'Auld Lang Syne' (Times Long Gone)

Today in the Book of Days: the folklore and customs of New Year's Eve. And free New Year's e-cards.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?

Chorus
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes
And pu'd the gowans fine
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl't in the burn
Frae morning sun till dine
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint stoup
And surely I'll be mine
And we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

Robbie Burns

Farewell to the Almanac Yahoo! Groups ezine, for a while

To the members of Wilson's Almanac ezine group,

We've done the ezine http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WilsonsAlmanac/ every day for five years!

As I announced in the Almanac last week, today completes five years of daily posting (1,929 posts) and from today I'm taking a break from sending the daily Almy -- just the ezine, as the rest of the project will be uninterrupted. I can't promise how long, but it will be at least 3 months while I complete my novel http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/novel.html which I hope you will read and enjoy. No need to unsubscribe, as we'll be back.

Here's a potted history of the Almanac:

How it began
On about December 29, 2000, I suddenly decided that January 1, 2001, would be the perfect time to launch an Almanac ezine from my two decades of hobby research into calendar customs. I had two days to work out how to do it, but we launched on the first day of the millennium as planned.

On January 1, 2001, the Almanac was launched with one reader. Soon I learned how to make a website http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/ with the plan of having two pages: an entrance, and a subscription page. It just kinda grew and now there are thousands of pages with millions of words.

By March, 2001, we had 22 members. Discouraged? Hmm, maybe a bit.

Growth soon became rapid, doubling every 70 days on average. By 2002 there were more than 1,500 members.

In 2001 we launched the Articles page http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/articles.html which now has several hundred original articles.

December 27, 2001, saw the first in the series of Essays for a New World http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/essay.html -- inspirational essays by friends of the Almanac.

On February 2, 2002, we launched the word 'scungeous' on the Internet http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WilsonsAlmanac/message/429 -- we are humbly convinced still that the English-speaking world needs this word.

In February, 2002, we launched the FeelGood Manual http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/manual.html , uploading a chapter a week for 17 weeks, thereby creating an online book on how to Feel better * Think better * Act better * Dramatically * easily * quickly. Readers say it is useful; some say it has changed their lives. (We still need a book publisher or even an agent.)

On March 15, 2002, we started building The Wall of Divine Almaniacs http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/support.html -- let me give you a customised brick!

On August 2, 2002 Wilson’s Almanac ezine No 650 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WilsonsAlmanac/message/650 posted the following notice to members: "The government of my country, Australia, and several others apparently, are planning an invasion of Iraq". Some scoffed. On this day the Almanac announced its opposition to war as a method of combatting terrorism, and the rates of membership growth immediately dropped to a level that has remained slow (but steady) to this day. Gone was the bacterial doubling every 70 days, which (an econometrician mate of mine kindly calculated) would have given us more members than the population of the world in 4.25 years.

Before the invasion of Afghanistan (and therefore of Iraq), in a poem http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/poetry3.html we predicted that Bush and Blair's misguided "crusade" would increase terrorism around the world. Sorry about that.

A world scoop
On February 13, 2003, http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/bin_laden_tape.html we scooped the world's media with the story that Colin Powell, in order to aid the war plans of the George W Bush administration, had misinformed the UN Security Council that Osama bin Laden was friendly to Saddam Hussein. We showed that in fact, bin Laden was calling for the assassination of Hussein, on the very tape that Powell was using to pretend the opposite. On the same day, we sent the information to hundreds of media outlets in Australia and about 80 other nations. Despite our most intense efforts, we could not get this story into mainstream media, and again many scoffed -- for 32 months, that is. Then, in September, 2005, Colin Powell admitted that this event was a "blot" on his record http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KHA20050911&articleId=931 . Now the accepted fact is as we stated it before the war.

On February 8, 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, we also showed many other lies and myths being promulgated by the pro-war lobby: http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/myths.html -- most if not all of our assertions (ferociously attacked by many at the time) are now the accepted facts.

In April, 2003, we broke the story of President George W Bush's conversion to the cause of non-violent conflict resolution: http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/summit.html Of course, it was just wishful thinking and a bit of fun with the worst President in US history.

Also in April, 2003, we launched the Blogmanac http://wilsonsalmanac.blogspot.com/

May, 2003, saw the nascence of the Yellow Pages http://yellow_pages.blogspot.com/

At about this time, we unveiled our remarkable Search Engine http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/search.html which is very efficient for finding what you want from more than 6 million Almanac words.

On January 1, 2004, we launched the Book of Days http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/book/book_of_days.html , adding each day's folklore and history just a day or two ahead of the members' reading of it. Today (December 31, 2005) it has 405 pages and 3,454,778 words -- more than 9,000 words for your birthday and Uncle Herbert's.

