Wikimedia goes bananas

Image: David Slater/Caters

Hello there. Always on the look-out for interesting selfies and selfie-related stories, I came across this the other day. It’s a rather charming selfie taken by a crested black macaque, and has been (along with 100-or-so other similar and less focused images) at the centre of a row between a wildlife photographer, David Slater, and Wikimedia Commons. They have been using this image and not credited the photographer, which understandably irritated him. However, they would not remove the image, as they claim that he doesn’t own the copyright. Right. So who does? The monkey, apparently, because it took the image. Well, yes, technically it did. But come on. What a ridiculously stupid argument to make. Is someone from Wikimedia going to track the macaque down to give it its royalty cheque? Are they going to demand that Mr Slater buys the copyright off the monkey? I’m all for animals being treated fairly, humanely and as we would like to be treated (one of the reasons behind my recent move to becoming a vegetarian, but that’s for another post), but come on. This can be taken a bit too far, and has been here to be honest. Now come on, Wikimedia- give that man back the money he deserves. You’ve had your joke.

Royal ‘onesie’

Another example of a selfie here that’s recently popped up in the news- the Duke of York was hosting an event for start-up technology businesses at St James’s Palace when he decided to take this:

 

I love the fact that the Duke has managed to almost chop himself out of the picture, but even better than this is a quote off MSN regarding the image:

“The Duke of York has torn up hundreds of years of protocol after he became the first member of the Royal Household to take a selfie in a Palace.”

???????????

Since when has there been “…hundreds of years of protocol” regarding the taking of selfies in palaces?

 

Lemurs can take pictures too

You may have realised that I am quite fond of strange selfies, and so I thought I’d post these two images I came across the other day:

Image: ZSL London/PA

Image: ZSL London/PA

These are two images taken by Bekily, a 12-year-old ring-tailed lemur at London Zoo. ‘Nuff said really.

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If you are interested in the other selfies I’ve posted, these are Pope Francis, Darth Vader, and an astronaut.

2013- Electric Puppet’s first 5 months in review

Well- it’s New Year’s Eve, and time to reflect on what has gone on over the past year. For my family, this has been a big year, as we left the comfort and splendour of Oxford to return to our home city of Stoke-on-Trent; I graduated from university; I got my first job; we decided where we want to go with our life in the near and more distant future, thanks to an American man and his family on YouTube; I completed my first book of poetry, which had been languishing prior to this summer; I took the plunge and begun this blog, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while; and have got back in contact with several family members that I haven’t seen for the best part of a decade thanks to Facebook. It has been eventful, and had also been emotional and tiring for all of us. Also, with any luck, next year should be just as eventful- beginning work; trying to get my book published; endeavouring to write the novel and short story collection that I’ve been planning for a month or so; and getting married. Yes: my partner and I are getting married next year!

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In terms of this blog, I will be getting up several ‘Thoughts on…’ posts for the books I have read recently- the first two Adrian Mole books, Penelope Lively’s ‘Heat Wave’, Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’, and Tove Jansson’s ‘Finn Family Moomintroll’- in the new year, and hopefully will get the first few up on New Year’s Day. For now, though, I thought that I would highlight a selection of posts from this blog that have proved popular, may have been overlooked, or are of relative interest for me.

• Firstly, a bizarre yet infectious song about socks from a star of the YouTube community, who has influenced my partner and I in the way we approach life more than I can ever express, and which has gained me quite a few views: I’ve got my socks on! 
• Graduating from Oxford: Graduation!
• …and the city we have returned to…: Stoke-on-Trent: The city that died
• This post about a Roman archaeological discovery in London has proved to be my most-viewed post on here, thanks to its inclusion on a history resource website in the Netherlands: The best Roman sculpture ever found in Britain: An eagle in London. (Here is the website with my page linked if you’re interested. They’ve given me free publicity, so I’ll give them a free plug too! Find my post part-way down this page on histoforum.net) 
• For me, one of the biggest losses of the year: Seamus Heaney 1939-2013
• An archaeologically-inspired painting: Banksy’s ‘Cave Painting’
• Here are just a selection of my ‘Thoughts on…’ posts from this past year: Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’; Anthony Burgess’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’; George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (in which I managed to mention Lady Gaga- you’ll have to read it to see how!); a selection of John Ruskin essays; Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Torrents of Spring’, and Jostein Gaarder’s ‘Through a Glass, Darkly’.
• I also posted about a book that I got for 50p from our church fair, and which dated from 1725: A new purchase- Matthew Prior’s ‘Poems on Several Occasions’
• The irrepressible stomp of Global Warming has had an interesting effect on archaeology, and I posted on several new discoveries: Treasure from the Norwegian ice; More Iron Age treasures from Norway, and Two soldiers in the Italian ice.
• For no reason other than that they look nice: Eye eye!
• This year has been dubbed by some to have been the ‘year of the selfie’ (David Cameron’s badly-judged example with Obama notwithstanding…), and I’ve included three good ones: Pope Francis; Darth Vader, and an astronaut.
• An interesting discussion of jewelled relics and adorned human remains in archaeology: The jewelled saints of 16th century Europe, and other beautifications of the dead

I think that’s enough links to my other posts to be getting on with for now. Anyway- check some of these out if you haven’t already, or have a browse of the blog and see what you come across. Also, you can follow Electric Puppet on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/electricpuppetblog

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Lastly, here are a few fellow bloggers that I’ve come across in the past few months that you may find of interest:

Don’t Bend, Ascend

These Bones of Mine

Bones Don’t Lie

A Corner Of Tenth-Century Europe (written by one of my Anglo-Saxon lecturers from Oxford; he has since moved on to work at Birmingham University)

Museum Postcard

Prehistories

Interesting Literature

I hope you have a very happy New Year, and that 2014 will be good for you.

Image: The Telegraph

The best selfie out-of-this-world!

 

I saw this photo yesterday, and thought that it was too good not to share on here. Following on from my posts on the Papal selfie and the Darth Vader selfie comes this new addition to a very occasional series, which was taken by (I think) a Japanese astronaut on a space-walk from the International Space Station. You can see the sun sitting on the left, but the best bit for me is seeing the reflection of the Earth in the astronaut’s helmet. Just wonderful. Nothing else to say really!