The problem with political jokes is they get elected.
– Henry Cate VII
So now we have another 4 years of Bush and another 3 years of Bonsai (aka Howard).
I think I need a stiff drink..
Category Archives: Writing
The state of Victoria stops for a horse race
For those outside of Australia it’s probably hard to grasp that pretty much the entire state of Victoria stops on the first Tuesday of each November for a horse race!
The Melbourne Cup has been running for an unbroken spell of 143 years since 1861, which is pretty good going considering the first horses weren’t introduced to Australia until 1788 by the First Fleet.
We didn’t watch the race, it was wet and windy so we were working on rearranging the Nobody Nowhere site.
There is an ABC report on the race if you’re interested..
George W Bush voted film “Villain of the Year”
Google News is showing a shed load of reports that British movie fans have voted GWB their film “Villain of the Year”. 🙂
Some interesting science stories..
Two things from the New Scientist newsfeed..
First off is a story that newborn rats given Prozac grow up depressed, although I must say if I’d just been born and found out I was in a lab I’d not be too happy either..
The other is about something I’d heard described at CCGrid 2004 regarding creation of the “National Lambda Rail” network in the US, basically a massive network allowing 40 10 GigE channels over different wavelengths. For SuperComputer geeks like me that translates into “Yummmm….”. 🙂
Fitzalan High School in the news for the wrong reasons..
Here’s a story about my old school that my brother sent me.
Some things never change. 🙁
Some new websites
I’ve been helping Donna out with some new websites.
One is still under construction, though it has some information about what it’s aims are. It’s called Auties.org and describes itself thus:
Auties.org is a website to promote the entrepreneurial (self employment) skills of people diagnosed on the Autistic Spectrum Australia wide (and in some cases display these skills to those overseas). Auties.org is run by a committee of people formally diagnosed as being on the Autistic Spectrum…
The other is Nobody Nowhere, an enigmatic website with quite a story behind it (literally!).
British armed forces recognise first ever Satanist
From the ABC news report on this:
A technician in the Royal Navy has become the first serviceman in Britain’s armed forces to be officially recognised as a Satanist, the Defence Ministry said today.Chris Cranmer, 24, has been given the go-ahead by his captain to perform Satanic rituals on board the HMS Cumberland and is reportedly lobbying his employers to register Satanism as an official religion in the armed forces.
I guess that will liven things up a bit on board.. Be a pain keeping all the goats under control though.
The Platypus becomes even stranger
Came across an interesting report on the ABC News website saying that Platypus has 5 chromosomes determining gender as opposed to virtually the rest of the animal kingdom which makes do with 1. There are further articles on this at the ABC Science News website and at New Scientist.
There was this interesting quote in the New Scientist article:
Another intriguing discovery from the study is that one end of the platypuses’ chromosome chain shares similarities with mammalian sex chromosomes, while the other end shares characteristics with the sex chromosomes of birds.
Robin Williams was right.. 🙂
New photos in the Gallery
OK, finally gotten around to adding more photos to my gallery!
There are snaps from our recent holiday in the Grampians where we were miles from anywhere with no mobile coverage, no computers, no people, just lots of wildlife, trees and mountains!
I’ve also started a new album called Historic Australia which now has its first entry, the homestead of James McClay near Moolart in Victoria. The house has a prominent name/data over the door which helped me track down this entry about Scots who emigrated to Australia. He is also mentioned in this document as being the secretary of an Anti-Dredging Committee in Maryborough, 1905.
CD Baby milestone – US$10 million paid to artists!
I don’t usually put press releases up here, but this is something I believe in, and it’s good news for music and musicians!
CD Baby is an independant on-line store selling CD’s directly from independant music artists.
There are no distributors involved, the musicians send their CD’s to CD Baby and they sell direct to the public.
They’ve just announced that they’ve now payed over US$10 million to artists from the sales of their CD’s as well as from their deals with people like Apple’s iTunes.
While record labels are blaming piracy for a lack of sales, music sold through CD Baby has almost doubled every year for the past six years. “It’s easier than ever for music fans to find great non-mainstream music,” says CD Baby founder Derek Sivers. “So what’s reported as a sales decline for a huge pop star is actually a sales boost for the less-famous but more-talented musicians of the world. We sell thousands of CDs a day by artists you’ve never heard, but will love when you do.”
Their “about” page says:
Current Numbers:
- 74,654 artists sell their CD at CD Baby.
- 1,254,336 CDs sold online to customers.
- $10,047,762.14 paid to artists.
All pretty impressive!
Donna has her CD “Nobody Nowhere” with them. They’re nice friendly people who are doing the right thing by making it simple for independant artists to sell direct to the public.
Read on for the press release.
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