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According to Treehugger Michael Jackson’s Earth Song music video is:

indisputably the most popular green-themed tune ever. It remains Jackson’s best-selling single in the U.K. (yes, bigger than “Thriller” or “Billie Jean”), and beat out the Beatles’ first single in 25 years for the top spot on the British charts. But it, and it’s wild video, barely registered in the U.S. …

Well, I’ve certainly heard of Billie Jean and Thriller — and watched them, but I’ve never heard of this one. It’s worth seeing though.

With its themes of drought, over-fishing, deforestation, pollution and war, the song and video speaks as loudly today as it did in 1996. …

Notably absent however was what has become the most talked-about environmental issue: climate change. …

At the time, climate change was still a relative seedling of an ecological crisis …

The amazing music video … was also pretty carbon-intensive: it was filmed in the Amazon rain forest, Croatia, Tanzania, and Warwick, New York, where a safe forest fire was simulated in a corn field.

[Via : Michael Jackson's "Earth Song," His Biggest UK Single, Was Never Released in the U.S. (Video) : TreeHugger and @Discovery_Space.]

And speaking of Climate Change … can we please agree on calling it that, rather than Global Warming.

I heard a few moments of The Panel radio show on National Radio the other day. It plays between 4 and 6 pm on weekday afternoons and commonly features guests chatting and opining about things they don’t understand and don’t know anything about.

On this particular moment I heard one chap dismissing the whole notion of Global Warming for two reasons:

1. Some glacier somewhere in the world is getting bigger, rather than smaller like most of the others.
2. Weather forecasters are often wrong in their predictions.

I don’t actually know who this ignorant twerp was, but I think he was the mayor of some town.

For one thing weather is different from climate:

Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate is the term for the average atmospheric conditions over longer periods of time.

[Via : Weather - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.]

For another: scientists have strong evidence for the climate changing. That change is evidenced by varying conditions in different parts of the planet: some parts are becoming hotter, while others are growing cooler. And all kinds of other shifts and changes are occurring too.

Calling the whole complex package of changes Global Warming is just plain silly.

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Apparently the King and Queen of Spain are in town today:

The King and Queen of Spain have been officially welcomed at two ceremonies in Wellington on Tuesday morning.

King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia attended a wreath laying ceremony at the National War Memorial and Tomb of the Unknown Warrior on Tuesday morning.

The King and Queen of Spain last visited New Zealand 21 years ago, their son Prince Felipe was the most recent Spanish royal to visit two years later.

[Via : Spanish royals officially welcomed in Wellington | NATIONAL News.]

That would explain the Spanish Air Force plane I spotted opposite the airport end of Lyall Bay when I took the dogs for a walk. Photo above.

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I’ve run out of space on the server for this blog and its associated photo album, so we’re on the move. There may be some disruption until things have settled.

Update: we’re at the new server now, but there were quite a few problems moving all the photos across. I’m sorting things out as quickly as I can. My apologies for broken links, missing images and other glitches.

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I’m having a few problems with the photo gallery features, so have turned off the sidebar images for a while.

I’ve also decided not to post my Twitter feed here any more — it’s swamping my infrequent real blog updates. I’ll go back and remove old Tweets soon.

What this blog will have is irregular and infrequent posts of general interest, particularly things relating to travels, pets, photos and general observations about life.

For regularly updated content be sure to visit my main blog, TiKouka, or the free weekly MacTips.

If you happened to want to follow my Twitter feed, remember you can always subscribe to the RSS feed for my tweets.

Considering this blog is so infrequently updated with real content, thanks for your heroic persistence in being a reader. :-)

Update: I’ve amended the RSS feed address for my Twitter updates.

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This morning I noticed these weird clouds over Wellington. You may think these photos are just out of focus, but the clouds really were like that.

It was pretty much as though wind from one direction had blown clouds at one elevation into wave forms, while wind from another direction had created cross-waves at another elevation.

Couple that with a sun low on the horizon, over the hills in the East, and we had these wonderful clouds.

If you know the name for this type of cloud, please do leave a comment.

Click the images to see larger versions.

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I’m de-cluttering, cleaning up and cleaning out — ruthlessly. I want to dispose of around 100 books: about 50 currently listed on Bookmooch, and another 50 or so listed on the page Books to go.

Some in the list on my site I’d be happy to give away; others I’d like to sell (mainly the newer books). For all of them I need a contribution towards postage.

If you’re interested in one or more books listed on my site email me at books@mactips.info, with the title and how much you’d offer (specify your currency). I’ll consider all offers, but retain the right to reject or negotiate.

First come, first served.

For books listed on BookMooch either mooch them (email me first if you’re not in New Zealand as postage is hefty for overseas destinations) or email me to discuss.

I want these books gone, so please take a look at the lists. And coming up in a few days: the DVDs I want to sell, including Stargate, Farscape, and others.

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I realised today that updates on this blog are few and far between, yet I post to Twitter often several times per day. In some respects Twitter has taken over from this blog, though not entirely.

Today I’ve added Alex King’s Twitter tools plugin and this blog will now echo my daily tweets. The first update has included each tweet as a blog post, but since then I’ve changed the settings to create a single blog post for each day’s tweets.

Let’s see how things go. If you have an opinion, please add it as a comment to this post.

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One of the things I love about my MacBook Pro and wireless internet is that any room in my house can be an office. After several days of sniffling and sneezing with an incipient cold I have allocated today for working from bed.

This has the enormous advantage of leaving plenty of room for as many of our three cats as care to join me, and space for the phone, box of tissues, cup of tea, sundry potions, and, not too far way, a plastic container of medicinal chocolate wheaten biscuits.

iTunes is sending pleasant background music through the low-end home theatre system in the lounge. Rain and wind are hammering at the windows. I’m snug.

Truth be told, I’m feeling much better than I was the last couple of days. Yesterday I visited my neighbour Rebecca for an acupuncture treatment. Needles and moxa burning, and perhaps the course of nature, have cleared my head, largely done away with the runny nose and possibly completely avoided the whole sore throat and persistent cough business.

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Welcome to the new Oddity 59. I’ve been moving posts across from the old site, but photos and other things still need to be updated. Meanwhile, please visit http://mactips.blogs.com for photos or anything else that you find missing from here. If you come across any obvious errors, please let me know.

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