Caffeine and Kids

It is always fascinating to see how attitudes and social norms have evolved  over the years by looking at old ads and the attitudes underlying them.

Sanka Coffee, for instance, was quite comfortable in its day with racism and ethnic stereotyping...

(Click on pics to enlarge).

Elections

Otto’s Rules of Elections:

The following principles of voting and elections are my own observations, developed over a number of years.

Feel free to dispute, add or comment.

1. People vote governments out, not in.

Voters do not change votes for an alternative government when they are satisfied with the government in power. As long as that government is doing okay, they will keep that government in. When dissatisfaction sets in, they will then vote for the alternative.

2. People care more about national issues than international issues.

People care more about State issues than national issues.

Voters care more about issues that directly affect them than issues in the abstract. They are influenced by what they feel themselves, by what is affecting them and their situation.

Quote: Dalai Lama

I find that because of modern technological evolution and our global economy, and as a result of the great increase in population, our world has greatly changed: it has become much smaller. However, our perceptions have not evolved at the same pace; we continue to cling to old national demarcations and the old feelings of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

- Dalai Lama

Tsunami

Once again we have seen tragic loss of life and property from a tsunami.

I do not recall the term ever being used when I was younger, in those days anything in the nature of a large wave was called a tidal wave. That is no longer the case.

Following are some facts about tsunami:

• The word tsunami dates from 1897 and is Japanese from tsu, meaning harbour, and nami, meaning waves. The plural can be tsunami or tsunamis.

• The term tidal wave has fallen into disfavor in recent years in that tsunami have nothing to do with tides. A tidal bore is a phenomenon in which a tide creates an actual wave travelling up a river or narrow bay. A huge wave can also be created by a coastal surge from a meteorological event, such as a tropical cyclone. To that extent they can resemble a tsunami in that all comprise waves of water travelling inland. A tsunami, however, is a series of ocean waves with very long wavelengths (typically hundreds of kilometers) caused by large-scale disturbances of the ocean, such as earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions and explosions. A tsunami can also be caused by an above ocean event, such as impact from a meteorite.

Some Monkeyisms...

Softly Softly Catchee Monkey

Meaning:

Achieving success requires careful and quite planning and strategy.

Origin:

Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts (and the author of the unfortunately named “Scouting For Boys”) spent time in Ghana with the Ashanti. Whilst there he heard the phrase used:

If it were not for the depressing heat and the urgency of the work, one could sit down and laugh to tears at the absurdity of the thing, but under the circumstances it is a little "wearing." But our motto is the old West Coast proverb, "Softly, Softly, Catchee Monkey"; in other words, "Don't flurry; patience gains the day." It was in joke suggested as a maxim for our levy of softly-sneaking scouts, but we came to adopt it as our guiding principle, and I do not believe that a man acting on any other principle could organise a native levy on the West Coast-and live.

Eva Braun

(Click on pics to enlarge).

Today’s youth probably only know of Eva Braun as the name of a cocktail in Fawlty Towers, that marvelous episode entitled The Germans, when Basil develops concussion and upsets his German guests.

London’s Daily Mail yesterday published previously unseen photographs of Eva Braun (pictured above, right, with sister Ilse in 1913), Adolf Hitler’s long time companion. Having met Hitler in 1929 when she was 17, she became his companion in 1931 and moved in with him at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden in 1936. Kept hidden from the German public, Hitler married Braun in the last days of WW2, on 29 April 1945. Forty hours later they both committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin.

Humour

Ever noticed how your voice gets louder when you speak to people who don’t speak English well? My lecturer at uni said “Remember, they have trouble with English, they’re not deaf.”

Sometimes humorous stories impart an element of wisdom and insight...

A motorist is driving past a mental hospital on a dark, moonless night when he gets a flat tyre.

As he begins to change the tyre, he notices that one of the patients is looking at him over the top of the fence whilst leaning his arms and chin on the fence.

Nervous, trying to work quickly, he jacks up the car, takes off the wheel, puts the wheel nuts into the hubcap on the ground and gets the spare tyre.

Whilst taking the spare tyre to the wheel, he steps on the hubcap, sending the wheel nuts clattering into a storm drain.

The mental patient is still watching him through the fence.

The motorist desperately looks into the storm drain but the wheel nuts are gone. He paces back and forth in the dark with the patient still watching him, trying to think of what to do.

