Aesop proved right about crows

WHO WAS AESOP?

A Greek slave who lived more than 2500 years ago, Aesop has gone down in history because of the fables -- or stories with a moral -- that he told.   Many writers, including Aristotle, are known to have referred to both Aesop and his stories, but over the centuries since then they have become popular reading for children.

Some of his best-known fables include The Tortoise and the Hare and The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Well, we all know those ones.  The tortoise proves to the hare that dogged persistence wins, and the boy who cried wolf proved that telling the same lie too often can rebound on the teller (politicians and financial hucksters, take note)

In the fable of The Crow and the Pitcher, a thirsty crow learns to raise the water level in a pitcher by dropping in stones. The tale concludes with the proverb: ''Necessity is the mother of invention.''

Well, a recent experiment in New Zealand has proved that crows really are that intelligent.

In a re-creation of the fable, Auckland University psychology researchers Dr Gavin Hunt, Professor Russell Gray and Dr Alex Taylor presented wild New Caledonian crows with a tall half-filled tube of water, which had a small piece of meat floating on the surface.

When given a collection of stones, each of the four birds – Pepe, Caesar, Mimic and Laura – quickly learned to drop them into the tube to raise the water level, allowing them to fish out the food.

They were even more clever than that, however. When given a selection of small and large stones, the crows picked out the large stones, which displaced more water at once and brought the food within reach more quickly.

"[The] crows showed an immediate preference for large, rather than small stones, with two crows actually discarding small stones the first time they picked them up and before they had observed their effect on the water level," the researchers wrote.

Read more and see a video of the bright birds HERE

Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair writer, is dead

Chrstopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair writer, dies at 62
Christopher Hitchens, a sharp-witted provocateur who used his formidable learning, biting wit and muscular prose style to skewer what he considered high-placed hypocrites, craven lackeys of the right and left, “Islamic fascists” and religious faith of any kind, has died at age 62. He had cancer of the esophagus.

Vanity Fair, the magazine for which Mr. Hitchens worked, confirmed his death.
Mr. Hitchens, an English-born writer who had lived in Washington since 1982, was a tireless master of the persuasive essay, which he wrote with an indefatigable energy and venomous glee. He often wrote about the masters of English literature, but he was better known for his lifelong engagement with politics, with subtly nuanced views that did not fit comfortably with the conventional right or left.

Read more

Kissing poets' graves

Today, the inimitable Jacqueline Church Simonds, Small Press World blogger, posts an intriguingly Wilde item of gossip.

People are kissing Oscar Wilde's grave.  Goodness knows why (because the grave -- pictured -- is really rather intimidating), but they are.

Here is the background, from another intriguing site, devoted to poets' graves

Whilst in Reading Gaol Wilde received an ear injury which was not properly treated. Late in 1900 he developed further infections which led to meningitis, and his subsequent death at the age of 46.

He died penniless and alone in a Paris hotel.

On his deathbed he converted to Catholicism. By becoming a catholic he enacted one of his well known witticisms: The Church of England is the best to live in, but the Catholic Church is the best to die in.

He is also reputed to have said, on being presented with an expensive medical bill, ' I suppose that I will have to die beyond my means'.

(Well, I love those quotes, but if he died alone, who was there to write them down?)

He was originally buried in the Bagneaux Cemetery but his remains were moved to Père Lachaise - the French National Cemetery - on July 19, 1909. However, the famous tomb, sculpted by Jacob Epstein was not added until 1914. It is now visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors each year - many of whom are gay men who come to pay their respects. The tomb is covered in lipstick kisses.

The ashes of Robert Ross (a former lover) are also buried in the tomb.

Comment from me:  This indicates that the kissing marks were made by gay men (wearing lipstick?), but google images show a lot of young women kissing the tomb, too.

