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Posts Tagged ‘ Blogposts ’

How to make perfect potato salad

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April 20, 2012

Felicitys perfect potato 008 How to make perfect potato salad

I love a good potato salad with everything….alond with a sandwich,chicken,with the barbecue, or just simply as a snack. Everyone has their own recipe and so do the supermarkets…my mom’s sister always made her special potato salad with apples everytime we came for a visit…so what are your waiting for? Start boiling those potatoes! 

poweredbyguardianREV How to make perfect potato saladThis article titled “How to make perfect potato salad” was written by Felicity Cloake, for The Guardian on Wednesday 18th April 2012 23.10 UTC

We British love a picnic. The first ray of sunshine carpets parks, verges and even kerbs with al fresco diners, happily cramming in scotch eggs and pork pies like they’re going out of fashion – because, although in theory you can decant anything you like on to your tartan rug, our climate dictates that the sustenance in question should be relatively hearty.

Quiches, sticky sausages, Dundee cake; perhaps a few carrot batons or cherry tomatoes as a concession to health, but in general, the British picnic on foodstuffs that, along with a fiery glug of ginger beer or a warming glass of cider, offer some protection against a “fresh” breeze or the occasional spot of rain.

Potato salad, then has some claim to being the supreme example, the appending of the word “salad” giving it a summery, if not particularly healthy air, and the hearty combination of carbohydrate and mayonnaise suggesting valuable insulating properties. It also happens to go very well with other picnic staples, like cold salmon or ham sandwiches. Yotam Ottolenghi may do a mean grilled courgette and fennel with saffron crumbs, but as my granny would have said, it won’t put hairs on your chest.

Waxy v floury

The eternal question with any potato recipe, this is one of the few dishes in which the British embrace the waxy potato with as much enthusiasm as our continental neighbours. Nigel Slater, writing in Tender, suggests that they aren’t the only option however: “The other approach is to use a floury King Edward-style potato, boiled till its edges fray, then cut into crumbling slices … it provides a salad of hearty rusticity”. I see what he means, but I don’t like the way the King Edwards fall apart when I toss them with the dressing, creating a mayonnaisey, potatoey mush instead of anything that could kindly be described as a salad, rustic or otherwise. Waxy it is – particularly given the quality of the new potatoes at this time of year.

Peel appeal

Most recipes call for one to peel the potatoes, generally after cooking but Nigel again offers a rare voice of dissent. “I like the rusticity of an unskinned potato salad,” he admits, “but there is also something very elegant about a salad made from skinned new potatoes”. Having burned my fingers trying to peel potatoes straight from the pan once too often, I struggle to see the elegance, but more importantly, I think that potato skins add both texture and flavour to the dish – without them, it could almost be anything lurking beneath the mayonnaise. If you do leave them on, however, it’s important to make sure there’s enough skinned surface area to absorb the dressing, which means choosing slightly larger potatoes, and cutting them into halves or quarters.

Dressing up, dressing down

Some of you may well think that, if one is stupid enough to try and peel hot potatoes, minor burns are no more than just desserts – in which case I refer you to Constance Spry’s observation, in her nigh legendary Cookery Book, that it is of prime importance that “the dressing should be poured over the cooked potatoes while these are still hot in order that it may penetrate into the slices”. This is certainly true: most of the vinaigrette added to cold cooked potatoes runs off, and ends up in the bottom of the bowl.

What kind of dressing to use, however, is less clear. Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book suggests that it must be “well-flavoured”, suggesting white wine or vinaigrette. Constance Spry, the Riverford Farm Cook Book, and the Prawn Cocktail Years all plump for the latter, and I can see why – wine just isn’t acidic enough here: the bland, almost buttery flavour of a new potato needs something sharper. Riverford Farm uses a simple oil and vinegar mixture, but adding a little mustard, as Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham do, gives a nice little kick.

Mayonnaise

Some recipes, like that in the Prawn Cocktail Years, just stop there – allow the potatoes to cool in their dressing, garnish with a few herbs, and tuck in. (“Although it can be fine to use mayonnaise,” the authors admit, somewhat grudgingly, “its thickness smears rather than coats the potato”.) Most, however, add a second dressing, once the potatoes have cooled down. Jane Grigson suggests a simple mayonnaise, Riverford Farm use a combination of mayo, crème fraîche and Greek yoghurt, which I find a little too sour, and Constance Spry deploys what she calls a “coleslaw dressing”, which involves boiling together vinegar, mustard, salt, flour and sugar, beating in eggs and butter, and then finishing off with cream. The result reminds me, not entirely pleasurably, of supermarket coleslaw – sweet and vinegary and oddly cloying. A simple mayonnaise seems by far the best option. If it ain’t broke …

Some recipes skip the vinaigrette stage altogether, and head straight for the mayonnaise – both Sarah Raven and Signe Johansen allow their spuds to drain for 15 minutes, and then toss them in a thick dressing. The former uses mayonnaise, enlivened with garlic and mustard powder, the latter goes for an unholy marriage of sour cream and salad cream. Given the dish is billed, in Signe’s hitherto faultless Scandilicious book, as a “pepped-up version of a traditional Scandinavian dill, egg and potato salad”, I’m prepared to allow the salad cream as an ingredient whose charms have been lost in translation – because, even in such tiny quantities (1 tbsp to 200ml sour cream), it brings back hideous memories of wet, limp iceberg and other school dinner horrors. (The recipe also leaves me a bottle looking for a good home, if anyone’s interested?) In both cases however, I feel the lack of tangy vinaigrette – without it, the potatoes and dressing remain in two separate layers.

Additions: a fishy caper

Alliums are a popular addition to potato salads – as Jane Grigson notes, this is “not a ladylike dish: it should have a direct appeal, from the delicate earthiness that characterises good potatoes and the sweet fire of a good onion”. I find her raw Spanish onion too much of a good thing however (cuddling up for warmth loses some of its appeal when you have to keep apologising for your lunch choices), and the same goes for Sarah Raven’s thinly sliced red onion. Call me a wimp, but Signe’s spring onion and Simon and Lindsey’s chives suit my tastes far better, adding flavour without overpowering the other ingredients.

Constance Spry wisely observes that a good potato salad “should be garnished with some sharp ingredient such as capers, sliced gherkin or sliced pickled walnuts to relieve the somewhat cloying taste of potatoes”. Which you choose is largely up to you, but, never one to stint, I’ve thrown in both capers and gherkins, inspired by Signe’s recipe, and (and perhaps controversially), the anchovies suggested by Sarah Raven – they just go so beautifully with potato. A good dollop of wholegrain mustard, as in Signe’s dressing, adds both texture and flavour to the mayonnaise, but I’m leaving out the chopped hardboiled egg used in both the Riverford and Scandilicious recipes – with mayonnaise as well, I find the whole thing too rich.

You could just stick with chives, but I think another layer of herbs contributes a welcome freshness: Sarah Raven finishes her salad off with a cornucopia of dill, basil, thyme, coriander, parsley, fennel, chives and mint, but, as I don’t have a herb garden to raid, I’m confining myself to the pepperiness of parsley and a little cooling mint. (Interestingly The Prawn Cocktail Years recipe cooks the potatoes with a few sprigs of mint, but I’m unable to taste this in the finished dish, clever as it sounds). Best served at park temperature, with a hearty slab of ham, or a piece of poached fish, and a woolly blanket.

Perfect potato salad

Serves 4

600g waxy potatoes
½ tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
115g good mayonnaise
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
3 spring onions, thinly sliced
2 tbsp capers, chopped
2 anchovies, finely chopped
Small bunch of chives, finely chopped
Handful of parsley, finely chopped
Handful of mint, finely chopped

1. Boil the potatoes in well salted water for about 15 minutes until tender. Meanwhile, whisk together the mustard and vinegar with a pinch of salt, then whisk in the oils. Cut the cooked potatoes into halves, or quarters if large and toss with the dressing, then leave to cool.

2. Stir the remaining ingredients into the mayonnaise, keeping back a pinch of each of the herbs for garnish, then, when the potatoes are cool, drain off any remaining vinaigrette and toss them into the mayonnaise.

3. Garnish with herbs and serve.

Are you for mayo or vinaigrette when it comes to potato salad, or will anyone admit to a Scandinavian taste for salad cream? And what other dishes find their way into your picnic basket (OK, carrier bag) year after year – do any other salads travel quite as well in your experience?

How to make perfect potato salad

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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A cardiac arrest and a heart attack: what’s the difference?

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March 23, 2012

Fabrice Muamba had a card 007 A cardiac arrest and a heart attack: whats the difference?

This a a good article for my students….and everyone esle needing an explanation of how  a cardiac arrest differs from a heart attack. A heart attack is a common result from an unheathy lifestyle due to poor diet and lack of exercise. Cardiac arrest has been more common among atletes who push themselves physically into exhaustion and may have an underlying condition that was never uncovered under medical examination.

That’s my comment ..pass it on,

Dr Anthony

Yepod.com

http://www.yepod.com/?p=40475 

poweredbyguardianREV A cardiac arrest and a heart attack: whats the difference?This article titled “A cardiac arrest and a heart attack: what’s the difference?” was written by Patrick Barkham, for The Guardian on Monday 19th March 2012 20.00 UTC

Fabrice Muamba’s cardiac arrest on the football pitch has become the most visible example of a shocking statistic: at least 12 young people die suddenly every week in the UK because of abnormalities of the heart.

Like Muamba, who is still in a critical condition, many of these tragedies strike during exercise. Phidippides, the Greek messenger who inspired the modern marathon and collapsed after running well over 100 miles in two days, may be the earliest recorded incident of the shocking death of an athlete. But until recently many cardiac arrest fatalities were classified as “natural causes” rather than attributed to a recognisable condition – sudden death syndrome (SDS).

A heart attack is the constriction of blood to the heart muscle caused by blocked arteries, commonly linked to unhealthy lifestyles and old age. A cardiac arrest is totally different and can occur in the young and healthy if the heart goes into a dangerous rhythm, unable to pump blood around the body.

Sanjay Sharma, professor of cardiology at St George’s Hospital in south London, has screened 20,000 athletes since 1994 with the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY). According to Sharma, an electrocardiogram (recording the rhythm of your heart) and an echo-cardiogram (a sonogram of the heart) can pick up 70% of the conditions that cause SDS in athletes.

It has been reported that 23-year-old Muamba underwent cardiac testing four times in his career. But some serious conditions, such as cardiomyopathies, may be hidden by the natural enlargement of the heart from strenuous exercise. “It can be difficult to be certain where it’s ‘athlete’s heart’ or cardiomyopathy but in an expert setting we are very good at distinguishing between the two,” says Sharma. He would like every young person over 14 who plays sport to be screened. This is expensive but with experts donating their help for free, CRY can perform screenings for £35 per person.

Leicester midfielder Clive Clark was 27 when he suffered a cardiac arrest at half-time in 2007. He recovered, but has never played professionally again. “When a footballer has a cardiac arrest, we would tell them it’s too dangerous to continue playing,” says Sharma. “Not playing football is a small price to give someone back 60 years of life.”

A cardiac arrest and a heart attack: whats the difference?

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Iran’s female ninjas: fighting for sexual equality

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February 21, 2012

Women ninjas in Karaj nor 007 Irans female ninjas: fighting for sexual equality

Oh no Iran is building a force of trained ninjas… assassins …should I be afraid? I don’t think they will make any impact for any war campaign…it’s nice to see the ladies getting out for a bit of fresh air…coming to a community near you!

That’s my comment…pass it on..

Dr Anthony

poweredbyguardianREV Irans female ninjas: fighting for sexual equalityThis article titled “Iran’s female ninjas: fighting for sexual equality” was written by Lucy Mangan, for The Guardian on Sunday 19th February 2012 20.00 UTC

For those times when Betty Friedan just isn’t enough … ninjutsu is here to help. Photographer Caren Firouz has been taking pictures of some of Iran’s estimated 3,500 female ninja-warriors-in-training. It turns out that when you’re denied basic human rights, restricted in your ability to dress how you want and mix with the people you choose, and when your legal testimony is officially recognised as being worth exactly half that of a man’s, you develop – if these images are anything to go by – a lot of rage.

For Iranian women, martial arts are an increasingly popular way of channelling it and ninjutsu one of the most popular choices within that. Purists argue that modern ninjutsu (which came to prominence in the 1970s) is not a martial art at all but a meaningless mishmash of moves and practices that have no connection with the covert arts of war practised by the true ninjas of ancient Japan. Of course, it’s a miracle that any of said purists made it through the Teenage Mutant You-Know-What years, so they should probably be left to mutter to themselves in peace.

For those of us less concerned with Japanese feudal history than with systematic depredations against the rights of women, the pictures seem to offer a more uplifting view of the situation in various parts of the Middle East than is offered in the traditional media narrative. Let’s hope they represent only the tip of an iceberg of resistance and refusal to be cowed by a regime that surely seeks to render women so subservient that even the possibility of hurling a throwing star at someone’s jugular ought to be unthinkable. More power to your shuriken-chucking elbows, ladies. More power to them.

Irans female ninjas: fighting for sexual equality

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Diary of a window box garden: The urban grower as activist

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February 3, 2012

The restored Grow Heathro 007 Diary of a window box garden: The urban grower as activist

If  you are looking for a nice hobby…why not try gardening…it’s fun to start out with a window box garden of herbs …great to have fresh herbs on hand for cooking…perhaps you think your thumb is not green enough, like anything…through practice and help from others…you can achieve good results…nurseries like Roots and Shoots operated and owned by Janet Baiardi in the state of Maine, are always available for consultation. 

http://www.yepod.com/?p=31013

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

Yepod.com

poweredbyguardianREV Diary of a window box garden: The urban grower as activistThis article titled “Diary of a window box garden: The urban grower as activist” was written by Helen Babbs, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 2nd February 2012 11.18 UTC

All is still quiet in the world of the window boxes and, in a 90cm x 12cm place where nothing much happens, it’s tempting to start thinking big. Peering at my plants through the bathroom window, I’ve started wondering what it’s all about. Is a decision to grow things on the ledge of a building I will never call my own, in the chaos that is Holloway, about more than decoration? Is urban growing a kind of activism?

Let’s focus on food. An edible window box isn’t going to change the world but it could be part of a wider movement that just might. The minute you start growing your own, no matter how small the scale, you become aware of others who are doing the same. Some urban growers are protesting with their produce – a positive kind of protest that explores alternative ways of living and working.

Grow Heathrow has returned a derelict market garden back to its former productive glory, while challenging stereotypes about squatting and highlighting environmental issues. I ask William Ronan from the project if he sees urban growing as activism. “The way in which we meet our basic need to feed ourselves is deeply political, and political movements have a rich history in making food a focus of their organising.”

