Anonymous [DVD] [2011] Rating: 
Set amidst the treacherous, shifting sands of Elizabethan England, Anonymous brings to life an issue that for 400 years has intrigued academics, actors and theatre lovers… Who was the author of the plays credited to William Shakespeare? Anonymous poses one possible answer, focusing on a time when political intrigue, illicit romances in the Royal Court, and the schemes of powerful nobles were fearlessly exposed in the powder-keg that was the London stage.
The Luhimba Project (UK Registered Charity 1084849)
LUHIMBA is a remote village in rural southern Tanzania, East Africa. It currently has a population of 3,500 villagers who live in scattered clusters of dwellings. Their houses are of two main types – mud huts with grass roofs, or constructions of home-produced bricks with corrugated sheet roofing.
There is no mains electricity or piped water to the village. The only electricity is provided by generators and solar panels on a few of the houses and community buildings. Otherwise lighting is by oil lamps. The villagers fetch water from pumps. Untreated surface water was freely drunk, with consequent high rates of water borne disease particularly amongst children.
The first production passenger car equipped with a diesel engine was the Mercedes 260 D (1936), widely used as a taxi due to its efficiency and reliability. Until that time, diesel engines had been considered too slow and heavy compared to the automobile petrol engine. In industry and in trucks, trains and buses, the diesel engine was well established. However, it was many years until the gradual disuse of steam engines. At the time they were seen as inefficient, heavy, and complicated in operation. Diesel engines, named after inventor Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel, found their way into every sector of the transport industry.
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I like brand new, shiny books as much as anyone. But every now and again an old, scruffy paperback a minute away from the rubbish bin proves to be a real gem. Such was ‘The Set of the Sails’, the 1949 autobiography of Alan Villiers (1903- 1982).
Alan Villiers was the second son of Australian poet and union leader Leon Villiers. The young Villiers grew up on the docks watching the merchant ships come in and out of the Port of Melbourne and longed for the day on which he too could sail out to sea. Continue reading The Set of the Sails (1949)
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Råstam had one question for Sweden’s most abominable serial killer. And the answer turned out to be far more terrifying than the man himself . . .
Walter Mitty Syndrome is a phrase occasionally used by psychiatrists and others in describing a person who prefers a fantasy world to reality, particularly if others consider him a failure, but when the potential for real harm results from his behaviour, it becomes a whole lot more sinister than the fictional stories.
“The desire to want to be somebody important without expending any effort, or making up stories to get attention is actually fairly common,” says Dr Colin Gill, a psychologist and expert on the nature of identity. “Of course, we only hear of high-profile cases such as these, when people get caught out. I suspect there may well be thousands of people telling these kinds of lies or leading double lives.”
Continue reading Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer (2013)
Radio-carbon dating of camel bones discovered in the Arava Valley has challenged Biblical accuracy, that is, according to reports based on an article published in Tel Aviv the journal of Tel Aviv University‘s Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures. In recent weeks, this has, as might be expected, attracted media attention.
The claim is also made that this anachronism is direct proof that the texts were compiled perhaps centuries after the events described..
During the tidal storm of 3rd and 4th January 2014, a breach in the front of the sea wall below the Bathrock shelter revealed the remains of basement walls relating to a historic bath house.
The Marine Baths were built in 1810 by Doctor Rice Williams at the north end of Marine Terrace. By this time salt water bathing had acquired a reputation for curing a wealth of medical ills, and bath-houses were being built for those who did not want to or could not brave the open sea.
Within the bastion of the promenade wall, the remains of basement walls belonging to the Marine Baths have been revealed. Cast-iron pipes ran far out into Cardigan Bay to ensure a supply of clean and sand-free saline water. Basement boilers heated the water for those wanting baths of a less invigorating nature.
Guédelon: A Castle in the Making (2011) by Maryline Martin & Florian Renucci
In Yonne, Burgundy, a unique construction site is creating a genuine fortified chateau of yesteryear. Starting in 1997, completion date is scheduled for 2022. At first sight, the men are grinning, and completely crazy. Dressed in authentic homespun clothing, and working in a quarry in the depths of the dense forest, this could be a film-set, but they are recreating the year 1246, in the reign of Louis IX of France.
This outstanding ‘Living History’ project was inspired by Michel Guyot, who owns the nearby Chateau de Saint-Fargeau, and had the idea of building a 13th-century style fortress following the discovery that the 15th-century red bricks of his castle obscured the stone walls of a much older stronghold.
Contary to some revisionist historians and Bible critics, but just as ancient Greek and Roman writers insisted, and incidentally supporting Biblical descriptions of Canaanite practices, the Carthaginians did kill their own infant children, burying them with sacrificed animals and ritual inscriptions in special cemeteries to give thanks for favours from their gods, according to a new study.
Continue reading Did the Ancient Carthaginians sacrifice their new-born children?
Have you ever thought that in some ways prejudice, like beauty, is only skin deep?
During the filming of the science-fiction cult classic Planet of the Apes in 1967, lead actor Charlton Heston noted “an instinctive segregation on the set. Not only would the apes eat together, but the chimpanzees ate with the chimpanzees, the gorillas ate with the gorillas, the orangutans ate with the orangutans, and the humans would eat off by themselves. It was quite spooky.”
