Blogs

June 12, 2009 - 12:00PM

An Italian woman who arrived late for the Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic has been killed in a car accident.

Johanna Ganthaler had been on holiday in Brazil with her husband and missed Air France Flight 447 after turning up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31, The Times online has reported.

All 228 people aboard lost their lives after the plane crashed into the Atlantic four hours into its flight to Paris.

The ANSA news agency reported that the couple, from Bolzano-Bozen province, had managed to pick up a flight from Rio the following day.

Ms Ganthaler died when their car veered across a road in Kufstein, Austria, and swerved into an oncoming truck. Her husband was seriously injured, The Times reported.

I have met the chaser boys a few times and you wouldnt meet a nicer bunch of blokes. Craig has kids that he adores and talked about all the time I met him.

Chaser pushes the envelope so people go " No that is so wrong, oh wait, that is reality". They try and get the population that is blinded by the spin and make them think about society, politics and reality of the selfishness that is the times we live in.

This skit is to show the population that the majority of people who donate to charity do it to make themselves look good to others and feel good. Save the whales cause they can be saved. Donate to Starlight foundation? Well If I hold a high tea to save the moneys in Africa then everyone will be happy cause they are cute monkeys being saved?

The reality is that unfortunately, these kids are not as lucky as the Monkeys and Whales so a proportion of the rich think its a pointless charity. And Charities like these are going broke as a result.

Example, last week the raising money for a boat house for a prep school in Somalia. Many of the people who will donate money to a prep school boat house would never give to a charity like Oxfam. But these people are more than happy to give to them cause they dont care about material possessions.

The Chaser tried to wake people up and show them that because of this attitude, these kids dont get their wish.

Cast your mind back 20 years. How do you think you would have reacted if someone had told you then that the Soviet Union would soon colapse, that something called the internet would consume your life and destroy newspapers, that an african american ould be elected president of America. When it comes to the future, prepare to be surprised.

Listen to this (click under the picture to listen). It will change the way you think.

US political scientist and strategic thinker George Friedman founded his private intelligence company Stratfor in 1996.

His predictions in his book The Next 100 Years: a Forecast for the 21st Century are backed up with economic, military and geographic data.

Those predictions defy all the conventional wisdom on where the world's headed, with surprising forecasts for Turkey, Poland and Mexico.

Most people tell them what they do for a living like its a defining part of them. Whatever you do, that doesn't tell me anything about you. I want to know about what YOU do. Do you paint, do you play football, do you like Ed Wood movies? These questions tell me who you are, not what you do to pay your bills.

In this day and age where there is little loyalty to employees and people who have worked places for 30+ years can be made redundant in a second, we still seem to care about what we do to make money and whilst it is important to care about what you do 9-5 and ensure you do it to the best of your ability, it is not who you are. Remember that.

On your death bed, are you going to care about getting that report in on time? No. And if you do, good luck to you.

I may come back to this and write more when what is in my head makes more sense.

But just remember, you are you, not what your job is, so next time someone asks you what you do, what will you say?

LAST week I was trapped in a room with old copies of The Women's Weekly, New Idea, Woman's Day, Zoo, Ralph and FHM. They whispered "read me". So I did. Because I am weak.

Magda Szubanski was the Weekly's cover girl, a welcome change from some linen-panted celebrity claiming to "have it all". Magda's obviously had a bit too much, and has shed a quarter of her body weight to pay for it. A free cookbook was stuck to the cover. Why was I not surprised? A third of the magazine was food porn. Get skinny. Eat food. Confused? Good.

In contrast, Zoo had a raunchy hot babe in a bra and knickers on the cover, with the headline "100 Hottest Beach Babes", a banner promising a free slab for every reader, and a free gift of bikini-babe coasters stuck to its cover. Again, why was I not surprised? A third of the magazine consisted of scantily clad women looking keen for sex.

Back to the chick mags. The Kidman-Urbans. The Jolie-Pitts. The Cruise-Holmeses. Perfect celebrity families reinforcing every other family's failure.

Natasha Stott Despoja is "blissfully happy as a full-time stay-at-home mum", the message being: if you're working and unhappy, it's because you're not a full-time, stay-at-home mum. And if you are and you're not happy, well, you're just crap, aren't you?

Back on Planet Bloke, Zoo, Ralph and FHM dish up wall-to-wall low expectation and reinforcement of hedonistic lad culture with women photographed as sex meat alongside sport, drinking, dares and jokes. Your maddest scars. Text us your arse. Show us your tatts. Sex advice from "a medium who channels dead celebrities". Boys' toys include a scale replica German Tiger tank, a remote-controlled cooler and a motorised inflatable mattress. There are 50 Freaky Footy Facts, there's the Wanker of the Year and Keep Track of Your Favourite Dickhead's Form (Ben Lee is at 3-1, Fred Nile is at 4-1, and Pub Trivia Hosts are at 9-1). Two of the magazines had interviews with comedian Dave Hughes.

One girly mag urged women to "learn to sew, cook and bake all over again" alongside four pages on Michelle Obama's fashion. Who needs to know what the woman married to the world's most important man thinks when we can check out what she's wearing?

Elsewhere, the woman who refers to her husband as MOTH (Man of the House) is still writing a column. Alan Jones' battle with prostate cancer featured in two of the chicks' glossies.

Favourite home hint? "A clean and easy way to crush soup cubes is to press them between two soup spoons." Thanks Bev! You've changed my life!

New Idea's Mere Male is still "putting smiles on people's faces since 1950!" Mere Male is where women write in stories about what dickheads their husbands are. Women fight back against centuries of oppression with stories like the one about a bloke spraying a fly on the window, but — wait for it, this is hilarious — the fly is on the OUTSIDE of the window. Pictures of readers' grandkids. Someone's drug hell. All shot through with steaks, cakes, patties, slices, mornays, cookies, bakes, stir-fries.

Women's mags are self-hate manuals, full of diets you'll never be able to stick to, lives you'll never be able to lead, recipes for food that'll never look as good on your table as it does in the pictures — and even if it does, if you eat it you'll never be able to fit into the gear on the fashion pages. Beauty products to buy that will leave you disappointed and interviews with celebrities who, no matter how down-to-earth they come across and how well you feel you know them, will never be your friends. Craft at which you will fail. Bodies you'll never have.

Drinking, sexual objectification of women, sleazy behaviour, sports, gadgets: bloke's mags are brochures that infantilise men and encourage and validate lowest-common-denominator lad culture.

The clear message is: "Don't worry, mate, we're all the same — just don't tell the girls."

Women's mags peddle food as porn, men's mags just peddle porn. If you believe these publications, women aspire to domesticity and happiness and to live happily ever after, while men aspire to debauchery with no responsibility and a happy ending. They make women feel they'll never be good enough and men feel they're not only good enough, they're better than most.

This is from an afternoon on James Valentine the other day, copied from his website. Too funny!

