Today is the 100th anniversary of Louis Prima, a legendary singer and musician from the swing era.
He is one of my favourite artists, and first performed in the 1920s. But his career only really took off in the 1940s, and in 1949, his partnership with singer Keely Smith, later to become his second wife, gave him a popularity that would eventually take him to Vegas.
For most people, he’ll probably be remembered mostly for “Sing, Sing, Sing”, which he wrote, but its popularity would be mostly credited to Benny Goodman’s classic version of the track. However, he did have his own legacy, providing the voice for King Louis in Disney’s Jungle Book and singing “I Wanna Be Like You”, one of the more memorable tracks in the film. Some videos for you to enjoy are below.
For now, I’ll save some more of my favourites from Louis for another time.
In the meantime, a very happy 100th birthday to Louis Prima, and hope he’s laughing and smiling looking down on us in his unique style!
So David Cameron has outlined his plans today to create a “Happiness Index” to measure how happy people in the UK are. The government (through the Office of National Statistics) will spend £2m compiling the index which will first appear in publication in 2012.
Best that the ONS takes some advice to improve the results:
Make sure not to ask questions to the following people:
Give the £2m out first to your interviewees, then ask them if they’re happy.
Alternatively, happiness is a cigar called “H******”, so spend your £2m on these first, give them out and ask your questions.
Mind you, a cheaper way of doing a Happiness Index is to ask everyone if they’re happy and know it and watch them clap their hands.
Those were jokes by the way, in case some hadn’t realised (cf. the Twitter joke trial). Mind you, not sure if any of them increased your happiness after reading them.
Ok, so I had a new look for this blog and then I decided I wanted to change it. Let’s be simple, really. I love minimalism (even for someone who has far too many possessions that clutter space).
It’s almost a year since I last wrote on here and if I were to leave this page too long, it wouldn’t be achieving its purpose, so I’ll try to write a few tidbits once in a while. Meanwhile, I have longer term plans for a feature to this site, but it will take me a while to get there.
In the meantime, here are a few thoughts for you:
The Nobel Prizes were awarded this month and while some of the prizes (such as the Prize for Chemistry) were very much worthwhile, I can’t help but think that the Peace Prize is much of a joke. To award prizes to Barack Obama in 2009 and Liu Xiaobo , a civil rights campaigner in China, in 2010 doesn’t seem right. Not to belittle their achievements so far, but neither has actually brought about change as yet, and there are plenty of others who have achieved much more but have not been recognised. I can’t help but feel that the Nobel panel is trying to send a political message about its vision of change, and less about rewarding those who have created good for the wider public. Shame really…
Meanwhile, the IgNobel prizes were a little more interesting. Held every year as a humorous award ceremony for research that “makes us laugh and then think”, there were the usual crop of amusing wins. Since the prizes are awarded by real Nobel laureates, so the prizes are coveted by some as much as a real Nobel prize. For full details of the ceremony, see here. And then you can find out, amongst other things, that it’s been scientifically proven that bats also perform fellatio.
Finally, I’m sad to hear of the passing of Benoit Mandelbrot. Many of us of my age will remember his fractals being adorned on almost every maths teachers’ classrooms, next to the Eschers and the 3D stereograms. But the art of his most famous fractal was only one side of his influence. His work had more serious impact in the world of digital compression, which is the base of most of the digital imagery and information that is transmitted in our technological world today. Thank you Benoit.
I’m giving a new look for this website. Sadly this site got hacked recently and if you’re using some browsers, it’s probably saying it’s a phishing site. And there was a plan that went out the window!
Seriously, though, it’s a bit of a pain and I’ve had to do a lot of updates to file permissions which have been very painful. I’m trying to get it delisted but it might still take some time. So advice to you all, make sure your site is looked after.
But while I was doing the cleaning up, I thought I’d look for a new theme and found this one. I kinda like, so I’ll stick with this for a while. I’ll fine tune this over the next few days.
In the meantime, I hope you like it and I’ll try to post some new content on here soon.
Now the benefits of anti-bacteral gels have been touted for quite some time, given the spread of the H1N1 virus. But what we didn’t know is that they apparently are a good ingredient in cocktails.
The BBC reports of a prison who have banned the alcoholic gels following the discovery of an intoxicated inmate. Supposedly a hospital has had the same problem of people drinking the gels.
Clearly some people really will do anything for a drink, but this isn’t recommended.