“Instead of lobbying power-holders through methods like petitions, marching and media stunts, urban food growing puts political power in the hands of the community. We remove our reliance on food systems that destroy eco-systems, manipulate workers and enrich the bank balances of corporation shareholders. We don’t have to eat vegetables tainted with chemicals, air miles and poverty wages.”

In Hackney, Growing Communities actively challenges agribusiness and supermarket dominance by growing tonnes of inner city salad and promoting community led trade. Kerry Rankine from the social enterprise says urban growing “concentrates people’s minds on how much effort goes into producing the food we all take for granted. For many, it’s a way to start thinking about alternatives”.

While Kerry thinks small-scale growing can be a form of activism, she believes as a means of creating change it’s not a great lever by itself. Urban growing is part of wider changes that need to be made, including supporting small farmers around cities and mentoring new growers.

So what would an activist’s window box look like, if William and Kerry were pushed to indulge me? It would be sown with rare varieties not sold by mainstream companies, and with locally sourced seed. An activist grower would reject the often sterile F1 Hybrid seed that’s wiping out old varieties of veg.

Kerry and I even think about window box potatoes, specifically the rare 1918 ‘Arran Victory’. It’s an ambitious plan requiring a deep container and a very sturdy ledge, but one that emphasises that experimenting with heritage edibles is a key way to transform a passive box into an active one. Sounds like an excuse for a Seedy Sunday.

Read more of Helen Babbs’ Diary of a window box garden here. Helen is the author of the book My Garden, the City and Me: Rooftop Adventures in the Wilds of London.

Diary of a window box garden: The urban grower as activist

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Fingerprint Digital aims at kid-apps market with ‘Mom-Comm’ feature

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December 8, 2011

fingerprint Fingerprint Digital aims at kid apps market with Mom Comm feature

More and more applications are using our individual fingerprints as a security lock option to protect our property and family. Fingerprints are a great way to reduce access or control access to our computers,phones,homes,etc….so as the market demand continues to grow…we should see more use of  fingerprint technology… 

Pass it on,

http://www.yepod.com/?p=21719

Dr Anthony

   

poweredbyguardian Fingerprint Digital aims at kid apps market with Mom Comm featureThis article titled “Fingerprint Digital aims at kid-apps market with ‘Mom-Comm’ feature” was written by Stuart Dredge, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 5th December 2011 15.00 UTC

There is no shortage of startups providing apps for children in 2011: Toca Boca, Mindshapes, Nosy Crow, Callaway Digital… and now Fingerprint Digital.

The San Francisco-based company has launched its first five iOS apps, and is counting on a feature called Mom-Comm to help it stand out from the herd. In short, it’s like a Game Center for kids and parents, providing rewards and app recommendations for the former, and an update on their progress for the latter.

Fingerprint was founded by Nancy MacIntyre, who previously worked at electronic learning company LeapFrog Enterprises as executive vice president of product innovation and marketing. Her new company raised $1.4m (£0.9m) in September 2011 to fuel her ambitions of finding an audience among 3-8 year-olds and their parents.

“There are tens of thousands of kids’ apps out there, and for parents just discovering what apps are good and knowing how to find them in the App Store is problematic,” she says.

“Once playing, they have no idea what their kids are doing with them. We set out to create a network of high-quality kids content where it’s easy for the parent to know what games are appropriate for their children, and get an insight into what the child is playing.”

This communication goes a bit further than just telling parents what their children have been doing. Parents can send voice or text messages of encouragement to their children within the apps, while the kids can send pre-scripted messages to their parents to tell them about achievements.

Fingerprint’s first batch of iOS titles includes three in its Big Kid Life franchise, focusing on firefighters, vets and fairy princesses, with a mixture of educational puzzles and more standard gameplay.

Fingerprint Play Maker is an avatar-based app designed to teach maths and spelling skills, while DoReMi 1-2-3 is a musical app introducing pitch and melody through the medium of cute animals. This last app is the work of an external developer, Creativity Mobile.

“Our apps were created to showcase how the platform works, and train people in how to use it and engage with it,” says MacIntyre. “We’ve created an SDK that third party developers can use to plug into our system, and we’ll have several more third-party apps coming out soon.”

Children will create their own character when they first use a Fingerprint game, and will then take that avatar from app to app, and device to device. They will also be able to collect and play with virtual pets, with one unlockable in every app – through play, it should be noted, not through an in-app purchase.

MacIntyre says that in Fingerprint’s tests, the messaging features have received the strongest response from parents and children. “We see it as transforming the solo app play of one child playing an app to making it a social experience between the child and their parent or caregiver,” she says.

“A child can send a message to mom, mom can send one back, and suddenly the parent is engaged in the learning. Kids have gotten really excited about that. We want to bring parents into the apps in a way that we think is interesting and clever.”

MacIntyre is under no illusions about the competitive nature of the kid-apps market, but she also warns that no developer in this space can afford to focus solely on their direct competition.

“Kids have so many choices,” she says. “The battle ground isn’t only about your apps versus Sesame Street. It’s about your apps versus Angry Birds. You need really compelling, fun content. We hope that our shared reward system gives children a reason to go from app to app, while bringing parents into the equation.”

The competitive kid-apps market could work in Fingerprint’s favour as it tries to get more third-party developers to use its SDK in their games and apps. MacIntyre says that the company’s pitch is its ability to deliver an audience for developers’ apps, while also providing them with analytics on how they’re being used.

“It gets them out of the mode of being one of tens of thousands of apps in the App Store, and into being one of a group of highly-curated very high-quality kids apps,” she says. “It’s not about being an app developer building one app at a time. It’s about the network.”

Fingerprint’s launch games are based on its own characters, but during the interview MacIntyre alludes to conversations she’s been having with children’s brands. Licensing looks set to play a part in the company’s future, although no deals have been announced yet.

“As a small company starting out, we need to attract as many customers as possible, and some anchor licensed brands is helpful in that regard,” she says. “However, the apps market has proven its ability to create new IP, and most of the biggest app brands are new IP. We’re really optimistic about Big Kid Life.”

Much of the competition for Fingerprint – but also many of its potential licensors – come from the toys industry that is very familiar to MacIntyre, given her background.

She thinks that most big toy companies still treat apps “as a marketing element” – something to bolster the brands of their physical toys, rather than a way to create new brands and become an important new revenue stream.

“I’m quite sure all of the major toy players are really thinking about the app business,” she says, though, expressing optimism about the idea of linking real-world toys with apps – something done already by Disney with its AppMates line.

What about companies like LeapFrog and Fisher Price making their own tablets for children, and so become a rival platform for kid-app developers to consider?

“Is it possible to have a good experience with a kid-oriented tablet? The answer is yes, but it’s still a toy,” says MacIntyre. “With the price of full tablets coming down, it will be very difficult for anybody to make a meaningful business out of making proprietary devices [for kids]. Every parent with an iPhone or iPad is actually a competitor for LeapFrog or Fisher Price.”

She cites a recent survey showing iOS devices at the top of children’s Christmas wishlists in the US as a sign that Apple’s devices in particular have “done an amazing job of becoming aspirational to children”.

Can Big Kid Life and Mom-Comm become similarly attractive to children, parents and other developers? 2012 should provide the answer.

Fingerprint Digital aims at kid apps market with Mom Comm feature

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Batman to move towards twilight years in The Dark Knight Rises

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November 27, 2011

The Dark Knight Rises wil 007 Batman to move towards twilight years in The Dark Knight Rises

Are you ready for another infusion of the Dark Crusader? I am…hope its exciting and full of special effects…I enjoy watching Batman use high tech weapons against the criminals of Gotham City…lets not forget his side-kick Robin! Sure he’s costume looks a little silly…but you can count him when the going gets tough….”To the Bat-Mobile Robin!”………

http://www.yepod.com/?p=20217

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony 

poweredbyguardian Batman to move towards twilight years in The Dark Knight RisesThis article titled “Batman to move towards twilight years in The Dark Knight Rises” was written by Ben Child, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 24th November 2011 17.02 UTC

Seeking information about Christopher Nolan Batman movies is, if not like waiting for buses, perhaps like watching volcanoes. You wait for an age for anything at all, then everything explodes at once.

If you’re aiming to go into The Dark Knight Rises next summer without any preconceptions, the time to turn away is now. That said, Nolan has been known to drop decoys and blatant misinformation in the past, so his comments about the third and final instalment of the caped crusader’s current big-screen iteration this week may be rather more disengenuous than they first appear.

The most startling new snippet, revealed in a bumper Empire magazine special (on sale now), is that The Dark Knight Rises takes place a full eight years after the events of the previous film. “It’s really all about finishing Batman and Bruce Wayne’s story,” Nolan tells the mag. “We left him in a very precarious place. Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later – eight years after The Dark Knight. So he’s an older Bruce Wayne; he’s not in a great state.”

Such an approach tallies rather well with Christian Bale’s portrayal of Batman/Bruce Wayne over Nolan’s trilogy. If Wayne was in his 20s during the events of Batman Begins, his early 30s in The Dark Knight and will be in his late 30s in this episode, Bale (37) is finally playing him at around the right age. I’d be surprised if the character is intended to be any older in The Dark Knight Rises, despite the apparent time gap since The Dark Knight.

Exactly how badly off is Batman in the new film? Might he be returning after a lengthy lay-off? Or is he injured early on in the movie? Gary Oldman, who plays Commissioner Gordon, described the film this week as “epic”, so it’s possible the movie takes place over a number of years, or utilises flashback sequences to show us what’s been happening since the last time we saw Batman on screen. We know that Liam Neeson has shot scenes for the film as the supposedly dead Ra’s al Ghul from Batman Begins, so such an approach doesn’t sound too far out.

That brings us to Marion Cotillard, ostensibly down to play Wayne Enterprises board member Miranda Tate, though that has long been rumoured to be a decoy. This new snap of the Oscar-winning French actor on set shows her in an outfit that looks pretty unsuitable for a high-powered businesswoman, but eminently fitting for Talia al Ghul, Ra’s’ daughter. Cotillard, of course, has denied that Tate is based on any character from the comics (which would rule out Al Ghul), but might she be telling porkies?

Tom Hardy’s Bane, who seems to be the main villain in TDKR, also spoke to Empire this week about his character. Bane in the comics is best known as a hulking yet intelligent villain most famous for breaking Batman’s back.

“He’s brutal – brutal,” Hardy said. “He’s expedient delivery of brutality. And you know, he’s a big dude. He’s a big dude who’s incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and orientated fighting style. It’s just about carnage with Bane. He’s a smashing machine. He’s a wrecking ball. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it’s nasty. Anything from small joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. It’s anything he can get away with.”

Hardy says the film will push its hoped-for 12 certificate as far as possible: “I’m not approaching it with a 12-certificate attitude,” he said. “If we’re going to shoot somebody, shoot the pregnant woman or the old lady first. Make sure everybody stands up and listens. He is a terrorist in his mentality as well as brutal action. So he’s horrible. A really horrible piece of work.”

Batman didn’t really have to face a physically superior opponent during the first two films, so Bane was an obvious choice of villain, says Nolan. ‘With Bane, we’re looking to give Batman a challenge he hasn’t had before,” he says. “With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we’re testing Batman both physically as well as mentally.’”

Hardy certainly has the chops to play a big man with a brain. He proved his mettle in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson as the famously dangerous British prisoner Charles Bronson. In fact I can’t remember seeing the British actor in anything where he’s been anything less than incendiary. Apart from the fact that it looks like being a rather crowded landscape in Gotham City this time around – I haven’t even mentioned Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Matthew Modine as the villain Nixon or Joseph Gordon-Levitt as city cop John Blake so far – The Dark Knight Rises seems to have everything going for it. Roll on 20 July.

 

Batman to move towards twilight years in The Dark Knight Rises

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My favourite film: The Thing

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November 22, 2011

Kurt Russell in The Thing 001 My favourite film: The Thing

I also loved watching this film starring Kurt Russell…so if you like science fiction, I recommend you get a copy of this movie,invite some friends,make some popcorn, and enjoy. Stay tune for the Thing 2011..see which one is better..

http://www.yepod.com/?p=19953

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

poweredbyguardian My favourite film: The ThingThis article titled “My favourite film: The Thing” was written by Dave Turner, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd November 2011 12.10 UTC

I was 15 when I first saw John Carpenter’s The Thing. It was a night of firsts: my first 18 certificate movie on the big screen, and my first date with the wonderful Morag. The night started well when my much-maligned bum-fluff moustache didn’t so much as raise a titter at the ticket kiosk, though I personally think it was my Simon Le Bon-inspired spiky mullet that gave me that wee bit of extra gravitas. Or perhaps it was the leg warmers. Either way, Morag was clearly impressed, and that was before I ordered the large Kia-Ora and the wine gums. A fiver went a long way back then.

The Thing came out in 1982, a few years after Alien had changed the horror landscape forever. While they are thematically similar, Carpenter’s masterpiece is in fact a reimagining of the 1951 B-movie The Thing From Another World, in which an alien creature is discovered in the ice, thaws out, and then runs amok in an Arctic military base. While the central conceit remains, the earlier movie imagines a lumbering Frankenstein-monster clone, while Carpenter’s is a shape-shifting chimera whose every cell is a living creature, and is truer to the source material, a short story by John W Campbell.

The Thing starts with a lone dog being pursued through the icy wasteland by a couple of enraged Norwegians in a helicopter who, in one of the movie’s few comedy moments, are shot and blown–up respectively. The dog is then taken in by the staff of a nearby Antarctic survey base, the stock-in-trade disparate bunch of American character actors, soon to be monster-fodder. Plus Kurt Russell who, as chess-playing, whisky drinking, cowboy-hatted helicopter pilot RJ MacReady has never been better. He is the original cowboy versus alien, and is far too cool even for the Antarctic winter.

So far, so good: Morag and I are holding hands and slurping loudly on our Kia-Ora – and then the dog erupts into a jaw-dropping myriad of tentacles, slime, mangled body parts and huge teeth, unlike anything I had seen in The Hammer House of Horror. I was petrified.

From then on Carpenter masterfully orchestrates proceedings. The menace of the dark polar night and the claustrophobic confines of the base are utilised to raise the fear, tension and paranoia to unbearable heights. This is a creature that doesn’t just hide in the dark, but could be your friend, your colleague, or the girl beside you whose hand you are breaking in a terrified vice-like grip.

The movie is about the creature, which means characterisation and plot become secondary – but who cares? A man’s chest becomes huge jaws that bite off a doctor’s arms; a head disengages from a torso, sprouts legs and eyes on stalks, and then scurries off; a hairless, slimy dog head explodes from a man’s chest. Throughout The Thing, man and creature merge in horrific, bloody contortions that would give Hieronymus Bosch nightmares, and almost everyone dies horribly. Brilliant.

By the end I was a quivering, sweat-drenched wreck, and soon afterwards was single once more. On the screen the two survivors sit and drink, and wait for the end, or for the sequel that never came. Until now. Strictly speaking The Thing 2011 is a prequel, and without Carpenter and Russell it has its job cut out as nothing can have the same impact as The Thing did over 30 years ago. Though I can’t wait.