1. Move to the back of the bus. It’s public transport. If you move to the back of the bus, more public can be transported.
2. Let everyone get off the train before you attempt to get on.
3. Same goes for lifts.
4. Don’t litter. Clean up your own rubbish.
5. In church, don’t sit on the aisle in an empty pew.
6. Keep to the left when walking.
7. No more than two abreast on a footpath.
8. And don’t amble in busy city streets.
9. When wearing a backpack, try to remember you are wearing a backpack. On your back is now a half metre hump.
10. Stay seated until it’s your turn to exit the plane.
11. Don’t crowd the luggage carousel.
12. Cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough. And try using the crook of the arm rather than your hand.
13. Keep your shoes on in the cinema.
14.Refrain from comment during the screening of the film.
15. Turn off phone in all public performance
16. If you are there first, you should get served first.
17. Return your shopping trolley.
18. At service station, use the bowser up the front. After filling car, if doing more than just paying, move car.
19. When buying goods, have payment ready.
20. Music in your headphones should not be audible to anyone else.
21 Pick up the front of a stroller at the bottom of the stairs.

Please add to these and comment. I believe these rules transcend culture, legal systems and religions. They apply to all and there are no exceptions. Punishment includes but is not limited to, a withering look, a resigned shaking of the head, a sarcastic retort, a brief explanation of the transgression to the transgressee.

I love them! Possibly the only form of kids I shall have but I love them to bits and that is all that matters.

They bought a lion from Harrods, and they loved him. Watch all four to the end...you will cry.

Who before this morning had ever heard of Swine Flu? Now it's everywhere and everyone is in a panic again. Just like the power in the world want you to be. Keep 'em scared and they will conform. Remeber when we were all going to die at Rooty Hill RSL from Bird Flu or SARS? Its just the next one in the line.

And yes one day on my death bed looking at the really bad carpet and sparkling lights of the contaminated area of the RSL (whilst listening to the clang of the pokies cause goddess forbid they don't make a buck out of the dying) I may regret this post but till then, I am sick to death (pardon the pun) of media hype.

A pic I took at the ANZAC Day march whilst watching my friend march. I am glad he said it.

Can anyone believe what is happening in Fiji?????? Why are we not doing more??????

Local and international media in Fiji are under increasing pressure and tough restrictions after the reinstatement of Commodore Frank Bainimarama's military regime.

Reports are also coming out of Fiji that the interim government is now restricting the use of the internet as it continues its crackdown on civil liberties.

Commodore Bainimarama's restrictions include stationing military censors in newsrooms and deporting ABC journalist Sean Dorney back to Australia.

Local journalists are being watched by police, amid reports of internet cafes are being forced to shut.

Fiji TV reporter Edwin Nand was released this morning after 36 hours in police custody but the military has told him he cannot return to work.

Fiji TV's lawyer, Tanya Waqanika, says the media is being forced to operate under tight controls.

"We've all been told that we cannot make comments on political [matter] or publish or broadcast political comments," she said.

Earlier today, Commodore Bainimarama, who took power in a 2006 coup, said freedom of speech caused trouble and was to blame for the country's political turmoil.

"That was how we ended up with what we came up with in the last couple of days," he told Radio New Zealand.

"If we [the Government and the media] had worked together from 2006, we wouldn't have had that happen to us.

"The circumstances have changed. We [the Government] now decide what needs to be done for our country, for the reforms that need to be put in place for us to have a better Fiji.

"We want to come up with these reforms and the last thing we want to do is have opposition to these reforms throughout.

Commodore Bainimarama says media restrictions will be lifted "hopefully in a month".

When asked if a Radio New Zealand journalist could travel to Fiji and report on whatever they pleased, Commodore Bainimarama answered: "There is no need; ask me the questions and I'll tell you".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/15/2543461.htm

The ABC says it is disappointed Fiji's military backed regime has shutdown Radio Australia's FM transmitters.

Earlier today, officers from Fiji's Ministry of Information and soldiers escorted local technicians to the two Radio Australia FM transmitters and ordered them to be shut down.

The director of the ABC's international operations, Murray Green, says the shutdown of the transmitters removes one of the few remaining uncensored sources of information in Fiji.

Speaking on Radio New Zealand, interim prime minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama has refused to say when the emergency regulations, and censorship will end.

Crisis escalates

Fiji's interim government has silenced the local media and now it has taken control of the economy.

Yesterday soldiers seized the Reserve Bank and today Sada Reddy was appointed the bank's new governor.

Executive director of the Australia Fiji Business Council Frank Yourn says there is a view that Fiji's dollar has been overvalued.

"Some devaluation was warranted but whether it was 20 per cent that was justified really remains to be seen," he said.

So Krudd is giving me money I need for my credit card, so nice of him! And he passed on all the telcos for the broadband network and I admire him for that, takes balls.

Shit is happening all over the world that really bites. So finding some things to make it all better!

The Triple J radio partner of comic John Safran, Father Bob Maguire, is not surprised the 33-year-old has had himself nailed to the cross in a Good Friday ceremony in the Philippines.

It's been reported that Safran, who identified himself as John Michael from Melbourne, joined three local men and one woman in being nailed to wooden crosses in Kapitangan town, just outside Manila.

Father Bob, who at first had no comment to make about his regular Sunday night radio partner, said Safran would have volunteered to be nailed to the cross in an effort to get a "forensic" insight into religious practices.

"If he did do it, it would have been for a forensic investigation of religious practices."

An AFP report from Manila said the Australian, who was half-naked and wearing a long-haired wig with an improvised crown of thorns, joined Filipinos in a procession carrying a huge wooden cross to a crucifixion site.

He could be heard moaning loudly as the nails were driven into his palms and as his cross was hoisted up, allowing him to hang for about five minutes.

When he was taken down, he was rushed by men dressed as centurions to a medical tent for treatment.

Photographs posted on news websites clearly identify a crucified man as John Safran.

In 2004, Safran undertook an eight-part series on the SBS called John Safran vs God which set out to expose bigotry and hypocrisy in religion.

I bought WAY too many books at the Lifeline book fair but not as many as my friends!

And they took me today to Questacon which is a hands on science museum and I had a blast! Everyone must go!

"This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgin.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set or some such thing, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up.

Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the Australian economy by spending your stimulus cheque wisely:

If you spend that money at Kmart, all the money will go to China .
If you spend it on petrol it will go to the Arabs.
If you purchase a computer it will go to India .
If you buy a car it will go to Japan .
If you purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan .

And none of it will help the Australian economy.

We need to keep that money here in Australia. You can keep the money in Australia by spending it at garage sales, going to a cricket match or footy game, or spend it on prostitutes, beer and wine (domestic ONLY), or tattoos, since those are the only businesses that may still be owned by Aussies

Dear Mum,

I did find the bag of Christmas decoration that you put away. Something in there was red and yummy as you can see by:
exhibit a - my face (no mummy, I didnt turn into a vampire) and
exhibit b - my feet.
With the rest of the decorations, I decorated the back garden for you mummy.

