News

A rare Beethoven manuscript which includes songs written by Robert Burns has failed to sell at auction.

The 22-page manuscript in Beethoven's own handwriting shows five arrangements for popular Scottish and Irish folk songs.

The music, commissioned by Scottish publisher George Thomson, was expected to fetch between £350,000 and £450,000.

Bidding at Christie's reached £300,000, but the owner was not willing to sell for that amount.

Christie's said it could not reveal the reserve price.

Heated exchanges

It is the most complete manuscript in Beethoven's hand to come to the market for 15 years.

Between 1803 and 1814 Beethoven wrote 126 settings for Thomson, who wanted to popularise Scottish and Irish folk songs in 19th century drawing rooms.

However, the arrangements produced by Beethoven were too complicated for drawing room performers.

Correspondence in the British library suggests Beethoven and Thomson had heated exchanges on the matter, with the composer refusing to simplify the music and also continually haggling on his price.

link

Dealing with fingernails, flowers and hair brings happiness at work, according to an annual survey. The study of 1,300 people revealed that beauticians, florists and hairdressers are among the UK's happiest workers.

At the other end of the scale, lawyers, civil servants and pharmacists are the least cheerful.

The City and Guilds study also suggests that skilled workers are more content with their work-life balance than white collar professionals.

One of the secrets to a happiness appears to be the opportunity to socialise while at work. Florists, beauticians and hairdressers all identify meeting new people and feeling appreciated as key to enjoying their working day.

Welcoming the local congregation obviously has the same effect on many members of the clergy, the highest placed professionals, who came second on this year's City and Guilds Happiness Index.

When asked to rate their happiness on a scale of one to ten, the clergy averaged 9.14, just behind beauticians on 9.20.

Index points up

However, the study did show that sitting behind a desk is not all bad, as both vocational workers and professional workers say they are happier in their jobs than they were a year ago.

The Happiness Index is published annually by City and Guilds, the UK's largest vocational awards body, which hands out over a million vocational qualifications each year to craftsmen and skilled workers.

Keith Brooker of City and Guilds said: "It is great to see that workers in all careers are happier than they were last year.

"Given the amount of time we spend in the workplace, finding a career that we are happy with should be everyone's priority."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4849168.stm

More people than ever are asking to be buried or cremated with their mobile phones when they die, say researchers. The trend, which began in South Africa, has now spread to a number of countries, including Ireland, Australia, Ghana, and the US.

Martin Raymond, director of international trend-spotting think-tank, The Future Laboratory said that this had started off "in the realm of the urban myth", but was fast becoming fact.

"You hear about it, the idea that people are being buried with their mobile phones, but you can't really believe it," he told the BBC World Service's Culture Shock programme.

He explained that the first cases of people asking to be buried with their phone originated in Cape Town, where some people's belief in witchcraft meant they feared that "they could fall under a spell, be put to sleep and actually be buried.

"In fact, they were asking for the phones to be put into the coffins with them in case they woke up."

'Limelight funerals'

Mr Raymond said that in Australia the trend was more about affluence.

"People wanted to be buried with the totems that they felt represented their lifestyle," he explained.

"We came across one guy who asked to be buried with his mobile phone and his Blackberry, and also with his laptop."

He added that in many cases, being buried with your phone is part of what he termed limelight funerals, people wanting to be buried like celebrities.

The phone is put in the coffin along with diamonds, jewellery, expensive suits, and gold watches.

In some places, however, the practice has parallels with a much more distant time, as being buried along with one's possessions can be traced to ancient Egypt.

In the days of Tutankhamen it was done because they believed literally that the objects would be available to them in the afterlife.

However, in modern times some people are finding they like the idea of being buried with the things that defined them while they were alive.

"When we looked at this in Chad and Ghana, there was part of that implicit in the burial service - that you were taking things with you that would be useful," Mr Raymond said.

"In Ireland, where we came across this, it was more to do with people being buried with things they liked. One guy we came across was buried with a pack of cigarettes and some matches.

