Heads or Tails

[Mike8]

1122-1112


https://swirlsofnoise.com/2014/06/05/the-gathering-mandylion/

The title track, Mandylion once again changes the pace of the album and showcases a more ambient as well as fully instrumental sound. The track makes use of a deep sounding flute and synth alongside some sublime vocal parts and plenty of sparkly sounding chimes all to the beat of what sounds like bongo or djembe. This track shows clear influence from bands such as Dead Can Dance.

The next track Sand and mercury keeps the Dead Can Dance vibe going before bursting into a doomy guitar and synth combo. The second half of the song slows down the pace leading to some honest and heartbreaking lines from Anneke and a fitting harmonised guitar outro topped with a reflective Simone de Beauvoir quote read by a .J.R.R. Tolkien – Very touching indeed.

[1714131621]

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[1714131621]

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[1714131621]

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[1714131621]

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[1714131621]

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[xJuturna]

1221-2112





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Protection_Units

The actual Siege of Kobanî approximately coincided with the American-led intervention in Syria getting serious by starting bombardments on Syrian territory. With the world fearing another massacre in Kobanî, the Americans started to give close air support to the YPG. While most observers expected ISIL to quickly crush the Kurds, the YPG put up a surprising and determined resistance. For months the western media covered a long and fanatical battle between an organization that had just committed genocide (ISIL) and an officially democratic organization (YPG) that employed female fighters and was isolated by Turkey. It was a fight that seemed epic and symbolic of a struggle between good and evil. While it lasted, the YPG was immune to criticism, and when it was over in March 2015 the U.S. and YPG had fought on the same side for half a year.

[Slow death]

2121-1212

Business-as-usual is changing. The conventional wisdom that capitalism comes at great cost to society is being challenged. Instead, we’ve observed that the most innovative companies are using those same market drivers – the ones that have until now been a cause of such criticism and skepticism –as drivers for positive change in the world.

Fortune’s new “Change the World” list contributes to this trend. As Fortune Editor Alan Murray explains, “It is meant to shine a spotlight on companies that have made significant progress addressing major social problems as a core part of their business strategy.” We at FSG and the Shared Value Initiative lent our expertise to help collect and vet nominations for the list.

This is the first list of its kind in which companies are recognized – and competitively ranked – on business innovations that positively impact pressing social and environmental issues. The presence of such a list in the pages of Fortune is news itself as when we first wrote about shared value in 2011, companies creating shared value were more the exception than the rule. The Fortune “Change the World” List shows us that the concept of aligning business opportunity and social impact is moving into the mainstream.

On the “Change the World” list, you’ll find familiar companies that we’ve highlighted in the past as well as a few surprises – but to be clear, this is not a “good company” ranking. Murray puts it best: “We recognize these are large global companies with complex operations that may be ameliorating one great global problem even as they contribute to another.”

But one thing the “Change the World” companies all have in common is that they recognize the business value in addressing societal needs. In their quest for profits, they are driving innovations that improve health outcomes, make progress on climate change, provide better access to education, and create new economic opportunities for those in poverty. They realize that business can – and must – compete to change the world.

http://www.fsg.org/blog/fortune-ranks-top-companies-changing-world?gclid=Cj0KEQjw57W9BRDM9_a-2vWJ68EBEiQAwPNFK3gAl6oOcJJLc830iZWwYX1EEL1r5_Qdoj-EjCMHJ2waAntY8P8HAQ

[hermesesus]

2221-1212

http://time.com/4450001/venus-life-balmy/

Venus May Once Have Been a Garden Planet

A new model suggests a world very different from the one we know today

One of the hard facts of our solar system is that even with eight perfectly nice planets, Earth remains the only house on the block with its lights on—at least in terms of life. Mars, it’s increasingly clear, was once a warm, watery planet and had a shot at cooking up biology, but only until numerous environmental cataclysms turned it dry and cold.

Now, according to environmental models run by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and reported in Geophysical Research Letters, Venus coulda’ been a contender too. For up to two billion years, the investigators believe, our cosmic neighbor may have been an entirely hospitable place for life.

