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Animal Lovers Corner: Elephant
Art
The artwork above - you're not going to believe this - was painted by elephants. That's right: The Asian Elephant Art & Conservation Project, a nonprofit organization, gives elephants paintbrushes, paper, paint, and an easel, and let's them do their thing. Most of the artwork is abstract, but some of the paintings are unbelievable! The AECP is based out of New York City, and it's purpose is to raise money and awareness about the plight of the elephants of Southeast Asia. Asian elephants are currently on the endangered list, where their natural habitat continues to disappear. The AECP supervises the gentle teaching of various ways to paint to the elephants, with non-toxic art supplies. The artwork above, and more, is for sale by the AECP at elephantart.com. Be aware, though, that the one on the left is on elephant dung paper! |
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Shakira has a big
heart
Her hips don't lie, and her wallet don't close. Pop singer Shakira has a corazón grande - a big heart! At the Clinton Global Initiative (where Brangelina frolicked this week), Shakira announced that she has just donated $45 million to charity: $40 million towards repairing the earthquake and hurricane damage in Nicaragua, and $5 million towards health and education in four different Latin American Countries. She's also hosting a discussion on youth activism tomorrow at the Clinton Global Initiative. "I've seen first hand many of the challenges facing Latin America," she said. "These are challenging problems that no one person can address, but working together everyone can help make a difference." And what else has she been doing lately? At the conclusion of her latest tour, Shakira took a break: to go back to school! For the last month, she's been studying at the University of California in Los Angeles, taking classes on the history of western civilization. The class just ended, and her instructor, Robert Cleve, said he hadn't even known she was a celebrity. "She told me she was visiting from Colombia and that she was just doing this for her own enlightenment and enjoyment," Cleve said. "She looked just like an ordinary student. She wasn't flamboyant...she didn't act like a big celebrity or anything." He also said he was impressed with how intelligent she was in the class. |
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We love a boycott:
Kanye still won't deal with MTV
Go Kanye...it's your birth-day...oops, sorry, we were doing the Cabbage Patch. Embarrassing. Anyhow, we love a boycott, and Kanye West is giving us one as he still refuses to to do an interview with MTV. At Us Weekly's Hot Hollywood Bash Wednesday night, Us reporters were next to both MTV and VH1 camera crews when MTV tried to catch Kanye's interview with Us on tape. And according to Us, Kanye "swatted away the MTV cameras, telling the cameraman and producer, 'I have nothing against you, just your bosses.'" Us also says Kanye kept his hand over MTV's lens during the entire interview. Kanye's apparently still ticked about Brit-Brit opening the VMA's instead of him. Well, one thing's for certain: Kanye can definitely survive without MTV. And he's not just a boycotter, he's a do-gooder: amongst other causes he's been involved in, Kanye is now promoting Education Reform in '08, which is a campaign to raise awareness sbout education issues, and encourage presidential candidates to make this a priority. He filmed a 30 second pot recently for ED in '08 at a benefit concert for the cause, and sent it out as a Myspace bulletin:
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Who is Emerson
Hart?
We loved this even before we knew the album is called "Cigarettes & Gasoline." You may have heard Emerson Hart's new single, "If You're Gonna Leave," on the radio and thought: isn't that voice familiar? Emerson Hart was the lead singer for Tonic, the band that came out with the chart-topping "If You Could Only See." Remember: "if you could only see the way she loves me, maybe you would understand...if you could only see how blue her eyes can be when she says, when she says she loves me." Well, Emerson Hart is back, with a debut solo album, and this is the latest song from the album. We love it!! Hart says that the album proved "freeing and education in the way that I had to learn to again trust my instincts above what is best. That was the greatest experience for me in making this record; I learned to trust myself as a writer." The album is also about his father's murder when he was a boy living in New Jersey. "This record, I had to address those issues before I moved on," he says on his website, "so I had to forgive those people who killed my father and let that go...it refers to an olfactory sense from my childhood - my dad smoking Marlboro Reds and getting gas in Jersey; I remember sitting in the back of his 'Caddy, and the smell of that, and his arm up on the armrest and him smoking, early memories for me." Emerson wrote this song, "If You're Gonna Leave." An artist with real talent who writes his own songs - they still exist! We're going out and buying this album, stat. |
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Political party
namecalling: why do we sling mud at each
other?
