When is it too soon to start in pumping Obama speeches, around the clock, through those belly-attached speakers?And what happens if the mother prefers the music of Slayer and Napalm Death to Brahms and Beethoven?
Police like searching stoners. They rarely put up a fight, the intense paranoidia in those they pat down is good for giggles with other cops later, and stoners all but never pull knives or guns or start screaming and spitting in their faces.A New South Wales Police spokeswoman confirmed the drug operation was conducted in an area that included a nearby railway station and licensed premises near the theatre.
...six people were caught in possession of small amounts of cannabis.
The six were issued with caution notices. They were not fined nor charged.
Their material is appalling....That's why the audience made so much noise, and laughed so loud. Cheech & Chong should add that line on their tour poster.
Sure, I remember when a poster of a larger-than-life spliff was revolutionary and fun. But now a new young audience hoots and sings along, and takes pictures of each other in front of the tour logo, and queues at the end to buy the merchandise. What is going on here?They think Cheech & Chong are funny? They understand it's a joke? They know the difference between bitterly dreamed-out, rapidly aging ex-hippie boomers and two very successful stoners who sold millions of albums and crafted some of the most successful comedy movies in history?
He rode a mini-bar fridge down the side of a live volcano and then came up with a successful tourism business.I had heard of a tour offered by Bigfoot Hostel, which Darryn Webb, a tour guide from Australia, founded in 2005, when he was developing the sport on Cerro Negro.
He’d grown up sandboarding in Queensland, and once he visited the volcano (in Nicaragua) he realized its boarding potential. Here was a dunelike slope, only bigger and blacker, and with the added thrill of a potential eruption.
After a lot of trial and error with sledding vessels — he tried boogie boards, mattresses and even a minibar fridge — he settled on plywood reinforced with metal and augmented with Formica under the seat.
I’ve published this not to fluff my own feathers, but to further illustrate the stultifying group-think of the “intelligentsia”, and the institutional hurdles facing anyone who might challenge its favored myths and prejudices. Smug complacency rules too often, I’m afraid.People running second-hand bookshops are part of the "intelligentsia"? Really?
"This...is a real thing isn't it, still? That's a really big part of the culture, that if anybody seems to be getting above themselves, you cut them down to size really quick. It's very similar in Ireland. The old saying there was that it was the only place in the world where somebody would spend 20 minutes crossing a crowded room to come over and tell you you were a cunt."
Qantas had to take a plane out of service when baby snakes went missing from a package being carried in the cargo hold earlier this week.
Twelve baby pythons were in the cargo of a flight from Alice Springs to Melbourne on Tuesday, but on arrival only eight were left.
That goes right up there with the story an NT local told me about how crocodiles in the East Alligator River will lay extra eggs when food supplies are low, so they have fresh crocodile to eat later."Our people called in a reptile expert and there was a suggestion that some of the baby pythons had eaten the other pythons because apparently it is not uncommon for baby pythons to eat each other," he said.
"The courts have held, but his conduct shows he does not accept that the freedom of speech citizens of this country enjoy does not include the freedom to publish material calculated to offend, insult or humiliate or intimidate people because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin. It is conduct that amounts to criminal contempt."
Federal Judge Rules Against The Freedom To Insult And Offend
News Corporation has created a new unit to share content and resources across the vast media empire.This is not a news story. This is a Murdoch mission control press release. Less journalists will be generating more content which will be shared more widely across Murdoch media entities worldwide. More Australian Murdoch journalists will be marched away from their desks by security guards in the next few months. But you probably won't read about that in The Australian.
"Our focus moving forward is twofold: to enable our digital businesses to flourish as individual entities and to bolster the digital strategies of our core media properties by treating them as central to, and not separate from, the enterprise," Murdoch said.
"The creation of a new unit designed to share valuable news content and harness the power of News Corporation's vast editorial resources is vital to our success as a global media entity."
When Jan Griffith's beloved dog, Sophie Tucker fell overboard from her family's yacht she feared her pet had drowned.
But Sophie Tucker, a grey and black cattle dog, wasn't going to give up that easily.
The determined pet swam six miles through ferocious shark-infested seas to an island, where she survived for more than four months by hunting wild goats for food.
'I thought I'd never see her again, but she's proved to be a dog who can really look after herself,' said Miss Griffith.
A handful of people living on the island reported seeing a dog running around, but assumed it was a feral animal.
When the bodies of several young goats were found, locals contacted wildlife rangers and word of a dog on the island reached the ears of Miss Griffith and her family.
'We wondered whether it could be Sophie Tucker but thought 'No way'.
'They waited at the marina as the rangers' boat came in - and there in the cage was a grey and black dog.
'We called her name and she went crazy - whimpering and banging on the cage, so they let her out and she ran over to us and almost knocked us over with excitement,' Miss Griffiths said.
'She's settled in well back at home now. I think she's appreciating the air conditioning.'
Island locals are amazed that Sophie managed to survive the big swim through waters infested with sharks. Here's something I didn't know :
Sophie's story has the making of a great Australian children's movie. Let's hope someone here moves quick to get this fantastic tale onto cinema screens before an executive at Disney changes the dog's name to Ralphie and shifts the action to an Hawaiian island.'The smell of a wet dog is irresistible to a shark,' said a fisherman.
