Do Our Drug Only

So that's why they have so many drug dogs and cops and security guards frisking people upon entry to the Big Day Out, to make sure you only consume the sponsored drug of choice :

Health experts have called for the Big Day Out music festival to drop its sponsorship deals with major alcohol companies or lift the admission age from 15 to 18.

You gotta hook 'em when they're young.



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This website claims the below satellite image was saved from the Bureau of Meteorology site on January 16 :



An explanation from the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Met Office :

It would therefore seem to be due to what is referred to as "anomalous propagation"(false echoes) or even possibly dust in the atmosphere.



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Cue Murdoch Media Outrage

Oracle Tim Blair on ABC director Mark Scott's plans for a 24 hour TV news channel :

Won’t happen.

ABC News launches 24 hour TV news channel :

“No media organisation in the country is better equipped to deliver this channel than the national broadcaster,” said ABC Managing Director Mark Scott.

“We can draw on the investment already made in the ABC, through its major newsrooms in every state and territory, 12 international bureaux and 60 regional newsrooms, to deliver to Australians a top-quality 24-hour news service that is comprehensive, independent and up to the minute.”

New programs are also being developed specifically for the channel, focusing on world news, national politics and business. Many of the ABC’s existing television news and current affairs programs will also be featured.

The Australian ran this up the flagpole to see who would salute it, on January 16 :

THE ABC's plan to launch in the next few months a 24-hour national television news service amounts to a taxpayer-funded declaration of war on commercial media outlets in Australia.

Apparently there's something inherently bad in having a news channel that is not packed with intrusive advertising.

This will not be the ABC's first foray into 24 hour news programming :

The gag at 3.30 is the news reality that all 24 hour news channels have to deal with, as will the ABC.

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An excellent series of sport-explanatory ads for the 2010 Winter Olympics on Foxtel, written by Charles Firth and Stephen Hancock :






Mumbrella Has More


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Stories I'm Reading Instead Of Writing Blog Posts Here :

"Green Disputes" In The Family Home Open Vast New Territory For Nagging And Henpecking

Director Terry Gilliam On The Difficulties Of Raising Money For His Movies

Dumping Bodies In Mass Graves Is "A Violation Of Everything The Haitians Hold Dear" But They Understand They Have No Choice

Oliver Stone Suggests We Should Take A Look At Hitler In The Context Of The History Of The Time (And Who Funded His Rise), Gets Branded A Holocaust Denier In The National Times

Wall Street Journal : "Natural Disasters Are Engines Of Development And Economic Growth"

US Troops Occupied Haiti 1915-1934, Now Obama Deploys 5000 American Soldiers To Patrol The Earthquake Aftermath

The 150 Year History Of The Stray Dogs Of Moscow - Some Have Learned To Ride The Subway "To Broaden Their Territory"

Another True Conspiracy : Years Later, The Washington Post Finally Discovers FBI Did Illegally Spy On Americans Phone Calls

Reddit Debate : Anyone Else Think Obama Isn't Doing That Bad Of A Job?

The American War On Terror Is A Holy War - Bible Codes And "Jesus Rifles"


And here's some thoughts on Digital Option Anxiety, and Why Paywalls Will Dry Out News Junkies



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Bet He'd Get His Arse Kicked By Galaga, Too

Okay, enough with the "human rights for apes" movement. They want to be treated like humans? For starters, they can impress us by cracking 2000 on Pacman. You don't have to be able to understand the voiceover in the below vid to know this chimp got in a bit of practice, before they turned on the cameras. And he's still shit at it.



On a more serious note, this vid looks to be a few years old. That's not good news. This chimp has no doubt already mastered Tetris, dabbled in Starcraft and undetartaken raids in World Of Warcraft.

It must, then, be only a matter of time before monkey hackers manage to crack CIA drone control systems, and fly Predators back to our shores to free all their brothers from our many zoos.

If I had shares in a security business targetting monkey hackers, I would say the threat of cyber attacks on armed UAV networks by our hairier planet sharers is very, very real.


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A beautiful photo of waterfalls on Uluru, submitted to ABC News by Sam Parker :



Thanks to plenty of recent rain, the Red Centre today is lush and green.

Within three years, all climbing on the Rock by tourists will be banned.

Not Enough White People Killed?

More than 50,000 dead in Haiti, hundreds of thousands injured, millions homeless, the "worst disaster the UN has ever faced", but Fairfax and Murdoch news readers have already moved on. Nothing related to Haiti, none of the incredible stories of survival, or the stunning reports from journalists who've found themselves in a literal hell of Earth, makes the most read stories lists.

Stories about a Moscow video billboard broadcasting porn, however, been extremely popular.

