I’m not sure why so many music groups have named their bands after insects. Insects have their role in nature, bird feed, eating dead corpses etc., but insects are really disgusting little creatures. Now don’t tell that to David Suzuki, he gained his Ph.D studying the organism Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies). Some people find them interesting. But to me bugs are bad little buggers. Always getting into places where they shouldn’t be.
So when these musicians were thinking up a name for the band, why the bug names? I think the acid and other mind stimulants may have had something to do with it. I once had a friend who took some magic mushrooms, he described in vivid detail how he hallucinated that he was transforming into a praying mantis. So I think there is a definite correlation between psychedelics and insect band names.
So here are some bands named after the creepy-crawlies. m
The Crickets
Papa Roach (maybe some connection to a burnt joint here).
The Beatles (it has been well documented that these guys delved into the Lysergic acid diethylamide).
Adam and the Ants (these guys actually thought they were pirates, where the ants come in is anybody’s guess).
Barking Spyders (drugs involved here without a doubt).
Bees Make Honey (sounds like a hippie band).
The Bollweevils, (never heard of that insect) punk band from Chicago.
Centipedes
Daddy Longlegs
The Flys
Iron Butterfly (these guys look like experimenters).
The Bees
The Scorpions (this band could really rock).
I wasn’t sure if I should have included Sting.
I’m sure there are many more insect bands out there that I missed.
This is a skating sport that resembles hockey and must be very good for the cardiovascular. It is called Bandy.
Bandy, sometimes unofficially named Russian hockey, is a team winter sport played on ice, in which skaters use sticks to direct a ball into the opposing team’s goal.
The rules of the game have many similarities to those of association football: the game is played on a rectangle of ice the same size as a football field. Each team has eleven players, one of whom is a goalkeeper. A standard bandy match consists of two halves of 45 minutes each. The offside rule is also similar to that observed in association football.
The size of a bandy field is in the range 4,050 – 7,150 square metres (45-65 by 90–110 metres), about the same size as a football pitch and considerably larger than an ice hockey rink. Along the sidelines a 15 cm (6 in) high border (vant, sarg, wand, wall) is placed to prevent the ball from leaving the ice.
Centered at each shortline is a 3.5 m wide and 2.1 m high goal cage and in front of the cage is a half-circular penalty area with a 17 m radius. A penalty spot is located 12 metres in front of the goal and there are two free-stroke spots at the penalty area line, each surrounded by a 5 m circle.
That rink is so big, a fight could break-out in a corner, and it would take 15 minutes for the refs to arrive. m
That is one big goal cage. 2.1 metres or 7.5 feet high.
Stanley Allison “Stan” Rogers (November 29, 1949 – June 2, 1983) was a Canadian folk musician and songwriter.
Rogers was noted for his rich, baritone voice and his finely-crafted, traditional-sounding songs which were frequently inspired by Canadian history and the daily lives of working people, especially those from the fishing villages of the Maritime provinces and, later, the farms of the Canadian prairies and Great Lakes.
Rogers died alongside 22 other passengers (23 fatalities in all) most likely of smoke inhalation on June 2, 1983, while travelling on Air Canada Flight 797 (a McDonnell Douglas DC-9) after performing at the Kerrville Folk Festival. The airliner was flying from Dallas, Texas to Toronto and Montreal when an in-flight fire forced it to make an emergency landing at the Greater Cincinnati Airport.
Smoke was filling the cabin from an unknown source, and once on the ground, the plane’s doors were opened to allow passengers to escape. Halfway through the evacuation of the plane, the oxygen rushing in from outside caused a flash fire. Rogers was one of the passengers still on the plane at the time of the fire. Eyewitness reports published at the time said that a man of Rogers’ height and build escaped the plane, but then turned and went back inside, apparently to assist in the rescue of others.
His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia.
He sang songs that the average person could relate to.
WHITE COLLAR HOLLER
Well, I rise up every morning at a quarter to eight
Some woman who’s my wife tells me not to be late
I kiss the kids goodbye, I can’t remember their names
And week after week, it’s always the same
And it’s Ho, boys, can’t you code it, and program it right
Nothing ever happens in the life of mine
I’m hauling up the data on the Xerox line
Then it’s code in the data, give the keyboard a punch
Then cross-correlate and break for some lunch
Correlate, tabulate, process and screen
Program, printout, regress to the mean
Then it’s home again, eat again, watch some TV
Make love to my woman at ten-fifty-three
I dream the same dream when I’m sleeping at night
I’m soaring over hills like an eagle in flight
Someday I’m gonna give up all the buttons and things
I’ll punch that time clock till it can’t ring
Burn up my necktie and set myself free
Cause no’one’s gonna fold, bend or mutilate me.
Stan’s version of Farewell to Nova Scotia is the best rendition out there.
The sun was setting in the west
The birds were singing on every tree
All nature seemed inclined to rest
But still there was no rest for me
Farewell Nova Scotia
The sea-bound coast
Let your mountains dark and dreary be
For when I am far away
On your briny ocean tossed
Will you ever heave a sigh
Or a wish for me
I grieve to leave my native land
I grieve to leave my comrades all
And my parents whom I held so dear
And the bonny, bonny lassie
That I do adore
The drums they do beat
And the wars do alarm
The Captain calls, I must obey
So farewell, farewell
To my Nova Scotia home
For it’s early in the morning
That I’m far, far away
I had three brothers and they are at rest
Their arms are folded on their chests
But a poor, simple sailor just like me
Must be tossed and driven
On the deep, blue sea
“My Ding-a-Ling” is a novelty song written and recorded by Dave Bartholomew. It was covered by Chuck Berry in 1972 and became his only number-one Billboard Hot 100 single in the United States. Later that year, in a longer unedited form, it was included on the album The London Chuck Berry Sessions.
