Cross-culturalism set to music!

This is the first post I've made purely to share a link, but despite all the financial doom and gloom, this will put a smile on anyone's face:

The video was taken at a local festival in a remote area of northern Australia, and to quote from an ABC news item when it was published in October 2007, 

"A group of traditional dancers from Arnhem Land has become a sudden smash hit on the internet, with their unique interpretation of Zorba the Greek.

The 10 Yolngu dancers on Elcho Island have decided that dancing is the ideal antidote to unemployment.
Their Zorba dance has gone around the world, and even been screened in a public square in Greece.
The offers are now coming in for the group to perform at music festivals.

They are called the Chooky Dancers, a group of young men and boys from Elcho Island, and their interpretation of the Greek Zorba is taking the internet world by storm."

Since then, they have even performed on a televised talent show and at the normally staid Art Gallery of NSW (although I notice they were more decorously dressed for that appearance).  Apparently there is also an invitation to perform in Greece, where the video has proved very popular, confirming that weighty subjects like international relations and indigenous culture can be light-hearted too.

Trivia: Elcho Island was the inspiration for a very popular mainstream song a few years ago, called "My Island Home", which was sung by Christine Anu at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

ODP/DMOZ lives!

To quote a famous Australian poet:

"There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around "

A post has been made in the Official ODP Blog, after a worrying 4 month silence broken only by the clamour of spammers using the unmoderated comments to promote their worthless sites.  This was a very poor indication of the interest shown by AOL in the volunteer-edited directory which Google used to recommend to webmasters.

However, to misquote a slightly less famous person: 

"They like us. They really like us!"

Not only did they acknowledge the work done by so many volunteers in building up the impressively extensive non-English part of the directory, but they alluded once again to exciting changes which are still "just around the corner" 

..... as indeed they were in March, 

........... and confirmed by the Editor-in-Chief at the birthday celebrations in June.

Yes I'm afraid I have to admit that when it comes to guesstimating the completion date of long-promised improvements, AOL sounds like it's relying on council workers. ;-)