Critical studies of Joseph Conrad have highly praised his unfortunately titled book, The N---- of the “Narcissus”, renamed The Children of the Sea in the first American edition. The change was made not because of the offensiveness of the title but because the publisher believed that readers would not be interested in a story about an African.
The book reflects on different responses of a ship’s crew to the terminal illness and death of James Wait, a dying West Indian black sailor on board the merchant ship Narcissus sailing from Bombay to London. Wait, suffering from tuberculosis, becomes seriously ill during the voyage, and his plight arouses the humanitarian sympathies of many of the crew.
According to critic John Peters, “it is Conrad’s best work of his early period. In fact, were it not for the book’s title, it undoubtedly would be read more often than it is currently. At one time, it was one of Conrad’s most frequently read books. In part because of its brevity, in part because of its adventure qualities, and in part because of its literary qualities, the novel used to attract a good deal of attention.”
Narcissismis the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of one’s own attributes. The term originated from Greek mythology, where the young Narcissus fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Narcissism is a concept in psychoanalytic theory, which was popularly introduced in Sigmund Freud’s essay On Narcissism (1914). The American Psychiatric Association has listed the classification narcissistic personality disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) since 1968, drawing on the historical concept of megalomania.
Sigmund and the Sea Monsters is an American children’s television series that ran from 1973 to 1975. It was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft and aired on Saturday mornings. The show centered on two brothers, Johnny (Johnny Whitaker) and Scott Stuart (Scott Kolden), who discover Sigmund (Billy Barty), a friendly young sea monster who had been thrown out by his comically dysfunctional undersea family for refusing to frighten people.
Billy Barty passed away at the age of 76 in December 2000. He is remembered for his many show business contributions, including his remarkable parody of flamboyant pianist Liberace doing I’m in the Mood for Love.
Władziu Valentino Liberace, who was born in 1919 and died in 1987, was an American pianist, singer, and actor. At the height of his fame, from the 1950s to the 1970s, Liberace was the highest-paid entertainer in the world, with established concert residencies in Las Vegas and an international touring schedule.
Liberace was recognized during his career with two Emmy Awards, six gold albums, and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Liberace, born in Wisconsin, was a child prodigy who started playing the piano at the age of 3, and then soon after started playing new songs by ear after only hearing the music. When Liberace was 7, he was enrolled in the Wisconsin College of Music.
His full name, Wladziu Valentino Liberace, was not a stage-friendly name, and so he adopted (for a time) the stage name of Walter Busterkeys.
Liberace was one of the highest paid entertainers in the world during his lifetime with a net worth estimated at $115 million when he passed away in 1986. Among his possessions were 39 pianos, a mirrored Rolls-Royce and the world’s most expensive fur – a Norwegian blue shadow fox cape with a 16-foot-long train.
John Lennon said of The Beatles’ song, Norwegian Wood, “I was trying to write about an affair without letting my wife know I was having one. I was sort of writing from my experiences - girl’s flats, things like that. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn’t want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I’d always had some kind of affairs going on, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair, but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn’t tell. But I can’t remember any specific woman it had to do with.”
Despite having the name Norwegian Cruise Lines, the company headquarters is located in Miami-Dade Country, Florida and most of it’s ships operate under the flag of Bermuda. Norwegian Cruise Line controls approximately 8% of the total worldwide share of the cruise market.
The Disney Dream, of Disney Cruise Line, was the largest of the four ships in Disney’s fleet when it was launched in 2011. The Disney Fantasy, launched in 2012, is now as big as the Disney Dream, and together they are the largest of the Disney ships.
Operation Dismantle v Canada was an early decision under the new Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The plaintiff organisation opposed the decision of the federal government to allow the US military to test cruise missiles in areas of Canada that were geologically and meteorologically similar to parts of the Soviet Union. They argued the federal government’s decision increased the chances of nuclear war, thereby endangering Canadians’ security of the person, guaranteed by s. 7 of the Charter.
The Court dismissed the claim. The Chief Justice held that there is no “political questions” doctrine under the Charter. He also held that use of the royal prerogative, which covers military and international relations, is subject to the Charter. However, the claim was simply too speculative on its underpinnings to warrant allowing it to go to trial.
The doodlebug or buzz bomb was the German WWII V-1 rocket (image) dating from 1944 was the only production aircraft to use a pulsejet for power. It was one of the earliest cruise missiles in history.
Doodlebugs are the larvae of an insect called an “ant lion”. (The term “doodlebug” is sometimes used for any unidentified flying insect, but most people with some knowledge of entomology wouldn’t use the term that way.)
Doodlebugs live in sand and take strange paths in it, thus leaving the loopy marks for which the doodlebug is named.
Ants don’t have ears. Ants “hear” by feeling vibrations in the ground through their feet. And ants don’t have lungs. Oxygen enters through tiny holes all over the body and carbon dioxide leaves through the same holes.
Ants have the ability to carry between 10 and 50 times their own body weight! The amount an ant can carry depends on the species. The Asian weaver ant, for example, can lift 100 times its own mass.
Ants!
It is estimated that there are around 1 million ants in the world. But wait — that’s 1 million ants for every 1 human.
Harvard professor E. O. Wilson is an American biologist, theorist, naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants, on which he has been called the world’s leading expert. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (for *On Human Nature *in 1979, and The Ants in 1991) and a New York Times bestselling author for The Social Conquest of Earth, Letters to a Young Scientist, and The Meaning of Human Existence.
The only time neighbor Wilson Wilson’s lower face was shown on Home Improvement was at a Halloween party, where he was costumed as the Phantom on the Opera with a full upper face mask.
Halloween is a 1978 American slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter. One of the stars was Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut.
The movie was produced on a budget of $300,000 and grossed $47 million at the box office in the United States and $23 million internationally, for a total of $70 million worldwide. It is one of the most profitable independent films of all time.
When Woody Harrelson was just seven years old, his father was imprisoned on a murder conviction. His father died while serving a life sentence, and his mother then raised Woody and his siblings in Ohio.
