It May Never Be Fashionable, But It May Save Your Life

When I was a kid, a $5 flanno from Woolies was all you needed to stay warm through an average Western Sydney winter's night of generally running amok. Scarves? Wimp. Gloves? Nancy. Jumpers? Pah.

Apparently the remarkable anti-freeze properties of the basic flanno can still offer life-saving chilly weather protection well in old age :

Search crews say they are "thrilled" and amazed that a 71-year-old man wearing just track pants and a flannelette shirt has been found safe and well after three cold, wet nights lost in the bush.

Bruce "Dick" Ludbrook, 71, who suffers mild dementia, got lost in dense scrub north of Wollongong during his regular afternoon bushwalk on Tuesday.

The fit former coal miner - who was used to walking long distances - endured pouring rain and bitterly cold weather before being found today by a group of motorcyclists near Mt Ousley.

Dr Giordian Fulde, St Vincent's Hospital emergency director, said Mr Ludbrook was "very, very lucky" to have survived his ordeal and risks like hypothermia.

"Somebody being out in flannelete shirt and trackdacks should get into trouble," he said.

The risks for Mr Ludbrook were even higher because maintaining body warmth was even more difficult for the elderly, he said.

Dr Fulde believed Mr Ludbrook's regular long walks would have been crucial to his survival.

Okay, maybe it wasn't just the flanno that saved him from hypothermia. Some credit must go to his fitness level. Ironically, the same wet weather that could have killed through a heart attack brought on by hypothermia supplied the water that stopped the also very dangerous risk of dehydration.

Dr Fulde believed that in order to survive, Mr Ludbrook must also have sought shelter from the rain to keep warm and drunk water from sources in the bush, such as rainwater puddles.

"I think he must have done something sensible," he said. "The most important thing to human beings is water - you can go quite a few days without food but you can't go a long time without water."

A pretty remarkable survival story. It could have easily had a tragic ending.

I've written a bunch of new stories recently over at Your New Reality :

Iran : A New Reality Dawning Fast And Hard

"There Are A Lot Of People Who Lie, And Get Away With It"

How To Kill Bloggers : Take Away Their Anonymity

Richard Nixon On Drugs

A Robot With "Predictive Powers" Will Be Able To Anticipate A Human Being's Reaction To Just About Anything

An American President Manages To Make An Entire Speech In The Middle East Without Using The Words 'Terror" Or "Terrorists" - "Extremists", However, Sure Did Get A Workout

That Freaking Old Hippie Raised HOW MUCH?

By Darryl Mason

There's something much scarier for the Liberal Party than imagining a future without Peter Costello.

It's this :

Senator Brown's so-called Wielangta forest fund had already raised $739,000....

Bob Brown announced, after losing a legal battle against a logging corporation, that if he was unable to pay more than $240,000 in court costs he could face being expelled from the Senate. In less than a week, Brown raised more than three times that figure through thousands of donors.

The Liberals couldn't raise $739,000 through donors that fast, even with a series of dinners starring John Howard and Peter Costello

No wonder the Liberals are so pissed :

Liberal senator Eric Abetz has accused Greens leader Bob Brown of misleading the public over claims he was approaching bankruptcy and could have been expelled from the Senate.

Senator Brown was more likely to be "ethically bankrupt'' than genuinely bankrupt, Senator Abetz said.

"Clearly the senator does not abide by the same accountability rules he so self-righteously insists being imposed on everybody else.''

The Greens leader must now disclose all amounts he has received, when he received them, to whom they were paid and how much money was involved, Senator Abetz told the upper house.

"Be accountable. Immediately disclose to the Senate ... exactly how much your fund raised prior to last week's appeal and disclose and substantiate your progressive and personal legal costs.''

And Bob Brown will do it. They've got nothing on him. It's one of the reasons why Liberals like Abetz hate him so much.

Brown is too clean, too honest, with too little, or nothing at all, to hide.

The Liberals have spent a lot of money over the years trying to get dirt on Brown that they can use against him in the media, or behind the scenes. And they found fuck all.