Finally the patient says "Take one wheel nut off each of the other wheels and put them on this wheel and you’ll have three on each. That will get you home and tomorrow you can take it to your mechanic and get the missing wheel nuts replaced.”

"That's brilliant," says the motorist, "What's someone like you doing in an asylum?"

“I might be crazy,” replied the patient, “but I’m not stupid.”

IWD 2011

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

- Irina Dunn

When I posted yesterday’s item about Margaret Thatcher, I did not realise that not only was that date – 8 March - International Women’s Day (IWD), it was also the 100th such day. IWD is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women in the past, present and future. It is a day when women are recognised for their achievements, regardless of divisions, whether national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic or political.

It was therefore appropriate to have a post featuring Margaret Thatcher, even if it was in ignorance of the importance of that day.

I received a suggestion that I should have included the famous story about Margaret Thatcher and the vegetables. That story holds that Mrs Thatcher, whilst Prime Minister, went to a restaurant for dinner one evening with some of her senior Cabinet Ministers following a late night session. The waiter asked Mrs Thatcher what she wanted to order and she replied that she wanted the beef, rare. The waiter asked “And the vegetables?”, to which she reportedly replied "They will have the beef as well.”

Quote: Margaret Thatcher

“The lady’s not for turning.”

- Margaret Thatcher

The above phrase, used by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in her speech to the Conservative Party Conference on 10 October 1980, has become a phrase defining her personality and character.

According to Brain Walden, BBC commentator:

Her strong points were her iron will. I've never known a will like it in politics and I've known a few politicians in my time in various countries. I've never known a man or woman faintly like her, she was as tough as they come, and anything that required guts and will she could do for you. Anything that required sensitivity, she couldn't, she had none.

Graffiti

Marketing and Mirth

Does anyone else find this ad for OriginEnergy funny?

It cracks me up every time I see it.  The look on the kid's face at the end is priceless, all the more so for there being no conversation in the ad.

See it at:
http://viad.tv/video-9847/origin-energy-save-electricity/

Cabs and Cairo

Email from Byter Leo:

The people in control in Egypt have asked the city's taxi drivers to drive around Cairo sounding their car horns.

It is hoped that the familiar sounds of the city will induce a return to tranquillity and normality.

Operation Toot ’n’ Calm ’Em will last for the rest of the week.

Words and Willies

Caution: The following post contains adult subject matter and some risque language

A lengthy post but hopefully one you will enjoy or at least find interesting...

I’m tired of pretending I’m not special.

I’m here and I’m ready.

I got tiger blood.

I have a 10,000-year-old brain

and the boogers of a 7-year-old.

I’m a high-priest Vatican assassin warlock

Park your judgment at the door.

Your children will weep

Over your exploded body.

They’re going to lose.

They lay down with their ugly wives

in front of their ugly children.

Just look at their loser lives.

I was born dead.

Hope is for suckers.

Don’t remember.

Don’t care.

Scoreboard doesn’t lie.

The above lines are not the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song or a Leonard Cohen poem, although they sound somewhat like that. Instead they are a collection of Charlie Sheen’s recent rambling comments in interviews and talkback telephone calls.

It is always sad to watch a train wreck in progress, be it Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen. What fascinates me about Charlie’s ongoing public meltdown is the images, metaphors and expressions he uses in his somewhat bizarre rants. In some ways they are almost poetic in the style of Dylan and Cohen.

In years to come the current fuss will diminish and Charlie will be looked backed on with a nostalgia for an irreverent son, a good guy who just lived life a little too fully but whose legacy to TV and films lives on,  much like Errol Flynn.  During his Hollywood years he was considered a scandalpus, unholy hellraiser, debauching women and underage girls at his house in the Hollywood hills or on his boat.  Today he is looked on with admiration and proudly claimed as one of Australia's own.

Reader Comment: Elizabeth I and Winston Churchill

Byter Charles pointed out to me that the Queen Mother was never called Queen Elizabeth I, as I called her in yesterday’s Bytes, that this title belonged to the Queen of a few centuries ago.