"Another was buried with his favourite teddy bear, given to him by his girlfriend."

Spare battery

In some cases, they are even taking their mobiles into cremation.

"We came across this in places like South Carolina in the US - people were being burned but unknown to the crematorium, they had left the phones in their jackets," Mr Raymond said.

"If you heat a mobile phone battery, it tends to explode, and the first reports were about explosions, and that's how they started noticing this trend."

Some funeral parlours will now arrange for the phone put into the box with the ashes following the cremation.

And one service in South Africa will put a number of batteries in the coffin just in case the dead person wakes up much later and finds their own battery has run out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4853548.stm

Some of those people are begging to have their graves robbed, honestly...

Late Grateful Dead Leader's Toilet Stolen
Apr 2, 6:39 AM EST


The Associated Press

SONOMA, Calif. -- The long, strange trip continues for Jerry Garcia's toilet. Police say the Grateful Dead leader's commode was stolen recently from a driveway along with three other toilets and a bidet, The Press Democrat newspaper reported Saturday.

Garcia's salmon-colored toilet was the subject of a legal battle before it was finally moved to Sonoma, to await shipment to a Canadian casino.

It's unclear if the toilet was swiped by a wayward Deadhead or a thief remodeling a bathroom. Police have no suspects or leads.

Henry Koltys bought Garcia's Marin County home for $1.39 million in 1997 and removed the toilet and other items he planned to sell to raise money for a charity.

After Koltys sold the house to a friend of the band's, the new owner sued to block the auction. The dispute was resolved last year, and Koltys moved the items to his home in Sonoma, about 40 miles north of San Francisco.

Last month, Koltys sold the Grateful Dead singer's toilet for $2,550 to online casino Goldenpalace.com, which planned to use it as part of a traveling marketing exhibit. The casino is offering a $250 reward for its return.

Henry Koltys said Friday that the toilet once stood in the master bathroom of Garcia, who died in 1995 at age 53. "It would have been his personal head," he said.

The casino has made other unusual purchases in the last year — it paid $25,000 for actor William Shatner's kidney stones and $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich that reportedly had the image of the Virgin Mary on it, Koltys said.

Jonathon Lipsin, who worked for Garcia as a gardener and now owns a Northern California record store, said the toilet might appeal to dedicated Deadheads.

"It's a little gross," Lipsin said. "But I could see it at a rock 'n' roll museum, too."

http://http://music.msn.com/music/ar...20133&GT1=7702

Such a lot of fuss over a loo.
:lol:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060405/music_nm/clash_dc

Man held as terrorism suspect over punk song
LONDON (Reuters) - British anti-terrorism detectives escorted a man from a plane after a taxi driver had earlier become suspicious when he started singing along to a track by punk band The Clash, police said Wednesday.

Detectives halted the London-bound flight at Durham Tees Valley Airport in northern England and Harraj Mann, 24, was taken off.

The taxi driver had become worried on the way to the airport because Mann had been singing along to The Clash's 1979 anthem "London Calling," which features the lyrics "Now war is declared -- and battle come down" while other lines warn of a "meltdown expected."

Mann told British newspapers the taxi had been fitted with a music system which allowed him to plug in his MP3 player and he had been playing The Clash, Procol Harum, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles to the driver.

"He didn't like Led Zeppelin or The Clash but I don't think there was any need to tell the police," Mann told the Daily Mirror.

A Durham police spokeswoman said Mann had been released after questioning -- but had missed his flight.

"The report was made with the best of intentions and we wouldn't want to discourage people from contacting us with genuine concerns," she said.




That's it. Next time I see someone listening to Michael Bolton, I'm sicing Interpol on him. Must be a terrorist.

Astronomers have discovered that the planet Uranus has a blue ring - only the second found in the Solar System.

Like the blue ring of Saturn, it probably owes its existence to an accompanying small moon.

Scientists suspect subtle forces acting on dust in the rings allow smaller particles to persist while larger ones are recaptured by the moon.

Smaller particles reflect blue light, giving the ring its distinctive colour, the US team reports in Science.

