An interesting post at Yeah Right, which paraphrases a Twitter discussion, on the apparent fall from grace of jazz, and the genre’s transformation into “high art”.
So what happened? Did jazz get too self-consciously cool? Too mannered, wrapped-up in an artistic bubble, esoteric? If you’ve ever heard a group of jazz musicians wailing in an improv [...]

Gaffe and blunder prone they may be, but local government in NSW has managed to notch up one success, liquour law reform that has facilitated the (much needed) emergence of small hole-in-the-wall bars in and around Sydney
Success is not a word used often by Sydneysiders to describe the efforts of local and state [...]

Artificial languages such as Esperanto (or Na’vi for that matter), offer the chance to create a “perfect” language, that has clear rules and structures from the get-go, rather than many “natural” languages which have evolved, sometimes somewhat erratically, over time.
So why go against the odds (not to mention nature itself) and make up your [...]

The Australia Project is all about stripping away clichés and discovering true Australian identity and culture.
The Australia Project is asking Australian creatives and the general public, to engage in a national debate regarding the current status of contemporary Australian culture. We are seeking to explore and redefine clichéd national stereotypes in the hope of revealing [...]

The extreme isolation of some the tribes and villages in Papua New Guinea is behind the rise of some 800 languages in the region, a concentration not seen in any other part of the world.
Deep valleys and unforgiving terrain have kept the different tribes of Papua New Guinea relatively isolated, so that the groups’ [...]

A selection of photochroms from the Flickr blog, somewhat singularly titled It’s Istanbul not Constantinople…
Istanbul was Constantinople. Now it’s Istanbul not Constantinople.

Works by Elvis Presley, Beethoven, Bob Dylan, Gloria Gaynor, and of course the Beatles, are included in a list of 20 musical pieces that changed the world.

A photographic snap-shot of the Les Halles area of Paris from 1962.

Half of the world’s 6500 languages are expected to have vanished by the end of the century says Dr Mark Turin, of the University of Cambridge, who is embarking on a project to record as much as possible, of as many as possible, of the world’s threatened languages, in order to help preserve them.
“The [...]

As taken from some 5.7 million photos that were taken over 12 months by a team of 14 photographers.