was written for the left-leaning magazine In These Times), part memoir and all Vonnegut writing about our world today.
And what kind of planet do we have?
Well, he says, we are making "thermodynamic whoopee with atomic energy and fossil fuel." The part that makes him feel unfunny for the rest of his life: People don't "give a damn whether the planet goes on or not." We are, he writes, too cheap and lazy.
In short: "Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint."
There is more where that came from.
The guessers (never filled with doubts) are in charge, wise people are despised, and the USA is now operating on the snake-oil standard, he writes.
Yes, and more.
From his perspective as a former World War II prisoner of war, Vonnegut writes that American soldiers in the Middle East are "being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."
Then, beyond all the gloom and doom, there are things to cling to.
Music (especially the blues) cheers him, as do people who behave decently. Librarians, too - "not famous for their physical strength" - who resist having books removed from shelves and refuse to give names of people who have checked out certain books in the era of the Patriot Act.
"The America I loved," he writes, "still exists in the front desks of public libraries."
Within recent weeks, he has been on Real Time with Bill Maher and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Said Stewart, introducing him: "As an adolescent, (Vonnegut) made my life bearable."
No one can doubt Vonnegut's staying power. Seven Stories Press has gone back to print four times for 190,000 copies of A Man Without a Country. He has written 25 books, among them some of the best-loved in American literature. During the past three months, he was in the top 50 most-popular authors in North America searched on abebooks.com, an umbrella website for used books.
Vonnegut grew up in the Midwest during the Great Depression. He came from a family of three; his older brother, Bernard, was a highly respected physical chemist who worked on cloud seeding.
Vonnegut learned how jokes work, he writes, from top comedians on the radio. He went to Cornell for three years, studying chemistry, and did graduate work in anthropology at the University of Chicago.
He helped raise seven children: three from his first marriage; three adopted when his sister, Alice, and her husband died; and another adopted in his second marriage.
He joined the Army in World War II, was captured by the Germans and experienced the Allied bombing of Dresden, the inspiration for Slaughterhouse-Five.
His thoughts about gasoline dependency came early in life. He was born Nov. 11, 1922, in Indianapolis - home to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, established in 1911. "When I got here in 1922, this country was already roaring drunk on petroleum," he says. "We are still roaring drunk on petroleum."
At La Mediterranée, Vonnegut brings with him a November 1972 Harper's article he wrote about the Republican presidential nomination in Miami of Richard Nixon when the country was fighting the Vietnam War.
"Read the piece written 33 years ago," he says. Nothing has changed: The country is still "divided between winners and losers. The government is Democratic and Republican, but look, in this last election, they had to choose between two members of Skull and Bones ( John Kerry and George Bush's fraternity at Yale) out of 300 million people or however many people we are."
"I was lucky enough to live under one truly humane president: FDR," he says. "He gave the common people enough influence by strengthening the labor unions.
"Automation has made labor worthless, so the losers are in awful trouble, and have no power whatsoever. They used to be able to withhold labor."
But then again there is the humanistic Vonnegut, honorary president of the Humanist Association: In A Man Without a Country, he repeats something his Uncle Alex used to say when they were sitting under an apple tree, chatting and drinking lemonade.
"Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.' "
It is a saying he now carries around with him, and he urges everyone to "please notice when you are happy."
Its not often one of my favorites gets in the news.
LONDON (Reuters) - Swedish-born philanthropist Sigrid Rausing has bought Granta, the century old literary journal renowned for discovering new writers like poet Sylvia Plath and A.A. Milne, the creator of Winnie the Pooh.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Rausing, whose UK-based trust has given more than 65 million pounds over the past decade for international human rights work, also started publishing firm Portobello Books earlier this year with her husband, film producer Eric Abraham.
Granta, which publishes books alongside its quarterly literary magazine, will be kept separate from Portobello.
"I am delighted that Granta will remain an independent publishing company and that it will be in the good and capable hands of Sigrid Rausing, who has a strong sense of appreciation for Granta," said Rea Hederman, the New York Review of Books owner who took a controlling share in Granta in 1994.
Granta was founded by Cambridge University students in 1889 to create a journal filled with political discourse and literary criticism. It has evolved into a favorite among literati in the United States and Britain for spotting up-and-coming writers.
Among the Granta contributors have been Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Michael Frayn, Salman Rushdie and Paul Theroux.
"As a showcase for new writing, the magazine is unrivalled, and as a publisher of innovative work, both it and Granta Books have few equals," Rausing said.
"I intend to ensure both have the human and financial resources to flourish," she added.
After years of financial woes, Granta last year swung to a profit of 168,000 pounds on about 3 million pounds of sales from a 129,000 pound loss in 2003 and 2.3 million pounds of sales.
Rausing's family, whose wealth came from the Tetra-Pak drinks carton manufacturing company, moved to Britain from Sweden in the early 1970s. The family was third on the Sunday Times list of richest people in Britain last year, with an estimated fortune of 5 billion pounds.
Sigrid set up the trust in 1995, originally naming it after her grandparents. It was changed to the Sigrid Rausing Trust in 2003 to more closely link it with her own aims and ideals.
source
Art exhibit a rough roe to hoe...
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A top Moscow gallery bowed to religious sensibilities and pulled an exhibit that combined two potent symbols of Russia -- a gold icon and black caviar -- local media reported Thursday.
Churchgoers had appealed to the state Tretyakov gallery, objecting to "Icon-Caviar," which depicts hundreds of tiny fish eggs where the face should be on an icon, saying it was trivial and insulting.
The artist, Alexander Kosolapov, told Ekho Moskvy radio that his work was in no way religious: "The icon frame -- that's a metaphor for Russia. The caviar, that's also a metaphor."
The work was part of a major exhibition of Russian pop-art, which also includes a picture of the Kremlin under a computer-game-style alien attack.
source
A great white shark crossed the Indian Ocean from South Africa to Australia and back again within just nine months. It was one of several great whites tagged by researchers in an attempt to improve conservation strategies.
Writing in the journal Science, they say the journey is unparalleled among fish - only tuna come close.
The mere act of tagging a great white is something of a feat; several people need to hold the creature still while the satellite tracker is attached.
EPIC OCEAN JOURNEY
This device was fixed to the female shark's trademark dorsal fin. Thankfully no scientists - and no sharks - suffered during the tagging.
The conservationists were investigating how far great whites wander, to see what protection measures might be needed to save them from extinction.
Several of the sharks migrated from South African to Mozambiquan territorial waters - where they are not protected.
Mate search
But Ramon Bonfil of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, US, and colleagues were stunned by the epic journey of the shark they called Nicole - after the shark-loving Australian actress Nicole Kidman.
"We suspect that she went for reproductive reasons," Dr Bonfil said.
"There's plenty of food around South Africa and she would be using too much energy to just go to Australia to feed. Of course we can't prove this at this stage, it is just a hunch."
Great whites were once thought to keep to coastal regions, but this was a trek across a vast expanse of open ocean.
The journey was very direct, not some aimless wandering. And the stay near Australia was only brief.
The researchers say the fact that they saw a shark make the journey at all - after observing only about 20 animals - suggests it is common behaviour.
Their concern is that such migrations make the great whites vulnerable to long-line fishing.
It is already known that lesser sharks do get captured and killed this way.
Given that the great white's population is small anyway, the species can ill afford to lose numbers in this way.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4317536.stm