All other rings - those around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - are made up of both large and small particles, making the rings reddish in appearance.

Bright blue

Astronomers have long known that the gas giant Uranus is surrounded by rings of dark particulate matter up to ten metres in diameter.

But last December, two new rings - the planet's twelfth and thirteenth - were discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Schematic view of outermost rings of Saturn (Image: de Pater, Hammel, Gibbard, and Showalter, courtesy of Science magazine)
...and Saturn

Astronomers observed the ring system at infrared wavelengths with the Keck telescope, in Hawaii.

The outermost ring, and its ice-bound moon Mab, could not be observed in infrared light unlike the red inner ring.

A team led by Imke de Pater, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, found that the ring was bright blue, something of an oddity in planetary terms.

"The blue colour says that this ring is predominantly submicron-sized material, much smaller than the material in most other rings, which appear red," Professor de Pater said.

The tiny particles - less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair - scatter and reflect predominantly blue light, much like the very small molecules in the air that make the Earth's sky blue.

The more common rings are reddish because they also contain many larger particles, which gives the reflected light its colour, and may be made up of reddish material, perhaps from iron.

It appears that the outer blue rings of Saturn and Uranus are strikingly similar, not least because they are both associated with small moons.

Moon dance

"The moon orbits the planet in the ring," Professor de Pater told the BBC News website.

"It is continuously impacted by very tiny particles [micrometeorites]. On a moon that doesn't have any atmosphere these tiny particles impact the moon at high velocity, and throw stuff up into space.

"Because the moon is so small, it escapes the moon and goes into orbit around the planet.

"The smaller particles stay in orbit around the planet but the larger particles smash back into the moon."

The work was carried out in collaboration with Mark Showalter, of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti) Institute in California; Heidi Hammel, of the Space Science Institute, Colorado; and Seran Gibbard, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

The scientists plan to carry out further observations next year, when the faint rings of Uranus will be more visible.

link

Hey Kilted, Congratulations on your 1000th post!

Congratulations, Kilted! :banana:

Burroughs' Former Cabin for Sale on eBay Fri Apr 14, 12:40 AM ET



LAWRENCE, Kan. - It's a 568-square-foot cabin with narrow concrete stairs, outdoor shower and an incinerating toilet in the bedroom — not the first place a home buyer might want to drop nearly $160,000. But what makes the place outside Lawrence special is that it once belonged to Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs, author of "Naked Lunch" and "Junkie." Burroughs, who died in 1997 in Lawrence, mentioned the cabin in his book "My Education."

Owner Carol Dengel listed the cabin on eBay on March 22 as a collector's item with an asking price of $159,950 and received more than 1,600 hits on her page.

Dengel first came into contact with the cabin in 1999, when she and Diane Fry, an old high school friend from Ottawa, decided to buy a place near Lone Star Lake where they could spend weekends with their families.

"I used to come here as a kid, so I wanted a place near the lake. When we found out who it belonged to we bought it for the asking price right there," Dengel said.

She declined to say what she paid, but the county appraiser lists the current value as $66,100.
More

An ex-Japanese soldier who disappeared after World War II and was officially declared dead in 2000 has turned up alive in Ukraine, officials say. Ishinosuke Uwano was serving with the Japanese Imperial Army in Russia's Sakhalin Island when the war ended. He lost contact with his family in 1958.

The 83-year-old has now reappeared, in Ukraine, where he is married and has a family, Japanese officials say.

He is due to visit Japan for the first time in six decades on Wednesday.

Just six years ago, his family officially registered him as having been killed in the war - and his details were removed from the official family registry.

Because of this, Mr Uwano must "return to Japan technically as a Ukrainian citizen with a Ukraine passport," a government official said.

Mr Uwano is due to visit family members and friends in Iwate, northern Japan, with his son before returning to Ukraine on 28 April, the AFP news agency reports.

The Japanese authorities are now restoring him to the family registry.

Strong interest

Mr Uwano's existence came to light last year after he asked friends in Ukraine to help him contact the Japanese government, which then sent officials to interview him in Kiev.

