An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Good grief it’s well past sunrise and yet frist!
What the hell is going on with the Winter Olympics, leftists?
Only one gold and a silver for an “oi, oi, oi”.
Well behind Norway, for gods sake…
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/medals
…mind you, well ahead of The Virgin Islands, Tony.
Got the new ALDI catalog in the email and it’s chock-full of “cycling accessories”, you know, those fashion items so beloved by our Tone.
Looks like fetishist gear, bodylength “Compression Underwear” and Bib Pants.
Gotta discipline that sinful flesh, Tone. Whip it good.
Recently I watched the first series of the TV series Rome on DVD. (I’m sure it would have claccicists tearing their hair out at the historical inaccuracies, but it was quite fun.) Don’t judge it on the few truncated episodes broadcast late at night a few years ago by Ch. 9. It is R-rated,(for sex and violence) so it was cut to shreds on commercial TV. Anyway, worth a look at.
Tim Flannery’s thinks scientists aren’t clear in their communication of climate change. Yet what of the government’s obligation to communicate on such an important public issue, as they’ve done with swine flu and in the wake of the Black Saturday bushfires re better preparation?
Penny Wong’s speech at the Adelaide National Climate Forum, where Flannery also spoke, shows that strong communication by government on climate is possible, but needs to be broadcast in a full-scale public information campaign. That poses political problems for state and federal governments whose actions run counter to an effective climate solution, and for a national science communication strategy recently launched by Senator Kim Carr. Climate clarity needs to be matched with climate action.
Interested to hear where LP readers think responsibility should lie for effective communication on climate change, its impacts, and what should be done about it.
For cinema buffs a couple to consider this weekend: The Hurt Locker (despite John PIlger’s criticism) and Crazy Heart (pure country corn but Jeff Bridges shines).
@Paul Burns,
I’m only a hobby classicist, but I got a good chuckle out of the various conflations and anachronisms in the Rome TV series, plus of course they regurgitated slabs of Suetonius’ highly salacious muckraking gossip about various luminaries of the day. They did an excellent job on the costumes and sets though.
Wikipedia has a brief section on Rome‘s historical deviations, and IIRC there is more detail on deviations in the individual Wikipedia episode guides.
tigtog @ 7,
Indeed. Thanks for that. I’m looking forward to series 2, which I hope I can afford to buy next pension cheque. Apparently its a bit rushed near the end.
It is quite a hoot, isn’t it? Far better than Caligula or Ben-Hur and but below I, Claudius, I reckon. About equal to Cleopatra (which I really liked, btw.)
I went to see Yo La Tengo last night….it’s the second gig in the space of a month at Fowlers where the PA has had problems. The Dirty Three did some rearranging of amps and then went with the flow, Yo La Tengo went acoustic…they are good at playing acoustic, but, after an extremely exhausting week at work, the cruisy and melodic sweetness meant that I suffered from extremely droopy eyelids. I feel a little bit disappointed because the electrified portion of the set was mesmerising. I see Dinosaur Jr at the same venue next month, here’s hoping the PA curse doesn’t plague that show.
I saw Avatar yesterday too, possibly one of the most trite films I’ve ever seen. “unobtanium”..?..for fucks sake! We nearly had to leave during the ‘poignant’ death scene, we were laughing so hard. What a dreadful film.
I think Joseph Campbell has a lot to answer for…..but at least George Lucas gave his woo-woo-waa-waa Jedi stuff some dignity and humour, the Na’vi however are more ‘avatars’ of some collected indigenous identity than the ridiculous Worthington character. I remember in the early days going to Womadelaide, and seeing some kid walking around with a South Park t-shirt that said, “what a load of hippy crap” on it….Avatar even trumps Womad in that regard, although at least they weren’t selling dodgy lentil burgers at the cinema.
On my early morning walk this morning it was sunshine and clear skies instead of yesterday’s cloud and the expected but now not-to-be rain. Never mind, Freo is wonderful in any weather and today sunflowers were out everywhere smiling and seemingly happy about the flocks of pink galahs feeding off them.
Cornflower blue plumbago is all over the place, even rampant on one block of old cottages built almost to street line and where the nature strip generally serves for front gardens. Though right in the middle some johnnie-come-latelies have cleared their section and paved it with sharp white tiling so they can park their sleek new cars. Very harsh and out of keeping. Re-cycled bricks at least would have been softer and ultimately weathered.
Tacker was a few yards away at one stage when suddenly I heard a hidden car start up in a driveway in front of him. Before I could call out I saw him already sitting stock still, waiting for the car to back out and for me to catch up. Of course I couldn’t praise and pat him enough but for once he didn’t roll over and ask for more. He just looked at me as if to say, “Of course I sat. D’you think I’m some kind of dumb animal!”
Darren @5
I’m sure if Tim F tried harder he could be clear and accurate, too. He plays pretty fast and loose with climate change science, sometimes. Gore is better.
furious balancing @ 9,
Coulda been buckwheat burgers. Now, they really are inedible.