Regards
Bella Black

Divers discover psychedelic bouncing fish with legs

A FUNKY, psychedelic fish that bounces on the ocean floor like a rubber ball has been classified as a new species.

The frogfish — which has a swirl of tan and peach stripes that extend from its aqua eyes to its tail — was discovered a year ago by scuba diving instructors in shallow waters off Ambon island in eastern Indonesia.

The operator contacted Ted Pietsch, a marine scientist at the University of Washington, who submitted DNA work identifying it as a new species.

The fish — which Professor Pietsch has named "psychedelica" — is a member of the antennariid genus, Histiophryne, and like other frogfish, has fins on both sides of its body that have evolved to be leg-like.

But it has several behavioural traits not previously known to the others, according to a paper by Professor Pietsch in Copeia, the journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.

Each time the fish strike the seabed, for instance, they push off with their fins and expel water from tiny gill openings to jet themselves forward. That, and an off-centred tail, causes them to bounce around in a bizarre, chaotic manner.

Mark Erdman, a senior adviser to the Conservation International's marine program, said it was an exciting discovery.

"I think people thought frogfishes were relatively well known and to get a new one like this is really quiet spectacular … It's a stunning animal," he said, adding that the fish's stripes were probably intended to mimic coral.

"It also speaks to the tremendous diversity in this region and to the fact that there are still a lot of unknowns here - in Indonesia and in the coral triangle in general," he said.

The fires in VIC were horrific, so much loss of life as well as everything else. I updated myself all day about what was going on and it made me sick, it still does thinking about what happened. A freak of nature started by a freak of nature.

I am proud to be Australian when I hear people donating and rallying for this cause BUT, let us not forget the floods in QLD which are some of the worst ever up there and lets not forget the homeless on the street every night, the ones without insurance, the mentally ill who must live in nursing homes because there is no where else for them to go.

The people who suffered in Victoria need this money. But do they need all of the millions that was raised? $1 million could buy an old hotel to house the homeless and supply toothbrushes and showers and back to work help for them as well as a warm bed.

On Feb 12 he would have been 200. Such a wise man for his time and I urge you to open your mind and have a look at his writings. Just to put it out there. Believe what you will after.

Having worked at Universal for many years and knowing where in the building this must have happened, I wonder who it was?

He won't say his name, hides his face, and hands cash to anyone who asks in the middle of New York.

The mystery benefactor known only as Bailout Bill sat behind a counter in the heart of Times Square giving money to hundreds of people waiting in temperatures well below freezing.

The well-built man protected by plainclothes guards wore wraparound black glasses and a wool hat pulled low over his head.

Some people waited for more than five hours to reach a makeshift window marked "Bailout Booth" where they received at least $US50 ($78), sometimes much more.

Many of those queuing were victims of the severe US economic downturn. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs in New York alone.

"I'm very appreciative. I might give some to my mother," said Leon McNeil, 25, after being handed $US50. He was laid off by troubled department store Macy's last December.

News of the giveaway spread fast by phone. McNeil said that at first he couldn't believe the story.

Bailout Bill's idea is partly a publicity stunt for a new website, bailoutbooth.com, where you can post videos advertising possessions, services, and personal messages.

But the idea is also to help ordinary people in the same way that the US government is bailing out banks and other corporations, a spokesman, Drew Tybus said.

"Rather than getting a TV commercial during the Superbowl, the idea was to give people a chance to make some money. We all know someone who's been affected."

All people had to do was tell their problems to an assistant standing in the street with a microphone and camera.

"My mother is dying in bed," said Mario, a frail man who wore cowboy boots and carried a walking stick.

A man named Curtis told Bailout Bill he was an Iraq war veteran who owed 500 dollars in rent and was unable to pay for stress medication. Both his parents were recently hospitalized, he said.

"That should last me three days for washing my clothes, food, cigarettes. To a person who's got nothing, that's a lot," he said.

Tuesday was the "Bailout Booth's" second and last day in New York. Next it goes to Washington, Boston and Philadelphia, Tybus said.

Just who is this mystery man with the deep pockets? "Bailout Bill can't tell you his real name," Tybus said.

"We assume there's too much of a risk. Everyone knows he's got money, so, well, something could happen."

But for anyone thinking of taking the money-for-nothing concept a bit further and robbing that cash-filled booth, Tybus had a warning.

"Those guys standing around here and also in the booth -- they're off-duty cops. And they're armed."

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has released a swarm of mosquitoes into an audience at a technology and design conference in California.

High profile members of online networking service Twitter reported the incident at the TED (technology, entertainment and design) conference on Wednesday (US time).

It reportedly occurred during Mr Gates's talk on malaria eradication, a cause the entrepreneur is pushing through his philanthropic foundation.

EBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Twitter chief executive Ev Williams confirmed on their Twitter accounts that Mr Gates released the insects.

TED is an annual conference that attracts some of the world's leading thinkers. Past speakers include Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Nobel laureates James Watson and Murray Gell-Mann.

Some of his 'History of' pieces and at some point I should blog about my Sam Simmons almost encounter.

One day when I work out how to get comments you can comment on my posts! Until then, email me via the feedback and I will paste them here....

So in the bathroom at work there is a note next to the radio saying "Please turn off this radio at night and save the world!"

And someone has written underneath "What about the cheerleader?" Funny yes but funnier when quite a few ppl at work have asked what it means :)

The BEST movie I have seen since I dont know when. Slumdog Millionaire....see it! see it!!! 5/5

Thanks to Manda V for the link... 30 Second bunnies is a website that does cartoon summarys of popular movies in 30 seconds, with Bunnies as the stars....

Dexter marries “his sister”

Carpenter, 29, plays the on-screen sister of Hall, 37, in Showtime’s hit series Dexter.

And they’re so damned convincing it’s gonna be impossible to ever look at them in the same way. The show is already twisted enough without overtones of incest, dammit!

The couple will walk the red carpet together at the Golden Globes. It will be the first time that they’ve publicly acknowledged their relationship.

Dexter’s third season is now screening on Showcase in Oz. TEN promises the second season sometime this year.

Just my humble opinion here but has anyone ever heard a rap songs without the word 'like' in it? Example...."Finish with a shot like Kurt Cobain's biography" or "Your dropping like the Doller in Indonesia".

How about taking the money you used for the NYE fireworks and putting it into public housing or our hospitals or transport? What you wasted in 15 minutes could be helping people for years!

The whole NYE fireworks is just a big pissing competition between countries anyway.

On the day that Donald Peters died, he unknowingly provided financial security for his wife of 59 years and their family.

Peters bought two Connecticut Lottery tickets at a local store on November 1 as part of a 20-year tradition he shared with his wife, Charlotte.

Later that day, the 79-year-old retired hat factory worker suffered a fatal heart attack while working in his yard in Danbury, Connecticut.

On Friday, his widow cashed in one of the tickets: a $US10 million ($14.2 million) winner which, in her grief over her husband's death, she had put aside and almost discarded before recently checking the numbers.

