Newspaper Slogans: True or False?

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia <ericshackle*bigpond.com>

Multi-millionaires and famous film stars frolicking in America's most expensive ski resort are warned every day by this slogan nailed to the masthead of the Aspen (Colorado) Daily News: If You Don't Want It Printed, Don't Let It Happen.

And the good folk of another small western town, Yerington, Nevada, must surely glow happily when they read this slogan of the Mason Valley News: The Only Newspaper in the World That Gives a Damn About Yerington.

Another great motto still in use is Liked by Many, Cussed by Some, Read by Them All,
displayed by The Blackshear (Georgia) Times.


Texas newspaperman Charlie Stough said his family once owned a weekly in Arizona called Sage: The only newspaper you can open up in a high wind or read on a horse.

Newspapers around the world flaunt slogans on their front pages. Many are boastful, some are untrue, and others make us laugh out loud. Here's a selection. You can decide for yourself which category each belongs to:

• New York Times: All the News That's Fit to Print.
• Atlanta Journal: Covers Dixie Like the Dew.
• Chicago Tribune: World's Greatest Newspaper.
• Philadelphia Inquirer: The Oldest Daily Newspaper In The United States--Founded 1771 / An Independent Newspaper For All The People
• Burlington (Vermont) Free Press: America's Most Colorful Newspaper.
• Longview (Texas) Daily News: An Independent Democratic Newspaper Of The First Class Unchallenged In Its Field.
• Edmonson News (Brownsville, Kentucky): The Gimlet -- It Bores In.
• Colleton and Beaufort (South Carolina) Sun: A Weekly Newspaper for the Mutual Benefit of Ourselves, Colleton and Beaufort Districts and Mankind Generally.
• Julesburg Advocate, Colorado: You won't see a newspaper like THIS every day...just once a week.
• Los Angeles Times: Largest Circulation In The West.
• Los Angeles Herald Examiner: Largest Circulation In The Entire West.
• New Orleans States-Item: The Lively One, With a Mind of Its Own
• Putnam Pit (Putnam County, Tennessee): [No bull] Going where no dog has gone before -- and without a leash!
• TheTombstone Epitaph, in Arizona: 116 Years In the Town Too Tough To Die. No Tombstone Is Complete Without Its Epitaph.

North Star: Dr Larry Lorenz, a professor of journalism at Loyola University, New Orleans says Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in 1838 at the age of 21, and founded the North Star Newspaper. Its slogan was Right is of no sex, truth is of no color. God is the father of us all and all we are brethren.

Newspapers in Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) also go in for slogans. The Post calls itself The paper that digs deeper, while the Zambia Daily Mail claimed We serve the country without fear or favour, which it later shortened to Without Fear or Favour.

Here in Australia, the Sydney Daily Telegraph once carried the sloganThe Paper You Can Trust. When I was a young reporter on its staff, in the 1940s, it was often called it The Paper You Can Thrust.

In those far-off days, the Sydney Bulletin magazine's masthead bore an infamous motto that persisted until 1961: Australia for the White Man. After the second world war, the nation's White Australia policy was abandoned, and Sydney is now one of the world's most multicultural cities. A single suburb, Marrickville, is home to people from 140 nations.

Gold Coast Bulletin,  Southport, Australia
Your Town, Your Paper

Sunday Mail, Brisbane, Australia: Feels Like Sunday

Sunraysia Daily,  Mildura, Australia: Bringing People Together

Sunshine Coast Daily,  Maroochydore, Australia: 
It's got the Coast written all over it

The Advertiser, Adelaide, Australia: Fresh Daily

The Age, Melbourne, Australia: Everyone sees things differently.

The Australian Financial Review, Sydney, Australia:

The Daily Habit of Successful People

The Border Mail , Wodonga, Australia: A New World Every Day 

The Daily Mercury,  Mackay, Australia: News You Can Use

The Examiner, Launceston, Australia: Read your own news every day

 The Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, Australia: Local news means the world to us

The Sun-Herald, Sydney, Australia: It's a Newsstand in a Newspaper

The Sydney Morning Herald,  Sydney, Australia: Tomorrow's Paper


Die Presse, Vienna, Austria: 

Gotta make time -- to read the Times (So viel Zeit muss sein -- so viel Zeitung muss sein)

Kleine Zeitung,  Graz, Austria: 

Life Writes Its Own Stories (Wie das Leben so schreibt)

Walt Whitman's Western Newspapers

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia. <ericshackle@bigpond.com>



Famous American poet Walt Whitman, who once edited New York's Brooklyn Eagle, wrote in his book November Boughs (1888): "Among the far-west newspapers have been, or are, The Fairplay (Colorado) Flume, The Solid Muldoon, of Ouray, The Tombstone Epitaph, of Nevada, The Jimplecute, of Texas, and The Bazoo, of Sedalia, Missouri."