Morag, wherever you are, I forgive you. I’m not sure if you can still get Kia-Ora, but give me a call if you fancy some wine gums.

 

My favourite film: The Thing

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The best of times to write

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November 2, 2011

Charles Dickens 007 The best of times to write

Perhaps the best time to write is any time you have a thought that appears interesting enough. Rarely do I ever have moments where I can splash down pages and pages of writing. I suppose you can train yourself to set aside a special time each day, away from distractions to complete that novel…sure…anything is possible as long as you have a plan and stick to it…

http://www.yepod.com/?p=16842

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

  100 yepod logo size The best of times to write

poweredbyguardian The best of times to writeThis article titled “The best of times to write” was written by Robert McCrum, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 27th October 2011 11.40 UTC

I have been reading Claire Tomalin’s bicentennial biography of Charles Dickens – the latest in a long line that begins with The Life of Charles Dickens by the novelist’s friend and adviser John Forster, and includes important studies by Peter Ackroyd, Michael Slater and, most recently, Becoming Dickens by Robert Douglas Fairhurst.

The thing I always take away from reading about the Inimitable, as he styled himself (half-joking), is his prodigious energy and his Victorian capacity for sheer hard work. Reviews, letters, petitions, journalism, stories, plays, scraps of poetry, more letters on myriad topics (from interior decor to prison reform), and finally of course the 14 great novels themselves.

But then, as you go deeper into Tomalin, you discover that Dickens, in his prime, used to compress his literary energies into five hours, roughly 9am to 2pm, after which he would walk incessantly, and put his mind into neutral. He might return to what he’d written in the morning later in the evening, but those five hours held the key to his output. Which raises the question: what’s the best time of day to write? and its corollary: how many hours are necessary?

Some writers (Dickens among them) are larks. Others – more nocturnal – are owls. Robert Frost, whose remote Vermont cabin I visited recently in company with his biographer Jay Parini, never started work till the afternoon, and often stayed up till two or three in the morning, not rising until midday, or even later. Proust, famously, worked night and day in a cork-lined room. I remember reading somewhere that Raymond Chandler observed that it was impossible to write well for more than four hours a day. What do you do in the afternoon?

There’s also the question of how long it might take to complete a novel. Here, you encounter literary legends. Faulkner claimed to have completed As I Lay Dying in six weeks. In the mid-1930s, PG Wodehouse, who wrote fast once he had the mechanics of his plots straight, polished off the last 10,000 words of Very Good, Jeeves! in a single day. In his autobiography, A Sort of Life, Graham Greene describes writing Stamboul Train on benzedrine, to pay the bills, working against the clock. Further back, Samuel Johnson wrote Rasselas, which is short, in a fortnight to defray the expenses of his mother’s funeral. Or so it’s said.

More usually, a 60-70,000 word novel seems to take at least a year to complete, allowing for two or three drafts, although often the first, rough outline can get written in a matter of weeks. The strange truth about a lot of fiction is that the dominant moments that animate an entire novel can occur to the writer in a matter of minutes. After that, in the words of one New Zealand writer I recall with affection, “it’s just typing”.

Dickens, of course, lived in the golden age of the typesetter. His strong, decisive manuscripts (he boasted a very clear hand) were swiftly transformed into galley proofs, for endless re-writing, the really time-consuming part of the process. The revision is the bit that many writers really enjoy, once the heavy lifting of the first draft is done.

 

The best of times to write

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Battlefield 3: Andy McNab on how he brought realism to shooting games

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October 27, 2011

Andy McNab 007 Battlefield 3: Andy McNab on how he brought realism to shooting games

I guess if you want to buy a battlefield video game that comes as close as the real thing….try Battlefield 3 by Andy McNab who has seen the real deal…shooting games are getting more and more realistic because of the high demand for it. More bloodier,louder,faster,and exciting…more is always better…isn’t it?

http://www.yepod.com/?p=16721

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

logo smaller with star Battlefield 3: Andy McNab on how he brought realism to shooting games

poweredbyguardian Battlefield 3: Andy McNab on how he brought realism to shooting gamesThis article titled “Battlefield 3: Andy McNab on how he brought realism to shooting games” was written by Keith Stuart, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 27th October 2011 13.27 UTC

Famed for his explosive SAS memoir Bravo Two Zero, and now the author of dozens of fictional military thrillers, Andy McNab is a pretty good person to go to if you’re concerned with creating an authentic combat game. The decorated ex-soldier worked with EA Dice through the last year of development on Battlefield 3, helping with mission design, dialogue and motion capture sessions. He has also written a tie-in novel, Battlefield 3: The Russian, which explores the activities of special forces operator Dima, who appears as a non-playable character in the game.

But what has he really been able to draw from his covert missions in hotspots around the world? And has his work as a security adviser helped in the task of describing war to a bunch of coders and artists? We spoke to him last week, to find out.

You haven’t been heavily involved with a video game before. What drew you to Battlefield 3?
The story. It’s as simple as that. Normally, when you’re approached by a games company, they just want you to jump on at the end as a marketing tool, or do a bit of motion capture. But when the call came from EA Dice, I went out to Stockholm and the guys there just seemed to get it – they wanted to progress the story-side. You’ve got to have a lot more than just shooting in games now, you’ve got to have that sense of engagement.

The first things EA Dice showed me were the scripts – and they had a sense of character, of emotion, of connection. That was what did it for me. And my first job was helping with the writing, coming up with plausible bridges between missions, doing some of the dialogue. Military speak is very progressive and positive. No one says, “Well, we’ll try to get to X by 9am”, it’s all about you will do this, I will do that, this will happen. The point of that is, if you start with a moment of doubt, when things get worse, doubt becomes failure. It’s got to be positive from the start. And it’s all about brevity – military language is not as formal as we think it is.

And I spent time with the designers and artists, looking at the aesthetics – the right use of weapons, different ranges of fire, operations in urban and desert environments. I worked with the stuntmen and actors in the motion capture studios, showing them how to hold their guns. The team just wanted everything to look right.

This may sound like a stupid question, but are there moments in Battlefield that have reminded you of genuine missions you’ve been on?
Oh yes, certainly some of the urban stuff. There’s quite a lot of action in Tehran, and through the Middle Eastern architecture, it does look very similar to Iraq. The tank section of the game is based on the earthworks that were built along the Iran/Iraq borders during their war. There were huge infantry battalions based around these earthworks. Four or five years ago, I was flying along the border with the Americans – I was working for a private security company at the time – and I saw these almost medieval constructions.

So I took a couple of pictures and when we were going through the tank levels in the game, I dug out them out, sent them over and Dice produced exact replicas in the game. There’s an American tank commander who served out in Fallujah and now works for EA Dice in the US – he said the tank level is better than a military simulator.

A lot of people aren’t comfortable with the idea of gamers indulging in war simulations for fun. Are you completely OK with it?
Yes! People have always been fascinated by war – games are just another medium for that. There have been war films since the beginning of cinema – you could go along to the Saturday morning pictures and watch John Wayne kill 100 Japanese soldiers in 10 minutes. It’s all part of the same thing. And the big arguments about games inducing violence – they’re a load of nonsense; violence has always been there. And possibly, the reason the crime rate is declining in the US is that people are now staying in and exploring violence through games rather than going out and beating people up.

It’s the same with films and books. I’ve been blamed for a bank robbery in America somewhere; I’ve been blamed for a couple of murders. But look… take Chicago and Toronto: they’re separated by two lakes, nothing more, the TV is the same, their influences are the same, but Chicago’s crime rate is up here and Toronto’s is way down there. How can that be? Is it a cultural thing? I don’t know.

Are the emotions that you experience in shooter anywhere near the emotions you genuinely face in real-life missions? Are there any similarities at all?
Yes, there are. Once you’re engaged with the character, you’re part of it. You get fear, anxiety, you get the same rush of endorphins if you’re successful; obviously it’s all at different levels because it’s just entertainment. You don’t get wet, cold and hungry! Also, some people have gamers down as solitary and geeky, but that’s not the case. It’s very social, you’re in touch with 16 other gamers in Japan, the US, all over the world.

And soldiers tend to be very good at shooters don’t they?
Absolutely. The military uses games to as a teaching tool; soldiers in training have always used games. Conflict is progressing, it’s becoming more about stand-off attack – you don’t want to face the enemy, because people get killed. So war is becoming much more technical and soldiers do play a lot of games. They get it.

Which are some of the key weapons in Battlefield, do you think? Which are the most authentic?
The RPG works very well, certainly in the urban environments. We spent a lot of time working on that, getting it right, especially the signature left by the back blast. Everyone always expects a big explosion from an RPG, but you don’t get that – it’s designed to penetrate armour.

And with RPGs in shooting games you’ll often get a guy who’ll just stand right up and fire. Well, in real-life, sometimes you see them sometimes you don’t; what you’re looking for is the signature of the back blast, which is quite distinctive, it’s a noisy signature. That’s in the game, and it should help players find where the fire is coming from.

The M4 carbine is in a lot of games, but it works very well here. The animation in BF3 captures the way that soldiers manipulate these weapons, the different fixtures on the safety catch, whether it’s on single shot or auto, all that sort of stuff. Even down to the moments where you have stoppage and you’ll just tip the gun to see what’s going on – if the working parts are back, you need a new magazine. So you’ll just tip and look. That’s in the game animation. Geeky things like that.

We spent a lot of time talking about the helicopter gunships, the 40mm cannons, the way that bullet casings come down like rain – that really does happen. So we played with that. Also, they asked me if the gunship would just stay still and hover over the battlefield. I said of course it will; the crew are like, “We’ve got a big gun, we’re heavily armoured, what are you going to do about it?” There’s this attitude, “we will go forward” and we’ve got to get that in the game.

It’s about changing people’s perceptions. If you have a line of machine guns pointing one in one direction, you think they’re going to stitch the wall in a nice line – it doesn’t work that way. When rounds fall, they fall in an oval shape, so instead of having the guns facing outwards, you have two slightly turned to each other – that way you have a bigger Beaten Zone. So often you’ll get players asking, what’s that machine gun doing up there? And actually, it’s doing its job because you want the fire to be coming in from the flank, so the Beaten Zones cross. The Germans worked it out in the first world war. That’s why we lost so many soldiers at battles like Passchendaele.

You’ve also talked a lot about ensuring a lived-in look for the vehicles, and about how tanks end up being heavily customised by their crews…
Yeah, I mean, people live in them! They customise them as much as possible. If they can get hold of a barbecue, they’ll stick it on there. Some crews, certainly in Iraq, they were nicking air conditioning units and trying to rig them up in the tanks. They plug in their iPods. That’s their home. Even in mechanised battalions, in Warriors and all that, they’ll get as much of their equipment as they can on the outside, to make sure they can make the inside more comfortable. Everyone wants chargers for their phones in there! And there are mugs everywhere because they’re continually getting brews on….

There’s a lot of cynicism among the soldiers in Battlefield 3 – they’re often very sceptical, even sarcastic, about their mission objectives. Is that realistic?
Yes, I think it’s in every soldier’s job description! They’ve always got to moan, they’ve always got to be saying, ‘what the fuck’s he on about… oh well, we’ll get on and do it’. It’s not all, ‘yeah, let’s go!’. It’s not like that, people aren’t like that. Everyone just takes the piss out of each other all the time. When they’re not taking the piss is when you’ve got to worry.

The multiplayer element of Battlefield 3 really highlights the importance of good communications between infantry and air force. Is that realistic?
There are occasions where infantry just talk directly to the pilots. There are voice procedures, but if you’ve got a guy on the ground screaming for support, the pilot can just say “Shut up, where are you, what can you see? Mark it for me.” Then they come in and say “Right. I’ve got it.”

But there is a lot of chaos and confusion?
Yes, and I’ve explained that to the team. With the night mission in Tehran, when you’re coming in to the city, I spent ages talking to them about the light flares and what they do as they descend – the shadows they cast, the usual confusion… we’ve played around with that a lot.

Can I ask you quickly, as a security adviser, what do you think about the current situation in the Middle East and North Africa? Did anyone see the Arab spring and the fall of Gaddafi coming?
No. There’s this thing called “the future character of conflict”, and both in the commercial military world and the state military world missed all this, it didn’t hit anyone’s radar. If anything, people were getting more concerned about central Asia. It remains to be seen whether this is all a good thing. I think everyone is relieved that Gaddafi is dead rather than going to the ICC – no one wanted him there. Why would they? It would give him a voice. Now it’s cut, it’s done, he’s dead.

Now it’s about keeping out of the way of the NTC, because there’s that void to fill – they have to manage themselves. As soon as it was over, they were saying, “OK Nato, out!.” That’s the right way to do it. It’s been about mentoring the NTC. They’ve got to be in charge of their own destiny. You don’t want the Europeans stomping around out there.

If you were still in active service with the SAS, where do you think you would be now?
In Afghanistan probably, in a task force there. Since November, most of the Nato special forces have been all about malleting the leadership of the Taliban. The process of transition has begun in the country; the Afghan national army control Kabul now and have actually been quite successful. So the plan is to remove the hardcore leadership of the Taliban so you’re left with people who you can negotiate with. I was out there just before Cameron in November last year and I got a brief that the task forces had malleted about 1,400 Taliban in a 90-day period. It was a huge operation. That’s what it’s all about – the run up to the point at which combat troops are withdrawn; they’re going no matter what – late 2014, probably 2015. They will go, because it will be election time.

So where do you think the next conflict hotspots will be for western powers?
There are many of them – and again it’s about assessing the future character of conflict. What all military forces do is assess energy and food security and the routes to and from trade partners. Food and water, we’re all right on, so it’ll be energy and trade routes – conflicts on the east and west coasts of Africa, possibly. The Americans, I think, still have an aircraft carrier fleet off the west coast protecting that flank. Our energy out of north Africa seems pretty secure now, it’s the east and west coast that might be problem…

Battlefield 3 is released on Friday for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

 

Battlefield 3: Andy McNab on how he brought realism to shooting games

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Welcome to our teaching blog

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September 2, 2011

Teacher at a whiteboard 007 Welcome to our teaching blog

Teachers need resources and develop networks to further their teaching skills.

poweredbyguardian Welcome to our teaching blogThis article titled “Welcome to our teaching blog” was written by Wendy Berliner, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 2nd September 2011 09.27 UTC

Hello and welcome to the new Guardian Teacher Network Blog.

Why the Guardian Teacher Network Blog? Well we thought it was high time that your fast growing community had its own place to discuss best practice in the classroom and a spot where we can shine a light into all areas of our rapidly growing teaching resources.

We know you already appreciate the Guardian Teacher Network resource library and find the weekly newsletter useful in locating materials to help you in class, and the blog won’t replace that – it will just take it a bit further.

