Religion of The Jedi
Star Wars fans and anyone who enjoys a little eccentricity will like this article about the “Jedi Church”, courtesy of the Daily Mail of London. Founded in North Wales, the Jedi Church/Religion preaches a Yoda-inspired gospel of “life improvement, inner peace and changing your lifestyle so you have a more fulfilling existence.” You can read the article at http://www.dailymail.co.uk. If you want to find out more, there is the Jedi Church official website at jedichurch.org which contains a forum, news, and demographics about the Jedi faith.
The creed is: The Jedi Church recognises that there is one all powerful force that binds all things in the universe together, and accepts all races and species from all over the universe as potential members of the religion.
There’s also a results page on debate results, including such important questions as:
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Who is on the dark side? – Madonna is on the dark side of the force
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Weapons – Jedis should register their lightsabers with the local law enforcement if required in your area
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Weapons – Jedis should not use lightsabers in crowded public areas
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The Dark Forces – Australia is moving to the dark side of the force
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Key Morality Questions – Jedis must not use their mind powers to gain sexual pleasure (I strongly agree because: This would be the domain of theSith, not the Jedi).
What the world eats
This website is a Time Magazine pictorial essay, using photos from the book, Hungry Planet, What the world eats. The book, by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio, came out in late 2005 and is a photographic study of families from around the world, revealing what people eat during the course of one week.
Each family’s profile includes a detailed description of what they eat. Basically, you see a family portrait and, spread out on the table in front of them, you see everything from their weekly diet – bunches of vegetables, packets of biscuits, cuts of meat, etc. You get a good feel for the percentages of the different food groups that typical families from various cultures eat. There is a lot of grain and vegetable in poorer diets, and a lot of meat and processed food (sugar, fat and salt) in diets from affluent countries.
The Ukita family of Kodaira City spent $317 on their food, dominated by fish, fresh fruit and vegetables, and lots of conveniently packaged foods. Their favourite foods include sashimi, fruit, cake, and potato chips. Chips surprised me a lot, with Japans rich tapestry of flavours and textures, I would have thought that chips would be bland.
The Manzo family of Sicily spent $260 on their food, dominated by bread, fresh and pickled vegetables and lots of canned and jarred sauces. Their favourite foods include hot dogs and frozen fish sticks. Surprising once again, although my Italian neighbours eat 5 times the junk food I do, so just having a rich culinary history does not necessarily mean you stick to it.
Then we have the Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp in Chad, who spent $1.23 on their weekly food, which consisted of a few bags of dried beans and grain, a few handfuls of vegetables (possibly dried), and a large bottle of water. Their favourite food is soup made with fresh sheep’s meat.
The Revis family of North Carolina spent $341 on large pizzas, some fresh grapes and tomatoes, then packets of food, meat, rice, fast food, chips, and cartons of soft drink. Favourites are potatoes, spaghetti and sesame chicken.
There are 16 families featured on the Time website and there is also link to buy the book. Visit What the world eats
Fringe YouTube
If you want to see some Fringe shows but can’t make sense of the printed program or the static descriptions on the Fringe website, have a look at the Fringe YouTube page. This page draws together all the Fringe shows that have posted video clips on YouTube. This way you get a feel for the actors and the design of the show, or just the vibe of the performers. NOTE: It is not totally intuitive though. When you see the listings appear, you only get to see the video if you click the little television icon at the far right of each listing. If you click anything else you get sent to the static listing or the booking page. Go to the Fringe YouTube list.
I have also created a Fringe category here on my Online Insights blog, just click on the Fringe category in the left hand column.
Net Disaster
This site is just plain fun. You can choose a disaster to befall a favourite or a hated website. There are dinosaurs, ants carrying text from the page, and a text sucker, The text sucker is supposed to show how valuable text is on a website – I think it is just plain fun. There’re also wasps. Guns, dog poop, and the priceless scribbling baby, which crawls over the page and scribbles everywhere.
You can also install Net Disaster on your own website so that your visitors and wreak havoc with your favourite disaster or choose their own. Go to Net Disaster.