Checking the internet, we find that three of those newspapers are still in business.
Walt was only 19 , when he was made editor-in-chief of The Long Islander,which went broke within a year of its founding. Whitman refused to give up, and within a few years he became editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.


Five years later, in 1848, he was fired again, because of his outspoken support for absolition of slavery. Undeterred, Whitman immediately set out for New Orleans to visit his brother Jeff.


While there, he became an editor for the New Orleans Crescent, but returned to Brooklyn within a few months to become editor of The Brooklyn Times. At the same time he worked for the arts-oriented periodical, the Democratic Review.
What has become of those far-west newspapers Whitman mentioned?
Let's visit them, one at a time.


FAIRPLAY FLUME
The Fairplay Flume has undergone more than a dozen changes to its masthead over the years. One of them was sub-titled The Paper With A Mission and Without A Muzzle. 


Today the sub-title is The Park County Republican's Fairplay Flume. 


Ten years ago, its then editor Robin Kepple told me "We understand The Flume acquired its name due to the vast amount of mining in Fairplay and Park County. A flume, as you probably know, is designed to channel water, logs, etc. from one place to another. In Fairplay's case, a flume was used to channel rocks, minerals and tailings from one place to another in the endless pursuit of gold.


"Some folks believe the name Flume was selected because the newspaper helps 'channel' information. I am not certain if this is really the reason for the name or not."


The Flume is now printed not in Fairplay, but in the nearby town of Bailey, which is also the home of the strangely-named Id-Ra-Ha-Je summer camps. That's shorthand for 
I'd Rather Have Jesus.


Today, the Flume's website says, "The Park County Republican and Fairplay Flume
is published every Friday and is the official newspaper in Park County, Colorado.


"The Flume, established in 1879, is almost as old as the county it serves - Park County, Colorado, which was formed in 1861. Park County lies just west of Jefferson County, the westernmost and most mountainous of the seven counties that are typically used in defining metro Denver.


"Headquartered in Bailey, an unincorporated town in the northeastern part of the county, The Flume covers all areas of life in Park County, including business, politics, the courts, weather, crime, festivals, fires and more.

"At the core of the stories in The Flume are the residents themselves, now numbering more than 16,000 in a county that's 83 percent bigger than Rhode Island and nearly as big as Delaware."


THE SOLID MULDOON
This newspaper was founded on September 5, 1879, and, through a series of name changes and merges, eventually became the present-day Durango Herald.


The newspaper didn't pull its punches. A local historian records that "David Day, a Medal of Honor winner for heroism at Vicksburg, had the distinction of having 42 libel suits pending at the same time [1900] for his raw and bitter articles in The Solid Muldoon newspaper of Ouray and Durango."  Maybe that's why it went out of business.


The original Solid Muldoon was the name given to a mysterious "prehistoric human body" dug up near Beulah, Colorado, in 1877. The seven-and-a-half foot stone man was thought to be the "missing link" between apes and humans. "There can be no question about the genuineness of this piece of statuary" said the Denver Daily Times.


It was later revealed that George Hull, perpetrator of a previous hoax featuring the Cardiff Giant, had spent three years fashioning his second "petrified man", using mortar, rock dust, clay, plaster, ground bones, blood and meat. He kiln-fired the figure for many days and then buried it.


A few months later, as the celebration of Colorado's year-old statehood approached, the statue was "discovered" by William Conant, who had once worked for the legendary showman P.T. Barnum. News of the find quickly spread to Pueblo, Denver, and eventually to New York.


The statue was named the Solid Muldoon after William Muldoon, a famous wrestler and strongman who had been honored in a popular song. Displayed in New York, it attracted large crowds until an unpaid business associate of Hull revealed the hoax to the New York Tribune, and the statue was seen no more. Muldoon was chairman of the New York State Boxing Commission from 1921 to 1923.