Abetz is making himself look like a jealous, petty arsehole, while providing Bob Brown with yet another opportunity to show why he is one of the most honest, respected, and quietly admired, politicians in the country.

The Harsh Online Reality For The Corporate Media Is That There Simply Isn't Enough Commenters To Go Round

By Darryl Mason

As I've said here before, probably a bit too rudely, this blog doesn't exist for the sake of comments. It doesn't matter to me whether there's 0 comments or 26, the posts will still be written and published.

But what if your online media business model, your basic plan for profitability, relied deathly on having dozens or hundreds of commenters spilling their thoughts and opinions on every story or opinion piece posted on your website?

The Murdoch Online Experience has already launched The Punch, and now, as Mumbrella reports, Fairfax are going to have their shot at creating an online aggregator site for its stable of digital newspapers, with a steady stream of commenters being seen as essential to push those daily hits into the five and six digit page view counts that advertisers like to see.

Unlike The Punch, however, who've made the effort to recruit writers who aren't already writing for other Murdoch media, The National Times is expected to fill itself out with opinion pieces already published elsewhere in Fairfax's digital newspapers.

As usual, I found it easier to put my thoughts together on this while commenting at another blog. So here's the comment I left at Mumbrella :

The Punch has had some interesting columns so far, but nothing that has set fire to the comments boards. It seems overall quite safe and pedestrian. For now at least. Nothing controversial, nothing that you don't already see in mainstream newspaper columns and op-eds. If the aim is too have a "national conversation", the convo has been damn quite with most posts in the past week pulling 0 to 6 but rarely 10 or more comments.If people who visit can't be arsed to comment, why will they want to eventually pay for it?

A huge turnover in comments, in the hundreds for each or most posts, is what The Punch needs to ramp up the hits, obviously. But how are they going to do that? Where is that hardcore crowd of a few hundred who will burn up the boards like they do at Piers Akerman's or Andrew Bolt's blog going to come from? .

The problem, as Fairfax will soon find out, is that there are a limited number of Australians who bother to comment on any story or column or blog post anywhere online, particularly when the content is centred around politics or culture or news events.

Even if you do like to comment on what you're reading, there are so many places to do so elsewhere, from Facebook to YouTube to Twitter to ten thousand more fun to read and riotous blogs elsewhere in the world.

The Punch has discovered that regular commenters for blogs and news sites that aren't stirring up racism and xenophobia and general hate, or raging about Israel and Palestinians, are pretty thin on the ground in Australia.

There might even be as few as three or four thousand in Australia who will write comments on local political/cultural blogs and news sites most days, as a habitt, not including those who are paid to professionally comment by PR companies and political parties.

There's no shortage of places to Have Your Say on Australian blogs and news sites now, but there is most definitely a shortage of normal everyday Australian commenters. The Punch now knows this, the National Times will most likely learn that too, very soon.

There are a few good free ways for corporate media sites like The Punch and National Times to pull quality and volume-high comments to their sites, but why give away good ideas like that?

Australian Troops Have Shot, Killed Dozens Of Civilians In Iraq & Afghanistan

According to this story, more than $350,000 has been paid out by the Australian government to Iraqi and Afghan families who've had family members killed or wounded by soldiers :

Dozens of non-combatants have been shot by Diggers since the Iraq campaign began in April 2003.

Rapid "act of grace" payments can prevent revenge attacks. Defence refuses to divulge how much is paid to each family but has told The Daily Telegraph $126,442 had so far been paid out to Afghani families.

The amount covers more than 20 individuals for an average of about $6000 each. The overall figure for Iraq is $216,417 for about 10 incidents and could climb before Australia's combat involvement in Iraq finally ceases next month.

The Full Story Is Here

If It's Not Swine Flu, Then What The Hell Is Going On?

By Darryl Mason

Why are so many people having so much trouble breathing normally?

The president of the Australian Medical Association Victoria, Harry Hemley, said doctors had been overwhelmed with people suffering respiratory infections in recent weeks.

"I would say about one-third of the population has some sort of upper respiratory infection right now, but I can't say how many of those have swine flu," he said.

So if it's not swine flu, and pollution levels in Australian cities are not causing this, then what is responsible?