At GTN HQ we will continue to highlight the thousands of resources we have for you but we are asking you also to blog to your community when and if you feel like it.

You might want to talk about how you’ve used a Guardian Teacher Network resource in your classroom; you might want to talk about a resource of your own and why it works so well for your students; there may be something in the news which affects classroom teaching and you may want to comment on that; you may want to share with your community colleagues a cracking piece of good practice in teaching or whole school activity – managing student behaviour, for example, that you know about.

Whether you are teaching early years or sixth formers or whether you are newly qualified or an experienced school leader – you will have something to share with your colleagues in other parts of the country and the world and perhaps something to learn collegiately too.

So give yourself a voice in your wider professional community and contact us at teacher.network@guardian.co.uk. Put ‘Blog’ in the subject field and can you keep it to a maximum of 800 words – anything longer than that gets a bit too much in the blog format we feel.

This is your community and we have been delighted to realise how engaged you are with it by your many messages over the last few months. We hope you enjoy being centre stage – the place teachers deserve to be.

• Wendy Berliner is Head of Education for Guardian Business and professional, the media services arm of Guardian News and Media. An award winning educational journalist, she has spent much of her career on The Guardian and is now leading the team developing Guardian Teacher Network, a ground breaking online professional network for teachers everywhere.

This content is brought to you by the Guardian Teacher Network.

 

Welcome to our teaching blog Welcome to our teaching blog

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Gamescom 2011: Lollipop Chainsaw – preview

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August 22, 2011

Lollipop Chainsaw 005 Gamescom 2011: Lollipop Chainsaw – preview

Lollipop Chainsaw 007 Gamescom 2011: Lollipop Chainsaw – preview

A cheerleader killing zombies.Gamescom 2011..wow that is so wild and I sure a lot of gamers out there will be looking out for the release in 2012…but I suspect it will be ready for release during the Christmas holidays in 2011. The hero is a teenage cheerleader using all her skills to fight off zombies in every corner of a high school. Arms,legs,heads,heads,and more bloody body  parts flying every-where …I sure mom and dad won’t approve of this software…remember its make believe …don’t go psycho on us…there are more games coming…so stick around for the fun.

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

Yepod.com 

poweredbyguardian Gamescom 2011: Lollipop Chainsaw – previewThis article titled “Gamescom 2011: Lollipop Chainsaw – preview” was written by Keith Stuart, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 22nd August 2011 13.10 UTC

Juliet Starling is a beautiful, popular cheerleader – the kind of idolised creature who provides the antagonist in every Hollywood teen flick. But in the latest third-person hack-’em-up from Grasshopper Manufacture, she is about to become the hero. A zombifying virus has hit the brilliantly named San Romero high school and the only way she’s going to escape is by harnessing her athletic skills – oh, and a chainsaw. The chainsaw is definitely going to come in handy.

Nowadays we know what to expect from Grasshopper founder Suda51. Violence, bizarre humour, punk music, some more bizarre humour. He is a sort of games industry combination of Roger Corman and Takeshi Kitano; he makes games about his own obsessions and seems to pay only fleeting attention to how others will interpret his works. How else can you explain Killer7, an action adventure game that’s essentially about split personality disorder? And this time the story has been co-written by cult director James Gunn, responsible for the likes of Tromeo and Juliet and sci-fi horror comedy Slither, so don’t expect anything as mundane as coherency to suddenly get in the way of a good evisceration.

In the Gamescom demo I saw, Juliet must navigate through the classrooms and corridors of her school, dismembering her undead peers. She has multiple chainsaw and pom pom attacks, as well as a handy dodge manoeuvre. And of course, all of these can be combined into a series of histrionic combos. Pull off enough of these in sequence (usually by manipulating and juggling zombie bodies) and a gauge in the bottom left of the screen fills up, giving access to the glorious special move roster. There are some belting executions: you can leapfrog over a zombie’s head then jam the chainsaw up between their legs, continuing the slicing trajectory until the blade bursts out the top of their skull, slicing your victim in half.

Everywhere, arms and heads are flying off, and bodies slump like discarded clothes. But this is no blood-red torture porn shocker. The clue is in that oxymoronic title, with its combination of sweet and deadly. In Lollipop Chainsaw, the visual style is comic book horror re-imagined as kawaii cute-fest; so decapitations are accompanied by rainbows, flying pink hearts and twinkling sounds. It shouldn’t work, but the slightly cell-shaded visuals and brash primary colour palette provide a sympathetic backdrop, while all the onscreen messages and HUD elements are in a grainy comic font. It’s a stylistic, hyper-kinetic smorgasbord of pan-global, pop culture references that draws its visual logic from the likes of Steve Ditko and Naoko Takeuchi. Who needs reality when you have illustration?

Amid the madness skulks a zombified teacher, Mr Fitzgibbon, who lumbers in shouting “no talking!” before trying to eviscerate you. He quickly becomes the centre of a mini-boss battle, picking up school desks and using them as makeshift shields against your flamboyant attacks. “Do you homework,” he growls, as you pom pom him from above. The only way to defeat him is to leap over his head and attack him with a special move from behind his desk. When you’ve finished with him, there will be no detention ever again.

We’re also shown a full boss battle against a zombie punk named Zed who works a Mohawk and tartan trousers combination, and lists his favourite bands as Black Flag and The Misfits. He looks like the sort of emaciated drug causality you might have spotted at Jane’s Addiction gigs in the late eighties. “I love the smell of dead cheerleader in the morning,” he whines in a cockney accent. His weapon is an electrified mike stand and the fight takes place on an under-lit disco dance floor. When you chainsaw him in half, he just pushes the two sections of his head together again with his bony hands. Instead, you need to chainsaw his mammoth stage amps in half; mammoth stage amps that, by the way, have a giant neon sign at the top, flashing the word “cocksucker” at you. For Suda51, subtlety is never the best policy. When he is eventually beaten, he cries and screams, the blood spurting from various dismemberments. “He’s such an emo,” Starling witheringly protests.

One of the criticisms levelled at Suda51′s previous Grand Guignol romp Shadows of the Damned, was that there was little gameplay substance beneath the ironic gore. Lollipop Chainsaw could well be another generic third-person slasher – and lord knows, we’ve seen enough zombie games recently. However, it seems as though there are multiple routes to take through the school (indicated by great big arrows shakily pointing at different doors), and it looks like there are uninfected pupils to rescue, bringing in a shepherding mechanic (no, that didn’t do Dead Rising any favours, but let’s see). Also, there’s the small matter of Nick Roulette, the talking decapitated head that Juliet has tied to her belt. What’s his role? Another joking accomplice, a la Johnson in Shadows of the Damned? They’re not saying just yet.

If the combat system is tight, if the visual imagination stays at this level and if the narrative pushes us along through the corridors of gore and rainbows, this is set to be another Grasshopper Manufacture title that you just have to experience for yourself.

• Lollipop Chainsaw will be released on Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2012

Gamescom 2011: Lollipop Chainsaw – preview Gamescom 2011: Lollipop Chainsaw – preview

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes goes box office bananas in first weekend

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August 10, 2011

Rise of the Planet of the 007 Rise of the Planet of the Apes goes box office bananas in first weekend

The first time I ever saw “Planet of the Apes” it was with the actor Charlton Heston and that film was made in 1968. In 1970 we had “Benealth the Panet of the Apes” and again in 2001 there was a remake of this movie. Now we have arrived to the making of the “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and I am sure it will be entertaining.

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

yepodcom2Logo1 150x150 Rise of the Planet of the Apes goes box office bananas in first weekend  

poweredbyguardian Rise of the Planet of the Apes goes box office bananas in first weekendThis article titled “Rise of the Planet of the Apes goes box office bananas in first weekend” was written by Jeremy Kay, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 8th August 2011 14.53 UTC

Peter Chernin must be grinning from ear to ear. The former second in command to Rupert Murdoch left News Corp two and a half years ago to try his hand at being an entertainment producer and it looks like he made the right choice. While Murdoch suffers the slings and foam pies of outrageous misfortune, Chernin Entertainment’s first feature, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, stormed to the top of the US charts on a terrific $54m over the weekend, according to Fox estimates.

Doubtless Chernin received a golden handshake from News Corp that would put Apes’ opening weekend in the shade, but he’s got to be excited about his future in entertainment and can look forward to developing a big franchise with Fox. The sequel will be a big deal because of that $54m opener, plus the movie’s obvious pedigree as a smart popcorn movie and a ton of enthusiastic reviews bode well.

James Franco and Freida Pinto (she of Slumdog Millionaire and the forthcoming sword-and-sandals epic Immortals) are the headline stars, but I would suggest the real gems here are the wizards at Weta Digital and the motion-capture technology that created apes that are not only extraordinarily lifelike but actually managed to please Peta, to boot. Andy Serkis is involved, of course, lending his abilities to the character of the simian leader Ceasar.

I reckon Apes is a shoo-in for the visual effects Oscar race and, who knows, it might even earn an Academy Award best picture nomination. It’s possible; after all, this is arguably the best studio release of the summer and summer blockbusters such as Inception and Avatar have earned best picture nominations, which was the point of expanding the number of slots. I won’t go into the maths on how many nominees there could be next year. It’s an overly complicated formula that generates between five and 10. We cool?

As summer winds down, as always the studios will be talking up the pyrotechnics of Apes and the extraordinary performances of the Harry Potter finale (now the biggest worldwide release of the year to date, on $1.13bn) and its billion-dollar-club buddy Transformers: Dark of the Moon. However, as I’ve said before, audiences are dwindling – and admissions are the bellwether of a film’s wellbeing. Don’t put too much faith in those weekend gross figures I and dozens of other trade reporters write about each week.

Inflation is the studios’ best friend: big opening weekend numbers make everything look rosy, but the reality is that consumers today are faced with more entertainment choices than ever before, and the role of cinema in selling a movie is diminishing, particularly at the US box office. For some time now, international box office has been the key driver for the blockbuster business. For example, nearly $800m of Harry Potter’s $1.13bn global score comes from outside North America (and almost $100m of that comes from the UK). Harry Potter opened in China over the weekend and Warner Bros estimates it generated $25.5m – a record for that territory. Within five years China could overtake the US as the world’s single biggest theatrical market.

Returning to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Fox used opening-weekend screenings to show trailers for The Sitter, in which Jonah Hill, the Superbad star and sidekick to Russell Brand in the truly horrendous Get Him to the Greek, plays a terrible babysitter. The Sitter will open in December in the US and is the latest of this year’s bumper crop of R-rated comedies. There’s nothing wrong with crass humour, but what never ceases to amaze and depress in equal measure are Hollywood’s demonstrable paucity of imagination and the suffocating control by the studios’ risk-averse conglomerations. Hollywood’s corporate paymasters demand copycat behavior, so we’ve had a year of big R-rated hits led by The Hangover Part II, Bad Teacher, Bridesmaids (easily the best of the crop) and Horrible Bosses. You can trace the development roots of movies such as these and The Sitter back to the success of The Hangover in 2009. Still, I’m a fan of Hill, who stars opposite Brad Pitt in Sony’s Oscar hopeful, Moneyball, due out later this year, and I hope The Sitter turns out well.

North American top 10, 5-7 August 2011

1 Rise of the Planet of the Apes, $54m

2 The Smurfs, $21m. Total: $76.2m

3 Cowboys & Aliens, $15.7m. Total: $67.4m

4 The Change-Up, $13.5m

5 Captain America: The First Avenger, $13m. Total: $143.2m

6 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, $12.2m. Total: $342.8m

7 Crazy, Stupid, Love. $12.1m. Total: $42.2m

8 Friends With Benefits, $4.7m. Total: $48.5m

9 Horrible Bosses, $4.6m. Total: $105.2m

10 Transformers: Dark of the Moon, $3m. Total: $344.2m

Rise of the Planet of the Apes goes box office bananas in first weekend Rise of the Planet of the Apes goes box office bananas in first weekend

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Judge tells student: Pay bill for pub assault by cutting down on beer

By
July 28, 2011

Pints of beer on a bar in 001 Judge tells student: Pay bill for pub assault by cutting down on beer

Punishments handed down these days are getting odd….but having  a judge tell a student he needs to go without some beer in order to pay off a fine…is hardly a slap on the wrists…for brawling in a bar?  No Beer … pure justice…

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

yepodcom2Logo 150x150 Judge tells student: Pay bill for pub assault by cutting down on beer   

poweredbyguardian Judge tells student: Pay bill for pub assault by cutting down on beerThis article titled “Judge tells student: Pay bill for pub assault by cutting down on beer” was written by Martin Wainwright, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 28th July 2011 09.52 UTC

A student in Hartlepool who tried to get out of paying compensation to a man he punched in a pub brawl has been told to find the money by missing out on two pints of beer a week.

The classic saloon bar line of ‘How come they can still afford drink/fags/a car?’ was taken literally by Judge Peter Armstrong after 19-year-old Anthony Davidson was convicted of unlawful wounding.

The attack in Middlesbrough left a local man, 24-year-old John Pawley, needing stitches in two mouth wounds. He also lost £250 in wages from missing work plus two-and-a-half stone through being unable to eat properly for several weeks.

He hadn’t exactly been an angel. Middlesbrough Crown court heard that Pawley drunkenly stumbled into Davidson’s table earlier in the evening, spilling drinks. But the prosecutor, Jacqueline Edwards, said that the attack happened subsequently outside the pub where Pawley was smoking a cigarette, and was unprovoked. Judge Armstrong told Davidson: “The injuries you caused were excessive for self-defence.”

It was at this point that the student’s barrister made a wrong move by saying that Davidson couldn’t afford the £500 compensation and suggesting that it should be paid instead by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. The judge replied: “Even students have an income. He can pay at two pints of beer a week. I don’t see why the burden should fall wholly on the taxpayer.”

Davidson faces just under two years on rations, with payment imposed at £5 a week plus 100 hours of unpaid community work as punishment for the offence. Judge Armstrong leads an interesting life. He had a brawler up before him only last week who had drunk 25 litres (44 pints) of cider in the 24 hours before the attack; and in 2009 he felt obliged to reduce an assault sentence on a 40-stone thug to 15 months because his health would have been unlikely to cope with a full, four-year-term.

Judge tells student: Pay bill for pub assault by cutting down on beer Judge tells student: Pay bill for pub assault by cutting down on beer

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The Beaver shows that the movies can’t cope with depression

By
June 20, 2011

Mel Gibson in The Beaver 007 The Beaver shows that the movies cant cope with depression

To truly understand depression you must research and ask qalified doctors questions. I didn’t expect The Beaver to teach me anything about depression,simply I wanted to be entertained…that is what a movie does..if I wanted to watch a documentary…I would watch a documentary….if there was anything to learn from this movie…it was that depression can have a tramatic effect on our lives…but we can overcome it,control it, and be happy with our lives again…consult your physician on the proper treatment for depression..