If Venus was indeed once habitable, you wouldn’t know to look at it today. Its surface temperatures climbs as high as 864º F (462º C) and its atmosphere—almost entirely carbon dioxide—is 90 times thicker than ours, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect. Yet Earth and Venus formed out of the same primordial cloud, are almost the exact same size and are located in at least a similar proximity to the sun. If we have liquid water it’s highly likely Venus once did too—a fact confirmed by American space probes which found chemical signatures of water in the Venusian atmosphere.

[lovewiki]

2221-1221

Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.
 H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
 David Viscott

Love isn't something you find. Love is something that finds you.
 Loretta Young

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
 Mother Teresa

Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.
 Ann Landers

From: http://mobile.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_love.html

[Niya]

1212-1221

The cyberpunk genre emerged in the early 1980s; combining cybernetics and punk,[49] the term was coined by author Bruce Bethke for his 1980 short story Cyberpunk.[50] The time frame is usually near-future and the settings are often dystopian in nature and characterized by misery. Common themes in cyberpunk include advances in information technology and especially the Internet, visually abstracted as cyberspace, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics and post-democratic societal control where corporations have more influence than governments. Nihilism, post-modernism, and film noir techniques are common elements, and the protagonists may be disaffected or reluctant anti-heroes. Noteworthy authors in this genre are William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, and Pat Cadigan. James O'Ehley has called the 1982 film Blade Runner a definitive example of the cyberpunk visual style.

Wikipedia - Cyberpunk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction#Cyberpunk

[hermesesus]

1221-2222

http://www.voanews.com/a/hubble-mission-extended/3460617.html
Hubble Space Telescope Gets a New 5-Year Contract

GREENBELT, MARYLAND — The Hubble Space Telescope has been dazzling earthlings with views of deep space for over 26 years. That’s old for a satellite but NASA has a team of approximately 80 engineers working at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland to extend the life of Hubble’s mechanical parts.

Anticipating Anomalies

Hubble is taking pictures and transmitting them down to Earth 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, as it races around our planet at more than 27,000 kilometers per hour. This means that most of the instructions sent to the orbiting observatory must be automated and uploaded ahead of time.

So, the engineers at Goddard spend much of their time coming up with innovative ways to keep the decades-old mechanisms on Hubble moving. This usually involves minimizing the motions of the most-used gears and predicting the future. “Part of our jobs here at Goddard is to try to anticipate problems ... and try to find ways to work around them or respond to them so we get back to science” as quickly as possible, Olivia Lupie, mission operations manager for Hubble, tells VOA.

Months and months pass between issues. But rest assured, the engineers are prepared to respond to get the telescope back on its science schedule -- even on weekends.

[Mauser]

1121-2212

In 1878 Hughes published his work on the effects of sound on the powered electronic sound pickups, called "transmitters", being developed for telephones.[6] He showed that the change in resistance in carbon telephone transmitters was a result of the interaction between carbon parts instead of the commonly held theory that it was from the compression of the carbon itself.[7] Based on its ability to pick up extremely weak sounds, Hughes referred to it as a "microphone effect" (using a word coined by Charles Wheatstone in 1827 for a mechanical sound amplifier[8]). He conducted a simple demonstration of this principle of loose contact by laying an iron nail across two other nails connected to a battery and galvanometer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edward_Hughes

[gamerfan]

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox

The grandfather paradox is a paradox of time travel in which inconsistencies emerge through changing the past. The name comes from the paradox's common description as a person who travels to the past and kills their own grandfather, preventing the existence of their father or mother and therefore their own existence.[1] Any inconsistency in past events may be regarded as a grandfather paradox.

1222-1222

[Mauser]

2121-2211

When feeding on large carcasses, the shark employs a rolling motion of its jaw. The teeth of the upper jaw are very thin and pointed, lacking serrations. These upper jaw teeth, numbering from 48 to 52 teeth, act as anchor while the lower jaw does the cutting. The lower teeth are interlocking and are broad and square, 50 to 52 in count, containing short, smooth cusps that point outward.[6] Teeth in the two halves of the lower jaw are strongly pitched in opposite directions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark

[hermesesus]

2212-1111

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37021145

Hundreds of tiny Montserrat tarantulas hatch in zoo

A clutch of about 200 Montserrat tarantulas has hatched at Chester Zoo - the first time this rare spider has been bred in captivity.

