Radio Garden, an amazing internet creation, free radio stations around the globe, in so many languages and styles, 24 hours a day

This is a Christmas present for anyone who comes to visit this little blog in the vast reaches of cyber space. 

Pick a place anywhere in the world and listen to their radio! Live, what is playing this minute. For free. How cool is that! 

Radio Garden
Listen to live radio all over the world by navigating an interactive globe

This is one of the most fantastic things I've seen/heard online in ages. 

Apparently, it was created by TRE (Transnational Radio Encounters). It is so awesome to be able to travel around this amazing planet, see the geographic details on the map, listening to the languages, music, ambiance, news in so many countries, far flung corners of the world. Just like that. Boom. One moment listening to music in Bamako, Mali, Almaty, Kazakhstan, Bengaluru, India then swiveling the globe and listening to music in Chalcis, Greece.

I love the Stories part of this website too, in different accents. The History part too around the world, in different languages. Even the Jingles part is cool.

Looking at the globe is wonderful as well, connecting to parts of the world by their radio programs is an interesting sort of intimacy. I like targeting the littler dots in exotic places I've never heard of before.

What a great sound adventure this is.

If you like classic jazz, just dedicated to jazz, here is Moscow's Jazz 101 via languagehat with thanks.

If you like Reggae, here's a great dub station out of Nicosia, Cypress of all places. 

And Radio Locator
Welcome to Radio-Locator.com, the most trusted radio station search engine on the Internet. We have links to over 15,100 radio stations' web pages and over 10,200 stations' audio streams from radio stations in the U.S. and around the world.

From BBC's Planet Earth II

teh kitten and owl chick friends, in Japan

So  interesting! Beauty salons in the sea, where fish and amphibians come to get groomed by "cleaner fish" of all kinds. One of the cool things is that predators repay the service of being cleaned by these fish by not eating them, remaining patient, even when the cleaning is irritating, hurts or tickles.

Wow. Human population through time

Yella - Tom Tom Club - a 1980s favorite and so true about NYC

Tom Tom Club - Yella Lyrics

Yella

Up in the morning at 8:05, my room€'s too cold to crack a job

There's no beginning, there is no end

The landlord has cut the heat again (Say what?)

It'€™s freezing cold in New York City

I have no heat and it'€™s a pity

I pay my rent bill right on time but I'€™m so cold that it's a crime

They say that New York'€™s red hot

I'm here to tell you that it'€™s not

And since the landlord he don'€™t care, I gotta live in my Long John Underwear

You gotta have a strong heart to live in New York

You gotta have strong lungs to live in New York

You gotta have a strong skin to live in New York

You gotta have Long Johns to live in New York

It'€™s gonna take a lot of heart to live in New York

It's gonna take a lot of soul to live in New York

You gotta have a lot of cash to live in New York

You gotta have a lot of dash to live in New York

Freezing heart and froze below, with freezing ears and frozen nose

On and on and on, on and on from midnight to the break of dawn

I shiver in the shower, stutter on the phone

Wonder why I end up an Eskimo

If the landlord he don'€™t bend, I guess I have to move again

You gotta have a strong heart to live in New York

You gotta have strong lungs to live in New York

You gotta have a strong skin to live in New York

You gotta have Long Johns to live in New York

You gotta have a lot of heart to live in New York

You gotta have a lot of soul to live in New York

You gotta have a lot of cash to live in New York

You gotta have a lot of dash to live in New York

I like to move where I can groove

Once a move to twice improve

To the South where the sun is hot

To a place where the landlord's not

I take my wife and the three fat babies because I came for New York lady

Left, right, left and to the South

(Forward march) I'm stepping out

You gotta have a strong heart to live in New York

You gotta have strong lungs to live in New York

You gotta have a strong skin to live in New York

You gotta have Long Johns to live in New York

Left, right, left, right, left, right, left

Left, right, left, right, left, right, left

Left, right, left, right, left, right, left

Left, right, left, right, left, right, left

Why don'€™t you move into the Louvre?

It'€™s cozy there and you could prove Monet was hot, Picasso was not

I should have moved but milk's no joke

Fool blew his bankroll tootin'€™ coke

Now he don'€™t like my on the spot

His New York baby and they'd rather freeze

That would be the bee€'s knees

To London please

I said, €œExcuse me if I have to sneeze€

I fear the cold like a disease

Have you ever seen a Londoner have a heart?

Have you ever seen a shark bark?