Love this paper that just came out, which points to adolescent overconsumption of sugar with a messed up reward system in the brain – diminishing the rewards in the adult for sweet and energy-rich food but leaving the motivation for things like cocaine intact… making cocaine relatively more attractive. The authors suggest other psychopathologies linked with messed-up rewards circuits in the brain could be affected… gambling being one of those.
The healthy eating lobby could have a field day with this.
gee the Golden Compass is a good movie of its kind, just watched the DVD with the kids…i can’t stand Kidman but thats ok with this as she’s the evil mother….pity the catholics stopped the sequels..its almost a s good as a Series of Unfortunate Events…of which kids and I eagerly await any further parts…..
PB @ 12…tell me about it. Due to a friends recent Coeliac [sp?] diagnosis, I had to suffer through buckwheat pancakes on shrove tuesday…luckily I have access to an unendless supply of blackberries at the moment, which lessened the offense of the cardboard pancakes slightly.
Tomorrow I have to go and perform another of my Ikea assembling miracles for my Mum. This will be my second miracle in the space of a month and still the Pope ignores my work.
Furious @ 9, the Dirty Three were in Adelaide? Fuck! Why wasn’t I told?
fb@19, but he’s sent Saint Mary McKillop to be with you, my son! Who knows, with two miracles in succession you too could be in line for elevation. Seriously, sounds as if you’re already being a saint with your mum.
Who’s picking your blackberries, anyway? Yum. If you need recipes garvick.com has plenty.
The canonization of Mary McKillop is just one in the very long list of frauds perpetrated by the Catholic Church. The true believers may rightly adore her for her caring for the poor and underprivileged, but these things have nothing to do with her canonization. She is being canonized solely for her purported supernatural power to heal cancer from the grave. She never had this power in life, so why should she have it in death? There is no evidence for survival after death anyway, and the idea that any person dead or alive can cure cancer by magical means is just preposterous.
Some of the media are touting this as a great day for Australia, bit in reality it is a setback for science. It gives cancer sufferers false hope, and worse still, leads them away from the the only true hope they have for recovery, which is scientific medicine.
Silkworm,
What narrowness of soul. I couldn’t give a stuff about Mary McKillop one way or the other, but if my Catholivc friends want to have a big party, let ‘em. And without complaint.
Patricia, I am lacking the requisite Y chromosome to be, even in a figurative sense, a son of the Pope.
I picked a few of the blackberry myself, after work, and took them to mum’s, and then [hehe] call me Tom Sawyer! if she didn’t request the opportunity to come and pick some blackberries, so you could say that the Ikea miracle is just payment for the several kilos of blackberry that now reside in my freezer.
Silkworm, I grew up in MacKillop country and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t hallucinating on the mushrooms that grow in the many pine forests of the region, when a vision of Sister Mary came to me, she was speaking words of wisdom when she said, “ditch the hexagonal key, those who are ignorant pursue that route, seek instead the cordless electric screwdriver”. Amen.
Ssshh, don’t tell them that — there are far too many interstate maniacs in quest of stimulants on the Riddoch Highway as it is.
Oh and sorry to David Irving [nr], you missed a great gig by the D3. As well as playing the Laneway festival, they are out doing one of the All Tomorrows Parties Tours where they play a classic album from beginning to end…I think they did Ocean Songs…or Horse Stories..???..not sure….anyhow for some reason, Adelaide didn’t get one of those shows, so they mostly just played requests. Warren was in good raconteur form too, which is always entertaining.
For future reference, this gig guide seems to be pretty good:
http://www.thedwarf.com.au/nd/whatson/adelaide
I like it because it includes the Wheaty, Grace Emily and other small venues like Jade Monkey etc.
Paul, I appreciate your kindness and positivity, but superstition does cause harm.
Still, it’s an ill woo which woos no one any good. Some mates of my SO’s at a studio round the courner have had a miniature for a commisioned bronze casting of a statue of Mary McK for some time ready to go. Now that she’s been canonised they will be flat chat filling all the orders for the full sized item.
Godless arty-farties waxing fat on McKillopmania! Stick that in your budgie smugglers, Tony!
Pavlos Cat, you are right, the pilgrims do seem a tad erratic, I always thought it was the Cab Sav, but maybe it is the ‘shrooms.
@ PB and tigtog
I’m a classicist (well a postgraduate student thereof). While Rome does indeed stray in its historical detail, and its rather truncated timelines, I felt that the texture of the series depiction of daily life (series one, anyway) was fairly accurate.
Let me just say that Tony Abbott is a very clever politician.
Pander to your base, safe in the knowledge you won’t ever have to act on it.
Just back from the Opera House from a performance of Mahler 8. Huge +500 performers including the girlchild. Am totally proud mama tonight. I didn’t know who Mahler was at aged 12, let alone singing his frigging choral symphony.
