 |
| The Doctor is in: Put your kit on. |
We're in the heart of Tasmania's finest Heritage Village.
We're a comfortable 1830's coaching inn with creaking stairs, cosy bedrooms with en suites and a log fire in the guest lounge.
You can wake to the smell of fresh bread from our own wood-fired oven.
We serve a unique bakery breakfast, with hot bread, croissants and pastries straight from the oven to your table. Don't worry if you can't eat it all - you can take it away for your morning tea.
Ross Village is the best ½ way stopping point between Hobart and Launceston, and only one hour's easy drive to the East Coast.
Sometimes the old fashioned way of doing things really is still the best - and we believe this is true of bread. The solid even heat produced in a full brick wood-fired oven is the best environment for baking bread. We use unbleached flours and old-fashioned recipes to make a variety of crusty breads; many of our loaves we bake straight on the oven floor, which gives them an all round crust.
Take away or take a seat. We're open every day in summer for light meals and the best espresso coffee (and tea) on the Heritage Highway. On fine days we serve outdoors in our garden courtyard.The University does not have a baking faculty. They have failed dismally to attract bakers, unlike the Ross Bakery which attracts customers all the way from Japan.
 |
| Stopped by for a drink, with very nice BYO Buns. This is not Emma. |
EVERY year thousands of Japanese tourist make the pilgrimage to an obscure bakery in a small rural town in the middle of Tasmania, captivated by its likeness to the setting of one of Japan’s most popular anime movies.
Anime movie Kiki's Delivery Service is a Japanese classic.
Fans are spellbound by the uncanny resemblance of The Ross Village Bakery to locations in the 1989 movie Kiki’s Delivery Service, a production of the premier Japanese anime creator Studio Ghibli and its founder Hayao Miyazaki — known as the western versions of Disney and Walt Disney.“It’s like discovering Hobart is the setting forSnow White or Cinderella,” said University of Tasmania lecturer Dr Craig Norris, who has done a thesis paper on the phenomenon.Dr Norris said is was fascinating because the story had been going for about 15 years.“The startling thing is how its so persistent, so immersive and so successful.”Ross bakery co-owner Carl Crosby said he welcomed at least 50 Japanese tourists every day, usually more and often by the busload.Some — known as cosplayers — even wear costumes to emulate their anime idols.
 |
| Not looking joyous, but then the Japanese are known for being inscrutable. |
“Seeing the looks of joy on their faces when they walk in, some squeal and jump up and down,” Mr Crosby said.
“Some of them will come in their little costumes, with their bow in their hair and their little red shoes, and they want to stand in front of the oven and take a multitude of pictures.
“They usually have something to eat and a coffee, usually a vanilla slice or a scallop pie.”
No one is sure where the folklore started but it has endured and is gaining momentum.
On a Studio Ghibli blog post, one of the animaters talks about receiving daily emails from fans about the Ross bakery. But none of the animaters have ever been to Tasmania.
Visitors to Ross bakery are overwhelmingly young woman who identify with Kiki and her story of a witch travelling from an urban space to a small community to come of age.
“You read in the guest log stories like a Japanese girl who has come to Australia, she just broke up with her boyfriend, her job hasn’t worked out but then she’s in the bakery and it all kind of makes sense now. She’s found a sanctuary and relief, much like the story of Kiki herself, overcoming challenges and adversity,” Dr Norris said.
“I think the atmosphere of Ross resonates really strongly with the atmosphere of the movie this idea that it’s a nice regional country space, with coffee and treats and you feel welcomed.”
An upstairs loft area in the bakery has been decorated to look like Kiki’s room from the movie after constant requests from tourists.
Dr Norris said the connection was not one created or enforced by the bakery owners, rather “it’s a grassroots, bottom-up phenomena developed by the fans”.
The cartoon Kiki in her bakery.
He said as well as travelling half way across the world, fans went to extraordinary measures to visit.
 |
| "I'm gorgeous, so watch it !" |
“There are stories of tourists who fly in to Launceston or Hobart and then get a taxi to Ross not having any idea how far out of the way it is.”
Dr Norris said since writing his research paper on Ross Bakery and Kiki’s Delivery Service he had been inundated with interest.“Since writing that article I’ve been invited to Japan to present on it,” he said.
“There’s a lot interest in this real oddity of having a cherished Japanese movie with a connection to Tasmania, an unlikely location.”
Prince Charles was in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky today.