Have you ever seen a snake with hips?

Have you ever seen a chicken with lips?

Have you ever known a harp to talk?

My god (Describe it)

Have you ever heard applause for a pause?

Have you ever seen a flasher flasher, flasher?

A hooker, hooker, hooker

A rub of rubber, rubber?

A millionaire have an affair?

I date the lady I say?

But you could have seen an empty day job

A summer in the summer?

A rock and roller reefer

A brother kill another?

Loved by your lover?

Stick by a sticker?

Lit by a lighter?

Have you ever got robbed by a robber?

Dreams form a dreamer

Have you ever given a gift to a giver?

Time to a timer

Books to a booker

And Shocks to a sinner?

No

I am freezing high, I am freezing low

In fact I'€™m freezing from the cold

On and on and on, on and on from midnight to the break of dawn

I shiver in the shower, stutter on the phone and I wonder why I end up an

Eskimo

I like to move where I can prove, once removed and twice confused

Go South where the sun is hot

Go South where the landlord's not

New York, right on

Marvelous reading by Boris Karloff of How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Very nice reading with pictures from the original book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Monday, July 2nd 2012

Paul Gustave Doré, The Creation of Light, c. 1832-1883

Via

Spiral cut hot dog.


Orangutan using a towel


Lovely yo-yo dance with gravity

Misophonia and an amusing thread on Reddit about the topic

Misophonia, literally “hatred of sound,” is a form of decreased sound tolerance. It is characterized by negative experiences resulting only from specific sounds, whether loud or soft, and is often used interchangeably with the term Selective Sound Sensitivity.^[1] The term was coined by American neuroscientists Pawel Jastreboff and Margaret Jastreboff.^[2]

Unlike hyperacusis, misophonia is specific for certain sounds. Little is known about the anatomical location of the physiological abnormality that causes such symptoms but it is most likely high central nervous system structures.^[3] It is believed to result from abnormally strong connections between the autonomic and limbicsystems in the brain, rather than over-activity of the auditory system. A subcortical route within non-classical auditory pathways may be indicated in the condition.^[4]Misophonia appears to reflect the auditory symptoms of sensory processing disorder, which typically presents in multiple sensory modes, but more research is needed to understand if, or how the conditions may be related.^[5]

Symptoms

People who have misophonia are most commonly annoyed, or even enraged, by such ordinary sounds as other people eating, breathing, sniffing, or coughing; certain consonants; or repetitive sounds.^[6][7] People with misophonia may be diagnosed with mood or anxiety disorders as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Though a few sufferers are bothered by sounds they make themselves, most are not.^[7] The reactions are completely involuntary.

People who have misophonia may also be annoyed by other people's repetitive movements, such as leg-tapping, nail-biting, the rising and falling of the belly, and typing.^[8]

Sensitivity to these sounds tends to be exacerbated by anger, stress, hunger, sadness, or fatigue.

The onset of the symptoms appears to have a characteristic pattern, often in childhood just prior to or during puberty. Often there is a single initial trigger (such as a parent's or sibling's noises), after which the triggers expand over time to include both auditory or visual elements. It is speculated that there is a genetic basis for this disorder as the etiological data supports a similar pattern of emergence, but this remains to be determined.

A fascinating look at one tiny aspect of the interconnectedness of modern life, the delivery of pizza

So interesting how a log can be cut

Enjoying looking around the New York Public Library's digital images

Far away / Shines a single ray. (1865)

Hiroshige: New Year’s Eve foxfires at the changing tree, Oji, 1857

Dressed.

Die Gänsehirtin am Brunnen.  [Goose-Girl at the well.] (1895)  

Undressed.

Hans, der kleine Däumling. (1884) 

... the Stars/That nature hung in Heav'n, and fill'd their Lamps/With everlasting oil, to give due light/To the misled a... (1921)

The prince with the wounded hind (1896)

Guiana in story and pictures. (1944)

Durochka's grave. (1916)

Where the waterfall piped in the shrillest of trebles / Hop o' my Thumb filled his pocket with pebbles. (1865)

The Sun-Child and the Queen. (1926)

Inside a camel's mouth is pretty strange looking. "The lining of the camel’s mouth is very tough, to enable the animal to eat whatever it can digest, when food is scarce. This way, it can eat thorny cactus plants without injuring its mouth."

Bird hates car

A fun jazz dispute.

So interesting to see the different nationalities.

Baby Kittens All Settled for the Long Awaited Bottles