Rudyard Kipling, a ballad and prose writer as famous in England as Whitman was in the United States, wrote a piece entitled The Solid Muldoon, one of seven short stories in his book The Soldiers Three, published in 1890.


The world-famous TOMBSTONE EPITAPH in Arizona, was founded on the Southwestern frontier on May 1, 1880 by John P. Clum, who proclaimed in the first issue No Tombstone is complete without an Epitaph. Souvenir editions detailing the O.K. Corral shootout can be bought from the Tombstone Epitaph Corp, whose shop displays old type cases and the original printing press.


A local historian wrote "Clum was the quintessential frontier administrator. As an Indian agent, he dealt with great Apaches warriors like Geronimo and Naiche, son of Cochise. 


"As mayor and editor of the Tombstone Epitaph, Clum had much to do in helping to foment the high levels of tension in Tombstone. After the street fight and subsequent trial, Clum learned he was on a 'deathlist' made up by the cowboy gang. 


"In December 1881, Clum narrowly escaped what he considered an assassination attempt when highwaymen attempted to rob the stagecoach he was in. Clum was a life-long friend of Wyatt Earp and was one of Earp's pallbearers at his funeral."


The original Tombstone Epitaph is published monthly as a national historic edition. It contains original articles about the old west written by western history writers.


A small local edition of the Epitaph is now published by students of the University of Arizona Department of Journalism. Its sub-title reads: 116 Years In The Town Too Tough To Die. No Tombstone Is Complete Without Its Epitaph.


JEFFERSON JIMPLECUTE
The Texas weekly, the Jefferson Jimplecute, was founded as a daily in 1848, when Jefferson was a thriving Red River town. The "Jimp," as the locals call it, sells about 2400 copies. How did it get its name? No one knows. At one stage it displayed, beneath its masthead title, words which formed an acronym: Join Industry, Manufacturing, Planting, Labor, Energy (and) Capital (in) Unity Together Everlasting. However, a local history book says that that phrase first appeared long after the paper was founded.


Amber Cullen, managing editor of The Jimplecute, has just emailed me:
"The editor in chief/ founder of the paper (name unknown) when piecing together the letters for the front page flag- with the old metal 'stamps' (the old way of printing) - he 
dropped the box of letters to the floor, and in a fit, he picked up a
handful and jumbled them back in and Jimplecute was the name that arose.
The acronym did come later, and still runs on our pages today!"



SPRING PLACE JIMPLECUTE
Strangely, a second newspaper named Jimplecute was published in the small Georgia town of Spring Place (688 miles by road from Jefferson) from 1879 to 1903, but here again no one knows how it was named, or whether it had any connection with its Texan namesake.


SEDALIA Missouri BAZOO
This newspaper was published from 1881 to1895.


LINKS
Walt Whitman - Slang in America:
http://www.bartleby.com/229/5009.html
Durango Herald. http://www.durangoherald.com/
Tombstone Epitaph, http://www.tombstoneepitaph.com/ 
The Jimplecute, Jefferson,Texas http://www.jimplecute.com/ 

How to Win a Pullet Surprise

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia. <ericshackle*bigpond.com>



Eighteen years ago, Professor Jerrold H. Zar composed a brilliant poem called Candidate for a Pullet Surprise (say the title aloud, and you'll get the pun). Here's the first verse:


I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.


Since then, thousands of readers around the world have chuckled over the poem and emailed it to their friends. It may have been read more often than any of Shakespeare's poems, yet the author is virtually unknown.


The poem is a favourite on the internet. Scores of websites have copied the original words, or posted versions amended by various wits and halfwits. Some have retitled it as Owed to a Spell Checker or Spellbound. 


Many webmasters have added the words Author unknown, or Anon. One says Sauce unknown. It's a classic example of intellectual property being stolen on the Internet.
Here is the complete official version, published with the author's kind permission:


CANDIDATE FOR A PULLET SURPRISE
By Jerrold H. Zar
I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.
Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.
A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime.
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.
Bee fore a veiling checker's
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.
Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know fault's with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.
Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word's fare as hear.
To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw's are knot aloud.
Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.
Title suggested by Pamela Brown.
Based on opening lines suggested by Mark Eckman.