Very little is known about the species, found on just the one Caribbean island.

A dozen of the hairy brown animals were brought back by a zoo keeper in 2013, after observing them in the wild on multiple field trips.

Three years later, after much study and behavioural management, one female has produced 200 British-born baby spiders.

"It's kind of a race against time, whether you can synchronise the sexual maturity between individuals," said Chester Zoo's curator of lower vertebrates, Gerardo Garcia.
'Popping out of the earth'

Part of the problem is that male Montserrat tarantulas live for about 2.5 years at the most, whereas the females live much longer and develop much more slowly.

The few males Dr Garcia had collected, therefore, were a precious resource. There were nervous moments for the team when they started match-making.

As with many other invertebrates, those encounters were risky for the males.

"The female can take it as a prey, rather than a partner," Dr Garcia told the BBC. "There were a lot of sweaty moments."

[Mauser]

2121-2211

Tenochtitlan was the capital city of the Mexican civilization, consisting of the Mexica people, founded in 1325. The state religion of the Mexica civilization awaited the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy: that the wandering tribes would find the destined site for a great city whose location would be signaled by an Eagle eating a snake while perched atop a cactus.

The Aztecs saw this vision on what was then a small swampy island in Lake Texcoco, a vision that is now immortalized in Mexico's coat of arms and on the Mexican flag. Not deterred by the unfavourable terrain, they set about building their city, using the chinampa system (misnamed as "floating gardens") for agriculture and to dry and expand the island.

A thriving culture developed, and the Mexica civilization came to dominate other tribes around Mexico. The small natural island was perpetually enlarged as Tenochtitlan grew to become the largest and most powerful city in Mesoamerica. Commercial routes were developed that brought goods from places as far as the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Ocean and perhaps even the Inca Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan

[Niya]

1111-1211

In the 11th century, the Seljuk Turks took over much of the Middle East, occupying Persia during the 1040s, Armenia in the 1060s, and Jerusalem in 1070. In 1071, the Turkish army defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert and captured the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV (r. 1068–71). The Turks were then free to invade Asia Minor, which dealt a dangerous blow to the Byzantine Empire by seizing a large part of its population and its economic heartland. Although the Byzantines regrouped and recovered somewhat, they never fully regained Asia Minor and were often on the defensive. The Turks also had difficulties, losing control of Jerusalem to the Fatimids of Egypt and suffering from a series of internal civil wars.[206] The Byzantines also faced a revived Bulgaria, which in the late 12th and 13th centuries spread throughout the Balkans.[207]

The crusades were intended to seize Jerusalem from Muslim control. The First Crusade was proclaimed by Pope Urban II (pope 1088–99) at the Council of Clermont in 1095 in response to a request from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) for aid against further Muslim advances. Urban promised indulgence to anyone who took part. Tens of thousands of people from all levels of society mobilised across Europe and captured Jerusalem in 1099.[208] One feature of the crusades was the pogroms against local Jews that often took place as the crusaders left their countries for the East. These were especially brutal during the First Crusade,[77] when the Jewish communities in Cologne, Mainz, and Worms were destroyed, and other communities in cities between the rivers Seine and Rhine suffered destruction.[209] Another outgrowth of the crusades was the foundation of a new type of monastic order, the military orders of the Templars and Hospitallers, which fused monastic life with military service.[210]

The crusaders consolidated their conquests into crusader states. During the 12th and 13th centuries, there were a series of conflicts between those states and the surrounding Islamic states. Appeals from those states to the papacy led to further crusades,[208] such as the Third Crusade, called to try to regain Jerusalem, which had been captured by Saladin (d. 1193) in 1187.[211][Y] In 1203, the Fourth Crusade was diverted from the Holy Land to Constantinople, and captured the city in 1204, setting up a Latin Empire of Constantinople[213] and greatly weakening the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines recaptured the city in 1261, but never regained their former strength.[214] By 1291 all the crusader states had been captured or forced from the mainland, although a titular Kingdom of Jerusalem survived on the island of Cyprus for several years afterwards.