During this time the relations between the indigenous aboriginal population in the area was reasonably harmonious, the area being populated by the Dharug and Barkinung people who called the river Deerubbin.More Here
The natives treated the newcomers as welcome guests, teaching bush skills and assisting in the planting of crops, they did not realize that the whites intended to stay and claim ownership of the land. Property ownership was completely alien to the Aboriginal; one cared for the land, but did not own it any more than one could own the sky overhead or the air one breathed.
The convicts and their keepers were the dregs of English society and were a hard and ruthless bunch and unfortunately conflicts soon developed as the Aborigines were denied access to many of their traditional areas, with Yam beds destroyed as wheat and corn were planted on the river flats and the banks denied to them for fishing, their traditional foods.
There are recorded cases of Aborigines providing labor on farms in exchange for a share of the crop and then massacred rather than given their share. They, in turn retaliated by setting fire to the crops just as harvesting was due. Regulations were introduced prohibiting Aborigines entry to established farm areas again denying them their food supply.
One of the most hotly awaited Hollywood films of this year is State of Play, a political thriller starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck and Helen Mirren. It is an adapation of the widely acclaimed BBC television series, a complex tale of a journalist investigating the murder of an MP's researcher...
(Director Kevin) Macdonald explains why he wanted to turn this BBC mini-series into a far more compact, and less, complex, movie :
"I thought the crisis in newspapers was something to be explored; I love All the President's Men and, in fact, all films about journalism. I thought we could make the last film about newspapers before they die."
Russell Crowe stepped into the lead role with one week's notice, after Brad Pitt ditched the film, and quickly discovered that not all journalists are intrusive hacks who want to harass his wife and children.
Director Kevin McDonald on Russell Crowe :
"...we argued a lot about journalism. Russell thinks that almost all journalists act out of self-interest and that most journalism is deliberately misleading and inaccurate. That newspapers and journalists act from their own agenda. Which obviously partly comes from his experience of journalism and having his life reflected in newspapers."
In Macdonald's State of Play, Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) is part of a dying breed: the heroic, old-school journalist who relies heavily on sources and leads and takes time to find the real story. His method is challenged by Della Frye (Rachel McAdams), a bright young blogger who wants to post the Stephen Collins story online as it's still developing.
There are a number of other movies, mostly thrillers, coming out of the UK and Hollywood in the next two years that feature bloggers as 'agents of change' or key protaganists. Perhaps there will be a movie soon that follows what happens when an independent blogger has to face off against a massive media corporation who wants to get rid of some eyeball competition.
Supporters of Earth Hour like to talk about the important symbolism of the event in terms of climate change and suchlike. The deeper symbolism is of a rejection of progress - of the centuries of research and innovation that culminates in us being able to bring light by flicking a few grams of plastic.Andrew Bolt :
....Earth Hour proves that what threatens us is not so much global warming, but lousy journalism.Somehow, bizarrely, yet again, Bolt and Blair managed to completely forget to tell their readers that their own boss is the biggest backer of Earth Hour and Green Corporatism in the world today.
Asking us to turn off lights between 8pm and 9pm is a crusade by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
....as always a danger when newspapers take up campaigns. Suddenly they get tempted to report only stuff that pushes their agenda, and to ignore facts that don't...
FOX/News Corp. is supporting the 2009 Earth Hour - a global initiative in which millions of people around the world will cast a vote in favor of action on climate change by turning off their lights for one hour on March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm local time. By voting with their light switches, Earth Hour participants will send a powerful, visual message to their leaders demanding immediate action on climate change.News Corp, outside of its full-bore greenwashing, appears to understand that the purpose of Earth Hour is to encourage people to learn to conserve power and get back into the habit of switching off unused lights, just as our parents and grandparents did.All of News Corp.'s screens in in Times Square will go out for the occasion. And in a video to be shown at the Earth Hour opening ceremony in LA, several shows will be shown going 'lights out' - including American Idol, Bones, SPEED TV, Family Guy, and the sets of Good Day LA, FOX 11 News, and FOX Sports West.
And lots of other News Corp. businesses have pledged to participate, including News International (News of the World plans a 2-page feature), FOXTEL ("Let Your Actions Do the Talking" campaign), and STAR in Hong Kong and mainland China.
Join in and vote for action on climate change with your light switch.
Who wouldn't have cashed in and helped destroy the home values, savings and pension schemes of hundreds of millions of people around the world? Who wouldn't have cashed in and helped unleashed a firestorm of financial destruction that has deleted around $20,000 from the superannuation of millions of Australian families, and will force hundreds of thousands into unemployment?...Rudd’s characterisation of the global financial collapse as being driven by “unfettered free markets” is false itself. Where, for a start, did these unregulated, free-for-all, no oversight financial structures ever operate? Wall St?
Give me a break. The mortgage broking scams that were at the core of last year’s US market collapse evolved from a regulatory realm that effectively insulated them (for a time) from free-market forces.
Remember, the whole sub-prime mortgage debacle began with housing loans to people who weren’t well equipped to pay them off. The free market sees credit risks and mostly turns away; these clearly weren’t free-market decisions.
Investors sought involvement with the largest US mortgage brokers not because they were regulation-free but because they were government sponsored and therefore seen as less risky. It was a little like betting on a fixed (or even “fettered") race.
Admittedly, that’s when crazy fire-eyed capitalists cashed in. But, in such circumstances, who wouldn’t have? We’re talking about free money here.