By the author's count, 127 of the 225 words of the poem are incorrect
(although all words are correctly spelt).
Published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, Jan/Feb1994, page 13. Reprinted Vol. 45, No. 5/6, 2000, page 20.


Five years ago, Zar told us, "My poem continues to travel around the Internet, sometimes with attribution (and permission) and sometimes without.


"In addition, several authors have asked to include it in books they were preparing (on writing, editing, and the like)."


Zar's experience closely resembles that of another gifted comic poet, Gene Ziegler, the overlooked author of a "stolen" poem that's now best known as If Dr. Seuss Were a Technical Writer. 


In a remarkable string of coincidences, both poems were written in 1994, both authors were professors at US universities, and both their names begin with Z.


Back in 1994, Professor Gene Ziegler, an educator at New York's Cornell University who later became Dean of the American Graduate School of Management, an online business school in Nashville Tennessee, wrote a long and witty poem containing these ludicrous lilting lines:


If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!


He says he composed it in an hour, after his four-year-old grandson and the boy's older brother had "significantly rearranged" the resources on his Macintosh.


"This poem has probably received more attention and circulation than anything I have ever written," he said.


"It was originally a gift to internet friends and was passed from person to person, and posted on newsgroups and web sites in several countries. It has since been published in NetGuide Magazine, March 95, and in the Seattle Times, August 13, 1995, and has generated more than 1000 fan messages and requests to post.


"Unfortunately, the internet being what it is, some scoundrel whose editing skills exceeded his or her ethical standards edited the poem, reduced it by half, removed my name, and recirculated it under the title If Dr. Seuss were a Technical Writer, attributed to the ever prolific 'Anonymous.'"


Dr. Zseuss, "the real Dr. Seuss impersonator" (Ziegler's alter ego) responded with "Hang the Information Highwayman!", a poetic appeal for respect for another's written words. It should be brought to the notice of all webmasters.


Writing programs and teachers' groups around the world often quote the two poems to teach internet publishing ethics.


Ziegler told us: "The original poem has been set to music twice, once by a rapper and in the second case made into a Gilbert & Sullivan-like opera by a music teacher in Bangkok, who had his students sing it at graduation.


"It's been made into a brass plaque and sold in a gift shop in Dallas, recited on an Australian talk show and for the closing moments of a Vancouver TV show, Data's Cafe."


A search of the internet shows that despite all that publicity, Ziegler has good reason to feel cranky and forgotten. When we googled his memorable phrase "socket packet pocket" we found about 231,000 references. We checked out some of the websites. In nearly every case, the original poem has been cut in half, and posted without the author's name.


Ziegler says on his webpage:


"When I first discovered what had happened to my original poem, I did a web search and found more than 200 copies of my poem posted, most of which were the edited and unattributed version.


"Over the years I have written to two score webmasters pointing them to the Clocktower site and asking them to remove the offending version. Most have been gracious and cooperative with my request.


"One woman scolded me for my claim and said that the true author was a close friend of hers and that I should be ashamed of myself for claiming her friend's work:-)


"I gave up trying to track down all of the forged postings because it was spreading faster than I could write, and have taken comfort in all of the fans who have seen and recognized my original work and who have taken the time to write to me and express their appreciation."

We found Zar's bio on the internet, and emailed him, seeking details of his original poem and asking if he was aware of this strange coincidence He replied:

Indeed, I have seen Gene Ziegler's poem more than once on the Internet!
I am aware that my poem has been distributed many, many times, via e-mail, at Web sites, and in printed newsletters and books, very often without attribution and in a badly altered form. As you note, my poem was published in 1994 (and republished "by popular demand" in 2000).
I recently retired from Northen Illinois University, where, after several years as a professor of biological sciences, I served for 18 years as Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Research and Dean of the Graduate School. In the latter position I presided over 53 graduation ceremonies for master's- and doctoral-degree students.
At these events I and the University president were expected to deliver some inspirational remarks to the graduates as they went forth with their advanced degrees to improve the world in a variety of fields.
I soon evolved my remarks into something out of the ordinary, such as poetry with both comical and serious elements and a quasi-serious discourse on lessons from "The Wizard of Oz" that are pertinent to such graduates.
Shortly after my retirement, the University reformatted the undergraduate-student and graduate-student graduation ceremonies in a fashion that excluded the Dean of the Graduate School from making formal remarks to the assemblage. (The purported reason for this change was, in part, accommodation of the audiences in the available campus venues; but I do wonder if it was to prevent any future dean from presenting the kinds of literary offerings that I produced.)
Needless to say: I have NOT read aloud the spelling-checker poem; it rather loses its impact if it is not experienced visually!