"I've always wanted a Corvette, but I don't think I'll buy one. I'll stick to a small car. I might go to Mohegan Sun," she said, referring to the casino in Connecticut.

"He'd be very mad, he just passed away and she won a lot of money," said Brian Peters, one of the couple's three children.

Finally it is here! Happy New year to the like 3 ppl who read this site. Hopefully there will be more of you soon.

I have grand ideas for this website... I will see if I can pull it off. Lots of reading involved but I can do anything.

I got a new puppy yesterday! Her name is Bella Black and she is the cutest monst loving puppy!

Its hard to believe she was dumped as a puppy but lucky for me some people from Pet Rescue found her, looked after her and gave her to me! She is about 4 & 1/2 months old.

Here is a video of her trying hard to introduce herself to her big brother Scooby and then giving up.

I can't quite grasp the concept of cute. I get when things are cute, but why? What makes you go gah gah when you see something that is 'cute'?

cute
/kyut/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [kyoot] Show IPA Pronunciation
adjective, cut⋅er, cut⋅est, adverb, noun
–adjective
1. attractive, esp. in a dainty way; pleasingly pretty: a cute child; a cute little apartment.
2. affectedly or mincingly pretty or clever; precious: The child has acquired some intolerably cute mannerisms.
3. mentally keen; clever; shrewd.
–adverb
4. Informal. in a cute, charming, or amusing way; cutely: In this type of movie the boy and girl always meet cute.
–noun
5. the cutes, Informal. self-consciously cute mannerisms or appeal; affected coyness: The young actress has a bad case of the cutes.

Cuteness is usually characterized by (though not limited to) some combination of infant-like physical traits, especially small body size with a disproportionately large head, large eyes, a pleasantly fair, though not necessarily small nose, dimples, and round and softer body features. Infantile personality traits, such as playfulness, fragility, helplessness, curiosity, innocence, affectionate behavior and a need to be nurtured are also generally considered cute.

Konrad Lorenz argued in 1949 that infantile features triggered nurturing responses in adults and that this was an evolutionary adaptation which helped ensure that adults cared for their children, ultimately securing the survival of the species. As evidence, Lorenz noted that humans react more positively to animals that resemble infants—with big eyes, big heads, shortened noses, etc.—than to animals that do not.

That is, humans prefer animals which exhibit pedomorphosis. Pedomorphosis is the retention of child-like characteristics—such as big heads or large eyes—into adulthood. Thus, pedomorphosis and cuteness may explain the popularity of Giant Pandas and Koalas. The widely perceived cuteness of domesticated animals, such as dogs and cats, may be due to the fact that humans selectively breed their pets for infant-like characteristics, including non-aggressive behavior and child-like appearance.

Some later scientific studies have provided further evidence for Lorenz's theory. For example, it has been shown that human adults react positively to infants who are stereotypically cute. Studies have also shown that responses to cuteness—and to facial attractiveness generally—seem to be similar across and within cultures.[1]

Additionally, the phenomenon is not restricted to humans. The young of many mammal and bird species share a similar set of typical physical proportions, beyond absolute body size, that distinguish them from adults of their own species. "Cute" features were also described in the recent finding of a baby Triceratops skull, suggesting that cuteness is an ancient and useful survival technique.[2]

[edit] Cultural significance
Knut, a young polar bear at the Berlin Zoo, has been referred to in news media as "cute".[3]

Cuteness is a major marketing tool in many cultures, such as that of Japan, with phenomena such as Pokémon or Hello Kitty. It is also an important selling point in the English-speaking world, where Elmo, Furby, Precious Moments, and many other cultural icons and products trade on their cuteness. It can be a factor in live action productions such as movies starring Shirley Temple, the Honey, I Shrunk The Kids trilogy, the Three Men and a Baby duology, and elements of One Good Cop, as well the successful documentary film March of the Penguins, where the noteworthy cuteness of the penguins was cited as a major reason for the film's outstanding appeal.[citation needed] This technique was repeated in the computer-animated film Happy Feet.

Stephen Jay Gould remarked on this phenomenon in an article for the journal Natural History, in which he pointed out that over time Mickey Mouse had been drawn more and more to resemble an infant—with bigger head, bigger eyes, and so forth. Gould suggested that this change in Mickey's image was intended to increase his popularity by making him appear cuter.

Did you know that Australia is the only democtratic country in the world without Human Rights Protection? Change it now!

Today, as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, we've been given a once in a lifetime opportunity to ensure that human rights are finally protected in Australia.

It sounds unbelievable, but Australia is the only democratic country in the world without formal human rights protections.

That's how our governments have got away with keeping children in detention, with leaving indigenous people without adequate housing, health and education services, and with everyday human rights abuses that take the form of bureaucratic bungles and discrimination.

Now, finally, the Government has opened up the conversation on human rights. Click here to tell them your vision for an Australian Human Rights Act that protects the values we all hold dear:

Imagine telling your children you had a hand in creating the Magna Carta, the US Declaration of Independence or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. We have a chance now to fight for Australia's own nation-defining declaration.

But it won't happen without you - many in the Government are hoping there will be little community interest in a Human Rights Act for Australia. We know better - over the past three years you and 300,000 other GetUp members have campaigned to stand up for our human rights time and time again.

Even so, a modern democracy shouldn't have to rely on community outrage to ensure laws and decisions are right and fair. We need to find a way to make sure that human rights are taken into account when decisions are made, so that nobody falls through the cracks.

Click here to take the next step in building a democracy where our everyday rights are protected:

The kind of things we worry about on a day to day basis: job security, giving our kids a good education, paying rent to avoid getting evicted, getting good health care, or paying for childcare are all human rights issues that can be protected under a Human Rights Act.

A strong society is one where we stand up for our fellow human being, setting a standard for how they should be treated in both good times and bad, and sticking to it. We have one chance to set that standard. Be a part of this moment in history today.

PS - Think freedom of speech or freedom from torture are protected in Australia? They're not. We're the only democracy in the world without human rights protection. Click here to tell the Government it's time for an Australian Human Rights Act.

This is a link to the food authority website which has a list of the places that they have 'named and shamed' for food safety infringments....

A summary of the main trends in IT, from the rise of the supernet
to the threat posed by intelligent machines.

Recently I was asked to speak at a conference about what's going to happen in IT predictions in the next 10 years. It's always hard to tell the future, but here goes anyway - 10 predictions, in no particular order. I have mentioned most of these ideas in various columns during the past year or two. So treat this, my last column for the year, as sort of a summary of what I believe to be the trends in IT as we near the end of the first decade of the digital millennium.

1. The internet will become the "supernet"

The internet has been around since 1969, but it's only 15 years since it has become the web - easy to use, easy to navigate, with billions of web pages and billions of users.

We have already reached the point at which most devices connected to the internet are mobile - phones, cars, even household appliances. That trend will continue, with the move to "embedded computing", where the internet links objects as well as general-purpose computers.