Ah, hatemail. Let's take a peek into today's: "Connie, I knew the hate mail would flood in once I posted a blog about how I think CBS' new reality show, Kid Nation, is child endangerment for entertainment; any time you make a serious accusation like that, people want to fight you over it. I also am getting a bunch of e-mails from young kids that saw my article and somehow thought I was involved in the casting of the show, and were asking how they can sign up for Season 2. Which pretty much reinforces my point, in my eyes: if a child is not able to decipher a news blog protesting the show from the show's own website, how are they expected to decide whether or not their appearance on the show is helping or harming them? Or a number of other decisions that they'll be subjected to on the show with no adult intervention? Shoot, there I go whining about Kid Nation again. What I want to address here, though, is political party namecalling. Whether or not you agree with what I think about a reality TV show, why would you assume I drink Kool-Aid and have no brains? Well, having "no brains" is sort of a noninsult-insult, because there is no such thing as "no brain" in a living human. But what is it about being concerned for children's welfare makes me a Liberal? You can think that CBS is doing nothing wrong to the children in Kid Nation. But even if you disagree with the children's advocacy groups, wouldn't you rather err on the side of caution? Are humanitarians evil Liberals?
Politics are so touchy, and when people disagree with another's ideology, it's easy to resort to throwing those labels around. If you're a "Liberal," you're a crazy, left wing, tin foil hat wearing, treehugging, what-have-you. If you're a Conservative, you're a tightass, right wing, a square, a prude, etc. Well, fine. You can call me whatever you want. I say it a lot in this blog, and I'll say it again: I am not a Liberal, nor a Conservative, nor a Democrat, nor a Republican: I am an American citizen. And I see political segregation to be just as sad as racial, religious, or gender segregation. So can't we all just get along? |
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Animal Lovers
Corner: Japanese scientists have created a transparent
frog
This is happy news for frogs everywhere! And the students that don't want to dissect them. I remember when I was in high school and failed all three of the dissection assignment projects because I refused to do them: a sheep's eye, a frog, and a pig fetus. My Biology teacher couldn't answer my question of whether or not they had died of natural causes. Luckily my lab partner was really hot, so I got to watch him instead of the stuff he had to dissect because I wouldn't touch it. I should have gotten an A for principle....but science teachers aren't into that so much. Japanese scientists have created this phenomenon by using traditional selective breeding (instead of genetic modification), and by mating the palest wild frogs they could find, the researchers have come up with a frog whose internal organs, eggs, and blood vessels can be seen without dissection. Professor Masayuki Sumida led the project at the Institute for Amphibian Biology at Hiroshima University. The scientists plan to patent their technique after it's completely perfected (the frog above is still somewhat milky-colored). "You can see through the skin how organs grow, how cancer starts and develops," Sumida has said. "You can watch organs of the same frog over its entire life as you don't have to dissect it...you can see dramatic changes of organs when tadpoles mutate into frogs." Many underwater creatures are transluscent naturally. Jellyfish, sea snails, octupi, sea monkeys, and other marine creatures have evolved transparent skin as a form of camouflage. |
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Kimberly Stewart is a
fashion...rewind?
Randomly, this is Kimberly Stewart, daughter of musician Rod Stewart, and I totally wore this dress to my freshman homecoming, I'm not even kidding you. Same tights, too. I didn't think to throw in the leopard-print bag...that was my dress for junior homecoming. I am totally having high school flashbacks after these last two blogs. What has Kimberly been up to this days, anyhow? I think her little flingette with Tommy Lee fizzled after the whole Tommy/Kid Rock brawl thing. Anyhow, she is filming a new British reality show with two roommates called "Living with Kimberly Stewart." There will be her search for "flatmates," the eviction of a male roommate, and...(yawn). |
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How are magazines and
newspapers doing now that everyone reads it
online?
You check the news online. Maybe celebrity gossip. Maybe women's health, or the stock market, or the latest fashion tips. Whatever it is that you look for, there it is on the internet. What does that mean for the fate of magazines and newspapers? I know I haven't used a phonebook in years...will it be that way one day with other printed media? "It's a long, slow sunset for ink-on paper magazines," Felix Dennis, a publishing entrepreneur told The Economist, "but sunsets can produce vast sums of money." They can? Crap! Now I can stop looking for pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. Dennis recently sold his firm's American outfit, which publishes Maxim, to a private equity business. The Economist also reported that FHM magazine has lost a quarter of its circulation. Guys are starting to realize that they don't have to hide their computer under the mattress. But newspaper and magazine publishers can have hope. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the newspaper website audience grew more than 20% over the past year. Just because not as many people want to pick up the mag or pay for the daily paper, doesn't mean they don't still look for the names they're familiar with. And although newspaper advertising declined in 2006 and 2007, PwC estimates that it will simply plateau next year. |
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ConnieTalk.com
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