| | ||
|
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China | ChinaHush
via chinahush.com
Hard to see where to start with an Emissions Trading Scheme when you see the scale of pollution here. What is so shocking is the direct human health impact. Australias issues seem so trivial by comparison. Comparisons with the industrial revolution seem apt. At what point will China tackle some of these issues?
Monday, October 26, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Time Lapse of Breakfast on the Bridge in Sydney
Breakfast on the Sydney Harbour Bridge from Ben Grubb on Vimeo.
Dick Cheney eat your heart out.
Thanks Ben Grubb
The Australian Citizenship test - difficult stuff. - Natmandu's Posterous
Ha Ha. I have taken the test for real and passed. This looks a lot more tricky than the real test.
How to choose a religion: the flow chart - Holy Kaw!
How to offend a lot of people all at once.
Personally I think it is funny. Chill out religious nuts. It is a joke.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Cassetteboy vs Nick Griffin vs Question Time
via youtube.com
That is why I should be deported and everyone else can stay Ha Ha
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Maldives government holds underwater cabinet meeting - Telegraph
via telegraph.co.uk
Many citizens would be happy for their govenrments to do the same, without scuba gear. At least question time would be civilised.
BBC - Today - The death of language?
via news.bbc.co.uk
In 1992 a prominent US linguist stunned the academic world by predicting that by the year 2100, 90% of the world's 7,000 languages would have ceased to exist.Thanks @jennyeather
Far from inspiring the world to act, the issue is still on the margins, according to prominent French linguist Claude Hagege.
"Most people are not at all interested in the death of languages," he says. "If we are not cautious about the way English is progressing it may eventually kill most other languages."
According to Ethnologue, a US organisation that compiles a global database of languages, 473 languages are currently classified as endangered.
Seens everwhere you look dramatic change is taking place in the way we live. A homogenised world seems to be the most likely outcome as the human race pushes the earth to the limit.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
How the mighty are fallen The Decline of Newspaper Empires. Hello Rupert?????
via theage.com.au
Hello Duh?
Media empires have been giants in our lives, and in these early days of a new millennium shockwaves are being felt all around them. They now seem less agents of their destinies as helpless witnesses to the unravelling of all they once stood for.
The media Caesars of today seem largely out of solutions - and instead challenge reality by seeking to deny a revolution that has already taken place by attempting to use a power that no longer exists.
World Of Sport - Mick Mcmanus Vs. Catweazle (1975)
via youtube.com
Mick McManus made my Grandfather more angry than anything else. Wrestling was on every Saturday afternoon What a showman and what theatre.From The Guardian
It is not British wrestling per se that is undergoing a resurgence, but the fuzzy memory of it. No one these days wants to pay to watch a bunch of oddballs attempt a folding press or Boston crab, but the recollection of Saturday afternoons in the front room waiting for Final Score is distantly appealing to many people above the age of 30 (and probably hideously perverted to people below 30).
Watching Catweazle, Vic Faulkner, Pat 'Bomber' Roach and Rollerball Rocco now, three thoughts come to mind. First, what a strange world we must have lived in to have become worked up by the antics of these men. Second, it wasn't only grannies in the front row at Westcliff-on-Sea who got worked up, but grandfathers, too, many with unusually shiny foreheads. And third, I had forgotten how significant the role of the referee was: apart from Max Ward, who looked like Arthur Mullard, they tended to be tiny squits who were invariably hit 'by accident' when a wrestler ducked, and riled the crowd by missing some skulduggery inflicted while looking the wrong way.And as for Catweazle
Millions loved him and a minority of purists were infuriated by Doncaster’s Gary Cooper, who adopted the name of a fictional television character. With long straggly hair and unruly beard it wasn’t his looks that made Catweazle so popular. Arriving at the ring in sackcloth the wrestler would remove his robe to reveal a lanky body wrapped in a gaudy wrestling outfit. Having placed his lucky-charm toad on the corner post the match would commence with Catweazle literally running rings round, and generally humiliating his hapless opponent. For the most part the fans loved his antics and Catweazle was one of the most popular of wrestlers throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was a tribute to the man that he was selected by Dale Martin Promotions to oppose Mick McManus in the Londoner’s final televised bout. The wrestler’s untimely death and subsequent cremation led to the inauguration of the annual British Wrestlers Reunion.
He died in 1993
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Friendship Scottish Style Aye!
True Friendship... SCOTTISH STYLE!!
(None of that Sissy shite)
Are ye tired o those pish weak 'friendship' poems that always sound good, but never actually come close to reality? Well, here are a series o promises that actually speak of true friendship. You will see no cute wee smiley faces on this card .
Just the stone cold truth o a great friendship.