Wikipedia - Crusades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages#Crusades

[Kabul]

How to make an aerosol bomb: http://explosives.wonderhowto.com/how-to/make-high-powered-aerosol-can-bomb-with-household-items-0123710/

This bomb is far better than any of the simple bombs on this website and all the equipment can be bought in a supermarket. So, have fun!

Step 1 Gathering equipment
First, you will need to get all the things that you are going use. These things will be: an aerosol can, tin foil and sparklers.

Tip
I have tested many types of aerosol cans, but Black and Gold's Air Freshener stands out from the others, by far! It creates a more impressive explosion. You can buy it from almost any supermarket and it is very cheap, ranging from $1-$2. I also recommend that you buy at least 30 sparklers, because the more sparklers you use, the more chance of the bomb being successful.
Step 2 Organizing the equipment
To start, you will need to crush up at least 30 sparklers, but make sure you leave at least one sparkler spare for the fuse. Also, lay out about 50 centimeters (~20 inches) of aluminum foil.

Step 3 Beginning the assembly
Lay out your 50-centimeter piece of foil and find the center of it. Once you have done this, place the aerosol can in the middle and your sparkler dust (which you crushed up earlier) around the aerosol can, making sure that the sparkler dust is spread evenly around the aerosol can. Also, make sure that the sparkler dust is not under the can, otherwise you will have a dud.

Step 4 Preparing the fuse
This is the easiest step. You simply bend the bare wire part of the sparkler upwards.

Step 5 Finishing it off
Place the fuse in the sparkler dust and up against the aerosol can and wrap it all up in the sheet of foil, leaving the end of the fuse clear so that you can light it.

Warning
REMEMBER SAFETY: If you are going to try this, I recommend that you stand a minimum of 100 meters away. From my experience, this bomb will take roughly one minuite to detonate, but this will vary on the length of you fuse and how finely you crushed the sparkler dust. (The finer the sparkler dust is, the faster it will burn. For a bomb like this, you will want the sparkler dust to be in the biggest pieces possible, so that it will burn longer and produce more heat.)

1211-1221

[Francis Freeman]

Permaculture is an ecological design system. It is an approach to finding solutions for sustainability in all our undertakings – a way of looking at such questions as “How do I build an ecologically sound home?”, “How do I decrease my own ecological footprint?”, “How do I direct my money to do good work that restores communities and local economy?”, “How do I grow my own food and create life-affirming conditions for other living things, instead of relying on commercial food supply and all its vices?” – to name a few. Permaculture teaches us how to design natural homes, how to create abundant gardens, plant food forests, how to include backyard animals, how to build biodiversity to protect wildlife, regenerate degraded landscapes and ecosystems, harvest rainwater, develop ethical economies and communities, and much more. As an ecological design system, permaculture focuses on the interconnections between things more than individual parts.

Permaculture: http://www.permaculture.org/resources/


2121-2112

[testcoin]

1112-1222

http://people.howstuffworks.com/what-is-friendship.htm

Friendship is a type of relationship between two people who care about each other. But such a dry definition doesn't do the concept of friendship justice. Consider these examples: A friend is the first person you want to call when you hear good news. A friend remembers that you don't like pickles on your sandwich. A friend will accompany you on the most boring of errands and make them seem fun.

In other words, friendship is wonderful, and much ink has been spilled in citing the virtues of having friends. That's not to say friendship is easy, though. It demands time and effort, and it requires that people put someone other than themselves first sometimes. But in exchange for that work, a friend can provide an immense amount of support and comfort in good times and in bad.

[gamerfan]

1111-1112



Tube Dalays - How to get a Refund: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/tube-delay-refund

There are over 1.3 billion journeys on the tube each year. Yet if you're a regular commuter, you'll know travelling on the London Underground is often fraught with delays and cancellations. If that happens, you may be entitled to a refund. Here's how to claim it.

Also see our TfL Overcharge Refunds guide for how to claim if you couldn't touch out, and Oyster Card Refunds how to claim back credit if you have and old card.

How long do I have to be stuck on the tube for before I can claim? Delays on the tube can be fury-inducing, especially when they make you late. But if your journey is delayed by at least 15 mins, you don't just have to put up with it.