2. The decline of the PC

This is a consequence of the first prediction. PCs will not die - indeed, they will become massively more powerful, but they will become only one of many types of computing device. Mobile phones and "thin clients" will be much more popular ways of connecting to the supernet.

3. The rise of software as a service

Again, a consequence of the rise of other types of computing device. Data and processing and applications are moving off fixed computers - or even mobile computers - and on to the web.

This is increasingly being called "cloud computing" as all processing takes place in the "cloud" that is the internet. An important example is the craze for "software as a service", in which applications reside elsewhere and are accessed through a web browser.

4. The decline of copyright

Regular readers of this column will know this is a hobbyhorse of mine. Copyright and most intellectual property laws are now an anachronism. Attempts by record companies and film studios and book publishers to stop people copying digital media are doomed to failure.

Technology is forcing big changes to business models.

5. The greening of IT

Computers contribute about as much to carbon emissions as do aircraft - about 2per cent of the world's total. Many users and vendors are working out clever ways to reduce this figure - virtualisation, data centre consolidation, thin clients and telecommuting. All worthy stuff. But the real greening of IT comes when the power of information systems is harnessed to increase efficiencies throughout the organisation, in logistics, in manufacturing and in power distribution. IT is also an integral part of the carbon footprint monitoring and measuring process.

6. The threat from intelligent machines

Look up "The Singularity" in Wikipedia or somewhere. The term, invented by American writers Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, refers to the time in the near future when machines become more intelligent than humans and start replicating themselves. Who then will be the dominant life form on the planet?

7. Increased importance of technology for the aged

The population is ageing. The proportion of people disabled by the illnesses of old age is growing rapidly. Digital technology has a big role to play in helping people live independently and in keeping them out of expensive and soulless institutions.

The rise of so-called "e-health" is a big trend in this direction - use of technology to remotely monitor people's vital signs, to provide diagnoses at a distance and to supplement communications systems.

8. The decline of IT as a speciality

A hundred years ago it seems someone predicted that if telephony job opportunities continued to grow at the same rate, within a generation everybody in the world would be a telephone operator. Well, with automatic dialling, everyone is. Somebody else once predicted a similar thing about computer programmers. Today we all program computers, by the very act of using them. There are fewer specialists, but many more generalists.

9. The death of newspapers

Newspapers as we know them are in decline. Are you reading this in hard copy or online? Around the world, newspapers are shutting down or moving to the web. Blogs are replacing the mainstream media.

The profession of journalism, and the way we consume media and get our news, is being transformed. I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing, but there's no doubt it's happening.

10. The growth of internet TV

TV is going digital. At the same time, internet bandwidth is quickly increasing, and most of the data it carries is video.

Many kids simply don't watch TV any more - they download stuff. All sorts of people are offering all sorts of video content on the net, from legitimate TV stations seeking another distribution medium to amateurs on YouTube and elsewhere.

The existing pay TV model of expensive content over a proprietary distribution medium has only a few years left. And "free-to-air" will become "free-to-internet".

Call me at the end of 2018 to see how all this has panned out. And do have a Merry Christmas.

Vampires are at it again, on the screen and in teen novels. But it's not just the gore and sex that make them popular: they tap into our deepest fears.

WHAT is it with the undead? It's like they just won't die or something. Ever since Bram Stoker snuck an erotic masterpiece, in the form of a penny dreadful horror story, past the moral guardians of Victorian England, the vampire has been with us. And no amount of garlic, holy water or overexposure to UV rays or Hollywood seems able to see it off, either as folk legend or mass cultural icon. No sooner has some wretched howler such as Moonlight (a vampire-detective unrequited-love mash-up) done its worst to kill off the genre than a high-concept quirkfest like HBO's True Blood (think Twin Peaks meets Salem's Lot) will appear to revive things like a long, cool drink of O-negative.

Joss Whedon, the precocious genius behind the last great revival, with Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the TV show, rather than the movie), even satirised the count's infamous inability to stay dead for too long. When Buffy, his perky blonde superhero, finally muscles up to the uber-vamp at the end of the episode entitled Buffy vs Dracula, the slayer had to stake him twice as he kept morphing from dust back into corporeal form.

Buffy, of course, was about a lot more than just vampires. She fought demons, giant slugs, an out-of-control, off-the-books military research program and the more standard teen horrors of peer group issues, parental conflict, adolescent angst and boyfriend problems. The boyfriends in particular were powerful drivers of the series' narrative, two of them being vampires. And while Buffy was superficially a teen soap leavened with flashes of comedic brilliance and bogyman excitement, at its dark heart lay an older and much grimmer tale: the hero's journey in which everything is sacrificed until the sacrifice itself becomes the journey's meaning.

All of this stands in stark contrast to the latest popular vampire outbreak, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, in which the heroine, 16-year-old Bella Swan, is such a limp, wan, bloodless slip of a girl it is hard to imagine what the sexy and rather too Byronic teen vampire Edward Cullen sees in her. Edward, himself the sort of forever-young adolescent male who so inflames Germaine Greer, is an almost perfectly realised paradox of the dangerous but non-threatening boy. A hard-bodied but doe-eyed "vegetarian" vampire, who dresses impeccably, composes music and frets endlessly about the ethical dilemma of the couple's mutual desire, he is probably what you would get were you to distil the essence of every teenaged girls' archetypal perfect partner.

Twilight positively quivers with the unrealised sexual energy that throbbed through Stoker's novel and climaxed, so to speak, as Dracula bit three times into the virgin flesh of Mina Murray-Harker. The series' success - more than 5 million sales so far - has drawn repeated comparisons with J. K. Rowling, a flattery Meyer wisely resists at every opportunity, and has spawned any number of imitators.

"Guess what's clogging up my in-tray," jokes Pan Macmillan's deputy publishing director, Cate Paterson. "Hello, I've written a novel about a teenage vampire/troll/pixie/werewolf/bad fairy/zombie ..."

All of which probably miss the point. Meyer claims never to have read Dracula and Paterson lends that some credence. "Now that I've read Twilight I realise that it isn't a vampire thing - it's just the age-old sexual tension model in another guise. My niece is addicted and she has never read a vampire novel and probably won't again.

"You are just as likely to see a teenager reading [Princess Diaries author] Meg Cabot after a Stephenie Meyer than another vampire novel. What Stephenie Meyer has managed to do is bring together a teenage female who feels like a bit of an outsider and bring her up against a dangerously attractive male - bingo, sexual tension. And she does it bloody well."

Slate.com's Dana Stevens, reviewing the film of Meyer's book, cites approvingly the "feminist critique" of Twilight, pointing to "all that's reprehensible about the Twilight universe: the heroine's passivity and masochism, her utter lack of grrl-power spunk". Stevens sees Bella as an "anti-Buffy": a vulnerable high school girl "committed not to slaying vampires but to being slain" by one of them, Edward.

The audience for Bella's tale skews almost entirely female and teen, and the shamefully compelling nature of it was nowhere better demonstrated than in a writing workshop I supervised a few weeks ago, where all of the earnest high school girls had read Meyer and professed to hate the story, and to hate it viscerally. Indeed, they hated it so much they'd had to read every novel in the series, sometimes more than once, just to make sure it was every bit as appalling as they suspected.