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

Your Educational Podcast and Video  

poweredbyguardianREV The Beaver shows that the movies cant cope with depressionThis article titled “The Beaver shows that the movies can’t cope with depression” was written by David Cox, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 20th June 2011 10.35 UTC

Is it faintly conceivable that “a hopelessly depressed individual” would outsource his psyche to a garrulous glove puppet to distance himself from “the negative aspects of his personality”? Not really. Depression isn’t like that.

The Beaver gets it right in its first few minutes, when Mel Gibson’s Walter has yet to place his trust in rodent therapy. Then, all he does is stare vacantly at the ceiling from the marital bed or lie comatose on a lilo or a couch. That’s pretty convincing. For depression doesn’t prompt weird and imaginative behaviour; its manifestations are as dreary as its impact on the lives of its victims.

We frequently hear the complaint that cinema perpetuates “myths and stereotypes” about mental illness. Its “pervasive negative portrayals” are accused of having “harmful effects”. Well, the movies are indeed misleading; yet it’s often their positivity that’s ill-founded.

Clearly no one could call Psycho, Apocalypse Now or Silence of the Lambs great PR for what Walter’s son terms nut-jobs. Yet overall, the latter’s portrayal on the big screen has become more and more supportive, particularly since One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest demonstrated that an affirmative approach could garner both Oscars and big bucks.

Schizophrenics have become the lovable flakies of Shine, Donny Darko and A Beautiful Mind. Autistic people like Rain Man’s Raymond can be mathematical geniuses. Sufferers from learning difficulties are inspiring idiot savants like Chauncey Gardner, Forrest Gump or Simple Jack. Obsessives like Black Swan’s Nina can be thrilling, and the deluded, like Shutter Island’s Teddy, can be charismatic. Even psychotics like the Joker in The Dark Knight are allotted wit and charm.

However, most of the mentally challenged aren’t suffering from conditions like these. The prevalence of all other afflictions of the mind is dwarfed by that of depression. Worldwide, it’s expected to become the world’s second most disabling disease by 2020. In Britain, it strikes one in six of us at some point in our lives. Unfortunately, the opportunities it offers for upbeat representation on screen don’t quite match its ubiquity.

That, presumably, is why The Beaver tries to invigorate its worthily selected subject matter with a miracle ingredient. Walter’s outlandish alter ego was originally conceived by writer Kyle Killen as one of his hero’s number twos; it was dubbed Barry by its begetter and carried round by him in a Tupperware box. This perhaps hints at a more light-hearted approach to the material than director Jodie Foster seems to have felt appropriate.

Apparently, Barry wasn’t turned into a puppet with a voice modelled on Ray Winstone’s simply to make him a little bit more endearing. Foster maintains that medical authenticity was also a factor. “It’s not unheard of to use puppets in therapy,” she’s informed a sceptical world. “It’s done all the time.” There’s also a bit of symbolism in play that might have escaped some filmgoers: “The beaver, I think, was the perfect metaphor for somebody who builds and destroys at the same time.”

Walter is supposed to embrace his furry doppelganger as a “survival tool” that will somehow enable him to get the better of “a painful life and death situation”. Regrettably, it’s not easy to see how that would work. It’s even harder to believe that Walter’s chosen spokescreature would provide him with an effective “way to connect” with his all too convincingly alienated family. Still, the narrative arc requires “healing” and “reconciliation”, so the film’s contrivance must deliver them. In the process, credibility is destroyed rather than built.

If The Beaver’s box office performance is anything to go by, it’s failed to invest depression with the kind of buzz for which Foster seems to have been hoping. It would be easy to blame this on the film’s eccentric choice of catalytic instrument, or even the transgressions of its star. Yet that may be unfair. Perhaps there’s nothing that could ever have made Walter’s story soar.

In future, maybe cinema should leave depression to Scandinavian art house. It’s far better off with the condition’s more glamorous sibling, bipolar disorder, of whose dramatic possibilities Gibson may have given us a glimpse through his own real-life behaviour. Bipolar offers plenty of scope for awards-oriented displays of desolation, but these can be immediately offset by ecstasy, extravagance and mayhem. The silver screen can therefore thank bipolar for everything from Mr Jones, Mad Love, Lust for Life, Sylvia and Michael Clayton to The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Blue Sky, Bulworth, Frances, Biutiful and A Fine Madness.

Yet 24-carat depression? Perhaps it’s just too much of a downer.


The Beaver shows that the movies cant cope with depression

The Beaver shows that the movies cant cope with depression

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Modern Warfare 3 – preview

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June 1, 2011

Modern Warfare 3 007 Modern Warfare 3 – preview

Your first mission is to take back New York City being occupied by the Russians..you and your team is sent in to turn the tide and secure the area…are you ready? Ready for Modern Warfare 3…

Dr Anthony

Yepod.com 

poweredbyguardianREV Modern Warfare 3 – previewThis article titled “Modern Warfare 3 – preview” was written by Keith Stuart, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 26th May 2011 12.00 UTC

Earlier this week, at a studio complex somewhere in Kentish Town, Activision previewed what will certainly be one of the biggest entertainment events of the year. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the latest in the long-running series of first-person shooters, is likely to make more money than any blockbuster movie release, and through subsequent downloadable content, it will continue to generate millions of dollars throughout 2012.

Last year, the Cold War-based Call of Duty: Black Ops shifted something in the region of 18m copies and became America’s biggest-selling game ever. But fans consider the spin-off Modern Warfare titles – developed by the original Call of Duty studio, Infinity Ward – to be the standard bearers for the series.

Of course, Modern Warfare 3 was always an inevitability, but nothing about its development has been predictable. Last year, several months after the release of the smash hit Modern Warfare 2, Activision sacked Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella for, “breaches of contract and insubordination”.

The duo sued Activision, Activision counter-sued and in the meantime dozens more Infinity Ward staff left, many joining their previous bosses at new development start-up, Respawn Entertainment, now working on an undisclosed project for EA. Very quickly, Activision revealed that it had also formed a new studio, Sledgehammer Games, with Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey previously of EA’s Visceral Games at its head, and a remit to work on the Call of Duty brand.

Indeed, the team was already being paired up with a restructured Infinity Ward to start work on Modern Warfare 3. The two companies have shared development duties – an increasingly common set-up in the modern industry, where projects can require teams of up to 200 people.

“We’re taking it to an entirely new level,” says Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling, displaying the customary games industry hyperbole. “We’re taking players into the heart of major cities all around the world, delivering urban combat in places like Manhattan and London. We’re also going throughout Europe, to Russia, parts of Africa, and the Himalayas – you will travel the world.” Yes you will, and judging by the two missions Activision revealed to us at the press event, you will blow most of it up in the process.

The story, apparently, picks up immediately after the close of Modern Warfare 2, in which Russia launched an invasion of the US, while the elite counter-terrorist squad Task Force 141, attempted to gather evidence against Russian ultranationalist leader Vladimir Makarov. “Washington DC is burning, ” explains Schofield. “Task Force 141 is either dead or on the run and battles rage along the eastern seaboard of the United States. You must now join with your delta team in Manhattan to help turn the tide against the Russians who have occupied New York City…”

Titled Black Tuesday, the first mission we’re shown picks up at the opening of the New York campaign. The player starts aboard a Black Hawk helicopter that’s just crash-landed in the city’s financial district. The objective is to get to the stock exchange, but there is a full-scale battle raging. Missiles cut through the sky, taking out vast chunks of Manhattan real estate. A front line of obliterated roads, burned-out police cars and crawling APCs is populated by groups of soldiers cowering behind great chunks of fallen masonry. It is, in short, what we expect from a Call of Duty set-piece – a cacophonous opera of destruction and gunfire, through which the player is closely guided by a computer-controlled superior (in this case, someone called Sandman).

From here, we burst into an office block riddled with bullet holes. An enemy chopper hovers outside, spraying everything with machine-gun fire. Then we’re out into an alley between tenements and fire escapes, before bursting into a jewellery store and engaging in another gun fight amid dozens of glass display cases exploding into shards.

The key moment is when we finally reach the stock exchange and indulge in a lengthy shoot-out on the trading floor, which has been intricately replicated – and then destroyed. Then we’re up a series of scaffolding platforms onto the roof where a thermite charge takes out a satellite dish, blocking enemy communications. From here, we get the grandstanding conclusion.

A comms link is established with a drone craft, and as in Modern Warfare 2, the player is able to remote-guide Reaper missiles at enemy positions, finally taking out a Hind and watching it spin to fiery oblivion in the streets below. But this isn’t quite the end. There’s still time to leap into a Black Hawk, laying down mini-gun fire, and duelling with another Hind between the skyscrapers – the final audacious moments see the two craft firing at each other through the superstructure of an unfinished building. It is every Michael Bay movie condensed into one roaring aerial showdown.

“The campaign is all about that cinematic intensity,” says Bowling, somewhat needlessly after what we’ve just experienced. “We are locked into delivering 60 frames per second; that’s what allows us to combine the high-speed gameplay and tight gun control. But the single player is just one aspect of a much, much larger experience.” Along with the main campaign, we’re promised the now customary Spec-Ops missions, and a two-player co-op option that will be apparently be massively built upon since its Modern Warfare 2 introduction. As for online multiplayer – well, something big is planned and an announcement is due next week.

To close the event, Bowling and Schofield show us another level, this time following the Bravo Six team on a covert mission in London’s docklands. An enemy weapons shipment is being unloaded, and we’re here to gather valuable intel (guided from the air by a voice actor who sounds uncannily like series regular, Craig Fairbrass).

There’s no indication of how this all links in with the Russian invasion of the US, but the air support is picking up heat signatures in a nearby warehouse and our job is, naturally, to take out the bad guys. The player is in control of a character named Burns who’s using a silenced P90 to pick off soldiers. Then we’re out into the dock and a full-on assault, with car alarms going off everywhere and Canary Wharf towering in the background, just visible through the night-time drizzle.

Whatever was offloaded from the ship has now seemingly been spirited off, and we’re giving chase in a truck, which thunders onto railway tracks and down into the tube system, where enemies fire from a hurtling train. We zig-zag between oncoming trains, taking constant fire. At one point, the whole cavalcade whips through a packed station, and we see commuters running in panic. We’re told to watch our fire – and for a second it looks like the infamous No Russian scene from Modern Warfare 2, where the player has to take part in a terrorist raid on a Russian airport filled with civilians. Eventually, the tube train jumps the track and spins through the tunnel in a fury of debris. And we’re out.

It is, as Call of Duty has always been, breathless stuff – a total sensory assault, this time lent an extra dramatic charge by those intricately detailed representations of familiar cityscapes. I wonder if the developers have considered how the use of such imagery will remind some of real-life atrocities in New York and London – and indeed, the trailer has already evoked the hysterical wrath of the Daily Mail, which has claimed that the tube train sections essentially simulate the July 7 bombings. It is an attention-grabbing connection, but it is also spurious; players will understand that the use of recognisable landmarks ramps up both the intensity and the stakes, and these hugely familiar cities have been destroyed countless times over the years in monster and sci-fi flicks.

With the tumultuous demo over, plenty of intriguing questions remain. We’re not sure if any favourite characters from previous Modern Warfare titles are returning, and there’s much to discover about the reworked multiplayer. In gameplay terms, amid the state-of-the art special effects and sheer graphical detail, the corridor-like structure is hugely familiar, a single route plotted through the chaos.

A question mark looms over whether the Modern Warfare 3 single-player mode can innovate beyond the restrictive formula of its predecessors. But then, do its millions of fans want it to?

This is a series based on bombast and bullets, and while last year’s Black Ops made a few interesting narrative sojourns into the territory of the 1970s conspiracy thriller, it looks like Modern Warfare 3 will be pure 21st century action cinema – a gigantic paean to the art of computer-generated destruction.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will be released on 8 November for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC


Modern Warfare 3 – preview

Modern Warfare 3 – preview

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Is Johnny Depp your ideal DVD marathon companion?

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May 27, 2011

Marathon man ... Johnny D 007 Is Johnny Depp your ideal DVD marathon companion?

Hey there’s a whole list of great actors and actresses to watch on the big screen…but sometimes you just want to go home and curl up on the sofa with a good old fashion DVD. How about some Johnny Depp?

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

Yepod.com

poweredbyguardianREV Is Johnny Depp your ideal DVD marathon companion?This article titled “Is Johnny Depp your ideal DVD marathon companion?” was written by Stuart Heritage, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 27th May 2011 12.32 UTC

If you consider yourself to be a movie lover, this will be of great importance to you. A survey has just uncovered the fact that Johnny Depp is the actor you’d most like to watch a film with. No, really, this is a thing. It’s true.

Apparently, Sky Movies asked 1,000 film fans who their ideal DVD-marathon companion would be and most of them – speaking on behalf of you, remember – chose Johnny Depp. This is probably because he’s very handsome and would be full of hilarious anecdotes about his life in showbusiness. After all, good looks and spoken wit are both vital attributes when it comes to picking someone you want to sit silently in the dark with for 10 hours.

If you could really convince any movie star in the world to watch a film with you – even though watching a film is such a pointlessly non-interactive pastime you’d be just as well served by sharing your sofa with a plank of wood or a ventriloquist’s dummy – would you really want Johnny Depp? He’s not really like Captain Jack, you know. Watch any interview with him and you’ll notice the difference. He mumbles a lot in real life, and most of his hats look like they stink. Plus he’s gone on record as saying he never watches any of his old films, so you wouldn’t be able to watch Ed Wood or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with him. On the other hand, it’d mean not having to sit through The Tourist, which might explain why so many people picked him.

The other actors on the list aren’t much better. Sandra Bullock recently adopted a child, so she’d be up and down on the phone to her babysitter all the time. George Clooney would lean over and try to flog you a coffee machine every couple of minutes. Matt Damon‘s too earnest, Bruce Willis is too intimidating, Samuel L Jackson is now a golf bore, Tom Hanks would keep rewinding the bits he’s in and then asking what you thought of them and Harrison Ford wears an age-inappropriate earring that may prove distracting in a real-world movie-watching scenario.

The survey does throw up a few fairly decent choices, but even they might prove to be problematic. There’s Meryl Streep, for example, but that’s no guarantee of anything. Yes, you might get the hooting, carefree, fun Meryl from Mamma Mia!, but there’s just as much chance you’d end up saddled with Meryl the Serious Actor, and nobody wants to watch a film with an aggressive shusher who forces you to watch the credits when all you want to do is go for a wee. Equally, Nicolas Cage also made the list, which sounds like a nice idea right up until the moment you realise that you’d actually have to be shut in a room with Nicolas Cage for a prolonged length of time.

Let’s be realistic here. There are a handful of qualities you should look for when it comes to choosing a movie-watching companion, and chief among them are a willingness to keep quiet and a modicum of snack-based generosity. So long as they can manage to tilt a bag of Revels towards you every 10 minutes or so without droning on about what a pleasure it was to work with Ridley Scott, you shouldn’t have a problem. This suggests a naturally soft-spoken actor like Forest Whitaker would be preferable or, better yet, a static Harryhausen skeleton from Jason and the Argonauts with a bowl of popcorn in its lap. Perfect.