The Australian government likes to boast about its 'one of the best in the world' stockpile of anti-virals, gloves and facemasks, but it seems reluctant to let them go to the front line Australians who need them the most :

Dr Hemley said many GPs had been exposed to the virus while caring for patients because protective equipment released from the Federal Government's stockpile had not yet arrived.

More than 1500 Australians are officially categorised as having been infected with Influenza A H1N1 by Monday morning, but the real figure is expected to be many thousands more.

The New Flu has already spread so far and wide across Australia that Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, has announced they're bailing on widespread testing and hardcore quarantine measures. They're not going to stop the spread, they know it, as the American Centre For Disease Control knew and admitted more than a month ago. Quarantining rugby league players and cruise ships was just "buying some more time", no time at all as it turns out.

The Great Hope that the Rudd government will sell this week instead is the August release of a supposed vaccine against swine flu. Well, a vaccine against the swine flu virus that is rapidly spreading now, and it may well mutate further by the time August rolls around, which would render the prepared vaccine not so effective, or downright useless.

Those with pre-existing health conditions, children and the elderly are expected to be the more likely to suffer seriously from the New Flu, though many of the deaths already reported from the virus in the US and Mexico seem to centre around people aged between 5 and 30 years old.

Nicola Roxon said that infected Australians who were now in intensive care were mostly those who were already suffering "respiratory illnesses."

And doctors are reportedly overwhelmed with "people suffering respiratory infections".

So, you have all these people apparently already suffering from respiratory problems while a fast-spreading previously unknown influenza virus seems to be hitting the hardest those already having trouble breathing normally.

It's a hell of a way for a country to head into Winter, and its peak flu months.

We are now only entering the second week of a new pandemic reality, one that may take 18 months to two years or more to unfold.

While the Rudd government will try to be seen as doing Everything It Can, the curious new influenza strain will do whatever it's going to do, mostly unhindered, for the next few months at least, by vaccines and containment measures.

How do you go to war against something that can spawn three generations of itself in under 60 seconds?

If you can't get your hands on pharmaceutical anti-virals, star aniseed is better than nothing, and some would argue far better in fact than the side-effect addled Tamiflu.

Who Can We Ban Next?

You can imagine the NSW government will be very happy with the first headline from this Daily Telegraph graphic. The bottom line? Not so much.



If the NSW government, as this story claims, really does end up spending $4 billion or so on local businesses for government contracts that would have previously ended up overseas, then it's obviously good news.

But do you think they really had a choice?

The NSW Liberals and independents, along with the unions, would have been hammering Labor all the way to the next election if they still allowed police and fireys uniforms to be made overseas while local clothing manufacturing is hitting the skids.

As for NSW Bans China, well, what a surprise, the story itself says no such thing at all. Not even close.

But the Daily Telegraph gets to serve up its daily dose of xenophobia, along with a nice big Fuck You to China on behalf of the boss, who is still smarting over his failed efforts to grab a major slice of Chinese media action, a business experiment that cost him more than $1.4 billion.

He's Right, Suede Desert Boots Do Need Little Pendulums

Liam Gallagher, just about the best thing that happened to British rock in the 1990s, fashion designer and president of The International 'Sideburns Are Still Fookin Cool Innit?' Movement :



This story about Liam's love for Spinal Tap, from his brother Noel, is classic :

Liam thought Spinal Tap were real people.

We went to see them play in Carnegie Hall. Before they played, they came on as three folk singers from the film A Mighty Wind. We were laughing and he said, 'This is shit'.

We said: 'No, those three are in Spinal Tap. You do know they are American actors?'

'They're not even a real band?'

'They're not even English! One of them is married to Jamie Lee Curtis.'

'I'm not fuckin' 'avin that,' he says, and walks off right up the middle of Carnegie Hall.

He's never watched Spinal Tap since.

How much more Tap can you be? The answer is none, none more Tap.

Just clouds, in the skies above Sydney on Friday and Saturday. We don't look up anywhere near often enough.










