The US government should get real and implement strict gun control. I’m not holding my breath though.
Don’t know much biology
Here are three biology-related stories that I have found interesting in the last few days.
Great Turtle Race: up-beat site championing action to save the critically endangered leatherback turtles. The turtles have been tagged and you can monitor online their swim from Costa Rica to The Galapagos Islands. Only 59 turtles came to the beach this year as compared to 1,500 in 1988… shocking! Sand temperature determines the gender ratio in turtle nest: the warmer the sand the more females, the cooler the sand the more males. Bring in global warming… if the sand temperature goes over 89.5 degrees, they will all be female…
Bee Hive Colony Collapse Disorder: A comprehensive run-down on possible causes for the worrying disappearance of bees from hives resulting in deaths of whole hives on a large scale. The suggestion that its likely to be the impact of imidacloprid, a nicotine-based pesticide marketed under the names Admire, Provado, Merit, Marathon and Gaucho, looks more plausible
than most to me. Apparently its designed to make termites disoriented and lose memory, among other things, so maybe it does the same with bees.
G Spot and related matters: The ABC’s Health Report has audio download and transcript of a great interview with Professor Beverly Whipple of the College of Nursing at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She is a pioneer in the scientific study of female sexual physiology and in particular the female orgasm.
Wordsworth Rap
Check it: a rap version of Wordsworth’s I wandered lonely as a cloud, with MC Nuts, aka Sam, the Lake District Red squirrel mascot for Ullswater Steamers. It’s to celebrate the bicentenary of the poem’s publication.
(via Burningbird)
Street party tube men
I rather like this new ad for Tooheys beer, which features lots of those tall inflatable tube men as revellers at a street party. It was made by Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney.
Once upon a Coffee Cup
You might think I’m on a real anti-Howard bender today, especially since I’ve also just decided its time to stop posting to my Vigil blog, but I swear this video was found quite accidentally while I was trying out the new Alpha search engine (very cool). It’s such a good caricature, both in looks and voice, too funny to pass by (the ‘Go Aussie’ cracks me up!):
Once Upon a Coffee Cup is described as a A Greek-Australian fairy tale!, presented by The So-Called Elite, a group of ‘latte-drinking, chardonnay sipping, over-educated, under-achieving artists who have come together for the first time to perform in this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival’ under the direction of Matt Scholten and if theatre. It’s written and performed by Andrea Mina, Vaya Pashos & Shan Jayaweera. Show dates are April 17-28 2007, 6:30pm Evatt Room @ Trades Hall.Can anyone tell me who made the puppet?
Shan also has a nice earlier Howard/Bush cowboy spoof.
Update:
Thanks to Shan Jayaweera, the puppeteer behind the John Howard puppet, who contacted me to let me know a few more details! Shan hadn’t picked up a puppet until he did the one year puppetry course at the Victorian College of the Arts last year, but since then he has worked with Philippe Genty (visiting artist at the VCA), and with Spike Jonze (on the Where the Wild Things Are film adaptation).
The puppet in the Howard/Bush Brokeback parody was made by Shan, but he then got a classmate, Jemila McEwan, to re-do the head for Once upon a Coffee Cup. Jemila was a production student at VCA at the time, and did the puppet build
for the show they did with Genty.
Thanks again, Shan.
If the boots don’t fit redux
(photo via the Canberra Times)
Speaking of sculptures, one of my first blog posts was about Greg Taylor’s satirical bronze, If the boots don’t fit, which depicted the prime minister as dwarf ANZAC. I got a bee in my bonnet, and tracked it all over town. I was pleased to see that its still doing the rounds, and has most recently been placed on the high water mark on Horseshoe Bay at Bermagui, as part of the Bermagui Seaside Fair ‘Sculpture on the Edge’.
Taylor is quoted as saying Bermagui now has “arguably the safest beach in the world.” “What terrorist is going to come ashore there? And there will be no global warming – the sea will not dare rise.”
The best photos (and commentary!) I can find of the sculpture at Bermagui are by JohnG here: 1, 2, 3.
Trans-substantiation 2
During all the fuss about the chocolate Jesus in the US over the last week or two I kept thinking: ‘Hang on, that was done here years ago!’. Lo and behold, the Canberra Times eventually dredged up their 1994 article on Trans-substantiation 2, by Richard Manderson. With a story beginning with the sale of 100 raspberry-fondant-filled smaller Jesuses at the Gorman House markets, an Easter-egg-foil loin cloth, chocolate-dipped string for hair, a sound artistic statement, a clever title, and the cultural superiority of leading by 13 years, whats not to like?!
Happy 10th to Scripting News
Sending a wave to Dave Winer today as Scripting News celebrates it’s tenth birthday – congratulations, Dave, and thank you for all you have done for the medium! We carry our essential selves into the blogosphere, so it is a medium that has all the same challenges as the real world; but I love it and believe it can empower and enrich us and our society.
Thats the way you do it!
Ian Sharpe’s comment on the latest development in the travesty of justice that is David Hicks’ lot.
