Anthony Stewart Head (born 20 February, 1954) is an English actor and musician who has appeared in theatre, television and movies. He is most well known for his role as Rupert Giles in the American television drama series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", as the Prime Minister in the British comedy show "Little Britain", as Dr. Frank N Furter in the London revival of "The Rocky Horror Show" and for a series of coffee adverts in the United Kingdom and the United States. He is credited by his full name on American television, and sometimes as Tony Head elsewhere.
Uluru
Uluru, also called Ayers Rock, is a name given to a huge rock near Alice Springs in the Australian Outback and located in Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park. This is a holy place for Australian aborigines. It is in the Western Desert, in the middle of Australia. It was listed as a World Heritage site in 1987 because of its geology. In 1997 it was again listed as a World Heritage site, this time because of its importance to the Anangu people. It was the second place in the world to be listed as culturally significant, and it is one of the few places in the world to have two listings.
The Anangu people believe that Uluru, and the rest of Central Australia, was formed by ancestral beings at the beginning of time. The Anangu are directly descended from these ancestors.
Modern science shows that they have lived around Uluru for more than 40,000 years. They continued to live their traditional life until the 1930s. This was a nomadic life, moving around to hunt and gather food according to the seasons. They have a complex ceremonial life based around Uluru. They are one of the oldest human societies on earth.
The first Europeans to see Uluru were explorers led by William Christie Gosse. He saw Uluru on 19 July 1873 and named it Ayers Rock after Sir Henry Ayers, who was Chief Secretary of South Australia. The land was too dry and remote for farming, and very few people came to Uluru until the mid 20th century.
See geography of Uluru and Kata Tjuta.
Elapid
The Elapidae, or elapids, are a family of venomous snakes. These snakes can be found in tropical and subtropical regions around the world. They can also be found in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. They are characterized by a set of hollow, fixed fangs through which they inject venom. There are snakes of different sizes, from only 18 cm ("Drysdalia") up to 6 m in length ("King Cobra"). Currently, 61 genera with 231 species are known.
Those elapids that live on land look a lot like the colubrids: almost all have long and slender bodies with smooth scales, a head that is covered with large shields and not always distinct from the neck, and eyes with round pupils. In addition, their behavior is usually quite active and most are oviparous. There are exceptions to all these generalizations: For example, the death adders ("Acanthophis") include short and fat, rough-scaled, very broad-headed, cat-eyed, live-bearing, sluggish ambush predators with partly fragmented head shields.
Some species spend most of their lives in trees or bushes; this is called arboreal (African "Pseudohaje" and "Dendroaspis", Australian "Hoplocephalus"). Many others are specialised burrowers (e.g. "Ogmodon", "Parapistocalamus", "Simoselaps", "Toxicocalamus", "Vermicella"). Some species have very generalised diets. Others have specialised on a certain kind of prey. They have also adapted themselves, to better be able to feed on other snakes, certain lizards, squamate eggs, mammals, birds, frogs, fish, etc.
Sea snakes, which are also elapids, have adapted to a marine way of life in different ways. All have evolved their tails so they can be used for swimming. They can also excrete salt. Most also have changed bodies, better suited for swimming. Ventral scales are much smaller, the nostrils of the snakes are located dorsally and without scales between them. They give birth to live young (ovoviviparous). In general they have the ability to breathe through their skin; experiments with the yellow-bellied sea snake, "Pelamis platurus", have shown that this species can satisfy about 20% of its oxygen requirements in this manner. This makes it possible to stay underwater longer. The sea kraits ("Laticauda sp. "), are the least well-adapted to an aquatic life. They spend much of their time on land where they also lay their eggs (oviparous). They have wide ventral scales, the tail is not as well-developed for swimming, and their nostrils are separated by scales.
All elapids have a pair of proteroglyphous fangs that are used to inject venom from glands located towards the rear of the upper jaws. The fangs are the first two teeth on each maxillary bone, which are enlarged and hollow, and usually only one is in place on each side at any time. The maxilla is intermediate in length and mobility between typical colubrids (long, less mobile) and viperids (very short, highly mobile). When the mouth is closed, the fangs fit into grooved slots in the buccal floor; in the longest-fanged elapids (e.g. "Acanthophis", "Oxyuranus") it is common for the fangs to pierce right through the intermandibular skin, which does not seem to endanger the snake. The fangs are usually below the front edge of the eye and are angled backwards; due to this construction, most elapids must actually bite in order to envenomate. This action is therefore not as quick as with the viperids, that can envenomate with only a quick, stabbing motion. Some elapids ("Acanthophis", "Oxyuranus", and especially "Dendroaspis") have long fangs on quite mobile maxillae (the prefrontal and ectopterygoid contacts are nearly as close together as in viperids), and can therefore make very fast stabbing strikes like viperids. A few species are capable of spraying their venom from forward facing holes at the tips of their fangs as a means of defense. Elapids use their venom both to immobilize their prey and in self-defense.
All elapids are venomous and many are potentially deadly. The venoms are mostly neurotoxic and are considered more dangerous than the mainly proteolytic viper venoms. Members include the black mamba ("Dendroaspis polylepis"), a species many regard as the world's most dangerous snake, the fierce snake ("Oxyuranus microlepidotus"), which is the most venomous land snake to mice, and "Hydrophis belcheri", a sea snake and the most toxic venom of all snakes.
Colubrid
A colubrid (from Latin "coluber", snake) is a snake that is a member of the Colubridae "family". Colubridae is the largest snake family, and includes about two-thirds of all known living snake species. However, colubrids are "certainly not a natural group", and many are more closely related to other groups, such as elapids, than to each other. This family has classically been a dumping ground for snakes that do not fit anywhere else. There is on-going mitochondrial DNA research which will sort out the familial relations within this group.
A colubrid's body is almost completely covered in scales. Most colubrids are not venomous and are normally harmless. A few groups, such as genus "Boiga", can produce medically significant bites. In addition, the Boomslang and African twig snake have both caused human fatalities. The venom-injecting fangs associated with venomous colubrids are almost always in the back of the mouth, in contrast to vipers and elapids.
Central Finland
Central Finland, "Keski-Suomi", is a region of Finland with about 270,000 inhabitants. Neighbouring regions are Pirkanmaa, Southern Ostrobothnia, Central Ostrobothnia, Northern Ostrobothnia, Northern Savonia, Southern Savonia and Päijänne Tavastia.
There are 27 municipalities in Central Finland. Cities and towns are marked in bold.
Sea snake
A Sea snake, or "coral reef snake", is a venomous elapid snake. They live in marine environments for most or all of their lives. At present, 17 genera are described as sea snakes, with 62 species.