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It's Not A Wonder Drug, Merv, It's A Wonder Vaccine

By Darryl Mason

As I wrote here on The Orstrahyun, June 4 :

Joel Fitzgibbon's resignation is just another curious example of Ruddlife imitating The Hollow Men, instead of the other way around. The episode where the PM's staff battled to decide whether it looked better for the prime minister to sack his defence minister, or accept his resignation, was only repeated on the ABC a couple of weeks ago.

The Budget episode of The Hollow Men, aired a week before treasurer Wayne Swann delivered the real one, was also full of key phrases and words that were put to good use when Swann and Rudd and Julia Gillard stepped in front of the media to sell it.

You'll know some sort of Evil Lefty ABC conspiracy is afoot if the Wonder Drug episode of The Hollow Men airs a week or two before the Rudd government begins seriously trying to sell the swine flu Wonder Vaccine

The instant classic 'Wonder Drug' episode of The Hollow Men aired again last Friday.

Next week begins the hardcore Big Sell by the Rudd government of a claimed swine flu vaccine.

RuddLife imitates The Hollow Men again.

The Rudd government has already committed to buy some 10 million doses of swine flu vaccine, even one that only has had, maximum, ten weeks of clinical trials :

Novartis, which has its Australian headquarters in Sydney, announced it had successfully completed cell-based production of the first batch of A(H1N1) vaccine.

"Based on that success, the company expects to be able to achieve rapid production," a Novartis spokesman said.

"The vaccine is in clinical trials now.''

Australian pharmaceutical company CSL said it would continue to develop a vaccine in Australia. Spokeswoman Dr Rachel David said CSL was conducting clinical trials of vaccines to determine the ideal dosage.

Nothing yet on possible side effects, and how the side effects compare to actually enduring and getting over a bout with swine flu.

No Australian deaths related to swine flu yet but the first fatalities blamed on the virus must only be a few days or a week away at the most. If not, Australia will be a curious anomaly as it will have some of the highest infection rates per capita but the lowest death rate.

The following numbers are of confirmed cases of infection, but the true numbers are probably far higher.

The government has confirmed 1441 cases of swine flu, including 1011 cases in Victoria, 160 in NSW, 90 in Queensland, 59 in Western Australia, 47 in South Australia, 41 in ACT, 17 in the Northern Territory and 16 in Tasmania.

I've been out of it for a few days with some kind of nasty bastard flu. That's why it's been quite around here. First time in a couple of years I've had anything that shut down the mini-writing factory for more than a day, or two. Don't like that. Forced to stop because the brain is too fogged out to function properly makes me very angry.

I went to the local medical centre to get checked out on Thursday, but it was standing room only. and they were only seeing "emergency cases", outside of those already booked in. First free appointment is Monday, 11pm. The only other two doctors within walking distance are likewise booked solid.

Either there are a lot of people around here feeling as utterly crap as I am, or a lot of locals have simply decided to exercise caution and headed to the doctor's when symptoms manifested they felt uneasy about.

There must be many other towns across Australia this weekend where it is next to impossible to find a doctor or medical centre that isn't fully booked.

Not much about swamped medical centres in the news yet. Maybe my neighbourhood is filled with hypochondriacs.

I knuckled last Monday, in spare hours, to finally finish the long overdue rewrite of the ED Day : Dead Sydney novel I published online in 2007 and 2008. It's a strange thing indeed to be working on a novel about life in Sydney after a flu pandemic at the same time a real pandemic is declared and then coming down with a flu that is fairly debilitating, heading for the local medical centre, finding it all but over-run with other flu patients....

I thought I became slightly obsessive with the hand-washing over the past few weeks. Didn't stop me from catching whatever this flu is.

I'd have to be feeling a hell of a lot sicker than this, however, before I volunteered to take a vaccine only a couple of weeks old, and fresh out of very brief clinical trials.

Obviously, there will be more on all this when the old energy levels return, and if I learn anything interesting from the doctor visit on Monday, I'll write it up here.

How Can You Not Blame Kevin Rudd?

First Dog On The Moon says way, way too much....

The Great International Swine & Jellyfish Global Warming Conspiracy

The second story about the near empty sauce bottle is equally brilliant.

