Family Affairs

BBC LAUNCHES NEW SPACE SERIES THIS WEEK

I’ve just been sent this information – thought some of you might be interested:-

Starting this weekend is the BBC Two Series “Wonders of the Solar System” which sees Professor Brian Cox explain how the heavens have been made and shaped in the same way that areas of the Earth have been made and shaped.

Looking at amazing features of other planets/moons, whether there is life on other planets and supported by the new solar system website that brings together all the BBC’s archive content about space, this series is sure to whet the appetite of young Buzz Lightyears.

The show broadcasts for 5 weeks from this Sunday and will also be available on iPlayer- Just thought you might like to know about it for your kids if there are any astrologers out there:-

Title: Wonders of the Solar System
Transmission: Sundays, 9pm, BBC 2
Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qyxfb
Educational website:
Topics:
1) “Empire of the Sun” is all about the Sun

2) “Order out of Chaos” considers the symmetry and balance of the Solar System

3) “The Thin Blue Line” looks at atmospheres.

4) “Dead or alive?” discusses how forces of nature/physics causes planets to flourish or perish.

5) The final episode asks whether there is life on other planets.

THE OSCARS

How cool that Kathryn Bigelow has become the first woman to win the best directing Oscar, as her Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker took six prizes, including best film.
She was briefly married to James Cameron whose film Avatar was pitted against hers. Even more cool when you think that her film [...]

Continue reading and leave comments...

CAMERON TO WOO VOTERS WITH MARRIAGE PROPOSAL

So David Cameron has propelled marriage to the centre of his election campaign, saying that he will announce details of tax breaks for married couples in the manifesto. I wrote a post about this earlier. I repeat what I said then:-

I don’t think this is fair. I am all for “recognising marriage” but surely a tax break is unfair for people like me. This means that although my marriage broke down because my husband had an affair, when he remarries, I will lose the tax break and he and his new wife would keep it. Is it fair to reward couples for simply tying the knot?

Why are the Conservative party so obsessed with the nuclear family and marriage anyway? Is it not patronising to assume that couples cannot make their own mind up about whether staying in the marriage is in their children’s best interests or not? Obviously committed stable relationships are important but surely not simply “marriage” for marriage sake?

I think he has misjudged the general mood of the nation by choosing to over-focus on marriage. Also, given that marriage is about to acquire minority status anyway with only 52% of men and 50% of women being married (OK so where are the other 48% of men hiding?) – the lowest since records began in 1862, it makes almost half of us feel completely inadequate to constantly be reminded that we’re not married.

Do people really want to be given money for getting married anyway? It’s going to cost a lot – up to £5 billion according to one report. Wouldn’t it be better spent on childcare so we can all work more effectively? Or to provide free mediation services where needed, or more nurseries, or more flexible working hours or a greater equality of pay between the sexes or a number of other things that would relieve the pressure on working parents and give them more of a chance to enjoy staying together.

Family is family. That is it. In all it’s glorious shapes and sizes. Some of us might be a little bit broken or dysfunctional as far as the perfect example of family is concerned but we don’t need the state to pay us to get married or stay together. It’s an insult. Pay us to go on holiday instead – then we’d be more inclined to stay together anyway.

Continue reading and leave comments...

“THE REAL VAN GOGH” EXHIBITION AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY

You have to go and see this exhibition – it’s on until 18th April 2010. It is a fascinating insight into the life of Van Gogh. You get to see many of his early sketches and drawings and letters – I was amazed to see how technically correct and powerful these were. It made me realise that when he suddenly leapt into a blaze of colour a few years later he wasn’t the impressionist I thought he was, he was just using the brush strokes that he saw as clearly rooted in nature.

He died at 37 after starting his career as an artist only 10 years before. He was clever, lucid and passionate. He read Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. He spoke and wrote in three different languages. “Books and reality and art are the same kind of thing for me” he wrote. It was hardly surprising he suffered from severe bouts of mental illness. Imagine trying to get everything he wanted to say and feel down on paper in so many different mediums in so short a period of time.

The exhibition takes you through the various stages of his development, from the sketches, to some paintings of the Dutch landscape and the focus on the peasants working in the fields moving from the rather bleak landscape to Paris where he suddenly became a daring colourist. Then there are the portraits which were the most important part of his work where he tried to capture the “je ne sais quoi of the eternal”.

There are many of the paintings we know already, but the story it tells is completely different when you see all of his artwork together like this.

He shot himself in a field, through the chest and then took two days to die. How hideous. He died in Auvers on 29 July 1890.

Paul Gauguin, with whom he lived for a while clearly unhinged him even more. They clashed really badly apparently. It was during this time he chopped off part of his left ear lobe. He sums up the difference between them by painting portraits of them each represented by chairs:-

“Portrait of the Artist as a Chair”:-

Van Gogh’s chair is all rustic and basic, sitting on a tiled floor. Simple with a pipe and a bit of old tissue on the chair itself and painted in the yellow light of day. Whereas Gauguin’s chair is depicted in night light, all dark red and green and lush with a candle on the chair. Completely the opposite in fact:-

Continue reading and leave comments...

