Waxing sentimental over first transistor radios and other devices.
miscellaneous
What a beat up!
The Fairfax papers are running a curious 3-page story today saying Justice Michael Kirby ‘has been vilified and defamed by fraudsters who have stolen his identity to post offensive material on the popular internet site MySpace,” and implying it is a first case scenario. Good grief, what a beat up!
Is this just lazy or out-of-touch MSM journalism? A very quick perusal of My Space gives you hosts of fake identity pages, and sometimes more than one for people with high profiles. There are numerous bogus identity pages for many of Australia’s political players, and if you care to look further afield, identities such as the Pope, the Queen, and Rupert Murdock himself. Most of them are crude and lame attempts at satire. The jabs on the fake Kirby page are not much different to ones on the fakes for Amanda Vanstone, or Alexander Downer, for example. It sounds as if MySpace will take the Kirby page down if approached. The comparison to real cases of stolen identity at the end of the article is nonsense.
If it’s not laziness, why highlight Kirby? Is it another instance of smearing Kirby (while appearing to do otherwise)?
The article also says ‘The case… underlines the flimsy or fraudulent nature of much of the internet’s so-called “citizen journalism”.’ The MySpace pages are attempted spoofs within a social networking site rather than citizen journalism. While there is plenty of lively discussion about issues surrounding citizen journalism, this appears to be an uninformed and broadsweeping (or flimsy and fraudulent?) smear on new media.
My feeling is that the only thing to be trusted here is that Michael Kirby will deal with the issue with his usual dignity, intelligence, and allegiance to free speech.
Satellite image of fire fronts in Victoria
This is a satellite image of the Victorian bushfires from the satellite NOAH/AVHRR at 10.15 am ESDT, on Dec 7 2006 (click on the image to see it full size). It was processed by Edward King from CSIRO’s Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research. The colours indicate green for forest, blue for smoke and cloud, and red for heat of 45 degrees Celsius and above. The squiggly red lines just to the left of centre are the actual fire fronts – amazing!
The fires were started by lightning over a week ago, and there is a lot of worry that in the extreme weather conditions expected this weekend, they will merge into a 100 km front. It’s scary stuff.
This all reminds me of Doc’s idea for a river of news site for bushfires. He was talking about California, but we could surely benefit from a similar site here. But I’m not sure how you go about setting up an aggregator like that.
A couple of other links:
Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment’s Statewide Map of Current Fire Incidents
NASA’s Earth Observatory satellite coverage
Smoke plumes: NASA satellite image : this was why it was so hazy in Canberra yesterday – the smoke was swept around and back over us at high altitudes
Sentinel Hotspots
Plea for a fingertip bandaid
You would think that we cut our finger tips enough for someone to have brought out a bandaid that fits over the top of one’s finger without little raggy ears at the corners, and without having to wrap a second bandaid around the finger to prevent the first one coming off. It’s easy. Here is the necessary design:
The bit at the top comes down over your finger, and the bits at the sides wrap over it and around. The cut-away sides in the middle mean no raggy ears.
Simple. You read about it first here.
Some thoughts on the miners’ interview
I watched the Ch. 9 interview with the two rescued Beaconsfield miners on Sunday night, and far from being bored, was quite fascinated. Some thoughts:
I was rather touched to watch how they were still taking care of each other. If one was struggling to keep his emotions in check, the other stepped in to relate something funny, or change tack, or give a reassuring touch, while he gathered himself together.
There was not one mention of god or praying. Their spiritual sustinance had been thoughts of their families and taking care of each other. I wonder if this secular aspect would be allowed to persist in a Hollywood version of their story.
These big boofy guys were wonderfully resilient and resourceful. They had good sense and medical knowledge and used them. One was less articulate than the other, but as someone here said, he pegged out the four corners of what he wanted to say, and left you to fill in the middle. I liked that description.
Channel 9 were really lazy. Their editing was sloppy, and they used an old graphic of the men’s position, obviously from a few weeks ago, presumably because they hadn’t been bothered to do a new one with the info the men provided. But I was glad the interviewer for the most part just let them talk without much interuption.
Live-blogging the rescue: Our trapped miners are free at last!
It’s 5.10 am here in Canberra. I woke up and turned on the radio wondering how the rescue of the trapped miners in Tasmania was going, and was delighted to hear they have been freed from the 1.2 metre cage and cavity that they have been in for the last 14 days, a kilometre deep in the earth.
They are not above ground yet, but apparently it’s immiment. It’s just so hard to imagine being in those circumstances. Now they will have the media to contend with.
Updating:
5.22 am: They say the streets of Beaconsfiled are filling with people waiting for the miners to emerge. The church bell has been ringing. It’s wet and windy, and still dark. The media is interviewing anyone they can.