Live And Learn, Don't Mess With Australian Women

By Darryl Mason

Gordon Ramsay doesn't get a lot of lip back from the women he insults in the British media, or the women he rains torrents of verbal abuse down on in his TV shows. You don't often, or ever, see women he's insulted get in his face and tell him to fuck off.

While Tracey Grimshaw and A Current Affair have been quick to capitalise on Ramsay's dickheaded attempt to be a stand-up comedian while in Australia, turning it into a ratings and profile bonanza for Grimshaw, it's been curious to see Ramsay's reaction to having a media shitstorm explode around him.

He's not in control of this, he's not in the bully domain of his kitchen, his kingdom, he's not in charge, and female journalists are now chasing him into hotel foyers shouting, "What do you want to call me, HUH?"

He needed a security guard to step in and stop the women who challenged him yesterday. He looked panicked. Worried. Uneasy.

Ramsay knows what his audience, and potential future audiences, across the world are seeing about him blasted across headlines and leading evening news bulletins. It's not tough Ramsay, or Sweary Ramsay, it's Weird & Creepy Ramsay :

...he showed an audience of several thousand at the Melbourne Good Food and Wine show a doctored photograph of a woman naked on all fours, with multiple breasts and a pig's face, announcing that it depicted Grimshaw, who had interviewed him on the previous night.

Yeah, that's not what anyone could call a whole load of good publicity.

Today, Tracey Grimshaw is soaking up the banner headlines and column inches of UK tabloids with her mostly impressive Go Hard back at Ramsay :

"Obviously Gordon thinks that any woman who doesn't find him attractive must be gay. For the record, I don't. And I'm not."

"Gordon Ramsay made me promise not to ask on Friday about his private life. He then got on stage on Saturday and made some very clear and uninformed insinuations about mine."

"We all know that bullies thrive when no one takes them on, and I'm not going to sit meekly and let some arrogant narcissist bully me."

"The guy's sort of on the ropes in many ways … his marriage must have been put under enormous pressure at the end of last year, his business has clearly been under enormous pressure, and his shows don't rate as well as they used to."

As Ramsay would put it, Fucking Ouch.

Tracey Grimshaw, thanks to Ramsay and A Current Affair quickly moving to make this minor news event into one hell of a big deal, is now enjoying spectacular ratings, and a sudden international profile.

And as sad as it is to say, this is a big story internationally, for this week at least.

So Kevin Rudd is not going to miss out on this action :

"All I could describe his remarks as reflecting is a new form of low life...'

New form of low life isn't bad, a bit over the top, but then that's Rudd, when he wants to hand over some instant headlines, and it sort of sounds like something a detective might have said on Underbelly.

But deputy PM Julia Gillard absolutely nails the moment :

"I think what he should do is confine himself to the kitchen and make nice things for people to eat..."

In other words, get back in the kitchen, food man. It's good advice.

Ramsay can learn a lot about delivering a killer funny line, with true sting and wit, from Julia Gillard.

While the publicity might seem to be a good thing, as in no publicity is bad publicity, for Ramsay's news series on Channel Nine, we may see Channel Nine actually use this opportunity to dump the expensive Ramsay now his ratings are heading for the toilet. Will all this media attention make more people tune into his show? Probably not. And when Channel Nine bails on his show, they will make it look like they smacked down this Jock git in the process.

It's not always a surprise to hear in the media that some famously aggressive man has punched a woman in the face, there has been plenty of that lately. But what Ramsay did in making that huge photo of multi-titted pig woman a part of his show was just downright bizarre, weird and plenty creepy. Forget Grimshaw. Why would he want to expose his audience to that?

And ulimatey it might prove harder for Ramsay to live down. Does he think the pig woman photo is funny? Or does he think it's erotic?

Maybe he should just call the whole bizarre episode A Piece Of Performance Art, instead of trying to make it sound like he has been treated unfairly, and done over.

It must cause Ramsay at least some grief that, yet again, women have again exposed him for the fuckwit that he is.


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Too Much Of A Coward To Have His Own Words Quoted Back To Him

By Darryl Mason

A few days later, The Professional takes a very similar stance to The Orstrahyun on the Gordon Ramsay publicity spectacular :

....will Channel Nine do the same and cancel future shows with Ramsay or will it reward him for attacking its star?