ZIMBABWEAN UPDATE REQUIRED PLEASE

Would somebody please explain to me what is going on in Zimbabwe?

Just a few weeks ago I was at a meeting discussing festival opportunities for the new and improved country, with everybody extremely upbeat and hopeful for Zimbabwe’s future. However, whilst there is clearly a far more buoyant economic situation owing to the replacement of Zimbabwe’s worthless currency by the US dollar, which has resulted in schools and hospitals reopening, it seems that not much else has changed as yet.

Look at this note my father has acquired…..farmers were exchanging several of these for eggs and bread not long ago:-

I understand that there is talk of an early general election but how are they ever going to ensure a fair democratic poll and how will the hosting of the World Cup in SA affect the results? Clearly Mugabe won’t be around forever (he celebrates his 86th birthday next week) but at this stage he still seems to be very much in control with the Economist reporting this week that “apart from the economy, the situation on the ground has barely changed at all, with Mr Mugabe holding on to the reins of real power. White owned farms continue to be invaded. Human rights and MDC activitsts are still being beaten up and arrested. MDC provincial governors have still not been allowed to take up their posts and Mr Mugabe continues to control the security forces”.

Anyone have a clue?? According to the latest rankings of the Economist Intelligence Unit which ranked 140 global cities on a criteria ranging from , stability, health care, culture, education , environment and infrastructure, Vancouver was number one and Harare , capital of Zimbabwe was judged the most unliveable city in the world.

There is a new law coming into effect on the 1st March which will force white-owned companies to surrender 51% of their shareholdings to black Zimbabweans. Analysts predict that it will halt billions of dollars of investment plans.

Continue reading and leave comments...

CHERYL COLE SEPARATES FROM FOOTBALLER HUSBAND ASHLEY

Well. The news we have all been waiting for has arrived. I (very cynically) predicted it would happen after a reasonable amount of time lapsed from the release of her single “We’ve Got To Fight For This Love” and her first solo album and whilst it’s extremely sad when any marriage breaks down, [...]

Continue reading and leave comments...

“APPS” FOR IPHONES

I have been like a child in a sweet shop all week. Playing with my new iphone and downloading apps. WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY TELL ME HOW MUCH FUN I’VE BEEN MISSING? I knew I should have one – a bit like having a husband, or a child, but this is just SO much better than all of that stuff put together. I have even had to tell my daughter that I love it more than her – which she’s fine with actually. I hadn’t realised how much I needed one. I thought it would take me ages to get used to and it was only because of the official breakdown of my previous phone, coupled with a permission to upgrade alert and a week without many distractions to learn how to use it that prompted me to take the leap.

I SO should have done it before. I LOVE it. I can actually sit on the loo and blog. I can do big blogs on the bog. Ha ha. There is even a sitting on the loo app I can download if I want to connect to other people doing their big blogs at the same time.

I have been gaily downloading apps all week. What a huge amount of choice. As I turned my phone on I was offered a squishy poo soundy app, but it didn’t appeal, I haven’t got the drinking lager app or the light sabre or indeed any games but I can now read 80 newpapers from around the world every day, scan the barcode of any product with the camera in my phone to compare prices, order my coffee, check out the latest headlines, find my way around the world, find any film I want, look at recipes, work out train times, check out the weather. In fact this morning, as I gazed lovingly at my iphone I was able to report that at EXACTLY that time, outside the window, if I’d bothered to look it was ACTUALLY snowing and I could do all this without bothering to engage with reality ever again. Quite extraordinary and frankly when I did bother to look at the icing of snow all over the lawn, yes, of course it was pretty, but my iphone is prettier.

So, are the mobile “apps” or applications going to be the next big thing? Now that they are becoming so easy to download and are more serious and useful than before? Presumably the main reason for the explosion is that Apple have successfully persuaded billions of us to give them full time access to our credit card details. Genius idea. It makes things so easy (for the moment, until somebody successfully hacks into their secure systems and steals our lives). If it is true that globally the number of mobile devices exceed the number of desktop devices by a factor of ten then it is clear that businesses should be looking at how to achieve competitive advantage through this channel and certainly the opportunities seem endless. There are now about 100,000 apps available from the Apple store to download but presumably that number is set to rocket as more companies come on board.

As I am assuming that I one of the last bloggers in the world to get with the programme (all my Disney blog mates had them last year I seem to recall) would somebody please tell me which Twitter app I should download? There are loads of them. Don’t want to get that wrong….I am v excited because I have become known in the world of Twitter as the one who replies about 3 years late to leave a message and invariably I find myself responding to the wrong thing. Hopefully all this is about to change.

Continue reading and leave comments...