Calculating your Christmas feast carbon footprint

Christmas feast, and calculating your carbon footprint

Czech photographer: hippos devour a crocodile

“It’s the kind of photograph you get to take once in a lifetime – if you get lucky” that’s how Czech photographer Václav Šilha describes the photo that millions of people admired on the web within hours of it being posted. On a three-day trip around Serengeti National Park in Tanzania Šilha captured a herd of hippos devouring a crocodile. The photographer says that this is something that rarely happens – usually hippos and crocodiles respect each other and seek their prey elsewhere but in this case the crocodile came too close to a mother with young and in the skirmish that ensued climbed onto a hippo’s back. He was immediately attacked and killed by the herd. There are few photos on which the feared crocodile is seen as the prey - Šilha says some of his colleague photographers had seen such a thing happen but had never been lucky enough to snap it.

Link to a photo series

Music competition for European minority languages

Leeuwarden, Netherlands (CNN) — “This is the outfit our parents wore when they used to go out to dance. It’s a traditional outfit,” jokes Riemelmeester Malde.

Malde is addressing a theater audience in Friesland in the northern Netherlands where he and his bandmates are about to perform in their native Low German dialect at Liet International, a song contest for European minority languages.

But Malde’s band is a rap trio rather than a folk troupe and their outfits are anything but traditional: boiler suits adorned with yellow and black hazard tape and garish hip hop baseball caps. Their instruments are laptops, microphones and loudhailers and, as their name suggests, De fofftig Penns owe more to 50 Cent than their Lower Saxony origins.

“We try not to have anything too middle of the road. Our contest is about new songs. The variety and originality are important,” Liet coordinator Onno Falkena told CNN ahead of Saturday night’s final in Leeuwarden, the Frisian capital.

read more at liet.nl

Swiss to vote on constitutional ban on building minarets

Are soaring towers on mosques a threat to Swiss culture or a sign of tolerance and democracy? Currently there are only four minarets in the whole country.

This election poster has been banned in several cities because it was deemed to be racist.

On November 29, the Swiss will decide on whether to ban the construction of minarets. As the debate heats up, swissinfo.ch explores the issues behind the vote.

Kim Kelly and Kim Nelson are modeling the handknit scarves from Switzerland. Eurobureau host Simon received the scarves from his cousins who knit and knit and knit some more. Last year it was socks for the pledge drive, this year it's two scarves. They're over 6 feet long and about 10 inches wide, and were knit during the first part of 2009.

A sustaining membership of $120 or more will make one of these scarves yours. Call (707) 923-3911 if you're interested.

Merci!

Schnitzer, a band from Zuerich

I'm excited to present you with the new album by Schnitzer. Very catchy, cool guitar work. There's only one song I can't play on the radio due to some f-words. Check 'em out on their Myspace page.

Solar Impulse has been unveiled

Bertrand Piccard's latest venture, a solar plane to circle the globe with, has been unveiled.

Find out much more on the website solarimpulse.com

Phenomden music video

A simple, cool video by Swiss reggae artist Phenomden:

More new music on Eurobureau May 13

Haydamaky from Ukraine, currently on a tour of Europe. I just listened to their album "Kobzar" and I'm impressed with their blend of traditional and modern sounds.

Here's some text from their myspace page, where you can hear a bunch of their tunes:

HAYDAMAKY – well known Ukrainian band through whose artwork you can hear and feel the great mixture of traditional motives and modern musical tendencies.

“Our destination is to make contemporary Ukrainian culture “cool”, trendy, fashioned, adopted into other world cultures and to gain for young Ukraine as widest as possible recognition throughout the world.” - O. Yarmola, Haydamaky

With the name HAYDAMAKY they are on stage since 2001. Starting from early ‘90ies till present HAYDAMAKY are touring Europe. Quite different from other popular Ukrainian musicians who are mostly working under cliché of soviet style or just copy/pasting western and American stars HAYDAMAKY are trying to show the elements of traditional Ukrainian music through mixture influenced and made of different cultures joint with modern musical styles.

Music of HAYDAMAKY is inspired by ethnic sounds from all around the world, especially from different regions of Ukraine such as Polissya, Bukovyna and Carpathian mountains so as the sounds of Jamaica, Ireland ethno-rock and hot sounds of Balkans and Moldova.

HAYDAMAKY are well known around Europe, so they are welcome guests in countries like Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and of course – Ukraine. Geography of HAYDAMAKY is growing on and on.