IF MEYER is less a vampire novelist than a fantastically successful re-inventor of the Mills and Boon oeuvre, that is not to detract from the appeal of the vampire in modern mass culture. It is ubiquitous. So much so that, as Tom Shales, The Washington Post's Style columnist, has written, "You need a very good excuse to dig up the subject of vampires yet again."

You can see them disguised, in sci-fi raiment, as the Borg of Star Trek, a soulless, parasite species who sire more of their own by plunging two steel prongs into the necks of their victims, by which means they inject "nanites", a technobabble version of the vampire's tainted blood.

In author Peter Watts's hard-science space opera, Blindsight, Dracula's children aren't disguised at all; they're reborn from ancient DNA samples and put to work by humanity, which needs their superior physical and intellectual skills to face off a universe full of even scarier monsters. It all sounds like a low-brow spook'n'shoot, an ill-advised cocktail of the undead and laser beams. But it's high-concept low-brow, with Watts providing reams of credible-sounding scientific "research" in a "Notes and References" section that recalls nothing so much as the early work of the recently departed Michael Crichton.

It's even arguable that the monster du jour of Western mass culture, the zombie, is nothing if not a shambling, nihilistic re-imagining of the Stoker legend. Stripped of all eroticism, nuance and lyrical beauty, the zombie is a vampire for the Age of Terror, a flesh-eating critique of modernity, in the hands of a George Romero, or shameless, profit-seeking celebration of it in a video game such as Dead Rising, or the slightly more knowing and ironically distanced Left 4 Dead.

But the vampire legend hardly needs substitutes. It is strong enough to sustain itself for a while yet. While Shales was correct to warn against unthinking exploitations, he also admitted that the True Blood series was reason enough to go back to the haunted well. Funny, addictive and at times horrifically violent, in a very funny and addictive way, True Blood is proof that Russell T. Davies, the executive producer of the latest and hippest incarnation of Dr Who, wasn't blowing smoke up our collective fundament when he said that "writing monsters and demons and end-of-the world is not hack work. Joss Whedon [Buffy] raised the bar for every writer - not just genre-niche writers, but every single one of us."

In True Blood, set in the deep-south backwater of Bon Temps, the bloodsuckers are the least of the grotesqueries. Freed from the need to snack on humans by the invention of synthetic blood, they now move among us, "living" their alternative lifestyle surrounded by caricatures of Red State America, knuckle-draggin', tobacco-chewin', Lynyrd Skynyrd wannabes with pick-ups full of weapons, watermelon and moonshine. The same humming aura of sexual threat and promise surrounds the vampires but an acute sense of identity politics is also prominent as America's culture war is reprocessed through the story of their "coming out of the coffin".

"I love the fact that these creatures are struggling for assimilation. I can relate to that in certain ways," the show's creator, Alan Ball, told The New York Times. Ball's work, including Six Feet Under and the screenplay for American Beauty, has often dealt with the notion that people are not always what they seem.

"It's very easy to look at the vampires as metaphors for gays and lesbians but it's very easy to see them as metaphors for all kinds of things. If this story had been done 50 years ago, it would be a metaphor for racial equality. But I can also look at the vampires and see them as a kind of terrifying shadow organisation that is going to do what they want to do, whether they have to break the law or not. And if you get in the way, they'll just get rid of you. So it's a very fluid metaphor."

The genre might be getting a little, ahem, long in the tooth but the creatures themselves remain so versatile that a new variation on the theme is never far away. Witness author Charlie Huston's bringing life back into the oldest and tiredest of genre tropes, the private detective story, by the simple trick of making his tough-talking, two-fisted shamus one of the living dead. The gothic setting of Manhattan is more than well suited to a crossover between the two noirs - crime and horror - and Huston has the writing chops to pull off the stunt where others don't.

When perceiving the growing hordes of vampires crawling towards us across the landscape of pop culture, I suppose the question must arise: why?

In part there is a simple element of reinforcing success. As Russell Davies pointed out, Joss Whedon set a challenge that a lot of creatives found impossible to ignore. More importantly, he also reminded studio executives that the undead do pay, sometimes handsomely.

Beyond the pragmatic, however, there is always something else working. The 1950s obsession with UFOs and alien invasion movies almost certainly had its roots in Cold War fears and the Russians' early lead in the space race. So why vampires, rather than, say, ghosts or werewolves or man-made monsters in the style of Frankenstein?

"When I pitched the show to HBO, they asked me what it was about," says Ball of True Blood, "and I said, it's about what it really means to be disenfranchised, to be feared, to be misunderstood. It's a metaphor for the terrors of intimacy. That's one of the reasons vampires have been such a potent metaphor and mythological motif for centuries. They show up in pretty much all cultures. It's the notion of separating that part which keeps us safe and separate from another person, both emotionally and physically. And how there is a certain loss of self that takes place when there is true intimacy. And I think that's really healthy. But it doesn't mean it's not scary."

The sexual power of our toothsome predators is undoubtedly a factor. "We did a focus group," Ball says, "and it was great because the women loved the romance and the relationships and the men loved the sex and violence. And I thought, well, that's kind of a cliche but I'm glad. There's something in there for everybody."

Beyond the merely prurient, however, lies the terrible attraction of the vampire, the feeling that while it would be awful to lose one's soul upon rebirth as one of the nosferatu, it would also be, well, kinda cool. You'd "live" forever, with superpowers and unnatural beauty, and your nightlife would really kick up a gear. The mundane concerns and frustrations of mortal life would no longer be yours. Of all the monster archetypes, none remain as intellectually appealing as the vampire. They seem to gain so much and give up only their immortal souls, and in a secular, materialist world that hardly seems to be any kind of loss at all.

Twilight opens on Thursday. True Blood screens on Showcase from February 10.

This is the video clip to the lead song from Twilight. I hope the movie is even half as good as the books.

So I am reading a book called 'The Host' by Stephenie Meyer at the moment. The basis of the book is that the human race was so horrible to each other that 'souls' came down to earth and implanted themselves into the humans. In the world there is total peace, there is no money as everyone is so honest they don't question, no fights, nothing. Of course it wouldnt be a story without a few humans still existing...

In the chapter I just read they find an old newspaper with horrible headlines. And I just go to smh.com and read pretty much the same thing.

Answer: 'I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever,'

'If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record.'

THE retail king Gerry Harvey may have a personal fortune of about $1.6 billion but the Harvey Norman founder thinks donating to charity is "just wasted".

Asked in a new book about the role he and Harvey Norman play in the community, Mr Harvey said giving money to people who "are not putting anything back into the community" is like "helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason".

He said he believed in helping "develop people to their potential" because "when they achieve [their potential] they will put a lot more back into the community".

"You could go out and give a million dollars to a charity tomorrow to help the homeless. You could argue that it is just wasted. They are not putting anything back into the community.