About an hour ago, he stopped by our downtown Cathedral, where I occasionally attend Mass, to give a brief speech. This is only 2 blocks from my office, so after a late lunch I walked over to see his arrival.As a reader of your work, I had in mind your past comparisons between the British Royal Family's entourage and that of the president and other politicians. I nonetheless still amazed at the modesty of Charles' cohort.The attached picture shows the moment he stepped from the car. And the car was not even a limousine. The entire motorcade consisted of only two police cars, Charles' towncar, and one additional vehicle. The other (empty) police cars visible across the street are not there for the prince. They are parked there every day because City Hall is just down the block.As you can see from the picture:1. they did not even close the street off for his arrival, not even for a few seconds. Motorists are still going by on the left.His car stopping there made no more disruption to traffic that a pizza delivery guy or UPS driver parking on the curb for 30 seconds to make a delivery.2. the sidewalk is not roped off at all.3. there were no "advance guard" or phalanx of other cop cars that preceded him that simply are off camera. What you see is really all there was.And the men who look like Secret Service there are actually just church parishioners who were helping direct what little traffic was there. I attended the Vice Presidential debate between Biden and Ryan in 2012 at Center College here in Kentucky. There were at least 50 police cars, maybe 100, and several "decoy" type black Chevy Suburbans for Joe Biden.You are correct that the monarchy America rejected years ago is now practically Joe Lunchbox compared with the grandiose, prima donna treatment demanded by our elected "public servants".
.jpg)
Putting aside the fact that the President's 40-car motorcade is nothing to do with security - as we see everywhere from the Secret Service hookers in Cartagena to the vast entourage required to get Obama to Mandela's funeral only to stand him three feet away from a violent schizophrenic convicted of "necklacking";
and putting aside the ever more absurd impositions on the citizenry, such as maintaining the street's closure for hours after the Presidential procession has passed so that pregnant women and injured persons are not allowed to cross the thoroughfare to get to the hospital on the other side;
and putting aside that I strongly dislike the Prince of Wales and regard his Grand Thoughts on "climate change" as witless and inappropriate;
putting all that to one side for the moment:One of the advantages of monarchy in a democratic age is that it comes with a built-in grievance factor: There's always a certain percentage of the people that is chippily resentful of even the most footling expenditure on the Royal Family's so-called pampered parasites - as a casual glance at the papers in Her Majesty's realms will reveal. So a prince or royal duchess can't go around closing streets and draining police manpower because some republican pol on the make will be all over the news whinging about it.
 |
| And putting aside that the President doesn't even wear a friggin seat-belt. |
That's very healthy, and one consequence of it is the entourage you saw in Louisville this week.
HRH The Prince of Wales is the heir to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Barbados, Tuvalu, Belize, Papua New Guinea, etc, etc, but when he travels to Kentucky he takes only what he needs.
 |
| This is how Royalty visits. |
By the way, that's also way cooler - as my daughter pointed out when she and I saw the Queen in Glasgow in her Diamond Jubilee year. HM and the Duke upfront, and one car behind. And that handful of guys are on their game. Whereas, with a 40-car motorcade, only the Cartagena hookers are on the game.But the bigger point is that a 40-car motorcade leads to a 40-car motorcade political culture -
- with a ruling class on the inside of the perimeter, and the rest of the schlubs on the outside. They don't live where you live. They drive through it, and you glimpse them through the glass darkly as you wait for the royal procession to pass and daily life to resume.Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been entouraged to the hilt for almost a quarter-century, is a near parodic example of the entitlement this breeds. What length do you think the motorcade's going to be by the end of her reign?
Great men make great mistakes
Lee Kwan Yew was a visionary statesman.
But his vision for Singapore's population may have doomed the prosperous city-state.
Lee Kwan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, died this morning. On many counts he was a great man: he took a poor city with no natural resources, not even its own water supply, and turned it into one of the most prosperous and best-educated countries in the world.
But the gleaming buildings and immaculate streets of Singapore distract visitors from a desperate problem: a lack of young people. The birth rate is possibly the lowest in the world.
This could undo everything the great man dreamed of.
(The MercatorNet article below was published in 2012 but has lost none of its currency, as his Lee's son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong,acknowledged last year.)
Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of Singapore, is one of the great statesmen of the 20th century. A man of steely resolve, he turned a tiny, defenceless, impoverished, racially and politically divided island with no natural resources into an economic powerhouse.
Today Singapore is a leading financial centre, is the world's easiest place to do business, is ranked number 8 in foreign exchange reserves, has the world's top-ranked education system, and is the world's least corrupt country.
Economically Singapore is a miracle
....and Lee Kuan Yew is its wizard.
But there is a cloud over Singapore's existence. Although it is situated in a volatile part of the world, the threat is not war or tsunami or cyclone.
It is its own imploding birth rate.
In finances, Singapore is at the top of the league table; in fertility, it is at the bottom.