But maybe I’ve got this all wrong. Which actor would you most like to watch a film with? Yes, we’re really doing this.


Is Johnny Depp your ideal DVD marathon companion?

Is Johnny Depp your ideal DVD marathon companion?

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Angelina’s big cinema challenge

By
May 24, 2011

Angelina Jolie at Cannes 007 Angelinas big cinema challenge

Angelina Jolie is in Kung Fu Panda  2….it should be a cute film for the children to watch…and sure…us grown-ups have the green light as well…we are all kids.

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

Yepod.com

poweredbyguardianREV Angelinas big cinema challengeThis article titled “Angelina’s big cinema challenge” was written by Marina Hyde, for The Guardian on Thursday 12th May 2011 19.00 UTC

We end with another celebration of Hollywood alchemy: that strange and magical process whereby narcissism becomes altruism.

Once again, our spirit guide is Angelina Jolie, who draws attention to the “pretty heavy lessons” of her latest cinematic outing. It seems that the star was concerned about how her brood of variously sourced children would handle the content of the work. “I wondered how they’d respond to the themes of the film,” she tells an interviewer. “I was nervous at first. I didn’t know if they were going to react to some of the issues – very personal family issues [such as] adoption and inner peace – and was it too heavy?”

The name of the movie?

Kung Fu Panda 2.

There are no words. There literally are no words.


Angelinas big cinema challenge

Angelinas big cinema challenge

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K-pop: how South Korea turned round its music scene

By
April 20, 2011

TVXQ 007 K pop: how South Korea turned round its music scene

K-pop music is big business in South Korea…and its about time some control is being implemented to safe-guarding copy rights and prevention of piracy. Hopefully these improvements will spill over to other business sectors in South Korea…

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

Yepod.com

poweredbyguardianREV K pop: how South Korea turned round its music sceneThis article titled “K-pop: how South Korea turned round its music scene” was written by Helienne Lindvall, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 20th April 2011 16.21 UTC

South Korean music has, traditionally, never been on the radar of major labels and publishers. Being one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world (out of a population of 48.6 million, 39.4 million use the internet), the country’s music industry suffered from rampant piracy for most of the past decade.

There was little revenue to be collected internally, and there wasn’t much demand for Korean artists outside the territory. Though Universal Music Group opened an office in the country over a decade ago, the only local artists it would invest in were classical ones.

But about four years ago – when, perhaps not so coincidentally, South Korea introduced anti-piracy legislation – Pelle Lidell, European A&R executive of the company’s publishing arm, turned his attention to pitching songs written by his roster of largely Scandinavian and British songwriters to Korean artists. Today UMG considers Korea to be one of the most important territories – and it’s all because of K-pop.

The K-pop phenomenon emerged at the beginning of the last decade, with Korean music production houses taking the concept of pop factories to levels way beyond The X Factor. Companies such as SM Entertainment and Play Cube Entertainment tapped into the 360 degree model way before the major labels – being independent record labels, talent agencies and publishers with their own academies where they groom young teenagers to be pop stars.

SME even has its own merchandise store in Seoul. The SM Entertainment building, set in what Lidell calls “the coolest youth district” of the city, contains a coffee shop, luxury restaurant, a section where you can take pictures that look like you’re sitting with the SME stars, and a store for SME artist memorabilia.

Though 55% of Korean music sales are digital, the company makes sure that physical CDs are attractive enough for the fans to splurge on them as well. It doesn’t release records in ordinary CD cases; they’re all in glossy luxury packaging. They’re often released in up to five different packages – and the fans buy them all.

To call SME an independent is almost misleading, as the company has 250 employees and has sold more than 59m records in the last year alone. “What UK label sells that many records of local repertoire in a year?” asks Lidell. “They’re the biggest in Korea. Today, many of the biggest US artists and songwriters, like will.i.am and Sean Garrett, shuttle back and forth to work with Korean acts.”

He adds: “I’ve never had a single release [in Korea] that has sold less than 400,000. Mirotic, a single by the group TVXQ sold around 2m in Korea and Japan (the group call themselves Tohoshinki in Japan). SME boy band Super Junior is Korean, but they’ve also put together a Super Junior in China. So sometimes when I get a cut with a song I’ll make three different adaptations: Korean, Japanese and Chinese.”

There’s also a lot of sync income in Korea. The song Top Billing Love – written by Karen Poole, Bloodshy and Avant, responsible for hits for artists like Kylie and Britney – almost made it onto a Britney Spears album in 2002. SME did a deal with mobile phone manufacturer LG and its biggest girl groups, Girls’ Generation and FX, did a version each of the song, calling it Chocolate Love, since LG were launching a new brown phone.

Girls’ Generation’s version went straight to number one. A few weeks later they released the FX version , which also went to number one. Then they released a joint version for LG, which also went to the top of the charts.

It took a bit longer for the recording side of UMG to get involved with K-pop. “It’s only in the past two years that we’ve seen proper growth in revenue from Korea,” says Sandy Monteiro, the president of UMG International in South East Asia. “Investing in this kind of artist development is not cheap. Though local classical artists are more niche, they’re a safer bet and require a tiny investment compared to K-pop acts. There are so many companies working with what we call ‘the Idol format’, so you’ve got a fight on your hands. But on 1 January last year we took the plunge.”

That’s when UMG decided to invest in Play Cube Entertainment, resulting in the label’s K-pop sales jumping from 9% of total Korean sales to 29% in 2010. But K-pop isn’t just a success in its country of birth. It’s also big in countries such as the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, China and Japan. While Play Cube’s biggest act, boy band Beast, reached six-times-platinum sales in Korea alone, it also sold gold in most other south-east Asian markets. Its biggest girl group, 4Minute, isn’t far behind.

“Beast are as big in South East Asia as Backstreet Boys were in the west, 15 years ago,” says Monteiro. Idol sales represent about 40% of all music sales in Korea, but they make up the bulk of all sales of Korean music in the rest of south-east Asia. That’s why UMG is now also licensing Korean repertoire that is not signed to the label, including some of SME’s acts, to countries outside Korea. “[The K-pop production houses] tend to be quite mercenary. But they’ve realised the value of partnering with a stable set-up like ours.”

Monteiro doubts K-pop will ever become as big in countries like the US and UK, as music fans in those markets would just be too critical about the lyrics and the acts’ accents when singing in English. That, however, doesn’t seem to be a major problem considering that while UK revenue from record sales shrunk by more than 11% in 2010, Korean overall sales were up 11.7%. This is why, at a recent industry event in Abu Dhabi, UMG’s head of digital, Rob Wells, indicated that K-pop was high on the label’s list of priorities, and Monteiro says UMG is planning to double its investment in Korea.

The fact that South Korea has very strict anti-piracy laws – including a three-strike rule for illegal downloaders – has helped turn around the fortunes of the country’s music industry. But UMG’s Korean managing director, Beom-Joon Yang, believes that there’s more to it. “We think the combined popularity of Korean megastar icons like Rain, Korean television soap dramas, top-quality music production in Korea, and a genuine love for Korean culture overall around Asia, have attributed to making K-pop part of mainstream pop culture.”


K pop: how South Korea turned round its music scene

K pop: how South Korea turned round its music scene

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Antibiotic resistance: Bacteria are winning the war

By
April 7, 2011

antibiotics460 Antibiotic resistance: Bacteria are winning the war

Superbugs will inherit the Earth…thats exactly where we are headed. Doctors have been over prescripting  antibiotics for years…and the bacteria are now becoming resistant to the medication that used to so effective in eliminating them. Health professionals are concern that we may be on borrowed time before a serious pandemic holds this world hostage. We need to investigate new options in controling the continued proliferation of superbugs…science needs to find an answer.

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

www.Yepod.com 

poweredbyguardianREV Antibiotic resistance: Bacteria are winning the warThis article titled “Antibiotic resistance: Bacteria are winning the war” was written by Frank Swain, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 7th April 2011 12.45 UTC

In what has surely become the most ritualised medical practice since the Hippocratic Oath, the World Health Organization took to the stage again today to warn that the misuse of antibiotics was threatening to render one of our most potent medicines useless. This comes a decade after an identical appeal from the organisation warned of a global crisis in the making.

Health experts have been ringing the alarm over antimicrobial resistance for so long that it seems to have become part of our collective background noise, like the endless rasp of waves on the shore. And like stupid tourists, we sleep in the sun while the tide comes in.

It might surprise you to learn that resistance to antibiotics was identified even before Fleming’s wonder drug hit the shelves. The first clinical application of penicillin came in the early 1940s, but the discovery of beta-lactamase – a bacterial enzyme capable of destroying penicillin – preceded that revolution by a few years. The microbes were always one step ahead. As early as 1960, it was clear that overuse of antibiotics was driving the emergence of resistant species.

We also knew how to combat the problem: restricting the use of antimicrobials, ensuring patients completed their courses, containing outbreaks of resistant species. But despite repeated appeals at every level, we couldn’t match the tenacity of microbes. Last year, resistant bacterial infections killed around 25,000 people in Europe alone.

In 2008 the rising waters were finally lapping at our feet. An unusually hardy strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae was isolated from a 59-year-old Swedish patient who had been treated in a New Delhi hospital. The bacterium was found to be indifferent to even our most powerful antibiotics. To make matters worse, the genes that gave it this superpower were found on a small ring of DNA that is easily traded between different species of bacteria.

New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1) has since turned up in more than 16 countries across the world, including Britain. A study published in Lancet Infectious Diseases today shows the resistance factor has spread to 14 different species of bacteria, including pathogenic varieties responsible for dysentery and cholera. Most bacteria holding the NDM-1 plasmid are resistant to all but a couple of our most clumsy, brutal antibiotics. One strain is immune to all of them.

In a report published last year, the US Institute of Medicine described antimicrobial resistance as “a global public health and environmental catastrophe”, while the WHO called the rise of NDM-1 a “doomsday scenario of a world without antibiotics”.

These are not hollow words. Beyond antibiotics, we have few options left on the table. New antibiotics take around 10-20 years to develop, and there are few in the pipeline. Vaccines are the most obvious alternative, but vaccination programmes are challenging to run even in the most industrialised societies.

Scientists have been training viruses to chase down bacterial cells like packs of hunting dogs for the better part of a century, but Georgia is the only country in the world where such phage therapy is licensed. More exotically, an experimental procedure using a jet of ionised argon gas shows promise, although it can only treat external infections.

After a torrent of dramatic headlines, interest in NDM-1 fell away. After all, in a world well-stocked with superbugs – MRSA, MDRTB, C diff – what was another acronym? The media tend to train their spotlight on highly pathogenic diseases – those that kill in no time flat – at the expense of untreatable diseases, which are far less dramatic. The trouble with superbugs like NDM-1 is that once they gain a foothold in hospitals, even minor surgerical procedures are burdened with a much higher risk of serious postoperative complications.

Last year, the chairman of the Board for the Canadian Committee on Antibiotic Resistance, Professor John Conly, spoke out on the issue. I asked him why NDM-1 had elicited such little concern. “None of us have the answers as to why the issue of antimicrobial resistance does not capture more meaningful attention by governments and governmental agencies,” he wrote. “The problem is that it is somewhat akin to climate change and so slow and insidious that people, and notably our politicians, are lulled asleep.”

Although previous campaigns in France and the USA have achieved substantial reductions in the prescription of antibiotics, their uncontrolled use in other countries has undermined those successes – microbes do not respect national borders. As such, the failure of governments to control drug resistance has often been labelled a “tragedy of the commons”.

But there’s a crucial difference. Left to their own devices, forests and fisheries restock themselves. Medicine cabinets don’t. Even if we rein in our appetite for antibiotics, NDM-1 is here to stay. Perhaps that will be enough to prompt the action called for by health practitioners 50 years ago, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that the microbes have us in checkmate.


Antibiotic resistance: Bacteria are winning the war

Antibiotic resistance: Bacteria are winning the war

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Cribsheet 11.03.2011

By
March 13, 2011

Bullying 007 Cribsheet 11.03.2011

The teacher’s job gets more challenging as technology becomes advance, allowing students the temptation of cheating on exams, inappropriate behavior, or taking attention away from the classroom. I personally will not search my students bags or confiscate cell phones for fear that they are misusing the technology in pursuit of a better grade or if I suspect bullying of another student. Teachers need to discuss these issues with their students in the classroom and try to encourage their students to make the right choices.

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony

Yepod.com     

poweredbyguardianREV Cribsheet 11.03.2011This article titled “Cribsheet 11.03.2011″ was written by Frederika Whitehead, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 11th March 2011 12.36 UTC

Should teachers be allowed to search the contents of pupils’ mobiles whilst investigating allegations of cyberbullying? Surely pupils have a right to expect some privacy for the data on their phones? This minefield was discussed in parliament on Tuesday as MPs tried to hammer out the finer details of the Education Bill.

MP Keith Brannan argued for a line to be added to the bill to protect teachers from criminal prosecution under existing data protection legislation.

We need to understand the implications of the new provisions for the protection of teachers and lecturers who might undertake confiscation measures and look through information, deciding whether to delete it or otherwise, as well as the implications for the privacy of the individual… The Minister will want to tell the Committee his thinking on the matter and explain how teachers and lecturers can be protected from accusations [of breach of privacy], as well as how individuals can be protected from teachers and lecturers potentially misusing such powers.

The Minister for Further Education, John Hayes, followed with an impassioned argument in favour of granting teachers powers to search pupils phones and delete images if students were found to have been involved in cyberbullying:

According to Bullying UK, 14% of young people, or one in seven, have been threatened or harassed via mobile telephones…There is not, therefore, much debate about the significance of cyber-bullying. Without a specific power to delete inappropriate images, teachers and college staff would be limited simply to delaying any bullying or harassment for which the images might be used until the confiscated device were returned to its owner…I want the Committee to ask whose best interests are served if a teacher learns that pupil A has taken an inappropriate picture of pupil B, but is powerless to act when, at a later date, pupil A publishes that image on the internet. Is it in order to prevent such situations? On balance, I believe that is justified, and we should include a provision to that end in the Bill.

It is estimated that debate over the education bill is likely to last another 6 weeks, and that the bill will be passed this Summer. To contact the Department about the Education Bill, please email: education.bill@education.gsi.gov.uk.

Education stories from today’s Guardian

• The majority of secondary school headteachers are preparing to offer their staff voluntary redundancy or early retirement in anticipation of huge cuts to their budgets, it has emerged

• Labour has accused Michael Gove of trying to bring back grammar schools by back door by his introduction of the “elitist” English baccalaureate.

• Dr Ian Craig, the chief schools adjudicator is to step down early. His contract was due to expire in April 2012, but Craig has the agreement of education secretary Michael Gove that a successor will take over in October.

