Posts Tagged ‘Loch Ness Monster’
So much for “Hump Day”…
Conventional wisdom has it that Monday is the dimmest of days. But recent research suggests that, in fact, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are equally loathed…
US investigators who looked at a poll of 340,000 people found moods were no worse on Mondays than other working days, bar Friday. People were happier as they approached the weekend, lending support for the concept of “that Friday feeling”. The report authors told the Journal of Positive Psychology that the concept of miserable Mondays should be ditched…
Read the whole story at The BBC…
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As we remind ourselves that Dorothy Parker (whose birthday this is) would surely have had something witty to add, we might recall that this is the date ascribed by many to St. Columba’s meeting with “Nessie” in 565– the first sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. The date (not to mention the details) are a little fuzzy, provenance-wise, as the encounter was first reported in Adamnan’s The Life of Saint Columba nearly a century later…
A good scare…
HW: Do you find that audiences are frightened by different things now from the things that frightened them when you started, what, 30 years ago… 35 years ago, making films?
AH: No, I wouldn’t say so, because after all they were frightened as children. You have to remember this is all based on “Red Riding Hood,” you see? Nothing has changed since “Red Riding Hood.”
In 1964, Huw Weldon (later, Director General of the BBC) interviewed Alfred Hitchcock for the BBC series Monitor…
Part Two here
HW: Have you ever been tempted to make what is nowadays called a horror film, which is different from a Hitchcock film?
AH: No, because it’s too easy… I believe in putting the horror in the mind of the audience and not necessarily on the screen.
[TotH to Brain Pickings]
***
As we reach for our security blankets, we might recall that, though accounts of an unusual aquatic beast living in Scotland’s Loch Ness date back 1,500 years, the modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster was born when a sighting made local news on this date in 1933. The Inverness Courier ran the account of a local couple who claimed to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The story of the “monster” (a label chosen by the Courier editor) became a media sensation: London papers sent correspondents to Scotland and a circus offered a 20,000 pound reward for capture of the beast.
Photo “taken” in 1934, later proved a hoax (source)
A good scare…
HW: Do you find that audiences are frightened by different things now from the things that frightened them when you started, what, 30 years ago… 35 years ago, making films?
AH: No, I wouldn’t say so, because after all they were frightened as children. You have to remember this is all based on “Red Riding Hood,” you see? Nothing has changed since “Red Riding Hood.”
In 1964, Huw Weldon (later, Director General of the BBC) interviewed Alfred Hitchcock for the BBC series Monitor…
Part Two here
HW: Have you ever been tempted to make what is nowadays called a horror film, which is different from a Hitchcock film?
AH: No, because it’s too easy… I believe in putting the horror in the mind of the audience and not necessarily on the screen.
[TotH to Brain Pickings]
As we reach for our security blankets, we might recall that, though accounts of an unusual aquatic beast living in Scotland’s Loch Ness date back 1,500 years, the modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster was born when a sighting made local news on this date in 1933. The Inverness Courier ran the account of a local couple who claimed to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The story of the “monster” (a label chosen by the Courier editor) became a media sensation: London papers sent correspondents to Scotland and a circus offered a 20,000 pound reward for capture of the beast.
Photo “taken” in 1934, later proved a hoax (source)
The long and the short of it…
To every new movement there is a backlash… so as a soon as one encountered the phenomenon of TinyURL, the service that compacts long web addresses into a few characters (the easier to cut and paste), one might have anticipated GiantURL— the service that takes URLs of ordinary length and makes them longer– much longer.
Consider your correspondent’s own LawrenceWilkinson.com; with the help of GiantURL, it becomes:
http://www.gianturl.com?UncwSwXkNRdC3x,B6,8p6,,Y2,2WKtw9XF0,GR3,8,SqN80z3w7jh,0BYHZ2lrVLqR
,x9z8w6N,,,9Yx32mCRnb3G,R8gq,,Lw3nC9wLp,W8N,8g1FXVLwP9s9,Z0CNj1qPQxRgs6,vm7mkXnm
SDd,,,Nlm3Z8,,YP2Mc0,DMh2x,6jxFvhsPbv9m2RZ3LNct3td8,3FW0HwzmW7DWKn,Fz4q,0mxvL9nr,,m
lb,YT2F1Ylh,H4w,9,4v,9sQWXgv2nZ6j,,7y,cYlx,0hT2T2W0bD5,k1snz7pxMCDpb6,GHw,dY,mZQRq
Wc6r7x4X,qW3Rf03pFSwl7XvN9,pm,Lx5kW6j,y,,0XF7g1BZCKgC8r4tQ1FRv4lBNbRmq8,jq7yhJkj
DGfbCnS,g1Q2qzDR1Zl5mFKs7jz4mnXwkjZ,s2h4CJ4JS,,3x,7,4PW0PkzqG6JVQkgR,3zZ0mk,,4cxfvl
sgwSL2H3,j,,C7,y7w4rn4bQZSbf9zH9cdh5mRw,jk,3d,5B2T0tQ6Kl2j,d7dpDLHbs3rJDtyx,sxX,,,
Mq5c1t2RRr,7,l81vBYzl9Nl,6pgsTWt3rJ8b,ccK6TL9f7,,SRdK7,6h,0YZr0,VK,L,t6Fck5qn,zr
K,rc,xQnn7F0t,W,5Yk0,DRz5pj3,pQlcnKvw8t5KQ2TS,w5vx8B7,Z7L,xyL5,N,mhTj6lZ0llg,1wlfns
IbwFab
..which, if pasted into one’s browser, does in fact take one there.
And further to the recently-featured Universal Packing List, another option: PackWhiz.
As we think like expansionists, we might recall that it was on this date in 1933 that the Inverness (Scotland) Courier newspaper related an account of a local couple who claimed to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The story of the “monster” (as the Courier’s editor called it) became a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound reward for capture of the beast. While accounts of an aquatic beast living in Scotland’s Loch Ness date back 1,500 years, this was the first modern sighting, and the inauguration of the Loch Ness “fever” that one knows and loves…
It’s probably no coincidence that, on this date exactly 39 years later (1972), Steven Spielberg began the production of Jaws.
Spielberg and “Bruce,” one of the articulated models used in the filming
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