Sometime (I don't know when), we launched Daily Planet News http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/news.html -- I still think it's our best-kept secret, with 150 news sources on one page. All the other news agencies seem to have very few sources, and usually only one. I invite you to bookmark it and use it instead of TV news as it is much broader.

On January 1, 2005, A Sandy Beach Almanac http://sandybeachalmanac.blogspot.com/ had its birth. In it we try to show that one does not have to be a beachcomber or an anarchist hippie bum, as the two are not mutually exclusive. Other blogs were to follow.

Naturally, I haven't recorded here the blunders and errors, and their numbers are legion, often generously pointed out by dedicated members of this project, to whom thanks and blessings.

Of course, there's been much more, like Toonimations, podcasts, poetry pages for adults and kids, a tagboard, games, resources and all sorts of things you can find at the SiteMap http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/sitemap.html -- and all of it fun for me and a great learning experience. I hope you will stay with the Blogmanac http://wilsonsalmanac.blogspot.com/ and subscribe http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/blogmanaczine.html to its regular posts. You'll find the free Blogmanaczine similar to what you've been getting in the Almy.

Don't go back, we'll be right away!
Thank you for your support and friendship over five incredible years. Don't go away, because the ezine will be back, as soon as I can do it, gods willing. Your continuing support is always invited http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/subs.html

This has been a privilege for me.

Abundance and gratitude, bright blessings, and, as always, "Carpe diem!" -- "Seize the day!".

Pip

Calling all bloggers: These documents need publishing

The UK government has been quick to deny that it practises or tolerates the practice of torture. So it is perhaps not suprising that they are determined that you should not see the following documents ...

Calling all bloggers: These documents need publishing

Tagged: torture, war+on+terror, human+rights, civil+rights, blair

Dubya's 'Brownie' quote wins award

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Call it the wrong phrase at the wrong time but "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" was named on Thursday as U.S. President George W. Bush's most memorable phrase of 2005.

"The ill-timed praise of a now disgraced agency head became a national punch line for countless jokes and pointed comments about the administration's handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and added to the president's reputation for verbal gaffes and clumsy turns of phrase."

And who can forget Brownie's awful emails during the hight of Katrina? Here's a photo of the one sent to him by one of his aides, telling him that in such a "crises" (sic) he should roll his sleeves up when on TV so he actually looks like he's working hard ("Even the President rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow"). It's hard to imagine that PR still works on people, but it does, and Brownie's aide was correct, unfortunately. There's one born at least once a minute -- every 17 seconds in TV land.
More

Tagged: dubya, bush, hurricane+katrina, fema, bushism, bushisms, humor, humour

The Shelleys get hitched

1816 Two and a half years after eloping to Switzerland Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (daughter of the philosophical anarchist William Godwin and the equally famous Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist author of Vindication of the Rights of Women) and Percy Bysshe Shelley were married, upon learning that Shelley's first wife had drowned herself. Mary, author of Frankenstein, is generally called Mary Shelley to distinguish her from her illustrious mother.

Tagged: english+literature, anarchism, history, poetry, feminism

How Kerry Packer will get through the Pearly Gates

Now that Australia's richest man, media and gambling magnate Kerry Packer, has died, there are many anecdotes about 'The Goanna' circulating. I'll add one more. It's from his lighter side, not the darker one.

I never met him, but through two unrelated chances I knew both his gardener and his caretaker, and also his pilot -- his plane pilot, not the helicopter pilot who famously donated his kidney to the tycoon. One of these gents showed me through Kezza's house when he wasn't home, but I won't divulge anything from his private domain.

However, one memorable anecdote one of Kezza's employees told me was that one night, the great man was being driven home and the enormous iron gates to his mansion wouldn't open automatically. The chauffeur fiddled with the remote control until Packer said "Drive through the bastards", which solved the problem.

Kerry Packer's hold on the media, enabled by the legion of politicians who revered and feared his money and power, is one of the reasons that Australia has one of the least free media in the OECD. This will remain even after he's gone to that opulent cesspit of disinformation and human misery in the sky.

Someone once expressed to me a sense of awe and surprise that Packer would bring a butler and two maids to his holiday house at Palm Beach, Sydney. I did a rough calculation on the back of a train ticket and decided that if he wanted to, he could employ a personal staff approximately equal in size to the population of Australian city of Newcastle.

Tagged: australia, media, television, sport, gambling

Murder in the Cathedral

On this day in 1170, Thomas a Becket, fortieth Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in his own cathedral by four knights acting, as they perhaps mistakenly believed, on orders of King Henry II of England.

The assassination shocked contemporaries in an age that was relatively used to deeds of violence. Becket's life has been the subject of two 20th century plays: Jean Anouilh's Becket and TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.