With a birth rate of 0.78 it has been ranked by the CIA World Factbookat 222 out of 222. To compensate for the falling number of babies, Singapore imports people. About 35 percent of Singapore's workers are foreign-born and about 23 percent of all residents.
In short, like the great man himself until yesterday, Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore is slowly dying. The government is trying desperately to boost the birth rate with generous benefits, dating services and louche advertisements. And still the birth rate falls.
.jpg)
Lee is watched this tragedy with tears. Speaking at a National Day celebration dinner on Saturday, [11 Aug 2012] he sounded desolate:
"If we go on like that, this place will fold up, because there'll be no original citizens left to form the majority, and we cannot have new citizens, new PRs to settle our social ethos, our social spirit, our social norms. So my message is a simple one. The answer is very difficult but the problems, if we don't find the answers, are enormous…
"Our educated men and women must decide whether to replace themselves in the next generation. At the moment, 31 per cent of women and 44 per cent of men are opting out. Not leaving a next generation.
"So, just ponder over it and you will know the solution is not simple. But we've got to persuade people to understand that getting married is important, having children is important. Do we want to replace ourselves or do we want to shrink and get older and be replaced by migrants and work permit holders? That's the simple question."Perhaps it's rude to ask this of a man mourning the mortal illness of a child whom he conceived, dandled on his knees and coached through adolescence, but who is responsible for this disaster?The answer is Lee Kuan Yew. Great men make great mistakes.
In the 1960s and 70s he worried about the Population Bomb and enacted stern population control policies. He encouraged sterilisation, urged Singaporeans to "Stop At Two", and imposed harsh financial penalties for those who didn't.
By the late 80s, the government had panicked and changed its tune to "Have Three or More (if you can afford it)". A future prime minister was already warning Singaporeans that "passively watch[ing] ourselves going extinct" threatened national survival.
.jpg)
It was too late.
Michael is quite right of course, and generous in his praise despite warning of the inevitabilities. But what do we onlooking nations think? What are our national attitudes to the great birth control issues?Singaporeans had acquired a taste for shopping and small families. Now their country's future belongs to immigrants and workers from nearby China, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. Singapore has to face the possibility of cashing in its chips.
Singapore's woes may be of its own making but there is a lesson here for the rest of us. In a small nation, the impact of an ageing population is felt more keenly and more swiftly than in larger countries. Singapore has to face the possibility of cashing in its chips. But demographic trends are inexorable everywhere. When birth-rates fall below replacement level, as they have throughout the developed world, migrants with very different cultural values replace the native-born.
Going extinct is no fun at all. Just ask Lee Kuan Yew.
Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.
41 Quotes From Medical Textbooks Prove Human Life Begins at Conception
“The life cycle of mammals begins when a sperm enters an egg.”
Okada et al., A role for the elongator complex in zygotic paternal genome demethylation, NATURE 463:554 (Jan. 28, 2010)
*****“Fertilization is the process by which male and female haploid gametes (sperm and egg) unite to produce a genetically distinct individual.”Signorelli et al., Kinases, phosphatases and proteases during sperm capacitation, CELL TISSUE RES. 349(3):765 (Mar. 20, 2012)*****“The oviduct or Fallopian tube is the anatomical region where every new life begins in mammalian species. After a long journey, the spermatozoa meet the oocyte in the specific site of the oviduct named ampulla, and fertilization takes place.”Coy et al., Roles of the oviduct in mammalian fertilization, REPRODUCTION 144(6):649 (Oct. 1, 2012) (emphasis added).******“Fertilization – the fusion of gametes to produce a new organism – is the culmination of a multitude of intricately regulated cellular processes.”Marcello et al., Fertilization, ADV. EXP. BIOL. 757:321 (2013)******National Institutes of Health, Medline Plus Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary (2013), http://www.merriamwebster.com/medlineplus/fertilizationThe government’s own definition attests to the fact that life begins at fertilization. According to the National Institutes of Health, “fertilization” is the process of union of two gametes (i.e., ovum and sperm) “whereby the somatic chromosome number is restored and the development of a new individual is initiated.”Steven Ertelt”Undisputed Scientific Fact: Human Life Begins at Conception, or Fertilization” LifeNews.com 11/18/13******
Why do people just not take notice?“Human life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoo developmentn) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).”
Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. pp. 16, 2.