Murdoch's news.com.au :



Fairfax (click to enlarge) :




And this from news.com.au yesterday :



And to the side this story :


Those million orphaned girls in Haiti are apparently not as brave as an Australian girl in a yacht.



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Cannabis : The Best Way NOT To Get Mixed Up With Heavy Drugs

Another War On Drugs myth destroyed, but don't expect it to drop out of common usage by most of the mainstream media anytime soon. Particularly those who rely heavily on pharmaceutical advertising dollars....which is most of them :

Get Off My Wave

For those who missed it, here's the full 'Surfers' Code' sign (based on the "tribal rules" of the "hardened locals") that's been installed on Manly Beach, because tourists on boards are a pain in the arse (when they're not keeping local businesses alive).




Hopefully that will help keep the locals from rioting and attacking ambulances, and shouting through drunken tears about how their grandfathers died in Europe during World War II trying to protect Manly Beach.

In other Manly news, the local council, like the Taliban, has now banned kite-flying on the beach.

But the anti-fun extremism of Bondi Beach is far more intense. All footie, frisbees, pets, smoking, drinking, collecting of shells and even volleyball have been banned.

Swimming, for now, is still acceptable.



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It's Called 'The Local Angle'

The Sydney Morning Herald :



An actual news site reports on non-Australian fatalities :

Thousands Feared Dead In Devastating Haiti Quake




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Peter Jackson Considers ANZAC Movie For 100th Anniversary Of Gallipoli

Movie maker Peter Jackson (Lord Of The Rings, Lovely Bones) has a lot of movies to finish in the next few years. There's his producing and scriptwriting duties on The Hobbit Parts 1 & 2, and his directorial work on Tin Tin, for starters. But as the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli draws closer, Jackson finds himself thinking about his grandfather, who was there and won a distinguished service medal, and the numerous cinematically untold stories of Australians and New Zealand teenagers fighting together, on the other side of the world.

Here's Peter Jackson on The 7.30 Report :

"I went to Gallipoli in 1990 for the 75th anniversary. That was the amazing year where 50 diggers were taken along, 50 of the original diggers were there. And so, you know, watching the dawn parade with 50 of these old men - the youngest was 92, the oldest was 103 and they were all sitting in these chairs as light came up....

"As the sun rose or the sky started to get light...thee old guys...they weren't interested in the speeches, they were all turning round looking at the hills. And it was an amazing experience to see them all looking at this landscape that most of them hadn't seen since 1915, hadn't seen it for 75 years.

"And I was standing right beside them as they were all turning around and looking behind and up at the sphinx and all the ridges....

"....to me (Gallipoli has) been a remarkable part of our history. And Peter Weir obviously made a great movie, but Peter's movie was set around events of August 7th, August 8th, 1915. I mean, you know, the Gallipoli was a seven or eight-month-long campaign. And that story is yet to be told on film. So I'd like to do that."

You Can Watch The Interview With Peter Jackson Here

The following is rare footage restored by Peter Jackson of the ANZACS fighting at Gallipoli :



And if you're wondering what a Peter Jackson World War I movie might look like, here's the captivating trailer for a short film by Jackson and Neill Blomkamp called Crossing The Line. It was shot on March 30 and 31, 2009, as a test for the Red digital camera system.



And no, I have no idea where you can see the full version of that short movie. If you manage to find it online, please let me know.



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They're Just Cartoons, They Can't Hurt You

A cartoon controversy in an Indian newspaper :




A cartoon controversy in a Danish newspaper :



A cartoon controversy in a Jordanian newspaper :



A cartoon controversy in an Indonesian newspaper :




A cartoon controversy in an Australian newspaper :



They're just cartoons.

The controversy is almost always contrived, made up, whipped up, by story-hungry news media.

I do, however, offer my sincere apologies to those who are offended, and sickened, by one particular cartoon above. Howard taking Downer from behind is a terrible thing to expose your readers to, even on a Saturday.

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Clouds over Sydney, January 4, 2010 :









The closest cloud type I could match these to are Asperatus.

But I'll try and confirm it with the most harmless, most benign, society in existence. The Cloud Appreciation Society.




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Whales To Show Appreciation For Being Saved From Japanese Harpoons With Ceremonial Mass Beaching

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair on the latest whale-related fundraising promotion by depopulationist Paul Watson :

The notion that the 491-ton Shonan Maru 2 – maximum speed 12 knots – could outmanoeuvre a 13-ton, 45-knot trimaran like the Ady Gil is insane, but the media seem to be buying it.

Note, Blair doesn't name 'the media' who seem to be "buying it".

Why?

From the Daily Telegraph online :



That's why.

This is standard operation procedure for Blair.