I should have realised that but can only plead in mitigation that I took the description from the site that had the pic of King George VI and his family. Charles further advised that he remembered from primary school being told that the wife of a King (by birthright) is called a Queen, but the husband of a Queen (by birthright) only gets the title of Prince.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender

be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;

and listen to others,

even the dull and the ignorant;

they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,

they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,

you may become vain and bitter;

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;

for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;

many persons strive for high ideals;

and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment

it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,

whatever you conceive Him to be,

and whatever your labours and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

Some time ago I was invited to make a speech at an 18th birthday. The young lady who had turned 18 is the daughter of a friend of mine and I have known her for many years. The theme of my speech was a quotation from George Bernard Shaw, words in which I strongly believe: “Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.” Malcolm Fraser quoted only the first couple of words of that sentence – “Life was not meant to be easy” - and was pilloried by the press of the day for being an unfeeling and uncaring silvertail who was out of touch with the economic hardship of the community. Had he quoted the entire sentence the press may have been less harsh towards him.

The King's Speech and Aussies

I confess that I haven’t yet seen the film The King’s Speech.  When I first heard about it some time ago, I looked it up on the net to find out what the storyline was.  There were some interesting facts.

For those who have not yet seen it and don’t want to know what it is about, read no further.  There are spoilers ahead.  I imagine that most people by now know the general general story depicted in the movie. 

The film is a British historical drama in which Colin Firth plays Albert, the brother of Edward, Prince of Wales. Edward, as Edward VIII, became king on the death of their father, George V, in 1936. In the same year Edward abdicated over his love for Wallis Simpson, thereby promoting Albert, aka “Bertie”, aka George VI, to the position of king. There is only one problem, Bertie has a terrible stutter that makes him a hopeless public speaker. From 1934 Bertie utilised the services of Aussie speech therapist Lionel Logue, played by Geoffrey Rush. When Britain declares war on Germany in 1939, Bertie delivers a faultless speech heard around the world.

At least that is what the film shows.

The reality is somewhat different and also removes the even stronger Australian connection than Lionel Logue coming from the Antipodes.

Inappropriate Children's Ads: Du Pont Again

How soon can baby be nuked under a sun lamp? If you said “2 weeks”, then you’re spot on, at least as far as Du Pont was concerned in 1960.

Du Pont has previously featured in Bytes in the context of inappropriate children’s advertising, namely various ads for cellophane that showed babies wrapped in it. See them at:

http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com/2010/12/inappropriate-ads-du-pont.html

According to the above advertisement for the Du Pont Health tan Sun Lamp, it’s absolutely safe, so much so that you can sleep under it and hold your newborn under it to go give the bub a “Luxurious Golden Health Tan”. “Be Healthy – Stay Brown th’ Year Round.” Why is it safe enough to clamp on the baby’s cot for the little tyke to sleep under? Because Du Pont Polyester Film blocks out harmful burning rays but passes the good stuff, the “long tanning rays”.

One commentator has suggested that because baby doesn’t know when to turn over while asleep, baby should be strapped to a device like a slowly rotating rotisserie that would enable baby to get an even, all over tan.

RIP Jane Russell

Jane Russell, voluptuous star of the Howard Hughes pic The Outlaw (above) and Hollywood sex symbol, died aged 89 in her home on 28 February.  She died of respiratory failure after having watched the Oscars with her family.

Contrary to popular belief, in the The Outlaw she did not wear the bra especially designed by Howard Hughes, revealing in her autobiography that it was too uncomfortable.  Instead she wore her own bra with the straps down.  Censorship restrictions and savvy promotion by Hughes meant that the film generated considerable discussion and received huge publicity.

Bob Hope once introduced her as "the two and only, Jane Russell".

In 1952, she and Marilyn Monroe (with whom she appeared in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, below) were to sign their names and place their handprints in wet cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre.  Grauman's was not amused when Marilyn suggested that she and Jane imprint their finest assets for posterity:  Jane's breasts and her bottom.

Quote: Shirdi Sai Baba

“Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?”

- Shirdi Sai Baba (Unknown - 1918)

Thoughts on Autumn

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolour, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.

~Stanley Horowitz

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.

- e. e. cummings

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

- Keats, Ode to Autumn

Autumn is my favourite season.

- Johnny Kelly

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

- George Eliot

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.

- P D James

Quote

How to make God laugh: Tell him your future plans.

