Tuesday, March 24, 2009

coffee

Coffee is a brewed beverage prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. Caffeinated coffee has a stimulating effect in humans. Today, coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide.

Coffee was first consumed in the ninth century, when it was discovered in the highlands of Ethiopia. From there, it spread to Egypt and Yemen, and by the 15th century, had reached Azerbaijan, Persia, Turkey, and northern Africa. From the Muslim world, coffee spread to Italy, then to the rest of Europe, to Indonesia, and to the Americas.

Friday, May 2, 2008


Bushey, Hertfordshire, England
Simon John Charles Le Bon (born October 27, 1958) is the lead singer and lyricist of the pop/rock band Duran Duran. He was born in Bushey Maternity Hospital, Hertfordshire.

Simon Le Bon Duran Duran
In 1984 Le Bon wooed the young fashion model Yasmin Parvaneh after seeing her face in a magazine and phoning her modelling agency to track her down. They married on December 27, 1985 and Yasmin Le Bon has gone on to enjoy a supermodel career of unusual longevity-- more than twenty years. After suffering two miscarriages, the couple had three daughters: Amber Rose Tamara (born August 1989), Saffron Sahara (born September 1991) and Tallulah Pine (born September 1994).

Family
While Duran Duran was on hiatus in 1985, Le Bon drew media attention when his maxi-yacht Drum lost her keel and capsized during the Fastnet race, just off Falmouth, along the southern coast of Cornwall. Before being rescued, Le Bon and other crew members were trapped underwater, inside the hull, for forty minutes. Despite the accident, Le Bon and Drum went on to participate in the 1985-1986 Whitbread Round the World Race, coming in third overall in elapsed time. Le Bon and his partners eventually sold Drum; the events surrounding Drum and the races were chronicled in a 1989 movie entitled Drum - The Journey Of A Lifetime (ASIN 6301334159).
Twenty years after his accident, in 2005, Le Bon made public his desire to race again. During a touring hiatus in August 2005, Le Bon again raced Drum in the Fastnet race, borrowing the vessel from her current owner to participate, and raising funds for the RNLI charity. Unfortunately, Le Bon had to leave the race unfinished, as light winds were slowing Drum (and Drum's competitors), and would have delayed the boat's arrival at Plymouth, interfering with Le Bon's obligation to perform in Japan at a sold-out, 60,000-seat show. [1]

Yachting
Before Duran Duran reunited, Le Bon formed the band Arcadia with fellow Duran Duran members Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor. Arcadia released only one album, the multi-platinum So Red The Rose (1985), and the band never toured.

Arcadia
Following the departures of Roger Taylor and Andy Taylor, Le Bon, Rhodes, and John Taylor continued on as Duran Duran, recording and releasing Notorious (1986) and Big Thing (1988). The group added guitarist Warren Cuccurullo and Sterling Campbell (his only album as a member of the band) and recorded the album Liberty (1990), but the band's success had begun to wane in the late-1980s.
Duran Duran had a resurgence in popularity in 1993 with The Wedding Album. Several months into the intensive concert tour supporting this album, Le Bon suffered from strained vocal cords, and the tour was postponed for six weeks while he recovered.
In 1995, Duran Duran released the covers album Thank You, and Le Bon had the chance to cover some of his favorite artists, (Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, and Elvis Costello), but the album was severely panned by critics from all quarters. That year Le Bon also performed Duran Duran's 1993 hit "Ordinary World" with opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti during a "Children of Bosnia" benefit concert for War Child. Le Bon described the event to Jam! Showbiz thus: "If you're talking about name dropping, he's one of the biggest names you could drop, Pav-The-Man."
When bassist John Taylor left the band in 1997, Le Bon and Rhodes remained as the only two members who had been with Duran Duran from the beginning. The successive two albums with Le Bon, Rhodes, and Cuccurullo, Medazzaland (1997) and Pop Trash (2000) were not commercial successes.
In 2001, Duran Duran's original five members reunited to record a new album, "Astronaut", for Epic Records. "Astronaut" was released worldwide on 11 October 2004. The album was preceded by the single "(Reach Up For The) Sunrise", their first UK Top 10 single for a decade.