The song tells of how the singer received a toy consisting of “silver bells hanging on a string” from his grandmother, who calls them his “ding-a-ling”. According to the song, he plays with it in school, and holds on to it in dangerous situations like falling after climbing the garden wall, and swimming across a creek infested with snapping turtles. From the second verse onward, the lyrics consistently exercise the double entendre in that a penis could just as easily be substituted for the toy bells and the song would still make sense.
The lyrics with their sly tone and innuendo (and the enthusiasm of Berry and the audience) caused many radio stations to refuse to play it. British morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse tried unsuccessfully to get the song banned. “One teacher,” Whitehouse wrote to the BBC’s Director General, “told us of how she found a class of small boys with their trousers undone, singing the song and giving it the indecent interpretation which—in spite of all the hullabaloo—is so obvious… We trust you will agree with us that it is no part of the function of the BBC to be the vehicle of songs which stimulate this kind of behaviour—indeed quite the reverse.”
In Icons of Rock, Scott Schinder calls the song “a sophomoric, double-entendre-laden ode to masturbation”. Robert Christgau remarked that the song “permitted a lot of twelve-year-olds new insight into the moribund concept of ‘dirty'”.
During a short spoken introduction to the song on the single, Berry refers to the song as “our alma mater”.
The controversy was lampooned in The Simpsons episode “Lisa’s Pony”, in which a Springfield Elementary School student attempts to sing the song during the school’s talent show. He barely finishes the first line of the refrain before an irate Principal Skinner pushes him off the stage, angrily proclaiming “This act is over!”
The tubby Indonesian toddler who caused a sensation last spring by enthusiastically puffing on cigarettes in a widely viewed video has quit smoking, according to media reports.
Two-year-old Ardi Rizal of South Sumatra, who reportedly smoked 40 cigarettes a day, has broken his nicotine addiction through a 30-day rehabilitation program, the Jakarta Globe reported Thursday.
“He has stopped smoking and doesn’t ask for cigarettes anymore,” Arist Merdeka Sirait, chairman of Indonesia’s National Commission on Child Protection, said, according to another publication, Earth Times. According to earlier reports, the child was placed in state custody after the video emerged and the boy’s parents said he would cry and throw tantrums if he went too long without smoking a cigarette.
Heavy smoking appeared to have caused the boy’s brain to shrink and could cause other health problems later, Sirait said, according to Earth Times.
“He needs to be in a smoking-free environment so that he doesn’t start smoking again,” Sirait said.
Anti-smoking advocates say Indonesia’s tobacco industry markets its products to children, according to the Globe.
In the 1960’s there was a science fiction TV show called Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The show centered around the crew aboard a huge nuclear powered submarine named the Seaview. One of the more interesting features of the show was a mini flying sub that was housed in the nose of the Seaview. This little sub could bolt away from the Seaview, propel itself through the water to the surface, and take to the skies. Then land back on the water and go submersible and dock back up with the Seaview.
Americans love their high-technology gadgets. And the military is often at the forefront when it comes to developing cutting edge high technology systems. And believe it or not the U.S. military is looking into a real Flying Sub!
Irwin Allen, the creator of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea would be very proud indeed.
From Newscientist.com
GUILLEMOTS and gannets do it. Cormorants and kingfishers do it. Even the tiny insect-eating dipper does it. And if a plan by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) succeeds, a remarkable airplane may one day do it too: plunge beneath the waves to stalk its prey, before re-emerging to fly home.
The DARPA plan calls for a stealthy aircraft that can fly low over the sea until it nears its target, which could be an enemy ship, or a coastal site such as a port. It will then alight on the water and transform itself into a submarine that will cruise under water to within striking distance, all without alerting defences.
That, at least, is the plan. The agency is known for taking on brain-twistingly difficult challenges. So what about DARPA’s dipper? Is it a ridiculous dream? “A few years ago I would have said that this is a silly idea,” says Graham Hawkes, an engineer and submarine designer based in San Francisco. “But I don’t think so any more.”
DARPA, which has a $3 billion annual budget, has begun to study proposed designs. In the next year or so it could begin allocating funding to developers. Though the agency itself is unwilling to comment, Hawkes and others working on rival designs have revealed to New Scientist how they would solve the key problems involved in building a plane that can travel underwater – or, to put it another way, a flying submarine.
The challenges are huge, not least because planes and submarines are normally poles apart. Aircraft must be as light as possible to minimise the engine power they need to get airborne. Submarines are heavyweights with massive hulls strong enough to resist crushing forces from the surrounding water. Aircraft use lift from their wings to stay aloft, while submarines operate like underwater balloons, adjusting their buoyancy to sink or rise. So how can engineers balance the conflicting demands? Could a craft be designed to dive into the sea like a gannet? And how will it be propelled – is a jet engine the best solution, both above and below the waves?
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