"What a parcel of fools and dastards have I nourished in my house," Henry had said earlier that month in an outburst in his court, "and not one of them will avenge me of this one upstart clerk." Some of his knights took his words literally. (Other versions include expressions such as "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?") ...

Tagged: british, history, saints

I nominate Boog Highberger as world's best mayor

Lawrence to celebrate Dada days

LAWRENCE, Kansas, USA: "Mayor Dennis 'Boog' Highberger wants to recognize Dadaism by devoting a month to the early-20th-century countercultural movement.

"Well, not exactly.

"Highberger plans to proclaim International Dadaism Month on Tuesday during the city's weekly commission meeting.

"But in the spirit of the Dadaists -- who declared 'art is dead' and rejected conventional forms, often making deliberately absurd works -- the Lawrence mayor hasn't picked a certain month to celebrate the movement.

"Instead, International Dadaism Month will be Feb. 4, March 28, April 1, July 15, Aug. 2, Aug. 7, Aug. 16, Aug. 26, Sept. 18, Sept. 22, Oct. 1, Oct. 17 and Oct. 26.

"To choose the dates, Highberger rolled dice and pulled numbers from a hat.

"As part of the proclamation, Highberger will utter a phrase from a poem by the late Hugo Ball, a founder of Dada: 'Zimzim urallala zimzim urallala zimzim zanzibar zimzalla zam.'
AP (emphasis mine)

Nonsense takes center stage as city honors art movement (nice picture)

Pictured: Hugo Ball, a patron saint of the Book of Days

Tagged: dada, art, dadaism

The birth of cinema

1895 Louis and Auguste, the Lumiere brothers, had their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines – this date is commonly considered the debut of the cinema, but at least one source challenges that, stating that a similar event took place in Sydney, Australia in November, 1894 ...

Tagged: cinema, history

Aussie puddle

Thanks Kate. :) Is it real? See Snopes.

Today in the French Revolutionary Calendar

Just added a script that shows today's date in the French Revolutionary (or Republican) Calendar. It was easier than I thought, and seems to work well. Here 'tis.

The escape of William Buckley

1803 At 9pm, William Buckley (1780 - January 30, 1856), Cheshire, UK-born convict in Australia, escaped. Thus began his 32 years of living in the bush among Aboriginal tribespeople, the only European in what we now call the State of Victoria.

In 1799, the more than 2-metre-tall (6 ' 7") teenager had gone to Holland to fight, under the command of the Duke of York, against Napoleon. Later, while in London, he was convicted of stealing a bolt of cloth which he swore he had been carrying for a woman and didn't know was stolen. Despite his war service record, and the relative insignificance of his crime, William Buckley was sentenced to transportation to New South Wales for 14 years (this was in the days when the British still believed that sending people to Australia was a punishment) ...

For a few days he wandered in the bush without sustenance. Some friendly indigenous people of the Wathaurong tribe of the Barwon River district caught a yabbie (freshwater crayfish) for him, which he cooked and ate. However, fearing that they might prove unfriendly, he decided for a time to take his chances in the bush. It was not long, though, before the hardships he encountered made him decide to seek out Aboriginal people again, so he set out to where he had met them before. Finding a spear stuck in a grave, and being so weak from thirst and hunger, he took it for support ...

Buckley’s chance
In Australia there is a common expression, 'Buckley's', short for 'Buckley’s chance' meaning 'without a chance or hope', as in the phrase, "You’ve got Buckley's, mate". Its configuration, then is similar to ‘Hobson’s choice’, which is no choice at all.

There are two main contenders for the original creation of this term. One is that there was a department store, named Buckley and Nunn's. Hence, one has two chances: Buckley’s and none. The other is that it derives from William Buckley.


Tagged: australia, history

Shakespeare's smoke and mirrors tricks

"The longstanding mystery of a floating dagger in Shakespeare's Macbeth may now have been solved thanks to the detective work of an Australian National University researcher.

"Professor Iain Wright, from the ANU Faculty of Arts, has uncovered a potential source of inspiration for the famous scene. The source is a description contained in a book edited by one of the fathers of modern science, John Dee, who was fascinated with how the eye could be deceived by tricks of the light.

"'Macbeth is a great enigma,' Professor Wright said. 'It’s a bigger mystery than Hamlet. We don’t have any record of its first production.'

"Professor Wright estimates that Macbeth was written and first performed in 1606, soon after Scottish monarch James I assumed the throne of England. He made Shakespeare’s players the official royal company, meaning the bard would have been under pressure to please his royal patron.

"The new king and his family had a great appetite for theatre, especially masques, which combined music, performers and special effects to create an elaborate and illusion-rich amusement for the aristocracy.

"Professor Wright argues that although Shakespeare kept his distance from the emerging masque hype, the bard acknowledged the trend by incorporating references into his later works, and tailoring his plays for performances in the closed, exclusive space favoured by the king.