I submitted the following comment to The Professional Idiot's blog, where the freedom to debate on any subject is supposedly written in stone, and open to all comers, at 10.27am, Tuesday.

This is Andrew Bolt on Gordon Ramsay (April, 2008) :

"...I've fallen for the bloke. My kind of guy completely. More of him and civilisation is safe."

"I like particularly the standards Ramsay upholds...."

"He thinks reason beats irrational sentiment."

"Here's Ramsay coaching millions of Australians into Liberal values and making them seem contemporary."

"Ramsay...is an artist who uses them as tools to create something beautiful from nothing..."

"Make something of yourself, is his message. Test yourself. Find passion. Make a life and, in Ramsay's own passion, his values and his art, he has."

"(Gordon Ramsay) creates a noble calling from a job, and a life from a collection of days."

So, is civilisation still safer?

Is he still coaching Australians in "Liberal values"?

Is Ramsay still "my kind of guy completely."?

My comment quoting The Professional Idiot's own words in an earlier column on Gordon Ramsay hadn't made it into the comments when I checked at 11.37am, though other comments submitted by people not writing under their own names went up on a few minutes earlier, at 11.23am.

I resubmitted the exact same comment at 11.34am. No dice.

I tried one more time, at 3.56pm, thinking surely he isn't so ashamed and embarrassed of his enthusiastic praise of Ramsay's "Liberal values" that he'd censor his own words from his own blog comments?

It still didn't show up.

I sent him an e-mail asking if he still stands by his claims about Ramsay keeping civilisation safe.

Nothing.

So at 4.38pm, I sent this short comment, with a direct link back to The Professional Idiot's own column, archived at the Herald Sun, on Ramsay :

Do you stand by your April 2008 column where you claimed, amongst many other words of praise, that Gordon Ramsay personifies "Liberal values", that is, conservative values?

Your column, where you called Ramsay an "artist" also had you saying, "...I've fallen for the bloke. My kind of guy completely. More of him and civilisation is safe".

Now surely The Professional Idiot wouldn't censor a non-abusive comment that included only his own quotes about Gordon Ramsay, and a link back to his own column from which those quotes were pulled?

Surely The Professional Idiot can't be that precious?

Let's see.

UPDATE : The Professional Idiot really is that precious, none of my comments quoting his enthusiastic praise for Gordon Ramsay passed his censor.

So much for standing by what you say.

Interestingly, this Herald Sun columnist will not allow his own words to be republished on his blog when the quotes are attributed to him, but when Toaf put some of that big sigh Gordon Ramsay infatuation and praise in a comment under his name, and not The Professional Idiot's, well, up it went :



(click to enlarge)

"I Know I Left It Somewhere In The Shed About Five Years Ago..."

By Darryl Mason

The Murdoch media's The Punch is worth checking out, and it will be (to media watchers anyway) fascinating to see how it evolves in the months ahead. It seems to have gotten off to a pretty decent start.

Eventually, if it survives and thrives, The Punch will become a test site for Rupert Murdoch's hilariously ill-fated fantasy to try and get people to pay to read what he hasn't paid anyone to write.

But is there something more suspect going on over there?

A conspiracy-minded friend, now living in England, thinks yes.

"Hey, I checked out that website you sent me the link for."
"Rate My Bourbon Vomit Wall Paintings?" I asked.
"No, the other one."
"The Punch."
"Yeah, The Punch."
"Yeah? What did you reckon?"
"S'Alright. It's a Murdoch thing, isn't it?"
"Yeah," I said.
"So where's all the tits?"
"........what?"
"There's no tits. It's Murdoch, and no tits."
"This is Australia," I sad. "Rupert's mum doesn't let him run photos of some 18 year old girl's tits in his Australian media."
"Oh."
"So did you read any of it?"
"Yeah, a bit. If it's not going to have tits on it, it needs more sports and movies stuff, somewhere I can say how much fucking arse Terminator 4 sucked."
"I think The Punch is supposed to become like the Blog Discussion Of The Nation or something like that.I think they have higher aspirations than running an open thread on 'Terminator 4 : How Much Does This Movie Suck Arse?"
"Yeah? Well, good luck to them....There's something else, though. It's weird."
"What's that?" I asked.
"It made me want to go back to smoking pot."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"The Punch. That website. I looked at it, and I thought, 'Fuck me, I'm suddenly hanging to punch down some brekkie cones'."
"I don't think you can blame some website for those thoughts, can you?"
"Yeah, I can. Maybe it's subliminal or something, but just after I looked at it, I'm thinking about which geezer at my local might be good to score some hash off and if I still had my old bong kicking around in the shed somewhere."

