Both from Channel 4:

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/arts_entertainment/
art/what+now+for+the+national+trust/2314772

A report by Nicholas Glass - informal but smooth - it rolls along (it felt self-shot to me… but it’s not). Web page just seems to repeat the film script though - a pity.

And the programme after:

19:50	The Truth About Street Weapons
	The Code of Silence This film explores the culture of silence that grips on the Mancunian community in which 15-year-old Jesse James was murdered two years ago.

Good access - the community spoke.
Also no cutaways over the interview edits - jarring and effective with such a powerful subject… can’t seem to watch again on the website… who is the film maker?

Today’s Sunday Times magazine was very strong - May 11 2008.

Follow up on disfigured soldier / photos from crushed Prague uprising - Josef Koudelka, photographer / and a piece about the subject of a forthcoming BBC documentary ‘Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go’ - on BBC4 on Thursday, May 22, at 9pm

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article3886308.ece

“The Mulberry Bush school in Oxfordshire – the subject of a film by Kim Longinotto to be shown later this month on BBC4 – looks after children who have been multiply excluded from mainstream primary schools. These are not yet the hooded teenagers of Camila Batmanghelidjh’s Kids Company: the youngest is just 6, the oldest 12. All of them are thought to have suffered significant neglect in the first two years of life, which has a ruinous effect on brain development. Fundamentally they are still babies. The building blocks of their personalities are not joined. They are chaotic, unpredictable and unable to function in a group without disrupting. That’s the theory. “

** Is there proof that neglect effects brain development? It sounds convincing - and it seems to be becoming a popular view.

Also: “Children with attachment disorders don’t just rage and spit and climb up on roofs: they connect inappropriately to total strangers, looking for warmth.”

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Also in the newspaper: Spaced learning

Monkseaton, which is a comprehensive in a deprived area, consistently wins high grades and has sent pupils to top British universities and Ivy League colleges in America.

Kelley’s technique, known as “spaced learning”, is based on the research of Douglas Fields, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Baltimore. He has found that connections between developing brain cells form most effectively when they are allowed breaks from stimulation.

From Wikipedia: “Cameron Crowe suggests reaching out to the people around us is the key to professional as well as personal success. The famous “Show me the money!” scene, featuring Rod Tidwell demanding Jerry scream his “family motto” back to him over the phone, epitomizes the empty values of those around Jerry, yet somewhat paradoxically it is Rod who serves as a role-model for the family values and personal attention that Jerry seeks. Crowe’s point is that the pursuit of financial success need not be incompatible with family values or personal relationships, simply that it should take second place to them.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Maguire

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The first cartoon I’ve drawn in ages. I still have not thrown away all of my pieces of paper…

It’s called The Primrose Path

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Primrose_Path

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”. Albert Einstein

“Heine identified the precise origin of the British-oligarchical way of thinking in Lockean empiricism, and utilitarianism. In the Englischen Fragmenten, he warns: “But don’t send any poets to London. This naked [mere?] seriousness about everything, this colossal monotony, this machine-like movement, this sadness of joy itself, this exaggerated London, oppresses the imagination and tears the heart. And you must certainly not send a German poet there, a dreamer, who must pause for everything he sees, even for a ragged beggar woman, or a shiny plate made by a goldsmith — Oh! He’ll have a rough time soon enough, and he will be pushed around from all sides, or with a mild “God damn” be pushed down onto the ground.”

http://members.tripod.com/american_almanac/heine.htm

Mike Chambers was walking his dog on a Norfolk beach. He found a flint axe that could be 700,000 years old.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/loan_in/h/handaxe.aspx

Given the choice, the bottom of a cliff with the tide coming in fast is not a place you’d work. For Paul Durbidge and Bob Mutch, however, the foreshore at Pakefield, south of Lowestoft, Suffolk, is precisely where they want to be. Especially in winter, and even more so when the storms are up. Because it’s then that the fossils are exposed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/jan/06/g2.archaeology

“There were actually other reasons in addition to “insufficient progress” that caused the wash-out. One was a loss of interest on my part in flying only level and in very gentle turns. But I had also developed a fear of the airplane. One evening an inspector had somehow dropped a lighted flare down through the flare chute, and it caught the fabric-covered plane on fire. In just over two minutes by the clock, the AT-17 was reduced almost to ashes. That wasn’t a pleasant thing to hear about. So those are the reasons my stay at Roswell lasted only about five weeks.”

http://www.stelzriede.com/ms/html/mshwp32.htm

Marshall Stelzriede, March 4, 1919 - January 1, 2005.

The story’s told that when Kirk Douglas’ son - Eric - was ‘dying’ on stage, he started to shout angrily at the audience “I’m  Kirk Douglas’  son!”.

Of course, members of the audience then started to shout back:

“No. I’m Kirk Douglas’ son!”

“No. I’m Kirk Douglas’ son!” etc

Yesterday I walked past a Tony & Guy salon. Inside, the hairdressers were having a meeting - seated together and taking notes.

This got me thinking…

Q: How many hairdressers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: One (if the bulb just wants a Wayne Rooney shaved head style).
Or two or more - if it wants a more elaborate style, like what Tina Turner has.  

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For all you hairdresser joke fans out there, I’ve just done a quick google search and it seems that my joke is less hairdresser labour intensive than other hairdresser jokes. The usual response is:

A: Five. One to change the bulb and four to say “Marvellous Gary.”

“Everything you can imagine is real”

Pablo Picasso

Does British magician Paul Daniels have negative buoyancy? Apparently he can’t use his swimming pool, because he sinks rather than floats.