One thing I noticed was the absence of evening attire – the mens ties and suits were few and far between and the women even turned out as though for a picnic in the park. Why don’t people dress up any more?

The safety button has been at the centre of an embarrassing public row for Facebook, one of the world’s most popular social-networking sites, which resisted requests for a so-called panic button on all young people’s profile pages. The American company faced an unprecedented fusillade of pleas from Ceop, police chiefs, politicians, charities and campaign groups who supported its use.

I was looking some time back through some catalogues from camera stores and was amazed at how those things have changed over the years – and their prices too. These days a slide projector will set you back a few more dollars than when dad bought one depending on what you buy and what it does. We still have the projector screen that dad bought when mum stopped him pegging up her good white sheets for screenings but I’d kind of like to resurrect the traditional slide night as we have a collection of slides of our own from as recent as eight years ago. They sit in boxes at the moment but are well stored.

The best way to buy one these days is to have a look at a site featuring projector reviews as these machines have moved on in technology since the 60’s and 70’s – they range fairly broadly in price too so if you are wanting one just to show your holiday slides you’d not be wanting to spend too much money.

The new variety of titi monkey, which has the scientific name Callicebus caquetensis, is the size of a cat and has greyish-brown hair. What sets it apart from other types of titi monkey species is its lack of a white bar on the forehead. The find was announced by Conservation International, a group that helped finance the research in remote rain forests that until recently were considered too dangerous for scientific work due to the presence of leftist rebels

The research team, including professors Thomas Defler and Marta Bueno and student Javier Garcia, visited Caqueta in 2008 – three decades after Martin Moynihan, an animal behaviour expert, first caught sight of the species in the area.

Most families, years ago, had one of those medical encyclopaedias that sat on the bookshelf in the living room or study. If the kids came down with some strange rash Mum would run to the book and look it up but always head off to the doctor in the end.

I suppose the internet, with it’s seemingly endless store of information, has replaced the old family medical bible and this has proved to be a divine providence for some people. One lady suffered recurring miscarriages until she looked up her symptoms online and took her information to the doctor – she now has two healthy children. Another lady in the UK was desperate to find out what was causing her little girl’s sudden blackouts – scans and tests had not revealed the cause – she went online and after a few weeks of searching discovered the actual cause. Result…? her little girl is now receiving the treatment she needed and is doing well.

It seems that a ‘find-it-yourself cure can be found online so long as you are diligent and willing to put in the time to do the searching. Depending on what the condition is just a few keywords could suffice; then there are conditions which are very well served on millions of websites enabling people to stay up to date on new advances in treatments. Just for an example; those with recurring acne will be able to find a myriad of brands of best acne medication online these days – the words  will lead you to a host of solutions.

Just remember though, as informative as the internet can be, don’t forget that your doctor needs to be kept in the picture along the way.

Listeners are less likely to regard what the speaker says as truthful, and the problem increases with the strength of the accent, according to a study from the University of Chicago. To test the impact of accent on a person’s perceived credibility, participants were asked to judge the truthfulness of trivia statements by native or non-native speakers of English, such as: ‘A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel can.’ The researchers tried to minimise the effect of prejudice by telling participants the statements were prepared for the speakers, and were not based on their own knowledge.

But despite knowing they were simply reciting from a script, the participants judged as less truthful the statements coming from people with foreign accents. On a truthfulness scale prepared for the experiment, they gave native speakers a score of 7.5, those with mild accents 6.95 and those with heavy accents 6.84.

It must have been dreadful years ago when there was no effective treatment for asthma and children died very easily; in fact the Hollywood actor Robert Donat died of asthma aged in his 40’s. Thank god for modern day medicine.

Claims that an ancient text contains secret messages should normally be taken with a large pinch of salt.

Plato, who died around 347BC, is arguably the greatest of all the Greek philosophers. With his mentor Socrates, and student Aristotle, he laid down the foundations of Western philosopher and science.

Many of their friends are going on Disney vacations in the summer break and it seems our kids feel a bit left out by being the only one’s who have not yet been to visit Mickey Mouse. They have been to Portaventura in Spain though to see Woody Woodpecker – and that is where James cut his eye open on one of the slides.

So he purchases a device which is supposed to promote ‘growth’ – rather like what maxoderm does for men – and finds that it has not worked. He is in a phone box trying desperately to explain to the sales girl that ‘nothing is any bigger’. This is a classic scene in my opinion, only a minute or two but very funny