"It might be a callous way of putting it but what are they doing? You are helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason. They are just a drag on the whole community.

"So did that million you gave them help? It helped to keep them alive but did it help our society? No. Society might have been better off without them but we are supposed to look after the disadvantaged and so we do it. But it doesn't help the society."

Mr Harvey added: "That is not to say we don't give money away to charities because we have given plenty away over the years. At the end of the day, the more quality individuals you develop in the community, the better off the community should be."

Earlier this year, Harvey Norman donated beds to a charity, Bridge Back to Life, that helps homeless men find rental accommodation.

The comments are in a new book, Master CEOs, by the Sydney funds manager Matthew Kidman.

Clare Martin, the chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, said: "I have really been impressed at corporate Australia and their real involvement in the wider community … and I always thought that Harvey Norman shared that as well.

"It does surprise me that Gerry Harvey, who's a very significant business figure, should not share the values of many other corporates."

In the interview, Mr Harvey also said that despite his wealth, "I still have a fear about going broke. I always think about it."

A HIDEOUS new affliction is creeping through the ranks of America's creative community.

The further Barack Obama edges ahead of John McCain in the million and one polls that are coming out the more pernicious the nagging fear becomes.

Barely a left-wing pundit, barely an Oscar-nominated softie can sleep a wink these days for fear of the race riots and international humiliation that will ensue should "The One" be defeated on Tuesday.

They think he's going to win, of course, but their hearts still bear the scars of 2000 and 2004.

The comedian Chris Rock is at least capable of joking about it. "If Obama loses?" he replied to a question from talk show host Bill Maher. "Well, that Wednesday after election day, anybody … any activity in your life that involves black people, it's not going to get done. If you're at the airport? No one's going to get your bags."

But for others, the dread is nameless and paralysing. Erica Jong, author of the 1970s feminist bible Fear of Flying, has developed a new complex in recent weeks - the fear of an Obama flogging.

"If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me," she told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera last week. "My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium.

"Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can't cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduced her to a bundle of nerves."

The American shock-jock Rush Limbaugh, on hearing this last detail, had a direct, if crude, response. "Maybe you should try getting off your back, Jane!" he roared. (The two are not friends.) Hollywood in general is on red anxiety alert for an Obama loss.

Crack teams of chiropractors are at the ready, and Nissen huts full of qualified shrinks and aromatherapists line Rodeo Drive to soothe the tortured brigades of the psychologically wounded should "The One" be robbed of victory.

"It's a critical time, but I have faith in the American people," she told Britain's Telegraph newspaper with a touch of implied menace in June this year. "If they prove me wrong, I'll be checking out a move to Italy. Maybe Canada, I don't know. We're at an abyss …"

Sarandon's words qualify her for membership of a small but committed group of Potential Canadians (PCs) in American artistic and creative circles.

Barbra Streisand vowed to emigrate to Canada in 2000 if George Bush were ever elected President, an undertaking she refreshed four years later at the prospect of his re-election.

But she was still sufficiently resident in California on September 16 this year to host a $US2500 ($3800) a head fund-raiser for Obama at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

The actor Alec Baldwin and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder made similar threats in 2000, as did Robert Redford in 2004, but none has since enriched the Canadian cultural scene.

In fact, Canadian immigration records show that arrivals from the United States actually slowed in the six months after George Bush's re-election in 2004.

You have the big Banana, the big Marino, the big Pineapple....Australia is obsessed it seems with 'big things'. But did you know there was a big Poo? For the list of 'big things' in Australia go the site below.

"DOMESTIC dogs may gauge the emotion in human faces in a similar way to us. The new finding could help shed light on the way we process people's faces on first sight.

When looking at a new face, humans tend to look left, at the right-hand side of the person's face, first - and spend more time doing so. This is known as "left gaze bias", but no one has as yet been able to explain the tendency, which occurs only when we encounter faces and not other objects. One theory is that the right side of human faces better expresses our emotional state." from New Scientist

Opal-like deposits spotted on Mars indicate the planet may have been wet for a billion years longer than previously thought, report US researchers.

If confirmed, the findings, by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), could have significant impacts for whether the planet was suitable to host life.

Dr Scott Murchie of John Hopkins University and colleagues report their discovery of a new category of hydrated minerals on Mars in the current issue of the journal Geology.

"Water may have existed as recently as two billion years ago," says Murchie. "It extends the time range for liquid water on Mars, and the places where it might have supported life."

Want to improve your health in as little as 15 minutes a day without doing anything? Give some thought to meditation. Doing nothing's actually the whole point of it. Training your mind not to do anything seems paradoxically to do quite a lot. Not only does it help reduce blood pressure, heart rate and stress hormones, it seems to change the brain in ways that make you smarter.

Although meditation's often used as a kind of worship or prayer, it's not necessarily a religious practice. You don't need to adopt a lotus position or follow any particular beliefs. It's really an exercise to focus your attention.

By focusing on an image, a sound, or your breath, the goal is to trigger a state of mental stillness, where you're alert and aware yet free of active thoughts.

When people report achieving this state of being, they not only feel good, their brainwave patterns change in consistent ways.

Just as lifting weights increases muscle strength, meditation is a type of work-out for the mind. By exercising the parts of the brain that deal with attention, it seems you can enhance your performance in tasks like decision making and learning that rely on attention.

One study showed people taught to meditate, performed up to 10 per cent better in a standard test of mental sharpness. That was after just one or two practice sessions. Their results were on par with people who'd had their brainpower boosted by a 40-minute nap.

There's even evidence the practice can reshape the brain. With people who meditate just 40 minutes a day showing thickening of the parts of the brain responsible for attention and sensory processing.

But many regular meditators say they feel benefits from as little as 15 minutes a day.

So not just inner peace and contentment but a bit of extra brain power to boot! Who'd have thought a little time out could achieve so much?

So Mark Ciptak puts his political beliefs before the desire to ever have sex with his wife again! Read here....

ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. -- A new father has secretly named his baby girl Sarah McCain Palin after the Republican ticket for president and vice president.

Mark Ciptak of Elizabethton put that name on the documents for the girl's birth certificate, ignoring the name Ava Grace, which he and his wife had picked earlier.

"I don't think she believes me yet," he told the Kingsport Times-News for a story to be published Tuesday. "It's going to take some more convincing."

Ciptak, a blood bank employee for the American Red Cross, said he named his third child after John McCain and Sarah Palin to "to get the word out" about the campaign.

"I took one for the cause," he said. "I can't give a lot of financial support for the (McCain/Palin) campaign. I do have a sign up in my yard, but I can do very little."

Some articles about Meg and her family that have appeared in the past couple of days. Please read.

What am I talking about you ask? Well I have been noticing lately that some people walk up stairs and put their whole foot on the stair and some only put the ball of their foot on the stair. Why?????

I see people walking around all day every day with white earphones hanging from their ears walking pass buskers. The buskers are trying to make an honest buck but society is deaf to them! They must still make some money or they would not be there but I wonder if the older buskers have given in to technology.

