As the snow is currently 5" high and rising here in west Wales, I am off work and multi-tasking at home to the fine sounds of Midlake, Bon Iver and kd lang (Hymns of the 49th Parallel) on Spotify.

Any further wintry musical suggestions to accompany this fine weather?

As part of birding's rapid progress to socially acceptable behaviour amongst folk of a certain age, I can recommend Tim Birkhead's September Do Lecture "The Wisdom of Birds" http://bit.ly/7PJp7P for as informative 20 minutes as you will find anywhere.

Featuring the unfeasibly large testicles of warblers, whistling bullfinches and Etty Darwin's anti-stinkhorn campaign and why all of these things are important, it's the biology lesson that you never had at school and worth a watch even if you hate our feathered friends.

Since I can only find a couple of passing references to the TED talks on the blog, I thought it's worth flagging up what a stimulating resource these presentations on a wide range of topics are, see

http://www.ted.com

And spending less that 20 minutes of your life watching Ken Robinson entertain on creativity and education is a good place to start...

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

While it is manly spoken word, there's some music here including Eddi Reader and Rokia Traore:

http://www.ted.com/talks/list

And the UK's own version, the Do Lectures, founded by UK sportswear company Howies can be found at the link below - the 2009 talks are due to go on line in the next couple of weeks.

http://www.thedolectures.co.uk/

The Best Westerns thread below reminded me of this. CGI fight scenes my ****.

Recent tweets by Mr Armstrong highlight a taste in music that falls well within the remit of the massive, with recent mentions for Ray Lamontagne, Jose Gonzales, Elvis Perkins, Sufjan Stevens, Jeff Buckley, Iron & Wine, Neko Case, Miles Davis, Great Lake Swimmers, Garden State Soundtrack, Conor Obest, Ryan Adams, Pete Yorn, Calexico, Cat Power & Beth Orton.

Would be interested to know if there's another professional sports person with as Word-friendly an ipod playlist as that?

he's "in a hard time with money" and is having to flog ringtones via his tweets.

Is this the real Mr Waits? He is assuring followers that it is see -

http://twitter.com/tomwaits

One of Mrs Hermit's seasonal traditions is the purchase of the Christmas edition of Radio Times. And my annual tradition is to look through this in the rare hope BBC2 might have the Seven Samurai on at 01.30 on Boxing Day morning.

But in the process, I have to flick through what (for me at least) is the worst magazine in Britain, the reading of which is roughly akin to the chinese water torture that is listening to Steve Wright's "big show".

There's something about the RT's knowing style - and never using one adjective where three will do - that really gets my goat, though no doubt it's written with the target audience of middle England housewives (and not me)in mind.

Or am I just becoming the proverbial Grumpy Old Fifty Pound Guy?

And speaking of which, isn't a there are need for an econmic downturn version of the latter?

And while I'm on, isn't Gavin and Stacey now a case of the emperor's new clothes?

Given that coming out of the closet as a birder (feathered ilk) seems in vogue with the massive of late, it's worth flagging up my book of the year, which is as high a quality small-press publication as you will find anywhere, namely Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku.
See http://www.wingbeats.co.uk/the_book.html for more info

With intros by Mark Cocker and Stephen Moss, superb photos by Sean Grey and the best of the UK's haiku poets, what's not to like, like?

Further to my post back in August re Elliott Bristow's project to transfer his Road Dreams series screened on Channel 4 in the 1990's to DVD, the product is now available via his website:

http://www.retroroadtrips.com/

And having now watched the initial films, if you enjoyed Road Dreams, you'll enjoy this. Plan 73, here I come...

There's a link on today's BBC News website for a site to replay the

"Newsreaders sing Abba for Pudsey"

from the horror, the horror, that is Children in Need.

Oh Chris Morris, where art thou?

Nomination 1 - Lau

http://www.channel4.com/music/video/lau-live-hinba-acoustic-video.html

While wabi sabi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi is arguably the aesthetic for our troubled times, it's a quality in short supply in most of what passes for popular music.

But then you stumble across this...

Any other suggestions?

Does what it says, etc, etc...

There's more like this, together with updates on the project to put all of Elloit Bristow's Road Dreams films on DVD at

http://www.retroroadtrips.com/

And if the whole project isn't an article of interest to The Word demographic, I'm not sure what is...

For an interesting fusion of popular culture types, see the video for Hey Ya below done in the style of the tweenagers on-line dungeons and dragons alike of choice, Runescape. And a noob is a new player (or someone faking that they are a new player) apprently...