People are also writing little messages.  I asked JCS what she would write, once she was in Paris with an old lipstick.  A quote from the man himself, of course! Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

I then wondered what poet's grave I would kiss, in the unlikely eventuality that I got the irresistible urge.  Accordingly, I had a quick skim through the list of poets (dead poets, of course) on the poets' grave site.  I guess, at a push, it would have to be John Masefield.

He is buried in Westminster Abbey (the last poet to get there), so the surroundings would be great. 

And which tombstone, dear reader, would you choose to kiss?

New Wellington millionaire is a blogger

His name is Richard MacManus
And he has just sold his blog on readwriteweb.com

The unassuming Wellington blogger says he has not had a chance to celebrate the sale of his technology website ReadWriteWeb to United States digital publishing firm Say Media for what is believed to be US$5 million (NZ$6.7 million), but reckons a new Volkswagen might be in order. "Mine is over 10 years old."

ReadWriteWeb, which is majority-owned by Mr MacManus, attracts 2.75 million unique visitors and 5 million page views a month, and is consistently named among the world's most popular blogs.

Its writers, most of whom are based in the US, cover innovation from new products to trends in social media. It has a mostly US audience but is edited from his home in Petone.

Read the full story by Hamish Coleman-Webb here

Children's publishing goes digital

Just last week Amazon increased the publishing world's attention to digital children's books with their agreement to acquire Marshall Cavendish's trade children's list, as color reading tablets from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo are exponentially expanding the audience for children's ebooks.

With amazing speed Publishers Lunch responded to this new challenge to publishers.  The next Publishers Launch Conference is a full-day show, Children's Publishing Goes Digital, that kicks off Digital Book World week in January. 

The event runs Monday, January 23, when those attending can check out the dozens of companies in the DBW exhibit hall and stick around for the Publishing Innovation Awards and DBW opening ceremonies reception. There is a packed schedule of nine different sessions.

Full program

Scott Bainbridge, Cold Case Investigator

Scott Bainbridge, writer about unsolved murders and missing people

I was delighted to see in Craig Sisterson's great column Crime Watch (link to the right) that in the upcoming Hamilton Crime Festival, Hamilton's own Scott Bainbridge will be giving a presentation.

Scott is one of New Zealand’s foremost investigative and true crime authors. A self-employed journalist and investigator, he lives and works in Hamilton and has a close association to members of the New Zealand police.

He is regarded as the New Zealand expert on missing persons and is often asked to comment on cases by the media.

"There are murderers out ther who have gotten away with their crimes," he has famously said. "Any renewed publicity causes them stress. My aim is to keep these cases alive."

His first two books Without Trace and Still Missing led to several cold cases being re-opened and inspired the acclaimed TVNZ series The Missing. In his third book Shot in the Dark, Bainbridge accessed old murder files to examine unsolved New Zealand murders of the 1920s and 30s, dispelling decade-old myths and uncovering hidden truths.

One of the cases he has investigated as part of his research for his books was that of Sara Niethe, whose cold case was recently in the news after police arrested a man for her murder. Another is the Jefferie Hill cold case of a Tokoroa boy who disappeared in 1968, which led to a formal re-investigation. Even where mysteries remain unsolved, his books give insider information into the background of all involved, the searches, suspicions, police theories, photos and other evidence -- which may (who knows?) trigger memories and lead to a successful conclusion.

His presentation is guaranteed to be fascinating.  I had the privilege of meeting Scott and his lovely wife, Puna, at his  goodmate Alastair's house last month in Hamilton, and was impressed not just with what he has accomplished, but his obvious emotional involvement with the cold cases he investigates.

I asked him if he found solving these ancient crimes and missing persons cases satisfying.

Yes indeed, he said with a smile.

He was kind enough to give me a copy of his latest book, Shot in the Dark, and I look forward to reading it, once I have managed to pry it out of my husband's hands.
You can watch an interview with Scott here

TIME names "The Protester" the 2011 Person of the Year

NEW YORK (Reuters) - From the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movement, "The Protester" was named Time magazine's 2011 Person of the Year on Wednesday.

Time defines the Person of the Year as someone who, for better or for worse, influences the events of the year.