5.27am: Bill Shorten, the Australian Workers Union leader who has been looking after the families and handling much of the media attention has announced the men will be coming out in about an hour. They have been medically assessed as being pretty fit: #3 on a scale where the average is #4. They are cleaning up and then being reunited with their families at a station below ground. People are allowing themselves to cheer!
In a slightly earlier interview, Bill Shorten kept emphasising that it was the families that should remain the focus. He’s right.
Not surprisingly, there is a lot of symbolism involved in this situation. Much emphasis on the miners wanting to walk out if possible, instead of being taken on stretchers, and wanting to move their work tags from the green to the red side of the board that indicates whether you are ‘on shift’ and down the mine, or ‘completed your shift’ and safely up from the mine. Also much speculation about whether the miners will push hard to attend the funeral today of their fellow miner who died.
5.49: announcement that the miners will be coming out after 6am EST. Or in 15 minutes…
The media has staked out everything fromBeaconsfield to Luanceston where the hospital is. A channel 7 reporter is saying that the 40min drive by ambulance to Launceston will be the longest drive in their lives. Somehow I think thats not true and she is projecting some of herself into that comment!
5.54 am: The wives have been seen heading down into the mine to meet their guys.
There will be a guard of honour as the miners leave the mine.
5.58 am : thewy are out! tags taken! families being embraced!
Todd Russel hugging Bill Shorten
Walking proud. If a little stiff!
much hugging, back slapping, hand shaking. Very blokey :-)Brant Webb getting into the ambulances with their families
6.06: Todd Russell hugging his boy and now going to the ambulance
Todd has chucked his boots off and is joking. Kicking back in the ambulance. People milling around. Obviously talkative and humorous. Much clapping and whistles.
6.12 Miners forming a guard of honour. Ambulances driving out slowly. Police car first, then the two ambulances, then a van for more family
6.17am: They are on their way :-)
From my garden
I happened to notice this tiny baby gecko trapped in a spider’s web outside my studio window yesterday. It was only an inch or so long. At first I thought it was one of the little sleek brown skinks, as we have lots of those, and the gecko’s distinctive pads on its fingers were not easy to see. I’m fond of both, but especially geckos, and I don’t see them very often.
It’s tail was very securely fastened to the web, which made me think it had been properly caught, rather than had just wandered into the web and got tangled. Perhaps the spider was waiting for it to weaken, because it hadn’t been poisoned or wrapped up more. I didn’t search for the spider, but maybe it was one of the black house spiders that live under the external window sills. After I had taken a few photos, I rescued the gecko and it ran away into the tanbark. It surprised me thinking about it afterwards that it hadn’t shed it’s tail to get away as both geckos and skinks can. Maybe tail shedding ability only comes with age?
Also from my garden, a moth with great camouflage, sitting on a towel on the washing line the other day. From other angles it was even more the colour of the towel. Underneath though, it was very colourful, and it had masked face like a bandit, and a shape that made me think of stealth bombers.
There are a few more photos in my Backyard set at Flickr.
Follow-up to my mash-up post
A friend told me that a Sydney church had already jumped on the bandwagon. I googled, I goggled, I gonquered:
I encourage them to go the whole hog and adopt my script (we can come to some arrangement) for a full-blown national media campaign. Mine has the distinct advantage of avoiding pointing the finger of blame and guilt for past demeanors, and suggesting a bit of head scratching and bemusement.
Updated links 2015
So where the bloody hell is the church mash-up?
There is a curious $150,000 church advertising campaign on in Canberra at the moment. With the tag line ‘I’m not into religion, but I reckon a lot of what Jesus taught is pretty amazing’, it really makes me feel as if the institutional church knows they are up against the wall. Some of the banners outside the participating churches give the main impression of the face of a pretty girl, and the word ‘Jesus’. I always look for the exclamation mark…
I propose they would have more success with a mash-up of our controversial tourist ads, which have been almost banned in Britain (because of the ‘bloody’), in Canada (because of the beer – huh?), and now in the US (because of the ‘bloody’ and the ‘hell’ disturb the ‘family values’ mob):
- We’ve brought you a wine (picture of chalice filled with wine)
- And we’ve had the camels shampooed (3 wise men and camels)
- We’ve saved you a spot on the pews (Lara Bingle in bikini smiles invitingly from pew)
- And we’ve got the rockspiders out of the pulpit (squeaky clean bishop in pulpit – perhaps a woman?)
- We’ve got the ghouls off the gravestones (ghosts exiting manicured graveyard)
- And Peter is on his way down to open the front gate (St Peter at Pearly Gates)
- The angel’s waiting (Gabriel)
- And supper’s about to be served (Last Supper)
- We’ve turned on The Light (flooding rays of holy light)
- And we’ve been rehearsing for over 40,000 years (?) (celestial choir)
- So where the bloody hell are you? (Lara again)
I’m fighting the temptation of making it into a flash movie myself, so if you want to do it and save me the trouble, go to it!
Updated links 2015