Whether you travelled using an Oyster card, contactless card or paper ticket, you can ask Transport for London (TfL), which runs the tube, for a 'service delay refund'.
To calculate the 15 mins, TfL looks at what time you touch in and out, then compares your journey time to the average.

Is that on every tube? Not exactly. TfL has rules about what's classed as a 'service delay'.

If you’re delayed for more than 15 minutes and for "reasons within TfL's control", then you can get a refund. This includes anything which is TfL's fault – for example, a defective train, faulty track or overrunning engineering work.

But it won't pay up if the reason doesn't count as something within its control, eg, adverse weather, security alerts or a person ill on the train.

In practice, however, we've found TfL is sometimes lenient with these rules, so it may pay up anyway. While there are no guarantees, it's usually worth a punt, as you may get a refund.

Brilliant... so is the process automatic? No. Sadly, TfL's not that nice. You'll need to apply for the refund.
To apply online, go to the TfL website and log in to your TfL or Oyster account (if you don't have an account, you'll need to sign up for free first). Click on 'Service Delay Refunds'. You'll be asked to provide your journey info and either your Oyster card or paper ticket details.
To apply over the phone, call TfL customer services on 0343 222 1234 (this costs the same as a normal 020 number). Give them the same information as mentioned above.
Don’t worry, you won't need to post paper tickets – you just need to enter some numbers from them. If the gate ate your ticket at the end of the journey, you should call customer services.

You have to claim within 28 days of the delay. TfL says it usually takes a couple of days and it processes 'most' refunds within seven days. It will email to tell you if your claim has been successful.
What about if I paid by contactless card or Apple Pay? Not a problem. Sign up or log on to a TfL account as above, and add your contactless card or Apple Pay account. You can register these before or after the delay. Then choose the contactless card/Apple Pay account, and click ‘Claim for a service delay’.

As an aside, you can track your journey history for contactless cards and Apple Pay accounts. Just click the account to see 12 months’ worth.

What can I get back? No matter how and what you paid for your journey, you'll get back the value of a single fare for the distance you travelled at the time you travelled. Even if you have to get off before you intended, the refund’s still based on where you touch in and out.

This applies even if you didn't pay full whack. Let's say you made the journey on a daily or weekly travel card – you'd still get the pay-as-you-go single fare back. If your journey started at peak time, it refunds the peak fare.

For example, if you were delayed when travelling during peak time from Balham to Bank (Zone 3 to Zone 1) using an Oyster card, you'd get £3.30. See the TfL website for full information on fares.

And how do I get it? You have a choice.

You can provide your bank details and get the refund paid into your account. (If you were travelling on a paper ticket, this is your only option.)
You can get the refund in the form of web credit in your online account to use next time you top up or buy a travel card online.
If you have an Oyster card, you can get the refund loaded back onto it as pay-as-you-go credit. This happens when you next touch in at a station of your choice.
The Oyster card needs to be registered before you can receive a service delay refund (you can still do this after the delayed journey).

What if my tube's delayed and I'm late for a flight or a concert as a result? Can I claim for that? No. TfL says it won't provide compensation for anything other than the delayed journey on services.

Can I get off the Underground and take another form of transport if my tube's delayed, but still claim for the delay? If it doesn't count as a 15-minute delay under the touch-in, touch-out rule, you could always call customer services and plead your case, but you're not officially entitled.

I'm not a fan of the tube – what if I'm travelling on another form of public transport in London? You might be in luck – many of the transport systems operated by TfL follow similar rules.

On the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) it works the same as on the tube – you can claim for a delay of more than 15 minutes if the cause is within TfL's control.
London Overground comes under National Rail’s conditions of carriage, so if a cancellation delays you by over 30 minutes you’re eligible for a refund (you must touch in and out).
On the Emirates Air Line, refunds are issued if you are delayed for more than 15 minutes.
For all the above, as with the tube, you can apply for a refund via the TfL website or by calling customer services on 0343 222 1234. Alternatively, if you're delayed on the Emirates Air Line, you can ask for a refund in person at the ticket office immediately after the disruption to your journey.