"'You notice at once that Macbeth is full of optical illusions -- there are floating daggers, the ghost of Banquo, ghostly kings, and ghostly cauldrons. I thought, surely if that’s the case, Shakespeare is probably saying to himself, "What sort of special effects are available to make these more spectacular?".'

"This train of thought took Professor Wright to the library at the University of Cambridge where he picked up a copy of Euclid’s Geometry edited by John Dee. A contemporary of Shakespeare, Dee is now regarded as one of the fathers of the modern age because of his talent for what was then called natural magic -- science. He was especially interested in how specially modified mirrors could create tricks of the light, making things appear as if by magic."
Source

John Dee, William Shakespeare in the Book of Days

Tagged: shakespeare, science, magic, theatre, theater, drama, alchemy

1908 'The Fight of the Century' Down Under

I very rarely cover competitive sports in the Almanac, as they get plenty of coverage elsewhere and I don't believe them conducive to inter-communal harmony.

However, on this occasion (and it is Boxing Day, after all) I will mention a remarkable event: the 1908 World Heavyweight Boxing Championship fought a long way from home by two Americans -- one black, one white -- in a 10,000-seat stadium especially constructed for the bout. The building was meant to be torn down afterwards, but lasted another 62 years and even Bob Dylan, The Who and the Beatles played it.

The stadium was more than packed full for its premiere function. Twenty thousand boxing fans watched the Jack Johnson/Tommy Burns fight at The Stadium, Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, Australia (the first time ever in boxing history a black man -- in this case Johnson -- had been allowed to fight for the World Heavyweight Championship, boxing's most prestigious prize).

The fight was covered by telegraph for the New York Herald by American author Jack London (The Call of the Wild), who was recuperating in Sydney from a double fistula operation, which interrupted his South Pacific wanderings ...

Tagged: trivia, boxing, sport, australia

Family at Christmas

Season's greetings from my daughter, my elder son and my grandchildren. Photo (copyright Pip Wilson) was taken on Christmas night.

Merry Christmas

Have a great Christmas. I have some busy days ahead as most of you do as well. I'll be wrapping presents on Saturday, bingeing with my children and grandkids in the bush on Sunday (temperature forecast to be SCORCHING), pigging out with an all-day musical jam session among friends on a mud-brick house veranda on Boxing Day, and then back to abnormalcy on Tuesday. See you then, gods willing. Stay safe, happy and optimistic.

Although the world is full of suffering it is also full of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller

Bluegrass jingle bells

If you're like me and you love bluegrass, like Christmas carols, and hate midi files unless they're good ones, I think you'll like Dueling Jingle Bells.

Aussie Prime Ministers: Skeletons in the Closet

"Australia is the arse end of the world."
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating

Interesting webpage. Needs more skeletons and proofreading. The former should be easy enough. For example, as we note in the Book of Days, in his younger days, William Morris Hughes worked (with later NSW Premier Jack Lang) on Arthur Desmond's anarchist magazine, Hard Cash.

Tagged: australia, history, australian+history

All about Christmas, in the Almanac

The Almanac has more info on the origins and folklore of Christmas than you can pole-vault over.

Recently updated and much embiggened. Dubya would even say it has embetterment, and is ungrinnable.

Tagged: christmas, xmas, folklore, lore, customs

Six white boomers and other Aussie carols

Click for the movingamation

Six white boomers, snow white boomers
Racing Santa Claus through the blazing sun
Six white boomers, snow white boomers
... On his Australian run

Kayla from California writes: "heard on the radio that there is a myth that Santa uses 8 white kangaroos instead of reindeer".

My reply: In 1960 the Australian singer/songwriter Rolf Harris wrote a hit novelty Xmas song called 'Six White Boomers', about Santa having white boomers (buck kangaroos) pulling his sleigh -- read lyrics/listen to midi. There are some graphic depictions here, but none are particularly good ones. Artists, we need some good pix of Santa's six white boomers.

There's no old folklore about it, but after four decades it is folklore now, I suppose.

My favourite Australian carol, however, is 'Carol of the Birds' which has beautiful words and tune ('orana' means 'welcome').

Out on the plains
the brolgas are dancing
Lifting their feet
like war horses prancing
Up to the sun
the woodlarks go winging
Faint in the dawn light
echoes their singing

Orana! Orana!
Orana! To Christmas Day.

Down where the tree-ferns
grow by the river,
There where the waters
sparkle and quiver,
Deep in the gullies
Bell-birds are chiming,
Softly and sweetly their
lyric notes rhyming

Orana! Orana!
Orana! To Christmas Day.

Friar-birds sip the
nectar of flowers,
Currawongs chant in
wattle-tree bowers
In the blue ranges
Lorikeets calling
Carols of bushlands
rising and falling

Orana! Orana!
Orana! To Christmas Day.