I am not shy about waving the flag for Steve Cannane and his new show the Hack Half Hour. I have been a huge fan of his for years and was sad when he left Hack on triple j (5.30pm weeknights, tune in). Now Steve has his own half hour show. The first episode was about how much of your personal details floats around on the internet, the second episode was about fighting.

Steve Cannane is an established and well respected journalist who won the 2006 Walkley award for Best Broadcasting Interviewing in 2006.

Mary Shelley wrote this story in a time where the world was changing, fast. Have a listen to this podcast to hear why electricity and the spirit world in the romantic era influenced writing in this time.

If you have read further down and read my rant about the state of journalism in this country you may find this podcast interesting.

If the sea levels rose by 7m, would you still have a home? Click here to find out.

Ever wonder why we have leap years? That is because the true year is 365.2422 long!

What is a leap year?

Which years are leap years?

In the Gregorian calendar, the calendar used by most modern countries, the following three criteria determine which years will be leap years:

According to the above criteria, that means that years 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500 are NOT leap years, while year 2000 and 2400 are leap years.

It is interesting to note that 2000 was somewhat special as it was the first instance when the third criterion was used in most parts of the world.

In the Julian calendar–introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC and patterned after the Roman calendar–there was only one rule: any year divisible by four would be a leap year. This calendar was used before the Gregorian calendar was adopted.

Why are leap years needed?

Details

The vernal equinox is the time when the sun is directly above the Earth's equator, moving from the southern to the northern hemisphere.

The mean time between two successive vernal equinoxes is called a tropical year–also known as a solar year–and is about 365.2422 days long.

Using a calendar with 365 days every year would result in a loss of 0.2422 days, or almost six hours per year. After 100 years, this calendar would be more than 24 days ahead of the season (tropical year), which is not desirable or accurate. It is desirable to align the calendar with the seasons and to make any difference as insignificant as possible.

By adding a leap year approximately every fourth year, the difference between the calendar and the seasons can be reduced significantly, and the calendar will align with the seasons much more accurately.

(The term "day" is used to mean "solar day"–which is the mean time between two transits of the sun across the meridian of the observer.)

An interesting article that I was emailed at work regarding the websites of John McCain and Barack Obama

The other day I did the first of a 3 day course called Springboard. It runs over 3 months and it was very interesting! It is designed to help empower women in the workforce and in their lives. So I thought that I would write a few quotes here of things that I heard on day 1 of the course.

All men think about ... isn't sex

Almost 28,000 randomly selected men, aged 20 to 75, from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Brazil responded to a standardised telephone interview about their attitudes to life and sex.

The results, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, showed men overwhelmingly rated attributes such as being seen as a man of honor and having the respect of one's friends ahead of having success with women when assessing masculinity.

When it came to quality of life, one-third of respondents said being in good health was the most important factor, followed by a harmonious family life (26 per cent) and being in a good relationship with their partner or wife (19 per cent).

"Taken together, this body of research underscores the centrality to men of nonsexual aspects of the male identity [and] emphasises the importance of the couple relationship," German researcher Michael Sand said in his research.

So Pamela Anderson is apparently dating Michael Jackson. http://www.smh.com.au/news/people/jacko-dates-pamela-anderson/2008/09/03/1220121285535.html

Hilarious! But you know there have been stranger couples in the world and so long as they are happy good luck to them! They are at the age where yes the lust part is good but if you are not with a friend then you are going to end up very sad and lonely. (I wish I could speeeeel!)

Anyways tonight after a VERY long day I want to say how disgusted I am with the state of journalism these days. Not all, some of it is very well done! But usually opinion pieces and bloggers.

These days you read a story on one of the major paper websites and after 2 lines they ask you if you know more and here is the number to SMS. Newsflash people, YOU are the journalists! You get paid to LOOK for more!

My favorite bad journalists are the one clearly out of uni who have been brought up in the networking age and the only quotes they get are the ones from random people on Facebook and MySpace. A perfect example was the tragic death of Mark Priestley. The 'quotes' were not from staff, not from friends or family, but from his Facebook Page. Someone saying they saw him at Newtown last week and he didn't look depressed. People don't usually 'look' depressed and besides, you are a random on the street! But this is our news source now.

But thumbs up for Pammy and Michael.... *wanders off to read the many facebook groups about this newest piece of 'news*

An emergency room at a hospital is a fascinating place where you can learn alot about people, the world and how low health comes in Government priorities. Trust me, I spent 13 hours in one today.....

I have met wonderful yet extremely overworked doctors and nurses, my family has been in an ambulance where not only did the bed not click in properly but half the machinery didn't work, the lights, the blood pressure machines, all not working where we were in the ER, patients lined up in the waiting room and patients brought in my ambulance lined up in the corridor (at 3pm the line was 9 long).

I have heard some horrible sounds today. Not just from my family member but screaming, crying, agony and mental and physical pain.

The lady in the bed next to us this afternoon was of Indian or Sri Lankan decent. All dressed up pretty in her sari. She was a suicide attempt. After listening to her talking (not that you can avoid it in ER cause there is NO privacy) I just wanted to go in there and give her a big hug. Her husband just stood at the end of the bed not looking at her as she cried. This was her 6th attempt apparently.

Its amazing the array of things that the doctors and nurses there have to deal with. I don't know how they do it.

Patients are a summation line on a white board. They look, and that's all they really have to go on. No communication between staff really cause they are all too busy. "Code two in bed 25". They all run.

It has come to be expected that in the summer months I end up spending a day in the ER feeding someone or another in my family, listening to them in pain and trying to stop a fever with some ice wrapped up in a bag with Biohazard written on it.

I hope it doesn't forget me this year cause I need a bit of....something at the moment.

I walked out of work this morning after the call, out the back alley way and broke down into tears. People walked by and looked at me but no one said 'are you ok'. You say people don't do that? I do, and so do people I know.

And so after hours of waiting we are moved to a ward. Sitting there, waiting, waiting thinking about all the pained people in the hallways who needed this spot.

The hospitals are at beyond capacity and this is a real issue. I didn't see anyone there today that should have gone to a GP instead.

Anyways, back to it tomorrow, but a ward so no more screaming in my ears from all directions, just one.

Are you excited? I am! I have a few things I want to put here but initially I will post an excerpt from "The United States Of America" by Jack Kerouac (one of my heroes)

Got up and dressed up
and went out & got laid
Then died and got buried
in a coffin in the grave,
Man –

Yet everything is perfect,
Because it is empty,
Because it is perfect
with emptiness,
Because it's not even happening.

Everything
Is Ignorant of its own emptiness--
Anger
Doesn't like to be reminded of fits—

You start with the Teaching
      Inscrutable of the Diamond
And end with it, your goal
      is your startingplace,
No race was run, no walk
      of prophetic toenails
Across Arabies of hot
      meaning you just--
      numbly don't get there

Woman who arrived late for doomed Air France flight killed in crash