LINKS:

Dr. Jerrold H Zar: http://www.bios.niu.edu/zar/zar.shtml

Dr. Gene Ziegler:  http://www.guernsey.net/~poetry/genez.html

Counting Sheep Will Help You Sleep

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia.<ericshackle*bigpond.com>



For centuries people have lulled themselves to sleep by counting imaginary sheep. They may appear in a flock, or jumping through a hedge or fence.


You can count 1,2,3 and so on, but there are plenty of other ways to count them.
Close your eyes and count some sheep, and very soon you'll fall asleep, we were told as children. 


English-born Ian Scott-Parker, who now lives in Hurricane, Utah (US), can do that in one of the strangest languages we've ever heard.


"My father taught me to count yan, tan, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dic almost as soon as I had learned to count in the more common one, two, three," he told us. 


"Bumfit for fifteen was a great childhood favorite."


Ian, a sophisticated man of the world with refined tastes and wide-ranging interests, grew up in Cumbria, near the Scottish border. These days few if any people still speak the ancient dialect.


"There are traditional methods of counting sheep in many of the Lakeland dales, though none seem to still be in actual use," says an article on a Cumbrian website, The Countryside Museum. 


"Garnett in 1910 said even then that the method was almost obsolete and as for the names of the numbers, but few of the farmers remember them. 'Yan' is still used for 'one', but the others are only known as curiosities.


"Traditionally the shepherd counts to twenty, then he marks a stone or stick with a 'score' and starts again. The final total is given as so many score of sheep. The method seems to be common to old Cymric or Celtic areas although the words themselves have taken slightly different forms over the years."


The website displays a list of numerals in three ancient dialects - Keswick (Cumbria), Wensleydale (West Yorkshire) and Welsh.


Most of the number words are similar in all three dialects, but others are quite different. Nine, for instance is dovera in Keswick, horna in Wensleydale, and naw (pronounced now) in Wales.


Not everyone agrees that counting sheep can cure insomnia. It's too boring, according to two Oxford scientists.


Fifty people who had trouble getting to sleep were divided into three groups, which were asked to (a) count sheep (b) imagine a placid scene, such as a beach or waterfall or (c) act normally. The sheep counters took 20 minutes longer than usual to drop off.


After we wrote a piece on this subject six years ago, David Halperin, from Urim, Israel,
told us in an email that we should read a book called Ounce Dice Trice by Alastair Reid.


"The book lists different ways of counting to ten," he said. "Reid writes, 'If you get tired of counting one, two, three, make up your own numbers, as shepherds used to do when they had to count sheep day in, day out. You can try using these sets of words instead of numbers, when you have to count to ten.'


"There are 57 pages of this delightful nonsense, with equally delightful illustrations. My wife and I love it."


David told us "I have been a member of Kibbutz Urim for the past 50 years, and so have had many -- and varied -- jobs over the decades: lathe operator, physics and mathematics teacher, factory worker, bookkeeper... But for the last few of them I was a musicologist at Tel-Aviv University until my retirement eight years ago."


In the book Ounce, Dice, Trice, now sadly out of print, Alastair Reid, a Scottish-born author, poet and translator, cites these witty ways of counting to 10:
Ounce, dice, trice, quartz, quince, sago, serpent, oxygen, nitrogen, denim.
Instant, distant, tryst, catalyst, quest, sycamore, sophomore, oculist, novelist, dentist.


Archery, butchery, treachery, taproom, tomb, sermon, cinnamon, apron, nunnery, density.


Acreage, brokerage, cribbage, carthage, cage, sink, sentiment, ointment, nutmeg, doom.


He also suggests ways of naming the fingers, such as Tommy Thumbkins, Ettie Wilkson, Long Lauder (a distant relative of today's Laura Norder?), Davy Gravy, and Little Quee. 