Tagged: australia, christmas, folklore, lore, kangaroos, santa, santa+claus

Put the X back in Xmas

From time to time over the years, I've drawn criticism for my occasional use of 'Xmas' rather than 'Christmas', at times being told that it is some new marketing shorthand.

In fact, the term 'Xmas' is centuries old. The 'X' stands for 'Christ' (which is why many Neopagans use the expression 'Xians' for Christians'). The ancient Greek letter 'Chi', the first letter in the Greek word 'Christ' ('Anointed one'), was represented by an 'X' -- hence the 'Ichthus' bumper stickers displayed by some Christians, which is an acronym for the Greek words for Iesous Christos Theou Huios Sotir ('Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour'). That famous fish symbol, by the way, was supposedly scratched on walls by early Christians to point the way to their illegal meetings, and it was revived by hippie Jesus Freaks in the early 1970s, then gradually adopted by conservative Christians.

Another use of the 'X' in Christian tradition is explained at November 25 in the Book of Days -- how it pertains to St Andrew and the 'XXX' we put at the end of letters to represent kisses.

Merry Xmas!

Tagged: christmas, christian, jesus+christ, folklore, customs, religion, english, language, words

Deaths show bird flu virus resistant to Tamiflu (poor Rummy)

"A bird flu virus that killed two people in Vietnam is resistant to the drug that health officials are counting on to halt spread of the disease, according to a study released on Wednesday.

"Two new deaths, added to a similar case in October, showed the H5N1 virus was resistant to oseltamivir, sold under the name Tamiflu, according to an article released by the New England Journal of Medicine. "
Deaths show bird flu virus resistant to Tamiflu: study. 22/12/2005. ABC News Online

Has Hussein been beaten and tortured?

"I want to say here, yes, we have been beaten by the Americans and we have been tortured," Saddam told the court before gesturing toward his seven co-defendants, "one by one."
Source

I doubt it very much. Saddam Hussein is a nasty muhfuh, and he'll say anything, not to beat this rap, because he knows he can't, but for propaganda purposes (although it's too late for that; he is yesterday's bastard).

The other reason I doubt it is because even Bush's horrible administration wouldn't be that stupid. They have been torturing uncounted people all around the globe -- it's these muhfuhs' stock in trade -- but they are electroding and savaging only the powerless and unknown. I doubt they would expose themselves by torturing a celebrity because it would soon get out (I wish they would start with Schwarzenegger and Pat Robertson). Have his co-accused been beaten and tortured? That's much more likely under Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of their gung-ho pro-torture gang.

The other compelling bit of evidence, though by no means conclusive, is that Saddam Hussein neither provided any photos of injuries, nor stripped off to show the bruises and scars. Hussein is savvy enough to know that if he did some courtroom theatrics, he would get half the world on side, but he kept his shirt on.

No, he's just another political leader full of shit. Another one who deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.

By the way, why do the US press always call him by his first name? They didn't do that with Adolph, Joseph or Henry.

Tagged: saddam+hussein, iraq, usa, torture

Gouldians: Red-heads top the pecking order

Pictured: My flatmates, John and Elizabeth Gould-Wilson. Lizzie is the redhead. Click to embetter.

Red-headed finches dominate their black-headed and yellow-headed peers by physical aggression and by the mere fact of being red-headed, according to research published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

University of New South Wales biologists made the discovery following experiments with stunningly colourful Gouldian finches (Erythrura gouldiae). Among Australia's most endangered native birds, Gouldian finches are now restricted to small isolated populations across the tropical north.

The bird has a bright green upper body, blue rump, violet-purple chest, yellow breast and bright azure-blue collar. But its most distinctive feature is its head, which occurs in one of three discrete colours: red, yellow or black. This colour polymorphism makes the Gouldian finch unique, with three distinct forms all naturally occurring and inter-breeding in the same wild populations ...
Source

Tagged: gouldian, gouldians, birds, australia, finch, finches

Today is Winter Solstice, or Yule

Yule is one of the eight solar holidays or sabbats of Neopaganism.

It is celebrated on the winter solstice, in the Northern Hemisphere circa December 21 and in the Southern Hemisphere circa June 21. The name is of Germanic origin; it is also called Midwinter ...

Tagged: christmas, yule, pagan, neopagan, religion, calendar, customs, folklore, mythology, lore

Free seasonal e-cards

Check out the Almanac's Yule, Christmas, Season's Greetings, New Year, Hanukkah, etc, free e-cards. More than 30,000 sent so far.

Tagged: christmas, yule, hanukkah

'He is President, Not A King: Russ Feingold

"He is President, Not A King" Russ Feingold

See Bush try to defend this indefensible and illegal use of wiretaps on American citizens, and Sen. Feingold's emphatic response.A video from InformationClearingHouse.info.

