abqtommy
abqtommy's JournalElectric blue: bioluminescence on Sydney's northern beaches - in pictures
From The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2021/oct/30/electric-blue-bioluminescence-on-sydneys-northern-beaches-in-pictures
Wow! And how!
October 30, 1941, President Roosevelt funded the Allied efforts to win World War II.
From The Good News Network.
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/events061030/
(80 years ago today, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave an additional one billion dollars in Lend-Lease Act funding to Great Britain to help fund the Allied efforts to win World War II.
Though FDR had been re-elected on a platform promising to keep America out of the war, Roosevelt wanted to help Churchill and the UK defeat Nazi Germany, which had already swallowed up France and Poland. The legislation sub-titled ‘An Act to Promote the Defense of the U.S.’, allowed American intervention without troops actually entering the war until years later.
The 4 years of aid also went to the Soviet Union, Free France, China, and others, and included food, oil, weaponry, warships, and warplanes. It was mostly free, although in return the U.S. was given leases on military bases across Allied territory. The total of $50 billion donated (half trillion in 2019 dollars) was 17% of the total expenditures of the U.S. during the war which ended 4 years later.
Russia’s Joseph Stalin acknowledged the importance of the $50 Billion intervention saying, “Without American production, the Allies could never have won the war.”)
There's a photo but no more text at the link. History teaches us many lessons about
what works and what doesn't. FDR's Lend-Lease program worked!
From The BBC: The 17-year-old making films fun for deaf children
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-58972808(...)"Seeing my son be able to sit and understand the movie and see things he's not seen before in eight years, it's amazing."
For eight-year-old Toby, who is deaf, watching films or TV on streaming platforms can sometimes be a bit pointless - because so many of them don't have sign language versions.
"We have captions but they don't really do anything for him because it goes quite fast. He would just watch and not get much from it," his dad Jarod Mills tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.
But now, Toby has some help thanks to an app developed by a 17-year-old A-level student.(...)
It's encouraging for me/us to see what good/productive things can be accomplished
by one person. Much more text and photos at the link.
Q: What do you get when you take the middle out of a hot dog?
A: A Hollow Weenie! 
I just heard that on a rerun of Happy Days. Just think, somebody got paid for
putting that in the script!
CBC*: Your North: Best reader photos for the week of Oct. 17 (2021)
*Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Well, well, today I decided to search for photos from the CBC's main page and look
at what I found!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/your-north-reader-photos-1.6222047
Here's a few notes: Nunavut is the Indigenous area in Northern Canada. The word
"inuksuit" refers to a group of more than one human-built stone structures/cairns and the N.W.T. is North West Territories, an area between The Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east.
The menu of CBC photos can be found at this link:
https://www.cbc.ca/search?q=photos§ion=news&sortOrder=relevance&media=all
From The BBC: Africa's week in pictures: 22-28 October 2021
A selection of the best photos from the African continent and beyond.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59075237
From The BBC: Your pictures of Scotland: 22 - 29 October (2021)
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-59013688Here it is, right on schedule! One of the photos uses the word "machair" to describe
the terrain and I found that the word indicates a certain formation of sand dunes*.
* https://sac.jncc.gov.uk/habitat/H21A0/
Happy Birthday to actor and writer John Cleese who turns 82 years old today...
From The Good News Network on October 27, 2021:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/events061027/
"Beyond his recent work on a musical adaptation of his film A Fish Called Wanda (which he wrote) and a stage version of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, he’s set to host a new TV series exploring the ‘mind-field’ of cancel culture: John Cleese: Cancel Me.
The British series features interviews both with those affected by being cancelled and those who are behind the cancelling. He has long questioned whether it is possible to make good comedy without offending someone, and wonders aloud about our appetite for silencing those whose views we don’t wholly share—and what that says about our society."
snip
"Who is Cleese? While studying law at Cambridge, he joined the theater club because he could “make people laugh.” There, he met his future writing partner Graham Chapman, and within four years they met the other collaborators who formed Monty Python. The sketch comedy troupe’s Flying Circus television show ran for 4 seasons and became an instant comedy classic, leading to four feature films. Cleese has written books, movie scripts, plays, and an autobiography called So, Anyway."
Happy Birthday, John. You've certainly made me laugh, giggle and walk funny on
more than one occasion!
There's a bit more text and some photos at the above link.
From The Guardian: The 31st annual Tompkins Square Halloween dog parade...
It happened in New York City. Who knew? Thanks to this photo collection now we all do!
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/oct/23/the-31st-annual-tompkins-square-halloween-dog-parade
Guardian: Diana Rigg: 'Ma didn't suffer fools: she exploded them at 50 paces'
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/oct/24/diana-rigg-rachael-stirling-interview-edgar-wright'When Ma found her cancer was malignant, all the theatres went dark.
“Normally, when one gets bad news like this, one becomes the focus of attention, but in a pandemic, no one gives a fuck!”
Mum was ill so of course there was an apocalypse.
I became my mother’s carer, cooking, shopping, medicating and shuttling her to and from radio and chemo.'
There's much more text and nifty photos at the link above.
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