Bligg,

a Swiss hip-hop artist, also blends traditional sounds with modern styles. Hackbrett (a hammered dulcimer) and accordion meets hip-hop beat. He has expanded his repertoire, very catchy tunes, highly produced, sounds like a large band. Some songs are very funny, others have more serious themes, like the song "Secondos" about immigrants and how much they have done for Switzerland.

His website is bligg.ch, and you can find him on myspace as well.

more coming...

Outcry from Inuits as EU bans seal products - Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Read the story on Radio Netherlands website

Most European countries back seal products embargo

At a meeting of ambassadors of the 27 European Union states, most countries came out in favour of a total ban on importing seal-related products because of Canada's controversial slaughtering methods. Click below for the article on France24.

And to read the rest for the story, get more here now.

Swine Flu Humor

One of these women returned from vacation in Mexico. Which one?

from Cyberpresse.ca

Danish police hug cyclists and hand out helmets

found on boingboing.net

Video of police in Denmark stopping bicyclists, hugging them, and giving them helmets. Happiness all around.

Östblocket: "yes, we are a Swedish Balkan band!"

Check them out on their Myspace page 

Holland: Queen's Day invitations spark controversy

Amsterdam is inviting people from all over the world to come to the Queen's Day festivities on April 30, celebrated by hundreds of thousands of orange clad partygoers. But not everybody is amused by the poster campaign that comes with the invitation.

Read the rest of the story on the Radio Netherlands website

Happy Easter

A friend of mine sent this:


"My butt hurts !!!" "WHAT?"

Opera singer wins Swedish Eurovision entry

Swedish opera singer Malena Ernman won the Melodifestivalen contest and will represent Sweden in Moscow for the Eurovision Song Contest.

European Broadcasting Union rejects Georgia Eurovision entry

The Eurovision Song Contest reference group has reviewed the Georgian submission for the 2009 competition and, earlier than expected, has issued a decision. The song selected in Georgia's national final, We don't wanna put in by Stephane and 3G will not be allowed to participate at the Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow.
The song appears to have clear political meaning and is has been widely seen in international and local media as an attack on the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin. The song is in breach of the Eurovision Song Contest rules and will not be allowed to take part in the competition.
The article on esctoday.com includes a Youtube video of the song.

Got a middle name?

Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg is the new German Federal Minister of Economics and Technology

Wikipedia link

Nonsensical Inventions

From Magazine on Radio Prague: 

The Brno Technical Museum is offering a look at the lighter side of life with an exhibition of nonsensical inventions. The exhibition features a tandem bike for married couples - with the man and wife sitting back to back and pedaling in opposite directions, glasses for Peeping Toms with an opening designed to fit a keyhole, a candleholder for a light bulb, a screwdriver inside a sealed bottle, a hammer made of porcelain and a gun that shoots backwards for people who want to commit suicide. The exhibition of crazy inventions that “failed to change the course of history” is on display until May 18.

More odd news on the Magazine Homepage.

Thank God I'm an Atheist!

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." That message, on British buses for just over a month, is coming to Switzerland.
The Swiss freethinkers' association launched a campaign on Monday to collect donations to "give a voice to those people who feel plagued by the missionary slogans" plastered around the country.

"We did it because so many people asked us to do it," Reta Caspar, spokeswoman for the association, told swissinfo.

"We hadn't planned it – we had our own campaign last October in which we invited people to 'out' themselves on our website, saying they were non-religious and why."

Caspar said one of the aims of that campaign was to give faces to the 11 per cent of Swiss who are non-religious.

"When we saw what happened in London and how people were so happy to have a campaign like this and how much support they got, we said we had to do it."

Read more here in an article on swissinfo.org, where you'll find quite a few links.

WEF in Davos

World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week.

How to pronounce Davos? Wikipedia has this: English-speaking broadcast journalists covering the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting, along with many speakers at the meeting itself, commonly mispronounce the town's name by emphasizing the first syllable and shortening the o to make the word rhyme with "moss", i.e., DAH-voss ([ˈdaː·vɔs]). The correct pronunciation is dah-VOHS ([daː·'vos]).

As I was growing up, every winter and spring day I would hear the avalanche report on the radio, right after the weather forecast. It came from the Swiss Institute For Snow And Avalanche Research, then located at Weissfluhjoch, Davos. That's how I know how it's pronounced...

Where's Davos? This from mySwitzerland.com: Davos in Grisons is a place of superlatives: this holiday destination with international ambience is the largest resort in the Alps for mountain holidays, sport and conferences, at 1,560 m (5,118 ft) the highest town in the Alps and a high-altitude health resort with a long tradition. 

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