"Is there a global tipping point for frustration? Everywhere, it seems, people said they'd had enough," Time Editor Rick Stengel said in a statement.

"They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. They literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change," he said.

On almost every continent, 2011 has seen an almost unprecedented rise in both peaceful and sometimes violent unrest and dissent.

Protesters in a lengthening list of countries including Israel, India, Chile, China, Britain, Spain and now the United States all increasingly link their actions explicitly to the popular revolutions that have shaken up the Middle East.

Seal pup finds comfy sofa

Seal pup's antics featured in Wellington's Dominion Post

I can't resist posting this.  Maybe little or nothing to do with the written word, but it's definitely cute.

Annette Swoffer of Tauranga got the shock of her life when a seal pup popped in through her cat door, socialized with her cats in the kitchen, and then made itself at home on her sofa.

"I thought I was hallucinating," she said, so she called a friend to come and look.

"I said to him, what's that, and he said, a seal, so I knew I wasn't having a stroke."

It looked so beautiful that she wanted to give it a pat, "but I knew you aren't supposed to touch wild animals," so she phoned the SPCA.  The SPCA, in its turn, called the Department of Conservation, where they were on seal alert, because someone had already reported a pup ambling along the street.

Annette Swoffer was right not to touch the cutie, because seals have a nasty bite, and human hands look like fish.  Any New Zealander who happns to see a seal or other wild animal in similarly strange circumstances should call the DOC hotline 0800 DOC HOT.

Happy birthday Nostradamus

Creator of much debated prophesies was born today -- or maybe next week

The man we know now as Nostradamus was born on either the 14th or the 21st of December, 1503, in St. Remy de Provence, in the south of France.

All his life, he was haunted by plague (though he actually died of gout).

First, he had to leave the University of Avignon, because of an outbreak of the terrible disease.  So instead of studying grammar and logic, he roamed the countryside collecting herbs, and researching herbal remedies.

In 1529, after practising as an apothecary, he entered the University of Montpellier to study for a medical degree.  Then someone found that -- shock, horror! -- he had been engaged in the menial work of dispensing herbs, and he was expelled.  So he went back to fighting sporadic outbreaks of plague, losing his first wife and two children to the disease, and inventing a "rose pill" that was supposed to prevent it.

About 1550, after an advantageous marriage to a rich woman, he moved from herbs to the occult, changing his name from Nostredame to Nostradamus, and publishing yearly almanacs.  Altogether, these contained 6,338 prophesies (more or less), which became so famous that prominent people began to pay him to make predictions.  (He accepted the jobs -- on the condition that his clients supplied their own astrological charts!)

He then set to the task of rewriting his prophesies into 1,000 quatrains, divided into "centuries."  These were published as The Prophesies in three instalments, starting 1555.

One of his most successful predictions was of his own death.  On the evening of 1 July 1566 he told his secretary "You will not find me alive at sunrise," and lo, it was so.

Another was of the Great Fire of London in 1666.

The blood of the just will be demanded of London
Burnt by the fire in 66

(Century 2, Quatrain 66)

Portsmouth paper archives describe secret departure of Edward VIII

Touching details of the flight of an exiled king revealed

By Dominic Blake, for the BBC

It happened 75 years ago, when Edward VIII abdicated the British throne, leaving the making of history to his brother, the shy, inarticulate Duke of York.

The archives of Portsmouth's Evening News newspaper reveal the details of how the former king slipped silently away from Britain.

One eye-witness, George Hale, 36, told the paper how he was asked for directions to the navy base by one of the drivers.

The paper describes him as "the last civilian in England to be spoken to by the ex-king Edward VIII" as a voice in the back of the car thanked him.

The cars swept up to Unicorn Gate, the entrance to the navy base, with blinds drawn and headlights blazing shortly after midnight.

The paper records: "The ex-King was sad and pensive. Indeed he looked deeply moved. He scarcely spoke a word as he went up the gangway of the destroyer."