Solo excursions

Le Bon attended Birmingham University at the same time as Blancmange lead singer Neil Arthur. This fact came up during a Smash Hits interview of Blancmange done by Chris Heath. According to Arthur, Le Bon recognised his old university classmate immediately upon running into him backstage at a Top Of The Pops taping, and the two met up for a drink and friendly chat.
As a teenager, he was a next-door neighbour to actor Derek Fowlds.
On the Clerks 10th Anniversary DVD, producer Scott Mosier recalls Le Bon singing White Lines to him on his yacht during Clerks.' run at the Cannes Film Festival.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

CKBY-FM
CKBY is a Canadian radio station, which airs a country music format at 101.1 FM in Smiths Falls and Ottawa, Ontario. The station is owned by Rogers Communications, and uses the brand name Y101.
The station was launched in 1969 as CJET-FM, a sister station to the AM radio station CJET, and changed its callsign to CKUE in the early 1970s.
In 1984, the stations were acquired by CHEZ-FM Inc., the owner of Ottawa's CHEZ. In 1986, CKUE changed its callsign to CHEQ.
In 1993, CHEZ acquired rights to the callsign and format of CFMO, an easy listening station in Ottawa which CHUM Limited had converted to hot adult contemporary CKKL.
In 1999, the CHEZ group of stations were acquired by Rogers Communications. At the end of the year, Rogers converted the station to a modern rock format, using the callsign CIOX and the brand name Xfm. The station's facilities were moved into Ottawa, and in 2001, the CRTC found that by operating CIOX as an Ottawa station, Rogers was in contravention of market concentration rules about the number of radio stations in a single market that can be owned by the same company. As a result, the CRTC ordered Rogers to return the station to Smiths Falls.
On January 9, 2004, the station adopted its current format when Rogers converted the former CKBY in Ottawa to the current CISS. 101.1 became CKBY, and 105.3 became CISS a month later after the format change.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Portal (architecture)
Portal is a general term describing an opening in the walls of a building, gate or fortification, and especially a grand entrance to an important structure. Doors, metal gates or portcullis in the opening can be used to control entry or exit. The surface surounding the opening may be made of simple building materials or decorated with ornamentation. The elements of a portal can include the voussoir, tympanum, an ornamented mullion or trumeau between doors, and columns with carvings of saints in the westwork of a church.

Saturday, April 26, 2008


Anton Drexler (13 June 1884 - 24 February 1942) was a German Nazi political leader of the 1920s.

Anton DrexlerAnton Drexler Biography
Born in Munich, Drexler was a machine-fitter before becoming a railway locksmith in Berlin in 1902. He joined the Fatherland Party during World War I. He was a poet and a member of the völkisch agitators who, together with journalist Karl Harrer, founded the German Workers' Party (DAP) in Munich with Gottfried Feder and Dietrich Eckart in 1919. He was also a brewer but did not have much involvement with the Drexler Breweries, one of Bavaria's most popular breweries at the time.
At a meeting of the Party in Munich in September 1919, the main speaker was Gottfried Feder. When he had finished speaking, a member of the audience whose name is lost to history stood up and suggested that Bavaria should break away from Prussia and form a separate nation with Austria. Adolf Hitler).

Friday, April 25, 2008

International Waffle Day
International Waffle Day was started in Sweden where it is known as Våffeldagen. It is annually held on March 25.
The Annunciation of the Virgin Mary was once called "Vårfrudagen" (Our Lady's Day) in Swedish. In certain dialects, the word "Vårfrudagen" was pronounced as "Våfferdagen" [1], Over time the word became "Våffeldagen" (Waffle Day), giving rise to the tradition of eating waffles on this day.
Chris Matthewson, mayor of Waltz, Michigan, declared "International Waffle Day" an official holiday of the small village in March of 2006.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Besarabsky Market
Coordinates: 50°27′32″N, 30°31′5″E
The Besarabsky Market (Ukrainian: Бесарабський ринок, translit.: Besarabs'kyi rynok), also frequently called Besarabka (Ukrainian: Бесарабка) is an indoor market located in the center of Kiev at the south-west end of Khreshchatyk, the main and best known street of the city.
The market was built from 1910-1912 to the design of H. Hay.
The name of the market originates from Bessarabia, a region conquered by the Russian Empire during the Russo-Turkish Wars and now partially located at south-western Ukraine in the Odessa Oblast.
An architectural exteriour window of the market.
View of fruit stands inside the market.