He was one of thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians who were left stranded across the Pacific and in parts of China and Russia after the war ended.

Some were kept as prisoners and forced to work as slave labourers, others chose to remain of their own accord.

Why Mr Uwano remained in Russia, and how he ended up in Ukraine, has not been disclosed.

There is still much interest in Japan in the plight of former soldiers who never made it home, the BBC's Chris Hogg in Tokyo says.

Last year, Japanese officials returned empty-handed after going to a remote Philippine village to investigate reports that two former Imperial Army members were hiding there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/4916294.stm

A method of creating super-nutritious but flatulence-free beans has been developed by scientists. Beans are a cheap and key source of nutrition especially in the developing world, but many people are thought to be put off by anti-social side-effects.

A Venezuelan team says fermenting beans with certain friendly bacteria can cut the amount of wind-causing compounds, and boost beans' nutritional value.

The research appears in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

Flatulence is caused by bacteria that live in the large intestine breaking down parts of food - such as soluble fibre - that have not been digested higher in the gut

Beans, such as the black bean commonly eaten across Central and Southern America and tested by the team, contain many of these compounds.

Researchers from the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas found that by boosting the natural fermentation process by adding a particular type of bacteria , called Lactobacillus casei (L casei), the amount of these indigestible wind-causing compounds were reduced.

Soluble fibre was reduced by two thirds and the amount of raffinose, another flatulence-causing substance, by 88.6%.

But the amount of insoluble fibre, which is thought to have a beneficial effect on the gut and help the digestive system get rid of toxins, increased by 97.5%.

The team concludes that fermentation involving L casei could decrease flatulence compounds and increase nutritional quality.

They suggest the bacteria is used by the food industry to create better bean products.

The team led by Marisela Granito said: "Given that flatulence is one of the main limiting factors for the consumption of this important foodstuff, the implementation of processes which allow for nutritious and non-flatulence-producing beans to be obtained would be interesting."

'Social concerns'

Dr Frankie Phillips, a nutrition expert and spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association, said: "This study provides an interesting lead in helping us to overcome some of the less desirable aspects of eating legumes - i.e. flatulence - whilst ensuring that the nutritional benefits from eating them remain.

"On a practical note, some people find that gradually increasing consumption levels of legumes helps, as the body adapts, and others have no symptoms at all.

"I'd suggest trying small portions of legumes as part of a meal and gradually eating larger portions as they can be tolerated."

She said that products existed, mainly in the US, which can help reduce flatulence.

She added: "Despite the obvious social concerns, there is no physiological harm from the flatulence caused by eating beans and other legumes, and considerable nutritional benefits from eating them owing to fibre content as well as a wide range of other nutrients and phytonutrients."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4943486.stm

Now if they could just invent beans that dont make my face bright red andswell up I wont have to buy meat at uni and save some money ...

The judge who presided over the failed Da Vinci Code plagiarism case at London's High Court hid his own secret code in his written judgement. Seemingly random italicised letters were included in the 71-page judgement given by Mr Justice Peter Smith, which apparently spell out a message.

Mr Justice Smith said he would confirm the code if someone broke it.

"I can't discuss the judgement, but I don't see why a judgement should not be a matter of fun," he said.

Italicised letters in the first few pages spell out "Smithy Code", while the following pages also contain marked out letters.

Although he would not be drawn on his code and its meaning, Mr Justice Smith said he would probably confirm it if someone cracked it, which was "not a difficult thing to do".

In March, he presided over a High Court case brought by authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who claimed Dan Brown plagiarised their own historical book for The Da Vinci Code.

But Mr Justice Smith ruled Mr Brown did not substantially copy Mr Baigent and Mr Leigh's work The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, saying it did not have a central theme in the way its authors suggested.

The Da Vinci Code, which has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, features a number of codes the heroes of the book must crack to solve the mystery.

A much-anticipated movie version of the novel, starring Tom Hanks as historian Robert Langdon, is released on 19 May.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4949488.stm