1. When ye are sad -- I will help you get pished and plot revenge against the bastard who made ye sad.
2. When ye are blue -- I will try to dislodge whatever is choking ye.
3. When ye smile -- I will know ye are thinking of something that I would probably want to be involved in.
4. When ye are scared -- I will take the pish oot o you every chance I get,
until you're NOT.
5. When ye are worried -- I will tell ye stories about how much worse it could be until YE STOP WHINING!
6.. When yer confused -- I will try to use only wee words.
7.. When ye are sick -- Stay the fuck away frae me until ye are well again.
I don't want whatever ye've got.
8.. When ye fall, I will laugh my fuckin heed aff at you, you clumsy arse,
........but I'll help you up.
9.. This is my oath.... I pledge it tae the end.
'Why?' you may ask;
Because you are my friend.
Friendship is like pishing your pants, everyone can see it, but only you can feel the true warmth.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
More Trampolining Madness From Oli Lemieux
via video.mpora.com
We moved our kids trampoline into the middle of the back garden. They have rediscovered their enthusiasm for it. Not sure they are quite up to this kind of high jinks, but it is excellent entertainment and exercise.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Out On A Limb « AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com
Video: Steve Bell on David Cameron: 'There's nothing much in there' | Politics | guardian.co.uk
via guardian.co.uk
With the Tories holding a huge poll lead in the latest poll, Brits are set to have a jellyfish like PM.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Photo Hunt: Sports
Playing sports is one thing, but getting an award at the end of the season is just as much fun. Ryan actually played on a winning team (well they won two games), having lost all his games last year. It was amazing how great he felt after all those losses. He played for another school this year because of lack of numbers at his school. He was one of the youngest, but still had a good time and improved his soccer skills.
photohunt![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f683b53d-3907-4263-8745-4e418cdc80c0)
Friday, October 09, 2009
Skywatch Friday
Just as the holidays ended, Hannah and Ryan discovered the joy of the shed roof. They created an open air cubby and sunbathed on the roof. Later on I found them at the top of the house roof enjoying the evening sunset. We have a great view from our balcony. Even better from the roof. The joys of explorations for kids of that age.
More sky pictures at the Skywatch Friday Site.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Class Warfare Alive and Well in the UK
via mirror.co.uk
David Cameron seen drinking champagne as Tories reveal spending cuts, wage freezes and pension cuts.
Not a good look.
Monday, October 05, 2009
Captain Les Fernandez Special Operations Executive Operative RIP
via telegraph.co.uk
Captain Les Fernandez - All around Action Man and Man of Action. RIP.
This kind of work makes James Bond a bit new age. The SOE agents made a big dent in Hitlers plan to occupy parts of Europe through ingenuity and specialised training.
In mansions that stretched from the Highlands to the New Forest SOE agents were taught how to kill with their bare hands; how to disguise themselves; how to derail a train; and even how to get out of a pair of handcuffs with a piece of thin wire and a diary pencil.
Fernandez saw his fair share of action starting with his first mission. After being dropped in behind enemy lines and after a few days reconnoitring the area, he organised regular supply drops of arms and explosives and met Cammaerts, the regional commander, who impressed upon him the importance of destroying the road over the Col de Larche.
By the end of August the weak detachment of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) in the area were faced with a considerable German force, and the local commander ordered a withdrawal. Fernandez, however, with the help of some partisans, set about filling a culvert under the road in the Col de Larche with explosives. It was a laborious task, but effective: the road was blown up and remained blocked for two years.
The work of the SOE is being recognised now over 60 years after much of their work was done. Even so most of the documentation associated with their work is still top secret.
Glad to do a little to recognise their work.
BibliOdyssey: Outer Space
Watching a documentary on Apollo 11 this weekend, I marvelled at how unsophisticated the technology was. The onboard computer was a little more sophisticated than a digital watch and all the computing power together was about the same as the PC that I am typing this on.
At the end one of the conclusions was that in todays world, the mission would never have been allowed. Too dangerous. Dangerous it was, but amazing example of human ingenuity.
Just as well they didn't use some of the designs developed by Karl Hans Janke.
Karl Hans Janke (1909-1988) graduated from high school and attended a technical college for a couple of years and studied dentistry although he didn't complete the course. He was drafted into the German army in 1940 where he was hospitalised on a number of occasions because of behavioural problems and was eventually discharged from the service on medical grounds in 1943.I think you have to be a bit mad to be as creative as he was.
By the late 1940s Janke was found to be malnourished and exhibiting increasingly eccentric behaviour and, after a short prison sentence and hospital assessment, he was committed to a psychiatric institution in Wermsdorf, Saxony in 1950 with a diagnosis of chronic paranoid schizophrenia. He remained at this facility for the rest of his life.