Tagged: bush, dubya, terrorism, nsa, homeland+security, espionage, civil+liberties, civil+rights, usa, america, liberty, wiretaps

Bush isn't drinking

'Breathtaking Inanity' and a victory for reason

'Breathtaking Inanity': How Intelligent Design Flunked Its Test Case

A federal judge minces no words as he comes down against evolution's rival

"Intelligent design is a religious idea and a Pennsylvania school board may not introduce it into the classroom, a federal judge ruled today. Judge John E. Jones III ruled that the Dover Area School Board improperly introduced religion into the classroom when it required science teachers to read a brief statement during the 9th grade biology class telling students that evolution was 'Just a theory' and inviting them to consider alternatives. The only alternative specifically mentioned was intelligent design,' the notion that life is so complex that it could not possibly have been the work of natural selection alone and must have been the work of an unspecified creative intelligence. 'We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,' Jones wrote.

"The Dover school board became the first in the nation to explicitly embrace intelligent design in October of 2004, when it required teachers to read the brief statement at the start of the evolution unit in the biology class. Teachers later refused and the statement was read instead by administrators. Jones said the Dover case was the result of 'the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.' He derided the school board’s decision as 'breathtaking inanity' and said the resulting 'legal maelstrom' was an 'utter waste of monetary and personal resources.' The judge’s decision clears the way for the plaintiffs in the case to demand repayment of legal expenses. It's not clear, therefore, how much the case may wind up costing the taxpayers of Dover."
TIME

'Intelligent design' teaching ban
Google News: dover inanity
Creationism (rotten.com)
Design Yes, Intelligent No (CSIOP)
What the blogs are saying (Technorati)

Tagged: intelligent+design, darwin, evolution, science, religion, fundamentalism

The Long March of Dick Cheney

"The hallmark of the Dick Cheney administration is its illegitimacy. Its essential method is bypassing established lines of authority; its goal is the concentration of unaccountable presidential power. When it matters, the regular operations of the CIA, Defense Department and State Department have been sidelined.

"Richard Nixon is the model, but with modifications. In the Nixon administration, the president was the prime mover, present at the creation of his own options, attentive to detail, and conscious of their consequences. In the Cheney administration, the president is volatile but passive, firm but malleable, presiding but absent. Once his complicity has been arranged, a closely held 'cabal' - as Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, calls it - wields control ..."
Sidney Blumenthal, Salon.com opinion piece via TruthOut

Tagged: cheney, usa, bush

WWW's creator 'tries this blog thing'

So Timbl's finally worked out how to blog. I hope it's not too hard for him.

I'm just kiding, of course, because Timbl is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the World Wide Web. His Timbl's Blog, launched a week ago, should be interesting to watch, although it doesn't look like he'll be posting all that often.

He writes: "In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.

"Strangely enough, the web took off very much as a publishing medium, in which people edited offline. Bizarely, they were prepared to edit the funny angle brackets of HTML source, and didn't demand a what you see is what you get editor. WWW was soon full of lots of interesting stuff, but not a space for communal design, for discource through communal authorship.

"Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space. In the mean time, I have had the luxury of having a web site which I have write access, and I've used tools like Amaya and Nvu which allow direct editing of web pages. With these, I haven't felt the urge to blog with blogging tools. Effectively my blog has been the Design Issues series of technical articles.

"That said, it is nice to have a machine to the administrative work of handling the navigation bars and comment buttons and so on, and it is nice to edit in a mode in which you can to limited damage to the site. So I am going to try this blog thing using blog tools. So this is for all the people who have been saying I ought to have a blog."

Tagged: internet, blog, blogging, www, world+wide+web

Another view of Santa's Cave

Another view of Santa's Cave

Santa's (fridge) Cave

Santa's (fridge) Cave,
originally uploaded by wilsonsalmanac.

Merry Christmas to subscribers and visitors. (Click.)

Rummy and Saddam Hussein

Click to embetterment

1983 Donald Rumsfeld met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Iraq. In a lengthy report in the Washington Post (December 30, 2002) based on analysing thousands of pages of declassified government documents and interviews with former policy-makers, it was asserted that "US intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defences" following this meeting.