He suggests that times of day should include daypeep, dimity, dewfall and owlcry.
"And if someone tells you something you don't believe, look at him steadily and say FIRKYDOODLE, FUDGE, or QUOZ."


The Random Pseudodictionary defines Firkytoodle: (n) Foreplay. Not my original word, but a wonderful word to say. Try it. Firkytoodle. Probably got it from Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary. Example: As in a song lyric: Momma don't 'low no firkytoodlin' 'round here.


The Countryside Museum: http://www.fellpony.f9.co.uk/country/c_main.htm


Video, Counting Sheep: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUjDvRJ_rzo

Aussie Kids Miss Out On Cicadas

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia.<ericshackle*bigpond.com>


Shock, horror ... and sadness too. Aussie kids don't collect cicadas!



"Is that a Floury Baker or a Greengrocer?" I asked my great-grandson the other day.
He had no idea what I was talking about. Nor had his dad. So it seems that Aussie kids (well, some of them) no longer enjoy climbing gumtrees in search of these noisy insects.



When I went to school ages ago, me and me mates had a bonzer time climbing gumtrees and collecting cicadas with wonderful names: the fore-mentioned Floury Bakers and Greengrocers, Union Jacks, Black Princes. Cherry Noses, Double Drummers and Yellow Mondays.


"The drone of cicadas is one of Sydney's most recognisable sounds of summer," says  Dr. Max Moulds from The Australian Museum.



"It is thought that the sound produced by some communal species can act as a defence against predatory birds and some are even loud enough (120 decibels) to be painful to the human ear. Cicadas also often sing in chorus, which makes it more difficult for a predator to locate an individual.


"Only male cicadas sing. They do this in an attempt to find a mate. Different species have different songs to attract only their own kind.


"Adult cicadas have short lives, usually only a few weeks.Most of their lives are spent as nymphs underground. For some species this can be up to several years.



"Cicadas feed only on plant sap using their piercing, sucking mouthparts. [They] feed on a huge range of plants, including eucalypts and grasses. Birds, bats, spiders, wasps, ants, mantids and tree crickets all prey on cicadas."



Many people around the world enjoy the taste of cicadas. They've been eaten in Ancient Greece, China, Malaysia, Burma and Latin America.



Sydneysiders have differring views of cicadas. Keira (aged six) wrote on a forum page: "I have six pet cicadas. One of them is called Georgina. My other one is called George. One day a cicada flew on to my hand and on Sunday the 11th I found a cicada on the wooden chair."



But Susan whinged, "Is there any way to STOP the cicarda noise. Perhaps an ultrasonic noise or anything you could think of."



Why Don't We Eat More Insects:
http://www.foodiesite.com/articles/2002-10:insects


Much more about cicadas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada#Diet


Still more: 
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2001/02/17/2822486.htm




Sir David Attenborough video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjLiWy2nT7U

Where Are The World's Largest Cities?

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia.<ericshackle*bigpond.com>



Can you name the three cities with the greatest population? If you thought New York would be one of them, you would be wrong. It's only fourth.


The top three are Tokyo, Japan (32,450,000), Seoul, South Korea (20,550,000) and Mexico City, Mexico (20,450,000).


Next comes New York City, with 19,750,000 people, followed by Mumbai, India (19,200,000), Jakarta, Indonesia (18,900,000) and Sao Paulo, Brazil (18,850,000).


Seven other cities have populations of 15 million or more. They are:
Delhi, India - 18,680,000
Osaka/Kobe, Japan - 17,350,000
Shanghai, China - 16,650,000
Manila, Philippines - 16,300,000
Los Angeles, US - 15,250,000
Calcutta, India - 15,100,000
Moscow, Russia - 15,000,000