Ridiculous you say? Perhaps. But what about these screenshots from The Punch?






I put the following question to The Punch editor David Penberthy at Twitter :



I'll update on any replies from 'Penbo'.

"You're Mad, You Bastard"

The first 8 1/2 minutes of the rarely seen 1971 Australian classic Wake In Fright :



The above video is obviously pretty crap quality, but a fully-restored uncut version of Wake In Fright will be screened this month at the Sydney Film Festival, and will hit DVD later in the year.

It's a brutal movie. Beautiful, and ugly as hell as well. For many Australians born in cities in the 1980s, Wake In Fright shows an Australia they are probably not familiar with, probably didn't even know existed.

The 7.30 Report has a great story on Wake In Fright and its remarkable restoration. It's a vital piece of Australian cinema history, and it was almost lost forever.

A short vid of claimed UFO footage shot on the weekend in Australia, featured on the front page of YouTube :

Less Kids Killing Themselves? Media Not Interested

This is probably the best piece of Australian news you'll hear today, or this month, and you can think the internet for at least of this good news :

During the past decade the suicide rate among young Australians has almost halved.

It is an extraordinary public health achievement, but one which has received little publicity.

Experts say a massive public education campaign and improvement in the treatment of depression are the key reasons for the success.

Here's how the rise of internet usage amongst teenagers added to the suicides averted :

The Reach Out website now gets 130,000 visits per month from young people.

The website's managers say being online is a big advantage.

"For a young person who suspects things are not OK, they might not know who to turn to or be afraid to talk to someone about it because they are afraid they will be judged," project manager Anna McKenzie said.

"So to be able to simply go online, Google something and have a look without anyone needing to know, that's really invaluable and that's what a lot of young people are doing at Reachout."

The Reach Out website was set up 10 years ago when Australia had one of the highest rates of youth suicide in the western world.

John Howard's decision to tighten gun laws in 1996 is also getting some of the credit, along with better methods of treating depression :

"After the new gun laws were introduced, the rate of gun suicide dropped twice as fast," Sydney University's associate professor Philip Alpers said.

"If you reduce the availability of firearms, especially to impulsive young men, then the number of people dying by gunshot reduces."

Less kids are killing themselves, for a variety of reasons, but the desire to end your life before you end high school appears to still be widespread, with less follow through, however :

"We've just had a national survey of mental health in Australia, rates of illness are as high as they ever were," Professor Hickie said.

"The good thing is that rates of suicide have gone down so we haven't yet dealt with the underlying problem, but we have got better at dealing with one of the worst outcomes."

Here's a damn good piece of news about Australian youth that should hit all the front pages and lead every evening news broadcast. It won't.

What an opportunity for the crumbling Australian mainstream media to put to death the gruesome lie that if "If It Bleeds, It Must Lead" that has so orientated so many journalists to believe that Nobody Wants To Hear Good News.

Turn the fact that the Australian youth suicide rate has HALVED in only ten years into the same kind of surreally hyped headline grabber as the average celebrity-related non-event and see what happens. See how the readers react.

The media may be surprised at just how many people want to hear good news, these days.

It certainly makes a pleasant change.

The Full Story Is Here


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How To Kill A Lively Conservative Blog Comments Thread - Speak Too Much Truth

By Darryl Mason

Blogs heavy on serious, not satirical, politics need opposing views and opinions in their comments if they want to really rack up those comment numbers. Apparently, this is important.