The institutional staff either encouraged or tolerated the passion Janke showed for sketching technical designs: he had his own "office" in the hospital in which he produced four thousand drawings and constructed hundreds of models of his "inventions". Apparently the boxes containing his works were stowed away at the hospital and forgotten after his death and weren't rediscovered until 2000 when the imaginative artistry and sheer enormity of his output was finally recognised.
Janke was, in his own mind at least, a serious engineer, intent on helping mankind by devising all manner of rocket ship (especially), space vehicle, ferry, bike, propulsion mechanism and associated transport system. His drawings range from simple prototype sketches to incredibly detailed schematics reminiscent of technical manual designs. He was an energetic correspondent with the patent office and various technological and aerospace type agencies and departments, endeavouring - without much luck - to share his inventions with his scientific "peers". Fearing theft of his intellectual property however, Janke was also assiduous in dating and signing his works with an accompanying statement declaring himself as the author and originator of each idea depicted.
It's an astonishing collection and, on casual perusal, might simply be regarded as an interesting and artistic obsession (like blogging?), albeit at the extreme end of the continuum. But the delusional nature of Janke's illness becomes readily apparent from closer inspection (and reading around). His elaborate and grandiose ideas about harnessing stellar atomic energy meld with naive conceptual visions for its applications and connections to nature and other lifeforms. He skips from a vague - to put it mildly - comprehension of the atom to designing end-point technical gizmos and transporters that will rely on his illusory power source. There is also a whole series of watercolour sketches outlining the origin of the world (including as a hatching egg), for instance, that hints at the breadth of eccentricity within Janke's deranged belief system.
I'm sure some people will consider Janke's thoughts and designs about futuristic transport to alien planets and odd energy sources to be visionary genius or prescient, with parallels in the modern world say, but they really are the product of deluded fantasies, no doubt helped along by photographs and schematics he saw in newspapers over decades that documented the evolution of rockets and satellites. This was a fellow who built a totally psychotic world in his own head - and he had no insight that it was from an illness - with only tenuous connections to reality; whose extraordinary artistic output wasn't so much a symptom as it was a documentary record of the nature and extent of his distorted thought patterns. That's not to say that his portfolio isn't brilliant in an 'outsider art' way. It is, of course. But any deeper meanings relate to aesthetic qualities or psychiatric disturbance and not to technological virtuosity.
Janke's works have been exhibited in both space art and psychiatric art exhibitions. The accompanying catalogues (linked below) have articles translated into English in which the authors speculate - perhaps wildly at times - about the probable background and origins of Janke's inspiration. One idea of particular note observes that Janke often backdated his designs and research to 1928 (he signs them with 1928-1956, for example) and the inference goes that 1928 was the year Fritz Lang released his sci-fi film, 'Woman in the Moon'*, (or at least, the year when the book it was based on was released; the film: 1929) which just might have been the trigger for Janke's life-long obsession with outer space creativity. Maybe.
"Janke went to great pains to emphasize that all his technological inventions and ideas were for the benefit of humanity and aimed towards propagating peace. In his final testament, he wrote: 'I ask you to keep the images and albums with the numerous drawings and models that I created for you humans.' "
Genesis 1 - LOLCat Bible Translation Project
1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.65
2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.
3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1
6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.7 An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.
via lolcatbible.com
Thanks Never Trust a HippySaturday, October 03, 2009
Chinese Commies Big Day Out - James Fallows
Happy 60th Birthday Communist China
A wonderful video summary from Dan Chung and Xiaoli Wang, of the Guardian, above, boils the many hours of the parade into four minutes -- and conveys the dramatic shift from tanks-and-missiles, to Mardi Gras/County Fair, at about time 1:55 of the clip.A lot more attractive than those 70s Russian Commie Parades.
As I mentioned in real time while watching the 60th anniversary festivities from Beijing on middle-of-the-night Chinese language TV, the whole event was a surprising relief. It had been shaping up ahead of time as a mammoth and imposing display of military hardware. The hardware and missiles were there -- but there was, to put it mildly, a lot of other stuff too.
As anyone watching in real time can attest, the appearance of this troupe was the first time that Hu Jintao, from the reviewing stand, broke into anything that looked like a relaxed expression:
What this picture (by Diego Azubel / European Pressphoto Agency) tragically doesn't convey is that members of scarlet-miniskirted division were actually goose-stepping.
Thanks James Fallows
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3a1e6971-d363-43e8-9cf2-4a499ceb68ed)
BibliOdyssey: Turkish Costumes
Beautiful prints of Ottoman costumes.
BibiOdyssey is a really interesting blog. Well worth a regular visit.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=789f46d6-f9ec-47c0-8b94-ecc459315bb4)
A Child is Born: Photographs of the foetus developing in the womb, by Lennart Nilsson - Telegraph
via telegraph.co.uk
Take over 40 years ago. Just amazing. Such innocence. How can we become so flawed later in life.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)