Have You Always Wanted to Go to North Korea?

Now you can.

North Korea announced a plan Friday to designate the Mt. Geumgang tourist region as an international tourism zone to attract foreign investment.

[...]

It announced a development program to create a tourist district in the region covering some parts of Goseong, Tongcheon and Geumgang counties.

Fascinating: South Koreans have been allowed to go to the region since 1998. Now it will be opened to international visitors. Very cool.

Music

I went to a songwriter's competition at the Mona Vale Hotel last night with old Oregon friend, current Sydney Northern Beaches friend, Jeff Stanley. There were seven performers, four move on to the semi-finals. Jeff and I were of those four.

Over a handful of weeks in the last few months Jeff and I went to a smilar competition at the Dee Why RSL. Jeff took second (or co-won, really, as he moves on to the final at one of Sydney's best known clubs, The Basement, on May 3); I finished next and won a "paid gig" at The Basement. In the future.

I was kinda hoping the move to Australia would wake my atrophying music back up. Hmmph. Maybe it is.

One American on Trump and the "Long-Form"

I do not want to do a lot of politics on this blog. I just don't. But sometimes I have to. This needs to be watched, carefully, by a really lot of people.



An excerpt:

It was during my viewing of this video [Trump’s remarks in New Hampshire] that I began to cry. I thought of my ancestors, both direct and collective, who had fought and died so that I might be treated as an American. I then thought of this fetid, smug, hate-filled, wealthy white man taking credit for the release [of the "long form" birth certificate] and yet still not being satisfied. It does not matter how long we’ve been in these United States. We will never be American.

So, tears in my eyes, pain in my heart and rage in my soul, I composed this video message. More than written text, it comes close to expressing my full pain at witnessing a white man who was handed everything call the President of the United States (and me) a nigger.

FaceBook and Twitter

Why do really good communication platforms have childish names like "FaceBook" and "Twitter"? I know they're hugely successful—so what do they care?—but I why are these things seemingly marketed to ten-year-olds?

Half expect the net big thing to be called "Poopy Pants Party" or something.

"Dead 10m whale lures sharks to Newport Beach" [updts]

Update I: Got pics.

Just a few miles down the road. Going to see it right now. Yay! (Yay for possibly seeing sharks, I mean.)

"AUTHORITIES are considering cutting up the carcass of a 10m sperm whale, which is attracting sharks to Sydney's Newport Beach.

The body of the wedged amphibian has drawn schools of sharks to the popular surfing spot, forcing the beach to be closed.

Local residents are flocking to the scene, but not for long, as the smell of rotting flesh wafts throughout nearby Newport village."

Busy Busy Busy

I'm deep into a bunch of articles that are just killing me ("The History of the Lock and Key" - without the crap you find on a thousand internet sites - for example), and creating a table of contents for a 500+ page book due out in April - on the natural world. So my blogging has been sparse.

And "Ow," too.

Limb Regeneration…In Humans?

This is a 2007 article from Nature. I'll see if I can find updates - because it is really fascinating. Just imagine.

Tadpoles can achieve something that humans may only dream of: pull off a tadpole's thick tail or a tiny developing leg, and it'll grow right back — spinal cord, muscles, blood vessels and all. Now researchers have discovered the key regulator of the electrical signal that convinces Xenopus pollywogs to regenerate amputated tails. The results, reported this week in Development, give some researchers hope for new approaches to stimulating tissue regeneration in humans.

...

But the complex networks needed to construct a complicated organ or appendage are already genetically encoded in all of our cells — we needed them to develop those organs in the first place. "The question is: how do you turn them back on?" Levin says. "When you know the language that these cells use to tell each other what to do, you're a short step away from getting them to do that after an injury."

The Jesus Bird

From a 2006 trip to the Northern Territory: The Comb-crested Jacana, [links fixed] according to the very knowledgeable and talkative guide on the South Alligator River in Kakadoo National Park (part of the Yellow Waters cruise), has the longest feet, per bird size, of any bird in the world. Allows in to "walk on water."

The Comb-crested Jacana or Lotusbird is a waterbird with long legs and extremely long toes that enable it to walk on the leaves of floating plants. It is brown above with white face and front of neck. The back of the neck is black extending into a black band round the belly. The rest of the underside is white. It has red bill with black tip and pink comb on forehead.

Here are some drawings of the Comb-crested jacana by John Gould. And more. And more on Gould himself.

Update: I posted this, then seconds later went, "Oh, it's Easter." I wish I could say it was intentional.

Yemeni Leader Will Step Down

We are witnessing some extraordinary events these days.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen has agreed to step down under a 30-day transition plan aimed at ending violent unrest over his 32-year rule.

Officials in the capital Sanaa confirmed the government had accepted the plan drawn up by Gulf Arab states.

Surf Fishing: Flathead and Mystery Crab

I went fishing yesterday. (Was it a Good Friday thing? Some smoke from a stirred childhood memory?) Christine came along, and spent some time trying to catch beach worms.

Just a few minutes in I caught a flathead on a little prawn (not fresh; been in the freezer for ages). Clean, hard strike, I didn't have to set the hook, it just took it and ran. Christine took a shot of the hook removal:

"Ooh ooh Child..."

I was playing with some very simple chord changes on my guitar the other day: C-G, 3 times, then to Em, repeat the whole thing, then to F, resolve on C. The Cs start with a hammer-on of the two highest fingered notes (C and E), and the G comes in on an up-strum. Nothing new or spectacular here, just sounded nice and I felt like strumming.

Last night I woke up, I'm guessing around 4:30 AM. I started playing those changes in my head: C-G; two times, Em… Then I thought, What if I didn't repeat the C-G? I'm always doing these simple repeats of two chords. So I start playing it in my head again: C-G, Em, then I go to Bm, which I knew on the way there was just stupid. So I kinda go to clean up that mess, when after a few seconds I notice that some other part of my mind has picked up the song and continued, but in a different direction. I heard it do this: C-G with the hammmer-on on the C, two times, then it went somewhere else I didn't recognize—was that an A?—then it came back to the C-G, with these words now singing: "Ooh-ooh child, things are gonna get easier, ooh-ooh child things'll get brighter…"

Weird. Just weird.

I just found this. It's very cool.