via youtube.com
this is not a blog
Multinational mining group Vedanta Resources has had two British safety awards – including one endorsed by the UK's Health and Safety Executive – suspended after campaigners drew attention to controversies including a fatality at the group's operations in Orissa, India.
Wow no British safety awards! But what does it mean? At which point do we stop pumping UK moneys into Vedanta?
I cried a little.
You can all take the piss but you have to admit Coldplay know how to push emotional buttons. Well, at least mine. I love the Beastie Boys.
This is in response to a challenge: Write a monologue from the point of view of a character from the Indian epic Ramayana.
I'm Surpanakha. I'm a woman, sister to one king, widow to another. People called me beautiful when I was younger. I probably was. There was the small issue of being caught between two giant egos - in the end, my brother killed my husband. My life was turbulent, nothing was ever calm, until I carved out my own existence as an independent woman. Today, however, I have learned what it is like to have a heart, and I am confused.
I've had my own life since I've been widowed, and haven't been hiding away. That scares people. I hear the villagers down the valley have started calling me a witch? I can imagine where that comes from. Everyone knows my relatives are scary, and I like to inject a little fear of my own. Some time ago, we really frightened one or two of the villagers at the edge of the forest while we were a bit tipsy. They do tend to leave us alone once we've done that a couple of times.
So according to the simple people, I can fly now... great! I travel a lot between Lanka and the forests. Right now I'm at my brother's court, but oh the politics. I needed to come back after some time in the woods, back to the lap of luxury, to be waited on hand and foot. But I can't stand doing what Ravana has to do, look after the court and the people, with all their little squabbles. It's tedious!
Today I'm off back to the country. I have other relatives there, they have their lives and I have mine, we have a great time together. We all take what we want and leave what we don't. And because of who I am, I can pretty much get what I want anyways. I may be past it but I still clean up nice. For some reason, people call that magic too! I can see why, I look a different person after a week in Lanka.
I can get what I want - well now I know what I want. Which was why I 'flew' off to Lanka to clean up. I've had nothing else on my mind since I saw this man in the forest. I've never seen him before.
I say man - I've known men, but I've never seen anyone like him. It's like all the other men are just shadows, immaterial, and he's the only real man that has ever existed, even though he also looks young. I am in love but I don't know love like this. Do I want to enjoy, or do I want to be there for his enjoyment? Looking at him makes my heart go soft. I didn't even know I had a heart. A look from him is perfection - you have to realise, I've never heard myself think like this. My life is in tatters and I'm doubting everything I ever knew. How can one look at one man make me do this?
I haven't spoken to him yet. I saw him in the forest and went to clean up. Wouldn't want to risk being seen like this. The other people around him, they looked like family - I don't care about them. There was a woman too, I'm sure they are together. She was exactly the type I would have wanted to be until I stopped caring about what people think. She was Good! Just so good. I think maybe half a lifetime ago, I might have cared about being good, for about half a second...
I can't even just want to go and pretend to be good. I have seen him. I am somehow completely sure that he would look through my pretenses. I feel that for him to even look at me, I would have to be good. And I want him to look at me so much that I would want to really be good. Really, to the bottom of my heart, good.
Oh I cannot believe the depth of this confusion. Me? Worrying about goodness? About my reputation, doubting my way of life? All because of one man. What is it about this man?
I want this, I want to go back there and make him look at me, the way he has looked at this other woman. I want to have him. Or - serve him. I don't know, my feelings are so confused. That effulgence! That peace! That - that pure manliness! I want that. I don't know what it is. I've never been so confused in my life.
There. I have made a decision. I am going to get him, and I am going to do it my way. I can't compete with that woman on her level. But - he might be a very special man, still, all men are just men. Aren't they?
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Surpanakha did indeed try and seduce Rama but was rejected, and when she didn’t give up and instead offended Rama's wife Sita, Rama's brother Lakshmana cut off her nose. Humiliated and upset, she first asked her brother Khara to defend her honour. He was easily defeated by Rama. She then went to Ravana and told him that Sita is the most wonderful woman and his ideal wife, upon which Ravana abducted Sita, starting the Ramayana war.
On April 23rd 2012 - Shakespeare's birthday and the launch of the World Shakespeare Festival - a group of merry players known as the "Reclaim Shakespeare Company" took unexpectedly to the stage in Stratford-upon-Avon, just before a Royal Shakespeare Company performance of The Tempest. This piece of guerilla Shakespeare aimed to challenge the RSC over its decision to accept sponsorship from BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster and the oil company's decision to start extracting highly polluting and destructive tar sands in Canada. Find out more here:
http://bp-or-not-bp.org/news/protesters-take-to-the-stage-at-rsc-over-bp-spon...>Filmed by Zoe Broughton
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Here's the script in full:What country, friends, is this?
Where the words of our most prized poet
Can be bought to beautify a patron
So unnatural as British Petroleum?
Strange association!
They, who have incensed the seas and shores
From a dark deepwater horizon
Who have unleashed most foul destruction
Upon far Canada's aged forests,
Clawing out the lungs of our sickening earth
Who even now would bespoil the high, white Arctic
In desperate search of more black gold
To make them ever richer. These savage villains!
And yet --
They wear a painted face of bright green leaves,
Mask themselves with sunshine.
And with fine deceitful words
They steal into our theatres, and our minds.
They would have us sleep.
But this great globe of ours is such stuff as dreams are made on.
Most delicate, wondrous, to be nurtured
For our children and theirs beyond.
Let not BP turn these dreams to nightmares.
Fuelling the Future? Thou liest malignant thing! Do we sleep?
I find not myself disposed to sleep.
Let us break their staff that would bewitch us!
Out damned logo!
BP are of course LOCOG's London 2012 'Sustainabilty' Partner. The World Shakespeare Festival "forms part of London 2012 Festival, which is the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad".
Hey he's not my bard (I'm not going to leave my Schiller for some pesky Shakespeare), but I quite like this.
Pff. BP as the Olympics' Sustainability partner. That's funny.
The Localism Act 2011 includes powers to allow local people to have more of a say in how their area develops in the future. It enables the formation of Neighbourhood Forums and a Forum can make a Neighbourhood Plan which, subject to examination by an independent examiner for conformity to Local Development Plans, becomes part of the statutory planning framework for the area.
The inaugural meeting coincides with a #knittingtuesday. Coincidence? I THiNK NOT!
Neandertals, the closest evolutionary relatives of present-day humans, lived in large parts of Europe and western Asia before disappearing 30,000 years ago. We present a draft sequence of the Neandertal genome composed of more than 4 billion nucleotides from three individuals. Comparisons of the Neandertal genome to the genomes of five present-day humans from different parts of the world identify a number of genomic regions that may have been affected by positive selection in ancestral modern humans, including genes involved in metabolism and in cognitive and skeletal development. We show that Neandertals shared more genetic variants with present-day humans in Eurasia than with present-day humans in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that gene flow from Neandertals into the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of Eurasian groups from each other.
It makes sense to call them Neandertal if you know German, since that's the name of the geographic location where their bones were first found. German spellings were often varied until the creation of the famous German spelling rules. Pronunciation would have been the same though, h or no h.
But these things clearly haven't made it into the history books yet.