Tagged: rumsfeld, bush, iraq, war, peace, military, wmd, wmds, usa

More guestbook spammers

Sorry to bore you but I think it's best to make these available to the whole Internet. Just ignore, thanks.

http://oil-tankstelle.lollerhverv.dk
http://foto-loro.phpcenter.dk
http://therapie-hamm.tulavedivadlo.sk
http://studieren-im-ausland.phatsites.co.uk
http://gelijkheid-van-kansen-en-voor.opel-ebeltoft.dk
http://seigneur-des-anneaux-le-retour-du-roi-sur-pc.malmundra.be
http://toner-laser-color.africars.be
http://listado-de-partidos.quadrant4guitars.be
http://architecte-en-chef-des-monuments-historiques.mfoteppe.be
http://cursos-a-distancia-de.miss-moses.be
http://calculo-de-pendientes.kirenia.be
http://technische-tekening-van.cnpp.fr
http://effetti-pinnacle-studio.deom.co.uk
http://hotel-palmeras-playa.jozefbucek.sk
http://paul-artisan.aissr.sk

Sea bird plunging into Pacific Ocean at dawn

If you would like to see a short 9.5MB flm of a gannet (or maybe a tern?) plunging into the Pacific in front of the same dawn I posted a pic of here yesterday, click here before Christmas (when yousendit.com will remove it as they only keep items for seven days). It was a lucky shot, best watched enlarged but not full screen.

Guestbook spamming is now organised crime

I run a webpage called Tell J-9 You've Read It, and it's for increasing awareness of a deadly form of breast cancer called IBC.

The following are recent spammers of the Tell J-9 guestbook, all of which I have had to remove manually tonight when I'd rather be in bed, till around 2.15 am. The creepiest things is the messsages these bastards leave, along the lines of: "This website is Great! I will recommend you to all my friends. I found so much useful things here. Thank you."

Guestbook spamming is now obviously organised crime. If you know which authorities or friendly hackers to report these spammers to, please cut out the middle-man and do it for me. Thank you.

http://de-la-enfermera-a.web-helpers.dk
http://technische-betriebe.nutrilife.sk
http://investigacion-en-enfermeria.houses-in-dunfermline.co.uk
http://sangue-leonino.valuecard.be
http://der-halle.minervatraject.be
http://bases-de-loisirs-en.mfoteppe.be
http://frequenties-den-haag.trouwfotografie.be
http://meaning-of-led-zeppelin.dopinglijst.be
http://con-la-luce.succescontact.be
http://sims-party-codes.ebz.fr
http://ashley-simpson-on.webcasters.org.uk
http://platos-tipicos-de-cada-region.steinecker.sk
http://proprieta-olio-di.pcpiacenza.it
http://tussenstand-voetbal.weston-welbeck.co.uk
http://park-hotel-londres.tonsite.fr
http://abogado-com.mijnsamenvattingen.nl
http://seguros-para-automoviles.jc-birkeroed.dk
http://black-hand-in.fc-zenit.co.uk
http://pour-chaussure.gblogs.org.uk
http://erfenis-belasting.ebz.fr
http://esperto-nella.houses-in-chesterfield.co.uk
http://off-to-thee.zar.sk
http://charge-de-batterie.tgnumic.sk
http://get-data-back-from.orggrow.co.uk
http://legalisierung-von-drogen.technorganic.co.uk
http://top-gun-jacket.solgames.dk
http://noorse-kronen.ldu.sk
http://grupos-de-bate-papo.rover-75-45-25.co.uk
http://munchen-zahnarzt.lets.sk
http://patrones-de-enfermeria.hostgeneration.co.uk
http://cadeaux-fete-des-peres.ek-mantis.dk
http://depressie-and.property-sale-norfolk.co.uk
http://et-appareil-photo-numerique.manfridaydiving.dk
http://como-se-hacen-las-monedas.peryt.waw.pl
http://kamera-5.aufob.sk
http://muestras-en-el-laboratorio.darlington-estate-agents.co.uk
http://karte-frankische-schweiz.property-south-yorkshire.co.uk
http://wrestlemania-21-video-game.hotelmilanosanremo.it
http://cracker-le-logiciel.houses-in-bingley.co.uk
http://wolfram-richter.camcorders-cameras.co.uk
http://services-sharepoint-portal.cpaction.org.uk
http://how-to-spot-a.targetingtechnology.co.uk
http://persoonlijke-bescherming.cnpp.fr
http://viagra.hut1.ru
http://phentermine.freebox.ru
http://lol.to/bbs.php?bbs=phenonline
http://phentermine-us.ql.st
http://viagra.drugs-worldwide.com
http://www.1st-phentermine.net
http://spaces.msn.com/members/1-online-casino
http://roulette.up-a.com
http://casino.20me.com
http://www.gambling-online.nu
http://online-slots.spycounter.net
http://voli-verona-lampedusa.clan-fubar.co.uk
http://ciencias-en-valencia.maxi-super.sk
http://prefecture-certificat.dragy.sk
http://quien-fuma.webg.dk
http://nike-air-max-total-365.hernesnesthouse.co.uk
http://u-handels-gmbh.cybersamenleving.nl
http://tierarzte-in-koln.hotelristoranteilporto.it
http://dagelijkse-leven-van-de.opel-risskov.dk
http://um-virus-de.1sck-kosice.sk
http://ein-anruf-von.cockycharlie.co.uk
http://correction-d-exercices-de.lkw.sk
http://baseball-diamond.agibilita.it
http://www.xxx-blog.com/
http://di-promessi-sposi.bmwz.co.uk
http://video-vault-software.property-west-midlands.co.uk
http://buckwild-bus-tour.manfridaydiving.dk
http://garten-wasser.nutrilife.sk
http://una-cuenta-hotmail-com.houses-in-dunfermline.co.uk
http://stichting-bedrijfspensioenfonds-voor-de.opel-ebeltoft.dk
http://xu-wei-lun.infoskola.sk
http://arbiter-flats-pro.halflifesource.be
http://www.fortuneplayer.info/11217
http://rote-kuh-hannover.hotelristoranteilporto.it
http://www.phentermine-information.us/weight-loss-surgery-new-word-in-the-weight-loss.html
http://www.viagra-inform.com/feedback.html