These figures were extracted from World Atlas. Here is their complete list:
1. Tokyo, Japan - 32,450,000
2. Seóul, South Korea - 20,550,000
3. Mexico City, Mexico - 20,450,000
4. New York City, USA - 19,750,000
5. Mumbai, India - 19,200,000
6. Jakarta, Indonesia - 18,900,000
7. Sáo Paulo, Brazil - 18,850,000
8. Delhi, India - 18,680,000
9. Osaka/Kobe, Japan - 17,350,000
10. Shanghai, China - 16,650,000
11. Manila, Philippines - 16,300,000
12. Los Angeles, US - 15,250,000
13. Calcutta, India - 15,100,000
14. Moscow, Russia- 15,000,000
15. Cairo, Egypt - 14,450,000
16. Lagos, Nigeria - 13,488,000
17. Buenos Aires, Argentina - 13,170,000
18. London, United Kingdom - 12,875,000
19. Beijing, China - 12,500,000
20. Karachi, Pakistan - 11,800,000
21. Dhaka, Bangladesh - 10,979,000
22. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 10,556,000
23. Tianjin, China - 10,239,000
24. Paris, France - 9,638,000
25. Istanbul, Turkey - 9,413,000
26. Lima, Peru - 7,443,000
27. Tehrãn, Iran - 7,380,000
28. Bangkok, Thailand - 7,221,000
29. Chicago, US - 6,945,000
30. Bogotá, Colombia - 6,834,000
31. Hyderabad, India - 6,833,000
32. Chennai, India - 6,639,000
33. Essen, Germany - 6,559,000
34. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - 6,424,519
35. Hangzhou, China - 6,389,000
36. Hong Kong, China - 6,097,000
37. Lahore, Pakistan - 6,030,000
38. Shenyang, China - 5,681,000
39. Changchun, China - 5,566,000
40. Bangalore, India - 5,544,000
41. Harbin, China - 5,475,000
42. Chengdu, China - 5,293,000
43. Santiago, Chile - 5,261,000
44. Guangzhou, China - 5,162,000
45. St. Petersburg, Russia- 5,132,000
46. Kinshasa, DRC - 5,068,000
47. Baghdãd, Iraq - 4,796,000
48. Jinan, China - 4,789,000
49. Houston, US - 4,750,000
50. Toronto, Canada - 4,657,000
51. Yangon, Myanmar (Burma) - 4,458,000
52. Alger, Algeria - 4,447,000
53. Philadelphia, US - 4,398,000
54. Qingdao, China - 4,376,000
55. Milano, Italy - 4,251,000
56. Pusan, South Korea - 4,239,000
57. Belo Horizonte, Brazil - 4,160,000
58. Almadabad, India - 4,154,000
59. Madrid, Spain - 4,072,000
60. San Francisco, USA - 4,051,000
61. Alexandria, Egypt - 3,995,000
62. Washington DC, US - 3,927,000
63. Wuhan, China - 3,918,000
64. Dallas, US - 3,912,000
65. Guadalajara, Mexico - 3,908,000
66. Chongging, China - 3,896,000
67. Medellin, Colombia - 3,831,000
68. Detroit, US - 3,785,000
69. Handan, China - 3,763,000
70. Frankfurt, Germany - 3,700,000
71. Porto Alegre, Brazil - 3,699,000
72. Hanoi, Vietnam - 3,678,000
73. Sydney, Australia - 3,665,000
74. Santo Domingo, Dom. Rep. - 3,601,000
75. Singapore, Singapore - 3,587,000
76. Casablanca, Morocco - 3,535,000
77. Katowice, Poland - 3,488,000
78. Pune, India - 3,485,000
79. Bangdung, Indonesia - 3,420,000
80. Monterrey, Mexico - 3,416,000
81. Montréal, Canada - 3,401,000
82. Nagoya, Japan - 3,377,000
83. Nanjing, China - 3,375,000
84. Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire - 3,359,000
85. Xi'an, China - 3,352,000
86. Berlin, Germany - 3,337,000
87. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - 3,328,000
88. Recife, Brazil - 3,307,000
89. Dusseldorf, Germany - 3,251,000
90. Ankara, Turkey - 3,190,000
91. Melbourne, Australia - 3,188,000
92. Salvador, Brazil - 3,180,000
93. Dalian, China - 3,153,000
94. Caracas, Venezuela - 3,153,000
95. Adis Abeba, Ethiopia - 3,112,000
96. Athina, Greece - 3,103,000
97. Cape Town, South Africa - 3,092,000
98. Koln, Germany - 3.067,000
99. Maputo, Mozambique - 3,017,000
100. Napoli, Italy - 3,012,000


By the time you read this, these figures will be out of date, since thousands of people move to most of the world's great cities every week.


World Atlas: http://www.worldatlas.com/citypops.htm


Video, Too Many People:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFddsWq2pDw


Video, World's Largest Cities:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7ut6qB3TFY