"
So, one night I can remember sitting up in bed telling my mother (Connie Rosen) that I couldn't sleep because I was sure I was going to fail. She brought me some hot milk with brown sugar in it and told me that I mustn't tell anyone but I couldn't fail. She said that actually the whole thing was really decided by the headteacher. He or she did a 'recommendation'. If anyone failed who the headteacher thought should have passed, the schools found a way for that person to go to grammar school." -- Michael Rosen on
his experiences growing up going to school in 1950ties Britain, with the Eleven Plus and the start choice of Grammar School or Secondary Modern.
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posted by MartinWisse
on Jul 3, 2012 -
25 comments
"[London investment analyst Rupesh] Shingadia’s journey to fame began when London Daily Mail photographer Mark Pain captured
an amazing image of Tiger Woods botching a chip shot on the 18th hole during the Ryder Cup competition. But all anyone talked about was the googly-eyed guy in the gallery behind Woods, wearing a ginger wig, Groucho Marx mustache and chomping on an enormous cigar ... [He] purchased his costume online to dress up as one of his favorite golfers, Spanish pro
Miguel Angel Jimenez."
* He's become a
Photoshop celebrity.
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posted by ericb
on Oct 15, 2010 -
14 comments
This past Saturday evening a woman dumped a rescue cat into a garbage bin on the side of a residential street in Coventry, U.K. Fifteen hours later owner
Darryl Mann: "I came down to feed Lola on Sunday morning but couldn’t find her anywhere. It was really hot day outside and I searched nearby alleyways but suddenly heard a tiny meowing coming from the bin. I looked inside and I found her in the bin, she was terrified and covered in her own mess....At first I thought she’d somehow climbed inside the bin herself but
when I checked the CCTV I was gobsmacked to see some a woman had done it deliberately." Mann posted the video to
YouTube and
Facebook in an effort to find the perpetrator. As a result, the woman was identified by this morning.
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posted by ericb
on Aug 24, 2010 -
249 comments
The novlist Julie Myerson has written a book, The Lost Child, about her son's addiction to cannabis, the violent behaviour she says this caused and her tough love policy.
Extract. Her son is
angry that she's published it, and says his parents over-reacted: "I wasn't doing anything that most other teenagers do, but such was their naive terror of drugs they were acting like six-year-olds". It comes out through
MumsNet that Julie Myerson was the anonymous author of a Guardian column, "Living with Teenagers," which described her children's behaviour candidly without their knowledge.
Extract. Myerson first
denied this. The Guardian discusses whether it was
right to publish the columns. Myerson is
interviewed about whether she was right to publish The Lost Child. Her partner, and son's father, Jonathan Myerson supports her:
This is an emergency. Her son says she's
addicted to writing.
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posted by paduasoy
on Mar 15, 2009 -
160 comments
British Library
warns of 'black hole' in history if websites and digital files are not preserved. "Historians of the future, citizens of the future, will find a black hole in the knowledge base of the 21st century." In addition to dead file formats and lost information from government websites, Lynne Brindley also points to the habits of individuals. "I call it personal digital disorder. Think of those thousands of digital photographs that lie hidden on our computers. Few store them, so those who come after us will not be able to look at them."
posted by cashman
on Jan 26, 2009 -
63 comments
In 2006 in the Fitzwilliam Museum three enormous porcelain vases from seventeenth or eighteenth century China were smashed by a museum visitor who fell down the stairs. This
presentation "follows the vases' progress from scattered fragments to their redisplay in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The site includes slideshows, film clips of the conservation process and a timelapse of one of the vases under reconstruction".
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posted by paduasoy
on May 5, 2008 -
20 comments