Sadly, if you're travelling on a bus, you simply can't get a service delay refund – no ifs, no buts. If you're travelling through London with another train operator, for example on Thameslink, you'll need to go straight to the train company to claim. See our Train Delays guide for a full how-to.

Ok, so I know how to claim a refund – but what if I want to complain about TfL? If you've complained to TfL but it still won't budge, a free online complaints tool can help.

Resolver* helps draft your complaint and manage it too. It's free, and offered by a firm called that we like so much we work with it to help people get complaints justice.

If the complaint isn't resolved, Resolver will automatically escalate it to watchdog London Travel Watch, which can ask to TfL to resolve your case. It doesn't have power to force TfL to do anything it doesn't want to do, though.

If all else fails, you could technically take your claim to court. Think carefully about whether you want the hassle of this, though, and whether it's worth it – far better to use this as a last-resort threat.

[npredtorch]

Number Combination: 2222-2222
Credit Link: http://mentalfloss.com/article/62455/15-things-you-might-not-know-about-mr-bean

15 Things You Might Not Know About Mr. Bean

Rowan Atkinson may have more than 50 acting credits on his resume, but to most of the world he’ll always be best known as the ridiculously rubber-faced Mr. Bean. As the iconic British comedy series celebrates its 25th anniversary (complete with a newly remastered DVD set from Shout! Factory), we uncovered 15 things you might not know about Mr. Bean.

1. MR. BEAN BEGAN LIFE ON THE STAGE.

Though it was on January 1, 1990 that Mr. Bean made his television debut on England’s ITV, Rowan Atkinson began developing the character more than a decade earlier, while he was pursuing his master’s degree in electrical engineering. “I was asked in my first term at Oxford to do a sketch in this one-night show at the Oxford Playhouse, and I’d never written anything,” Atkinson recalls in The Story of Mr. Bean, a feature on The Whole Bean DVD. “I’m not really naturally a writer, so I just had to invent sort of 5 minutes of something at 48 hours’ notice. I just stood in front of the mirror and started to mess about with my face. And this strange, surreal, sort of non-speaking character evolved.”

2. ONLY 14 EPISODES WERE EVER PRODUCED.

Even the most dedicated fans have trouble reconciling the fact that only 14 episodes of the live-action series were ever produced. It did, of course, spawn two movies, an animated series (which returned to British television earlier this year), a video game, and some books, including Mr. Bean’s Definitive and Extremely Marvelous Guide to France.

3. THE SERIES WAS BROADCAST IN NEARLY 200 COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD.

Because the bulk of the comedy is physical, not narrative, Mr. Bean has not gotten lost in translation. “There doesn’t seem to be a country in the world, or not that I have visited, or indeed none that I have heard of, who don't seem to get him, who don’t seem to understand and enjoy the character of Mr. Bean,” Atkinson told ABC. “I think, and I’ve always assumed, it’s because he’s basically a child trapped in a man’s body."

4. ATKINSON HAS FAITH IN HIS FACE.

While the beginning of Mr. Bean started by looking in the mirror, Atkinson decided to put faith in what he was doing with his face following that first successful performance at Oxford. “In the sketch the following Sunday, I just went through a whole lot of facial expressions,” Atkinson said in a BBC World Service radio interview in January. “I’m not sure whether there was a particular narrative, a logic to it, but I did my best and it certainly solicited laughter. But since then, I’ve hardly ever looked at my face … I hope it’s doing what I think it’s doing.”

5. THE GUY WHO DIRECTED LOVE ACTUALLY DEVELOPED THE CHARACTER WITH ATKINSON.

Atkinson’s creative partner at the time, and the man who helped develop the character of Mr. Bean, was writer-director-producer Richard Curtis. The two collaborated on Not the Nine O’Clock News and Blackadder before Mr. Bean ever hit the airwaves. Curtis would later make the jump to the big screen as the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones’s Diary, and the writer-director of Love Actually, The Boat That Rocked, and About Time. (Which explains Atkinson’s cameo in Love Actually.)

6. ATKINSON WAS INSPIRED BY JACQUES TATI.

Over the years, Atkinson has repeatedly cited French comedian Jacques Tati as one of the great influences on Mr. Bean. “My interest in physical comedy was from discovering a film by Jacques Tati called Mr. Hulot’s Holiday,” Atkinson says in The Story of Bean. “It just struck a chord with me. I so admired it, because it was an uncompromising comic attitude and setting that I really admired.”