******
“In that fraction of a second when the chromosomes form pairs, the sex of the new child will be determined, hereditary characteristics received from each parent will be set, and a new life will have begun.”Kaluger, G., and Kaluger, M., Human Development: The Span of Life, page 28-29, The C.V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, 1974.******An embryology textbook describes how birth is just an event in the development of a baby, not the beginning of his/her life.“It should always be remembered that many organs are still not completely developed by full-term and birth should be regarded only as an incident in the whole developmental process.”F Beck Human Embryology, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1985 page vi******“It is the penetration of the ovum by a sperm and the resulting mingling of nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the initiation of the life of a new individual.”Clark Edward and Corliss Patten’s Human Embryology, McGraw – Hill Inc., 30******“Although it is customary to divide human development into prenatal and postnatal periods, it is important to realize that birth is merely a dramatic event during development resulting in a change in environment.”The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology fifth edition, Moore and Persaud, 1993, Saunders Company, page 1
 |
| And the U.N. has its hand right up the Media. |
 |
| Not even allowed to wear modest clothes ! Poor little rich girl. |
Top violator of women's rights around the world?
It's Israel says UN
Guess who is the number one violator of women’s rights in the world today?Israel. Violating the rights of Palestinian women.At least that is the view of the UN’s top women’s rights body, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
CSW ended its annual meeting (yesterday Friday, March 20 )by condemning only one of the 193 UN member states for violating women’s rights – Israel.Not Syria. Where government forces routinely employ rape and other sexual violence and torture against women as a tactic of war. Where in 2014 the Assad regime starved, tortured and killed at least 24,000 civilians, and three million people – mostly women and children – are refugees.Not Saudi Arabia. Where women are physically punished if not wearing compulsory clothing, are almost entirely excluded from political life, cannot drive, cannot travel without a male relative, receive half the inheritance of their brothers, and where their testimony counts for half that of a man’s.Not Sudan. Where domestic violence is not prohibited. There is no minimum age for “consensual” sex. The legal age of marriage for girls is ten.
88% of women under 50 have undergone female genital mutilation. And women are denied equal rights in marriage, inheritance and divorce.
Not Iran. Where every woman who registered as a presidential candidate in the last election was disqualified. “Adultery” is punishable by death by stoning. Women who fight back against rapists and kill their attackers are executed. The constitution bars female judges. And women must obtain the consent of their husbands to work outside the home.In fact, not only is there no possibility that the UN Commission on the Status of Women will criticize Iran, Iran is an elected member of CSW.
Sudan – whose president has been indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity – is currently a CSW Vice-Chair.The 2015 CSW resolution on Israel will repeat, as it does every year, that “the Israeli occupation remains the major obstacle for Palestinian women with regard to their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society…”Not Palestinian men.
Not religious edicts and traditions.
Not a culture of violence.
Not an educational system steeped in rejection of peaceful coexistence and of tolerance.
Instead, the fault for a UN statistic like this one – an average of 17% of Palestinian women are in the labor force as compared to 70% of Palestinian men – lies with
the Jewish scapegoat.That fact comes from one of only nine official documents produced by the UN for the 2015 annual CSW meeting. Eight were procedural or general in nature, and one was entitled: “Situation of and assistance to Palestinian women.”By comparison, there was no report on Chinese women and girls, half a billion people without elementary civil and political rights, who still face the prospect of forced abortion and sterilization.
There was no report on women in Somalia, where female genital mutilation is ubiquitous, sexual violence is rampant, and women are systematically subordinate to men.There was no report on women in Yemen, where the penal code goes easy on the killers of women for “immodest” or “defiant” behavior, there is no minimum age for “marriage,” and women have no equal rights to property, employment, credit, pay, education, or housing.And the women’s rights scene is not the only liberal sham at the UN.The UN’s top human rights body, the Human Rights Council (HRC), will wrap up a major session next week by adopting a minimum of
four times as many resolutions slamming Israel than any other country on earth.Condemnations of Israel will include a resolution demanding Israel immediately give back the Golan Heights to Syria – the place where Syrians run from their own government for life-saving Israeli medical care.
Tallying all the resolutions and decisions condemning a specific state over the history of the Human Rights Council, one-third has been directed at Israel alone.Remember Ukraine? In the past year, there have been at least 5,500 confirmed killed – with recent reports from Germany suggesting the total may be as high as 50,000 dead – in addition to a million people displaced. But the score is 67 Council resolutions and decisions attacking Israel and zero on Russia.So who is calling the shots at the Council?
A closer look at its members reveals human rights luminaries like Qatar – that bankrolls the terrorist organization Hamas – along with China, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia.It is impossible to add this all up and conclude that the UN’s treatment of Israel is anything but wildly discriminatory.
In the twisted language of UN rights, the means is the verbiage of equality, while the end game is prejudice.
Anne Bayefsky is director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. Follow her on Twitter @AnneBayefsky.But at least Oz gets a mention from the U.N.