If the Sydney Morning Herald or the ABC promote someone like Sea Shithead's Paul Watson, who wants to see the world's population reduced to less than 1 billion people, then he and his droogies will go to town on the "leftist" Herald and gronk about privatising the ABC, but when his own newspaper leaps onto the latest eco-clickbait bandwagon, well, the Daily Telegraph becomes simply "the media".


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Rare Australian Plant Has Been Cloning Itself For At Least 43,000 Years



There are believed to be only 500 examples of this native Tasmanian shrub, King's Lomatia (Lomatia tasmanica), growing in the wild south west of the island.

From Wikipedia :

The plant has shiny green leaves and bears pink flowers, but yields neither fruit nor seeds.

King's Lomatia is unusual because all of the remaining plants are genetically identical. Because it has three sets of chromosomes (a triploid) and is therefore sterile, reproduction occurs only vegetatively: when a branch falls, that branch grows new roots, establishing a new plant that is genetically identical to its parent.

Although all the plants are technically separate in that each has its own root system, they are collectively considered to be one of the oldest living plant clones. Each plant's life span is approximately 300 years, but the plant has been cloning itself for at least 43,600 years (possibly up to 135,000 years).

Fascinating.


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"Is This A Game.....Or Is This Real?"

The 'story trailer' for the Predator Vs Alien game Australian censors assessed, banned, endured a storm of controversy over, then reassessed before creating a new category, "strong science fiction violence", which then allowed them to pass the game for release with an MA15 rating :





Here's how the Australian Classification Review Board explained its decision :

In the Review Board's opinion the violence depicted in the game can be accommodated within the MA 15+ category as the violent scenes are not prolonged and are interspersed with longer non violent sequences. The violence is fantastical in nature and justified by the context of the game, set in a futuristic science-fiction world, inhabited by aliens and predators. This context serves to lessen its impact. The more contentious violence is randomly generated and is not dependent on player selection of specific moves.

Aliens Vs Predator is released on February 18.

Did you know koalas have been around for tens of millions of years, and that they're bigger now and more abundant than any other time in their history? Neither did I :

Scientists have gained a glimpse into how the koala, one of the nation's most loved creatures, may have acted tens of millions of years ago.

....perhaps the most important finding to come out of the research is that never in their history have koalas had a period when they were so abundant as they are now.

The fossil remains of the extinct koalas....were about a quarter to a third smaller than today's koalas....

....24 million years ago, koalas and their close relatives, wombats, had long diverged on their evolutionary tree. Koalas were already creatures living in the forest canopy and specialising in eating leaves.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the ancient koalas and the modern variety is that it is clear from the fossil jaws and teeth that whatever the extinct creatures were eating it was nowhere near as tough as the leaves from present day gum trees.

The dominance of eucalypts in Australian forests is a relatively new thing - the result of the drying of the continent following a succession of ice ages. Koala teeth reflect this rarity of eucalyptus in ancient Australian forests.

The Full Story Is Here

Rudd's Totalitarianyrannical Grip On The Nation Even Extends To The Family Pet

7.30 Report, August 28, 2009 :

Q : So (PM Kevin Rudd) doesn't come home and kick the cat?

Therese Rein : Oh, no, he would never kick....

Q : ....to use a well-known imagery.

Therese Rein : He would never kick Jasper or the dog or anyone at home. No. I don't see him do that.

No, Rudd has other ways of disciplining Jasper The Cat :



Looks like a combination nerve and throat hold.

Every cat owner knows the expression on Jasper's face. It's equal parts "Someone or something's about to get shreddded" and "Help Me!"

Free Jasper!

Meanwhile, Rudd exploits the cat and the dog, by turning their adventures around The Lodge into a children's book :

"...we've interviewed the cat and the dog. They have been very co-operative in their responses..."

Yes, I bet they were.


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Eyes In Australian Skies

Surveillance drones very similar to the one in the below story have already been test-flown in the skies above Australian cities by the Australian Federal Police. All a journalist has to do is ask the AFP to officially deny it :



Surveillance drones were used, briefly, during the Victorian bushfires in February 2009, though there doesn't seem to be anything online about their effectiveness.

Rumours still float around the Defence Department that the Rudd government will be buying less Joint Strike Fighters so they can purchase some three dozen unmanned aerial combat vehicles (UACVs), which will fly fast enough to be used in missions with the JSFs.

In the 1980s, to have even suggested that by 2015 there would be 'Eye In The Sky' flying robots, and armed robots at that, cruising around Australian skies would have seen you labeled a loon, and a science fiction-addled paranoidian.

And yet, here they come.

There will be little outrage or fuss because UAVs, particularly in this age of Catatrosphic Bushfire Warnings, will likely prove extremely helpful, and life-saving, in spotting outbreaks of fire as soon as they begin, and essential in tracking the spread of those fires.

The future is here, and it makes a weird buzzing noise.