Groupthink in comments usually mean the threads go cold quickly. If everyone agrees with everyone else, there's not much to discuss, and nobody to insult, smear or defame.

This is why some of the most popular politically-charged blogs in Australia, for example, cannot do without a rabid Obamist Ruddian Green Lefty to pop his/her head up if most of those commenting there think John Howard should have a statue honouring him in every town square and that, one day, a generation of children will grow up believing that George W. Bush is right up there with Washington and Lincoln.

Conservative blogs need stupid Lefties in the comments so the groupthinkers gathered there will have a target to attack and vilify, to make themselves feel better.

This is why the most popular conservative blog in Australia often has Stupid Lefty Comments either written by the blogger, or the moderators, or both, under fake names.

An Allegedly Stupid Lefty stating something as simple as "War Is The Very Definition Of Immaturity"on a War On Iraq related post really fires up those conservative comment threads. For a while anyway. But then if that Allegedly Stupid Lefty starts stating undeniable facts, the groupthink comments quickly die away.

This comment thread at JF Beck's was getting into the 60s, one of the biggest comment counts ever seen on that blog, until I posted the following comment, number 69, which none of the usual suspects over there attempted to counter or even deny. It remains the last comment in the thread (as of this posting) :

"Did you get that theory from the fact that Bush was bragging to journalists in 1999 that he was going to go War On Iraq and finish what his daddy wouldn't, or couldn't?

"If you don't think The Bush administration totally capitalised on the tragedy of 9/11 to sell the Iraq War, you have some reading to do.

"Condi Rice, Bush and Cheney all called 9/11 an "opportunity" after the War On Iraq began."

You also get the feeling from reading all those Anonymous comments at Beck's that nearly all were written by the same, at most, two or three people.

If they stand so firmly by their beliefs and claims, why don't they post their thoughts under their real names?

It's not like they're leaking secret government reports or anything, it's just opinion. But not opinion they believe in enough to put their real names to.

"The Application Of A Questioning Mind Is The Best Way To Wisdom And Insight"

ABC Lateline host, Leigh Sales, on the benefits of healthy scepticism versus ideological denialism :

In our society, certainty has more cachet than doubt and that is making our public debate shallower than it ought to be. Some of Australia's highest profile commentators act, in public at least, as if they have never experienced a second of self-doubt or ever entertained the thought: "What if I am wrong?" Our age of cable television, talkback radio and blogs seems to have been accompanied by a growing number of people who think their opinions are always right and that anyone who disagrees is not only wrong but worthy of contempt and public ridicule.

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It is a shame that, in today's politics, expressing doubt is taboo. Consider the great thinkers throughout history. Many have been branded heretics for publicly voicing scepticism. Those who have sought truth, whether philosophers or scientists, artists or writers, revolutionaries or explorers, have always begun their quests from a premise of doubt, not certainty. Their questions most often ran counter to the prevailing wisdom or authorities of the day.

Copernicus asked whether the Earth really was at the centre of the universe. Martin Luther asked whether the Catholic Church was the only route to salvation. Thomas Jefferson asked why Americans couldn't govern themselves. Mary Wollstonecraft asked why women shouldn't have equal rights. Nelson Mandela asked why blacks weren't entitled to the same privileges as whites. To elevate certainty over doubt as a mark of intellectual strength flies in the face of historical experience, which has repeatedly shown that the application of a questioning mind is the best way to wisdom and insight.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

...climate change is an area in which we should allow room for doubt. The weight of scientific and political opinion backs the existence of human-induced climate change. When there is such universal agreement, doubters have an important role to play, both in terms of the science and the policy responses. Constructive sceptics (as opposed to ideological zealots) will be able to force our politicians and scientists to keep testing the evidence and exploring the options. That should lead to better outcomes for all of us.

The rest of Sales' excellent essay is definitely worth a read.

The Professional Idiot celebrates his ever expanding American audience :

And thank you yet again: May set a new record on this blog for page impressions - 1,352,994

Scoring links on extremely popular American 9/11 Truther sites like Alex Jones' Prison Planet...



....and the 'Holocaust skeptic' site WhatReallyHappened.com....



...can really help boost those page impressions stats.

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