7. MR. BEAN DOESN’T SPEAK IN FRENCH EITHER.

Before he made his small-screen debut, Atkinson tried out the Mr. Bean character on the audience at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal, Quebec. In order to ensure that the character’s near-silent comedy would translate, he requested to perform for a French-speaking audience as opposed to the English-speaking attendees.

8. HE COULD HAVE BEEN NAMED AFTER ANOTHER VEGETABLE.

It wasn’t until shortly before Mr. Bean hit the airwaves (and after production had already begun) that the character actually got his name. Originally, he was going to be called Mr. White. Then the show’s creators began throwing around some vegetable names, and considered Mr. Cauliflower before deciding on Mr. Bean.



9. MR. BEAN IS THE MAN WHO LIKES TOILETS.

Mr. Bean doesn’t speak often, but when he does the voice he uses is the same one Atkinson used to voice “The Man Who Likes Toilets” sketch on Not the Nine O’Clock News.

10. ATKINSON THINKS MR. BEAN IS AN ANARCHIST.

Atkinson often refers to the character of Mr. Bean as “a child in a grown man’s body.” And in a 2003 interview with IGN, he called him “sort of such a natural anarchist. But at the same time, Mr. Bean is a very, very self-contained character because he's so sort-of introspective and so selfish and self-centered that there's no particular need to have another person in the scene to make him funny.”

11. YES, HE REALLY CAN WIGGLE HIS EARS.

Mr. Bean’s legendary ear wiggle is one trait Atkinson has in common with his on-screen alter ego. While promoting Mr. Bean’s Holiday, ABC’s David Stratton asked “perhaps the most crucial question of the entire interview: can you really wiggle your ears?” To which Atkinson simply replied, “Yes, I can.”

12. MR. BEAN PERFORMED AT THE OLYMPICS.

When London hosted the Summer Olympics in 2012, Mr. Bean was on hand for the opening ceremony, where he ushered in the games with a rendition of “Chariots of Fire.”

13. ATKINSON RETIRED THE ROLE IN LATE 2012.

In an interview with The Telegraph in November of 2012, Atkinson admitted that Mr. Bean’s time was coming to an end. “The stuff that has been most commercially successful for me—basically quite physical, quite childish—I increasingly feel I’m going to do a lot less of,” Atkinson said. “Apart from the fact that your physical ability starts to decline, I also think someone in their fifties being childlike becomes a little sad. You’ve got to be careful.”

14. IN 2015, BEAN ROSE AGAIN—FOR A FUNERAL.

Never say never: On March 13, 2015 a brand-new Mr. Bean sketch, “The Funeral,” premiered to celebrate Comic Relief, and in honor of Bean’s 25th anniversary.

15. MR. BEAN’S CREATORS COULD NOT HAVE PREDICTED ITS SUCCESS

When asked about Mr. Bean’s enduring appeal during a BBC World Service radio interview earlier this year, executive producer Peter Bennett-Jones said, “I don’t think anyone could have anticipated quite how successful and long-lived it would be. Coming up to 25 years is an extraordinary thought since we first went on air on January 1, 1990. Mr. Bean’s been very good to us all, so we love Mr. Bean.”

Worth to read facts about Rowan Atkinson AKA Mr. Bean . I know you will like this . Have fun reading~

[brokenfate]

I still don't understand how to get rewards from this activity
Must post 8times or what?
Please give me the explanation
Thanks

[Mauser]

1121-2212

 Tipu's Tiger in the V&A Museum, London showing the prostrate European being attacked
Tipu's Tiger or Tippu's Tiger is an eighteenth-century automaton or mechanical toy created for Tipu Sultan, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in India. The carved and painted wood casing represents a tiger savaging a near life-size European man. Mechanisms inside the tiger and man's bodies make one hand of the man move, emit a wailing sound from his mouth and grunts from the tiger. In addition a flap on the side of the tiger folds down to reveal the keyboard of a small pipe organ with 18 notes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipu%27s_Tiger