Woody Allen (1935 - )

Reader Comment: Winston Churchill

Hello Otto,

I really enjoyed the Winston Churchill stuff today. I too am greatly affected and at times motivated by his many witticisms and charm. He was also, not a very pleasant man at times, especially to those that loved him (Lady Churchill, for instance). He was also an extremely selfish, single minded, arrogant and stubborn person – thank God that he was, or we would all be running around under a very different flag today!

If Charles has not seen it, I would thoroughly recommend a film about Churchill’s rise to power prior to the second world war. It is called The Gathering Storm and stars the wonderful Albert Finney and the equally marvellous Vanessa Redgrave. It is perhaps a sanitised version of Churchill that we see, but none the less it is a truly wonderful piece of character acting by Finney. The film won three Emmys but regrettably was not nominated for any Oscars.

Regards

Steve m

Reader Comment: Tank Man

Otto


Tank man is apposite at the present time. The young man who immolated himself in Tunisia has started an avalanche of change (and let's hope reform).

Robyn T

Hello Otto,

I am just catching up on a few Bytes -- The Tank Man was of great interest to us.

Diane and I were in China two years ago, for a Chinese friends wedding – we were the only Westerners there, and it was a very special experience, as you can imagine, more so because I had to give a speech!

After the wedding (in Shanghai) we spent quite a few weeks touring China, and of course we found ourselves in Tiananmen Square. We asked our Chinese friends about the Tank Man and they knew nothing of him or the event – same with every Chinese person we met – they are still quite oppresses over there, despite our thoughts that the doors are open – the doors are not open, they are held ajar by the Government.

Fly Paper and Milk Bars

As I work at my computer with Border Watch on the TV in the background, I noticed that one NZ customs officer commented on the fact that a person subject to a bag inspection was bringing fly papers into the country. It took me back many years, to the late 50’s and early 60’s when I was a nipper.

Before:

(Click on pics to enlarge, especially the place pics below).

More Winston...

Byter Charles mentioned to me during the week that has a fascination with Winston Churchill and that he has particularly enjoyed those Bytes which have featured him. I promised Charles that I would post something about Churchill this weekend and that it would be interesting.

Following are quotations by Churchill which show some lesser known aspects of the man, his personality and his character. 

"For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time to still be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment that you have. And treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time and remember that time waits for no one.

So stop waiting; until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you have kids, until your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire, until you get married, until you get divorced, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or home, until your car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter, until you are off welfare, until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on, until you've had a drink, until you've sobered up, until you die, until you are born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy. Happiness is a journey, not a destination."

-  Alfred D'Souza

Graffiti

Graffiti on Philip St, Bedminster, Bristol, UK (opposite Windmill City Farm)

RMS Queen Mary

Sydney Harbour hosted a spectacular royal rendezvous early this morning when the luxury ocean liners Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Elizabeth sailed into port under grey skies.

- News Report, Sydney Morning Herald 22.02.2011

Once upon a time there were two large shipping companies, the Cunard Line and the White Star Line.

(Old joke:

“I work for Cunard.”

“I work f’Cunard too.”)

In 1934 the two companies merged to form Cunard- White Star Limited.

One of the issues that had to be resolved was naming of future ships. Cunard had a tradition of naming its ships with names that ended in “ia”, such as Lusitania, Mauretania and Aquitania. The White Star Line, on the other hand, had a tradition of ending its ships’ names with "ic", as in Olympic, Britannic and the ill-fated Titanic. Because Cunard had acquired the White Star Line, many considered that the Cunard tradition would prevail. Others felt it would be appropriate to commence a new naming tradition.

White Star and Cunard continued to separately build ships.  White Star built a new ocean liner, Oceanic, and Cunard built two unnamed liners, Ships 534 and 552.

Cunard had kept the aproposed name of  ship 534 a closely guarded secret. In 1936 a delegation led by Sir Ashley Sparks, then Chairman of Cunard Line's American offices, approached King George V for permission to name the ship Queen Victoria. Sir Ashley told King George that the company wanted to name the ship after "the greatest of all English queens." Upon hearing this, the king replied, "Oh, my wife will be pleased."

The delegation had no option but to name ship 534 Queen Mary. Ship 552 became Queen Elizabeth.

 

Left to right:
Edward, Prince of Wales;
Arthur, Duke of Connaught;
Queen Mary;
King George V;
Princess Mary