Education stories from around the web

• Headteachers could strike over planned pension reforms alongside doctors, civil servants and police chiefs, the Independent has reported.

Ministers were warned they would face a backlash that would bring together professional organisations and traditionally militant unions if the Government implemented proposals from the Labour peer Lord Hutton for a radical overhaul of pensions.

• Alastair Campbell has piled in on the debate about removing citizenship from the curriculum.

“The hints that the Government is thinking about removing citizenship from the curriculum are becoming a little louder. It would be yet another mistake by Michael Gove…Whether we call it citizenship, democracy or politics, there is a need for more education in this area, not less.”

Campbell urged his readers to support the Decomcratic Life campaign. Democratic life is a coalition of NGOs and other politically minded organisations that was formed solely to protect citizenship education. The government is seeking views from interested parties on this very topic and you can find out how you can have your say here.

• Every day four children are admitted to hospital having been injured by dogs. Battersea dogs home has produced an animated film to teach to young children how behave around our canine companions.

Special needs on stage

As the debate on the government’s special needs green paper continues, a play – Death of a Nightingale – pleads for special schools to receive government support. The ficitional head of a threatened special school highlights the problems with Labour’s “inclusion agenda”: “Nearly every kid with special needs is bullied in mainstream schools at one time or another. It’s always the most vulnerable on the receiving end.”

Playwright Alan Share says: “Children with special educational needs are the most vulnerable in our society. The Green Paper is a great victory for common sense. Ending the bias towards Inclusion and strengthening parental choice is great news. Also less bureaucracy is great news too. 2014 can’t come soon enough.”

Death of a Nightingale is at the New End theatre in north London until April 3.

Caricature masterclass by a Guardian cartoonist

Sharpen your pencils – the Prince’s Drawing School is running a weekend masterclass for adults, led by Nicola Jennings, on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 March from 10am to 4pm.

The weekend will begin with a brief history of caricature, followed by a look at the proportions of the face. Students will learn to observe and analyse facial expressions and movements, highlighting appropriate characteristics to describe personality. Here’s the booking form.

Insight into journalism seminar for teachers

A unique opportunity for teachers to spend a day at the Guardian, find out how a national news media organisation works and get ideas and resources that can be used in the classroom.

Multimedia 31 March Writing for a news website, web editing, blogging, the use of social media, video production; podcasting.

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Cribsheet 11.03.2011

Cribsheet 11.03.2011

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Japan tsunami and earthquake – live coverage

By
March 12, 2011

A woman carrying a child 008 Japan tsunami and earthquake live coverage

As more and more information comes in about Japan’s tsunami and earthquake, concerns about their nuclear reactors has everyone around the world wondering if they can contain the toxic material from leaking out or are the possibilities of a nuclear meltdown unfolding before our eyes. What will be the consequences of this event?

Pass it on

Dr Anthony

Yepod 

poweredbyguardianREV Japan tsunami and earthquake live coverageThis article titled “Japan tsunami and earthquake – Saturday 12 March part one” was written by Lee Glendinning and Tania Branigan, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 12th March 2011 02.00 UTC

1.36am: Hello, here’s a summary of the latest events as Japan wakes to a mass rescue mission and scenes of devastation on Saturday morning after an earthquake which measured 8.9 magnitude struck the country, prompting a massive tsunami.

• Japanese media have said the death toll is expected to exceed 1,000.

• The earthquake struck in the afternoon local time on Friday, triggering a tsunami with 10m-high waves hitting the northern port of Sendai. Waves have swept across farmland, sweeping away homes, crops, vehicles, triggering fires.

• Japan has declared states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability

• Japan’s military has mobilised thousands of troops and hundreds of planes as a mass relief effort begins to take shape

The latest information from the Associated Press builds a vivid picture of what Japan wakes up to this morning.

(AP) Japan’s northeastern coast was a swampy wasteland of broken houses, overturned cars, sludge and dirty water Saturday as the nation awoke to the devastating aftermath of one of its greatest disasters, a powerful tsunami created by one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded.
The death toll from Friday’s massive magnitude 8.9 quake stood at more than 200, but an untold number of bodies were believed to be lying in the rubble and debris, and Japanese were bracing for more bad news as authorities tried to reach the hardest-hit areas.
Aerial footage showed military helicopters lifting people on rescue tethers from rooftops and partially submerged buildings surrounded by water and debris. At one school, a large white “SOS” had been spelled out in English.
The earthquake that struck off the northeastern shore was the biggest recorded quake ever to hit Japan. It ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month, scientists said.

1.53am: Some updated information on nuclear reactor situation unfolding in Japan. The Japanese government has been holding an emergency meeting on the Fukushima nuclear plants. It has warned of a possible radiation leak as authorities battle to contain rising pressure at two nuclear plants damaged the quake.

Pressure was building in reactors of two plants at Tokyo Electric Power Co ‘s Fukushima facility, located 150 miles north of Tokyo. At one of them, the Daiichi plant, pressure was set to released soon , which could result in a radiation leak, officials said.

“It’s possible that radioactive material in the reactor vessel could leak outside but the amount is expected to be small, and the wind blowing towards the sea will be considered,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference.

“Residents are safe after those within a 3km radius were evacuated and those within a 10 km radius are staying indoors, so we want people to be calm,” he added.

Reuters has quoted an expert as saying that while some radiation may leak from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, a major disaster is unlikely.

Naoto Sekimura, a professor at the University of Tokyo says “No Chernobyl is possible at a light water reactor.”

Loss of coolant means a temperature rise, but it also will stop the reaction. Even in the worst-case scenario, that would mean some radioactive leakage and equipment damage, but not an explosion. If venting is done carefully, there will be little leakage. Certainly not beyond the 3 km radius.

2.10am: Residents in Japan are beginning to survey the extent of the devastation.

2.20am: A new official death toll gives a clear idea of the scale of the tsunami’s destructive reach. Japan police said that as of 10am Saturday local time, 287 people were confirmed dead in nine prefectures; a further 725 are missing in six prefectures.

2.32am: This graphic and list from the US geological survey demonstrate the relentlessness with which shocks continue to pummel the quakezone.

2.38am: Justin McCurry our correspondent in Japan, writes to say that Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, has returned to Tokyo from a visit to the disaster zone. He described the damage as “huge”.

2.42am: The Japan Times is now reporting a radiation leak has been confirmed at Fukushima plant.

Radiation leak confirmed at quake-hit Fukushima plant
Kyodo News

Radiation rose to an unusually high level in and near Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant Saturday following the powerful earthquake that hit northern Japan the previous day, the nuclear safety agency said, making it the first case of an external leak of radioactive substances since the disaster.

2:49am: @DavidHalton who is tweeting from Sendai, has posted this picture of survivors crammed into a shelter. He said it appeared that aftershocks were subsiding and that phones were now working sporadically.

“We have enough of everything except water right now. Not looking forward to nighttime and the cold,” he wrote.

Temperatures are due to drop to around zero overnight again.

Earlier, he wrote: “So grateful to be in the company of family and best friends even though we have nothing else. All that matters!”

@blaiseplant, also in Sendai, wrote: “The school we just checked was completely packed with refugees…The people at the schools seemed to be in high spirits, a lot of sad faces though.”

2.54am: A Japanese expert acknowledged that the size of Friday’s earthquake had taken many researchers by surprise. Yuji Yagi, an associate professor at Tsukuba University, said the quake had been triggered by a displacement of up to 20 meters in a fault approximately 500 km long and 200 km wide.

Yagi told Kyodo News that the boundary of a large tectonic plate stretching from offshore Iwate prefecture to offshore Ibaraki prefecture had undergone a significant realignment. ”Many earthquake researchers did not expect such a quake to happen,” he said.

Yagi believes the quake measured magnitude 9, rather than the 8.8 announced by Japan’s meteorological agency.

2.56am: News agencies are reporting that a 6.1-magnitude earthquake has struck the South Pacific nation of Tonga.

The quake hit about 143 miles (230km) northeast of Neiafu, Tonga at 2:19 pm. It occurred at a depth of 6.8 miles (10.9km).

No tsunami alert was immediately posted. Earlier the Met Office in Tonga had reported the island nation had recorded 2-3 foot (60-90cm) waves as a result of the massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake off Japan.

Radio New Zealand is reporting that thousands of people in the capital Nuku’alofa had sought refuge from the tsunami at the King’s residence, which was on higher ground.

3.11am: Byron Kidd, a Tokyo resident, said phone voice services to Sendai still appeared to be down, but his father-in-law had managed to send an email from his mobile phone to confirm he was safe.

He was not at home when the earthquake struck thankfully – he lives in Sendai very close to the ocean. His place has been destroyed. Things that should be outside are inside. It’s pretty uninhabitable. There have been shelters set up in schools and gymnasiums and some people have spent the night in cars.

With concerns about power shortages persisiting, Byron added that officials are now using the public address system in Tokyo to request people conserve electricity by shutting off non-essential appliances.

3.17am: Here is a statement from the World Food Programme executive director Josette Sheeran.

When nature strikes with such force, the world has to come together. I would like to express my deepest compassion and heartfelt solidarity with the Government and people of Japan in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

This epic tragedy recalls some of the worst devastations that WFP and Japan have together responded to around the world, and all of us at WFP are impressed by the bravery and dedication of Japan’s emergency response services and the decisive measures the Japanese Government has taken to deal with the damage and save lives.

It is a spirit, a resiliency in the face of challenge, which we have come to know and admire from Japan. Japan is one of the world’s most generous nations and has always stood with WFP when tragedy occurs and, today, WFP stands with Japan.

We are ready to assist in any way Japan may find helpful. Our thoughts and prayers are with the many families affected by this tragedy.

3.27am: @s.o: All 81 passengers rescued on ship that was swept out to sea by tsunami – NHK

3.29am: Justin McCurry writes:

Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, has said that “minute” amounts of radiation were released from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

Kan was speaking after a helicopter trip to survey the quake and tsunami damage. The plant’s operator had earlier opened the valves of the containers housing the reactors to reduce pressure, which in turn led to the release of a small quantity of radioactive steam.

Light planes and vehicles swept from Sendai airport in northern Japan sit among the debris from the tsumani.

3.36am: Daisuke Wakabayashi (@daiwaka), a Tokyo-based Wall Street Journal reporter who has reached Fukushima prefecture, reported “quite extensive damage to the roads and some surrounding buildings. We are seeing buildings that have crumbled.”
He added that around 200 people were queuing with buckets, bags and bottles at a water distribution centre allowing them to take 10 litres per household.

3.45am: Roland Buerk, from the BBC, writes about the scene as the country awoke this morning.

It was only when the sun came up that a more complete picture of devastation began to become a little bit more clear.

From the air it was clear that what had been paddy fields and villages are now sea-water lagoons. The water came in with the tsunami in some places and hasn’t gone out again. It must have been very difficult for rescuers to get to those areas during the night.

The scale of the devastation has become clearer too. Overnight we heard snippets of information – 300 bodies found in one ward of one city. In another town, 300 homes engulfed by a wave that came in at rooftop height. Now local media are reporting that a town in Iwate prefecture, home of 23,000 people, has been largely destroyed.

3.57am: Here are some of the latest snippets from Reuters and Japan’s Kyodo news agency:

In one of the worst-hit residential areas, people buried under rubble could be heard calling out for rescue. TV footage showed staff at one hospital waving banners with the words “FOOD” and “HELP” from a rooftop.
In Tokyo, office workers who were stranded in the city after the quake forced the subway system to close early slept alongside the homeless at one station. Scores of men in suits lay on newspapers, using their briefcases as pillows.
Kyodo said at least 116,000 people in Tokyo had been unable to return home on Friday evening due to transport disruption.
The northeastern Japanese city of Kesennuma, with a population of 74,000, was hit by widespread fires and one-third of the city was under water, Jiji news agency said on Saturday.
The airport in the city of Sendai, home to one million people, was on fire, it added.

Some video footage shows the full force of water battering ships, homes and cars yesterday

4.04am: Time for a summary of events so far this morning:

• The death toll is expected to exceed 1,000, domestic media say, with most people appeared to have drowned.

• Around 3,000 residents living near nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture have been evacuated from area.

• The Northeastern city of Kesennuma, with population of 74,000, has been hit by widespread fires, with one-third of the city submerged, media say.

• Tsunami warnings were issued for the entire Pacific basin, except mainland United States and Canada, but fears of tsunami beyond Japan have not materialised.

4.23am: For readers in Japan, @TimeOutTokyo has offered this guide on how to help. Their summary: “Give money, give blood, but don’t head to the afflicted areas”

4.25am: Police in Japan have raised the death toll to 420, with 784 missing, Kyodo News is reporting.

Justin McCurry earlier spoke to Shaun Burnie, a consultant on the nuclear industry, and head of nuclear campaigns at Greenpeace International, who has explained the potential risks at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture where the cooling system has failed. Burnie has been visiting Japan for nearly 20 years, including the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

When nuclear power plants are shut down in an emergency that does not mean that the problem is over. And this has proved to be the case at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, south of Sendai.

One critical safety issue is the maintenance of water cooling systems to ensure that the nuclear fuel inside the reactor core does not heat up to unsafe levels. With the loss of emergency generator capacity at 3 reactors at Fukushima the risk is that the nuclear fuel is already damaged.

It appears that the reactor operator Tokyo Electric has been unable to pump cooling water for at least 3 or more hours at units 1,2 and 3. These are reactors built in the early 1970s – so are nearly 40 years old.

The possibility is that the reactor fuel is already damaged. If they are unable to restore coolant pump capacity then the fuel will continue to heat up, eventually the fuel will be exposed to air at which point a whole series of events can unfold, including steam explosions, fuel meltdown and worse case is loss of containment.

The reactors contain around 100 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel within each core. People may remember Three Mile Island which was a partial core meltdown. The fact that 2,000 people are being evacuated from around the site suggests there may already be radioactivity in the containment building.

A fire broke out at Onagawa nuclear power plant, and there are reports of leaking spent fuel ponds at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa. This is a serious situation could get very much worse. The last thing the people of Japan need after the tragedy of this earthquake and tsunami is a nuclear catastrophe.

4.42am: Here is a breakdown on what we know about the nuclear reactors currently having problems, which is quite complex. This is what Richard Adams published earlier to explain:

• Diesel generators that normally would have worked as back-ups to keep cooling systems running had been disabled by tsunami flooding.

• Power supply systems to provide emergency electricity for the plants were being put in place, the World Nuclear Association said.

• Both plants are light water reactors operated by the Tokyo Electric Power company (or Tepco):

Fukushima Daiichi (No 1) plant

- has six reactors, three of which were shut down for maintainence. Two of the remaining reactors, Unit 1 has significant problems with a rising temperature and in another the operator says it has lost cooling ability.