It’s ah, interesting when your children start doing stuff that you can’t or haven’t. This isn’t the first time, but she is starting to rack up quite a few things that Mum hasn’t/can’t/didn’t. I think this means I’m doing a good job and that the apron strings while always still there are now stretching across cities and across states on occasion, they will be the thinnest gossamer stretching round the globe in just a few short years..*sniff sniff*.
I’ve just returned from installing daughter No 1 in Melbourne for her first year at university. After having witnessed an orientation day at International House, I can report that I am now fully convinced that there is a previously undefined human hormone which I have momentarily dubbed “Enthusosterone”. This hormone has the effect of producing wildly excessive exuberance in young adults. Enthusosterone appears to be equally effective in both males and females, as I witnessed today in the welcoming team for new enrolees, but its effect appears to decay fairly rapidly in males with the repeated carrying of heavy loads.
In the relentless search for scientific knowledge I’d be keen to hear of any other’s observations which might add to a better understanding of this suspected new substance and its effect on human behaviour.
There is a good article over at Overland, by Trish Bolton, about the sad state of The ABC and it’s reliance on the likes of Andrew Bolt. It comes complete with interesting comments from a rep of Friends of The ABC who want people to let the organisation know how they feel.
http://web.overland.org.au/?p=3807
Thanks, St Furious! I generally only ever hear about things when it’s one of my mates drumming up an audience. (Last of which was an excellent night of ska at the Squatters Arms about a month ago.)
Motoring Safety advisors appear to have not even seen the opportunity to use the Comcar vs Semi near miss the other day to teach one of the important aspects of Defensive Driving.
While the Comcar driver probably broke no laws with the action of stopping in the center of a main highway while waiting for oncoming traffic before executing a turn into a farm driveway, I question the sensibility of doing so.
Surely the Comcar has rearview mirrors, and its driver should have seen that there was a small bus approaching the Comcar from behind. The driver would probable also be able to see the Semi, as it is so much bigger than the small bus which was in front of it. One part of the Defensive Driving style is to attempt to not place yourself in a position of possible danger, so a Defensive Driver would not have stopped in the center of the road, the better choice would have been to pull over to the left, and wait out of the path of traffic until the road was clear, then execute the turn into the driveway.
Perhaps the Semi driver was travelling a bit too close to the bus, and therefore was the cause of the near miss. Just like Airplane crashes seem to be the end result of a series of events so was this event. If the Comcar driver had not been stationary in the center of a 100 kmh highway, there would have been no near miss event.
I just discovered this extraordinary singer and after thrashing the YouTube for wees, embedded on another site (H/T Echidne) clicked through to YT itself and discovered she’s no longer living.
(
RIP to Eva Cassidy and Ruby Hunter.
For weeks, not for wees. Sheesh.
“thrashing the YouTube for wees” wouldn’t be fruitless though, by any means.
I could link, but… y’know.
Peter Martin reports that Godwin Grech’s house is on the market.
Looks like Godwin had a pronounced penchant for the Napoleonic. Perhaps that may explain his dedication to Malcolm Turnbull.
The realtor’s blurb gushes “the love and attention to detail will become evident”.
I wonder if all those clocks were synchronised to chime simultaneously. Godwin’s dining room sound like the climax of Charles Laughton’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame”.
Fuck me! Is Godwin Grinch a secret admirer of Paul Keating or something, Katz? That’s a hell of a lot of clocks. (And they’re all ugly.)
Nah, Keating’s clocks are neo-classic gems.
Looks like Godwin’s tastes were formed while watching Disney’s “Pinocchio”.
Indeed, Godwin himself bears an uncanny resemblance to Jiminy Cricket.
“looks like Godwin had a pronounced penchant for the Napoleonic. Perhaps that may explain his dedication to Malcolm Turnbull.”
ha!
Thought I’d mention I saw Bran Nue Dae, and it was the perfect antidote to Avatar. Great fun.
I’ve not seen Keating’s Clocks, Katz.
My own taste is more to the rather plain Georgian clocks like my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather clock that graces my living room (fucken thing’s only 230 years old, and the escapement’s fucked already. Keeps stopping. Nice oak case, but.) and pocket watches. I don’t much care for French clocks.
Harsh but fair assessment of Gordon Grinch’s appearance (and truthiness), btw.
Happened to catch Julia Gillard on the National Press Club Address today and I am a huge fan. Listening to Jules answering questions from snarky journalists trying to *gotcha* her was the best fun I’ve had for months. Unfortunately no transcript is available at this time but a repeat is ,I believe , on for the 25th at 3.30 pm if the runaround I’ve ploughed through has delivered an accurate guide.
The support for a journalist from another organization by Chris Uhlmann during questions, exposed his all round support for anti Government reporting.
One after another the News gang were made to look like errant school kids as they attempted to look and sound intelligent and across the subject matter. Almost without exception Julia answered the questions put, by demolishing the snarky inferences, and reminding the questioners that had they listened carefully to her address, no question would have been necessary.
Zorronsky @ 40 I dread the day that Kerry O’Brien retires and Uhlmann get his job.
Does the ABC lurch to the right come from the top, i.e. if Scott were to go would things change for the better?