– the Unit 1 reactor has seen radiation levels inside its control room rise, and slightly higher radiation levels have been detected outside the reactor. Pressure inside the reactor is twice the normal level, and the operator has been forced to vent radioactive vapor to relieve the pressure.

Fukushima Daini (No 2) plant

– has four reactors, and in units 1, 2 and 4 of them the operator has said it has lost cooling ability.

– Tepco says pressure is stable inside the reactors of the Daini plant but rising in the containment vessels.

• Both plants have been declared to be in a state of emergency by the government, and residents moved outside of a 10km zone around both plants.

4.49am: This is quite an incredible image of an energy map provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which shows the core of the tsunami, and the intensity of the way it spread.

5.20am: Kyodo news has just reported that the Fukushima nuclear plant might be experiencing nuclear meltdown.

5.30am: @tukky_nt RT @Reuters: FLASH: #Japan nuclear authorities say high possibility of meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 reactor – Jiji. RT @TomokoHosaka: Japan nuclear safety commission official says meltdown at nuclear power plant possible, AP confirms. #earthquake #jpquake

6.01am: As we wait for more confirmation on the nuclear situation unfolding in Japan, here is the latest information from AP.

AP) A nuclear power plant affected by a massive earthquake is facing a possible meltdown, an official with Japan’s nuclear safety commission said.

Ryohei Shiomi said that officials were checking whether a meltdown had taken place at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant’s Unit 1, which had lost cooling ability in the aftermath of Friday’s powerful earthquake.

Shiomi said that even if there was a meltdown, it wouldn’t affect humans beyond a six-mile radius. Most of the 51,000 residents living within that radius have been evacuated, he said.

The BBC has just published a fresh gallery of pictures, which show the scope of the rescue mission going on in Japan today.

6.37am: Possible good news – Japan’s Kyodo news agency is reporting that workers have successfully released pressure from the Fukushima No. 1 reactor.

It is thought they had to halt work earlier because of the high radiation levels around the valves, but were able to resume.

Reports concerning the possible meltdown remain confused: the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, does not believe there has been damage to the core due to overheating. But officials with the nuclear safety commission say they believe there is a possibility of a partial meltdown.

6.48am: This Reuters gallery shows the aftermath of the disaster in some of the worst hit areas today.

6.55am: While we wait for more news from the press conference by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, a quick update on events:

• Workers have successfully vented gas from the reactor, reducing pressure, but Japanese media report that prime minister Naoto Kan has not ruled out a possible radiation leak from the No. 2 reactor.

• The death toll from the disaster is expected to exceed 1,300, with most deaths due to drowning.

• Around 50,000 rescuers have deployed to north-eastern Japan

• Many survivors have been trapped overnight on rooftops, surrounded by a sea of mud and water, and in emergency shelters

• Tsunami warnings for most of Japan have been lowered, although there is still a risk of large waves along the north-eastern coast

7.15am: A fuller read on the nuclear situation is now up here. Events are developing fast so we will continue to update on this blog.

7.30am: An expert from the USGS has told CNN that the quake appears to have moved Japan’s main island by 8 feet and shifted the world on its axis.

Aftershocks are continuing more than 24 hours after the magnitude 8.9 tremor struck.

There’s an interesting read here on how the crucial few seconds gained thanks to Japan’s earthquake warning system may have helped to save lives.

7.52am: Japanese media reporting that explosion heard at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi plant around 0630 GMT – more soon

7.56am: My colleague Justin McCurry in Japan says explosion reported at Fukushima Daiichi (No 1) reactor at 15:36 local time (06:36GMT). TV footage shows smoke rising from plant.

8.35am: The nuclear plant’s operators say four people were injured in the explosion, Kyodo news agency reports.

NHK is advising people in the Fukushima area to stay inside, close doors and windows and turn off air conditioning. They have also been advised to cover their mouths with masks, towels or handkerchiefs

8.45am: Justin McCurry says television footage is showing the exposed frame of one of four buildings housing reactors. The external panelling appears to have been blown away, but no flames or smoke are visible almost two hours after the blast. Officials in Fukushima prefecture said the cause of the explosion is being investigated.

8.56am: While we’re waiting for more details from the press conference on the explosion, a quick response to a query in the comments about how people can help.

The Disasters Emergency Committee says most of its members are unlikely to play a part in the response because their expertise lies in handling disasters in poorer developing countries and points people towards the Red Cross, the only agency with significant expertise in developed nations. But the British Red Cross say they are not accepting donations for Japan at present as their Japanese colleagues have yet to ask for help.

If you’re in the US, MSNBC has suggestions here

For those in Japan, @timeouttokyo has offered a guide on what (and what not) to do

9.03am: Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano has told a press conference that he cannot confirm that the explosion at the nuclear power plant was the reactor, saying details of the incident remained unclear. He said authorities were prepared for the worst emergency but urged people to remain calm and not to listen to rumours. He also asked them to conserve electricity.

9.14am: Reuters reports that the UN’s nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency – is urgently seeking information on the situation at the power plant.

Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano has confirmed a radiation leak, but it is not clear if he was referring to the aftermath of the blast or to earlier reports of high readings in the area.

9.23am: We’re wrapping up this blog but live coverage will continue.

In the meantime, here’s a round-up of events so far in Japan on Saturday.

•There are growing fears about damage to two nuclear power stations following Friday’s 8.9 magnitute earthquake. There has been an explosion at a building at one of the plants, Fukushima No 1 in Futuba, 150 miles (240km) north of Tokyo. Japanese authorities have extended the evacuation area at the Fukushima No 2 plant to 10km, the same distance as for Fukushima No 1 plant.

•The death toll from the disaster is expected to exceed 1,300, with most deaths due to drowning. The official death toll currently stands at 413, with 784 people missing and 1,128 injured. Police said between 200 and 300 bodies were found along the coast in Sendai, the biggest city in the area near the quake’s epicentre.

•Police estimate that more than 215,000 people are taking refuge in emergency shelters in the east and north of the country. Many survivors have been trapped overnight on rooftops, surrounded by a sea of mud and water. Around 50,000 rescuers have deployed to the region.

•Tsunami warnings for most of Japan have been lowered, although there is still a risk of large waves along the north-eastern coast.

•The tsunami rolled across the Pacific at jet speed but had weakened before it hit Hawaii and the West Coast of the US. Initial reports suggest limited tsunami damage to Pacific island nations.


Japan tsunami and earthquake live coverage

Japan tsunami and earthquake live coverage

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

How to cook perfect beef stew

By
February 5, 2011

Can British beef stew hold its head high in the face of the international competition? If not, seriously, what’s better?


Jack LaLanne: US fitness guru who last ate dessert in 1929 dies aged 96

By
January 25, 2011

Jack Lalanne before handc 009 Jack LaLanne: US fitness guru who last ate dessert in 1929 dies aged 96

I remember watching Jack Lalanne as a kid on the black and white television tube. He had so much energy on his show and perhaps he was ahead of his time. He made fitness for many a life-style and promoted it all his life. He is proof that a long life can be achieved with  proper exercise and diet. As he said many times before “ its never too late to start!”

 

Pass it on,

Dr Anthony 

This article titled “Jack LaLanne: US fitness guru who last ate dessert in 1929 dies aged 96″ was written by Haroon Siddique, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 24th January 2011 13.11 UTC

Somewhere in the great gym in the sky, Jack LaLanne, the pioneer of the modern physical fitness movement who died yesterday, is probably doing fingertip press-ups. Or perhaps, having dedicated the majority of his life to sculpting his body, he is lying back and finally helping himself to an ice cream sundae – he reportedly last ate dessert in 1929. The former scenario is altogether more likely.

LaLanne, who died aged 96 from pneumonia, went from being a puny weakling to the world press-up record-holder. But his obsession with diet and exercise wasn’t confined to personal improvement, as he co-opted Americans to join him in his quest for physical perfection. He espoused bodybuilding and the virtues of lifting weights, at a time when few had access to them. The Jack LaLanne show, in which he demonstrated his fingertip press-ups (see below), plus other exercises more suitable for mere mortals, and educated viewers on how to eat healthily, ran from 1951 until the 1980s.

He designed his own gym equipment and used his television show to promote his Power Juicer, which found its way into many US kitchens, and is still going strong today. The juicer, for fruit and raw vegetables features in a number of the affectionate tributes to LaLanne on Twitter today, where his death is one of the top 10 worldwide trending topics.

@Arolplease tweeted: “I will juice me some fresh orange, carrots & apples using the revolutionary Jack Lalanne Power Juicer in honor of Mr. Lalanne & his fitnezz.”

His philosophy on food, echoed in various modern-day diets, can be summed up by his LaLanneisms: “If man makes it, don’t eat it,” and “If it tastes good, spit it out”.

In 1936, LaLanne started his own gym with a juice bar and health food store. It was a prototype for the modern health club – and soon there were 100 of them nationwide.

His physical feats included completing 1,000 push-ups and 1,000 chin-ups in 86 minutes in 1959, and in 1984, when aged 70, towing 70 boats 1.5 miles in Long Beach harbour, while he was shackled and handcuffed. Nearly 30 years earlier he swam from Alcatraz island to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, also in handcuffs.

Well into his 90s, LaLanne exercised for two hours a day. A typical workout would be 90 minutes of weight-lifting and 30 minutes of swimming. He celebrated his 95th birthday with the release of a book titled Live Young Forever and one of his sayings was: “I can’t die. It would ruin my image.”

As @MarylandMudlfap tweeted in tribute: “Jack LaLanne will carry his own casket at his funeral.”

Did he inspire you to lead a healthier lifestyle? Or do you think the obsession with diet and exercise he perpetrated has gone too far?


Jack LaLanne: US fitness guru who last ate dessert in 1929 dies aged 96

Jack LaLanne: US fitness guru who last ate dessert in 1929 dies aged 96guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Catcher in the Rye sequel might just be a good idea

By
January 13, 2011

Wide Sargasso Sea 007 Catcher in the Rye sequel might just be a good idea

poweredbyguardianREV Catcher in the Rye sequel might just be a good ideaThis article titled “Catcher in the Rye sequel might just be a good idea” was written by David Barnett, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 13th January 2011 13.07 UTC

If you’ve ever wondered what happened next to the young Holden Caulfield, wonder no longer: you’ll shortly be able to find out – unless you’re American, of course. Swedish author Frederick Colting’s highly unofficial sequel to JD Salinger’s classic The Catcher in the Rye has been blocked from release in the US and Canada, though rights to 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye have apparently already been sold in six countries.

It’s a curious thing when contemporary authors take classic or much-loved books and write a sequel, authorised or not. But it’s a brave, foolhardy – perhaps money-grubbing – author who takes on characters with a huge global following, and tries to craft a sequel to another writer’s great work.

Yet unofficial sequels abound. We probably don’t need to do anything more than mention in passing the recent fad for inserting zombies, sea monsters and vampires into Jane Austen and Brontë works. But the Janeite website pemberley.com lists dozens of less-fantastical novels written as continuations of Emma, Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility.

Why would any novelist worth their salt choose to pick up where someone else left off? On the one hand, of course, there’ll be a lot of interest from aficionados of the source material. On the other, isn’t it part of a novelist’s job to create characters? And isn’t using someone else’s characters and situations for your own novels ultimately little more than fan fiction given the legitimising sheen of publication?

Maybe. But it is the case that some sequels have achieved literary success on their own merit. The best-known example is Jean Rhys’s 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which acts as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre – although Rhys’s success is perhaps down to her not simply continuing a main character’s story, but delving instead into the “unknown life” of a secondary character – in this case, Brontë’s famous “madwoman in the attic”. Another good example might be Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which spawned two well-received follow-ups. Mrs De Winter, by Woman In Black author Susan Hill came out in 1993 while Sally Beauman’s Rebecca’s Tale – featuring efforts to unpick the circumstances of the character’s death many years before – was published in 2001.

Sometimes an author’s creation, be it a character or a concept, so far transcends its origins that it almost becomes fair game. Take, for example, HG Wells’s The Time Machine. Because the “big idea” that it put forward was so new and exciting, subsequent authors writing on time travel felt it only right that their own work in the sub-genre should give a nod to Wells, either by using his characters or riffing on his visions of the future.

And then there are the characters who become bigger than their books. Those who have made the crossover into movies, especially, become well-known even to people who have never so much as glanced at the source material. People who might not know, for example, that James Bond was a literary creation years before he became a star of bank holiday telly. Since Ian Fleming wrote his last Bond novel in 1966, the 007 myth has been continued in print by writers as diverse as Kingsley Amis, Charlie Higson and Sebastian Faulks – and, coming up in May this year, thriller writer Jeffrey Deaver.

Which brings me to Shibumi – a 1979 novel by Rodney William Whitaker, who wrote under the pseudonym Trevanian and also penned The Eiger Sanction. An old paperback of Shibumi was given to me by a friend who many years ago made it his mission to disseminate esoteric books. I was immediately hooked. Shibumi’s one of those odd books, a work of beautiful zen genius masquerading as a lurid, cheap-looking thriller.

Shibumi is about Nicholai Hel – an international jet-set assassin with an incisive mind, a master of the ancient strategy game Go, a lover and a fighter, who could out-spy Bond and Jason Bourne together. I wanted to be Nicholai Hel when I grew up – still do, in fact. Hel was ripe for a series, a movie franchise, action figures, the works. But Shibumi never really achieved more than cult status, and Trevanian died in 2005. Nicholai Hel never came back.

Until now. A few weeks ago I received an advance copy of a book by a thriller writer called Don Winslow. I’d heard the name, but never read anything of his before – I don’t really do conventional thrillers. Then I picked up the press release. Winslow’s book, Satori, is a sequel to Shibumi.

I didn’t know whether to be ecstatic or horrified. I read it carefully at first, hyper-critically. I read it not wanting to like it, which is a strange way to approach a book, I know. But as I read on, I realised I loved it. The spirit of the original was there, the characters were bang on, the novels flowed almost seamlessly into each other. And, by the end, I found that I no longer considered that I was reading a Don Winslow follow-up to a Trevanian novel. I was reading a Nicholai Hel novel.

And that, pretty much, is as good as any writer who takes on another author’s babies needs to be. Maybe America should give a septuagenarian Holden Caulfield a chance.


Catcher in the Rye sequel might just be a good idea

Catcher in the Rye sequel might just be a good idea

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Students Complete Medical Tourism Course

By
December 29, 2010

recent photos 006 300x225 Students Complete Medical Tourism Course

  

Congratulations to the  students completing the Medical Tourism Course offered by DHU.

Dr Anthony taught and developed the curriculum. The Medical Tourism Course gave a better

understanding about global medical tourism and what to expect from this industry in the near future. Many countries

are now offering medical procedures at substantial savings to the customer/patient.  Many medical procedures not being properly covered by private insurance are now being offered by countries like Korea, Thailand, India, Philippines, etc to meet increase demands from prospective clients.

 

Sincerely,

Dr Anthony

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