Tagged: spam, internet

Parodic pictures

These photo-cartoons from a Belgian site are worth checking out. Click this one to embetterate.

Tagged: parody, satire, humor, humour, cartoons

Schwarzenegger Stadium to be renamed 'Tookie Williams Stadium'?

"In Schwarzenegger's hometown of Graz, local Greens said they would file a petition to remove his name from the southern city's sports stadium. A Christian political group went even further, suggesting it be renamed the 'Stanley Tookie Williams Stadium.'

"'Schwarzenegger has a lot of muscles, but apparently not much heart,' Dray said.

"In Italy, the country's chapter of Amnesty International called the execution 'a cold-blooded murder.'"
PHX News

Drunk Santas cause New Zealand mayhem

Forty drunken Santas have rampaged through central Auckland, stealing from stores and assaulting security guards in a protest against the commercialisation of Christmas.
The New Zealand Herald reports some of the Santas threw beer bottles, one tried to climb the mooring rope of a cruise ship and a security guard was punched during the fracas.

"They came in, said 'Merry Christmas' and then helped themselves," convenience store staff member Changa Manakynda said.

The newspaper says the event organiser, Alex Dyer, had warned the antics would only stop when someone was arrested.

It links the incident to "Santarchy".

Santarchy (www.santarchy.com) records protests going back around 10 years in the United States, with participants marking Christmas in anti-commercial manner involving street theatre, pranks and public drunkenness.

Police say identification is a key issue as they try to sort out which of the 40 men and women had done what.

"With a number of people dressed in the same outfit, it was difficult for any witnesses to confirm the identity of who was doing what," Senior Sergeant Matt Rogers said.

- Reuters

Season's greetings to all

Click to embiggen

Is Google stepping closer to EPIC?

So, Time Warner is selling 5 per cent of AOL to Google. Where will this lead?

According to the NY Times, "Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before." They also note, "Representatives of Time Warner, Google and Microsoft declined to comment."

This is the same Google that always promised it would never play the favourites game. As InfoWorld says: "The lesson? Never, ever trust a capitalist who pretends to be otherwise."

Google has much to commend it, and I'm a fan, but like many others, more than a tad concerned about monopoly. It's amazing how much news Google is generating in just one day (on Google News):

Google to Pay Billion Dollars for 5% AOL Shares
Google Launches Music Search Feature
Google to Build Pennsylvania Research Facility
Google goes mobile with Gmail

Now listen to the ABC documentary, Googlemania: "Google is now all pervasive, it's a cultural phenomenon, a boundless mediascape and a huge business empire. It's also entered the language as a verb, and it is changing everything. It now plans to digitise every book ever written, and to find it you have to google it. It's creative destruction, it's cool, it's scary -- and it's happening."

Listen in :: Real Media Windows Media :: Download MP3 :: Podcast :: [ File size: 22MB ]

Then watch EPIC -- it's the year 2014 and Google owns everything. Food for thought.

Tagged: google, corporation, corporations, globalization, business

Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Oz and USA

1863 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria (d. 1914). His assassination by Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914 precipitated the Austrian declaration of war against Serbia, which triggered World War I.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Australia and USA
The Archduke arrived in Sydney on May 17, 1893 on board the Austrian warship SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth on a world tour when he was 29. Within 24 hours of his arrival he left Sydney by train for Nyngan, a frontier town in the west of New South Wales, accompanied by Francis Bathurst Suttor, Member for Bathurst and Minister for Public Instruction in the Government of Sir George Dibbs, and Herr Alfred Pelldram, the German Consul-General. He spent most of his time in Australia hunting in the Nyngan and Narromine districts, but also travelled to Moss Vale in the Southern Highlands of NSW ...

Tagged: trivia, austria, royalty, monarchy, australia, usa, history

The Hard Gay

He's the Hard Gay, a funny Japanese guy, and Google video has a clip.

Wikipedia Vs Britannica: Suck it and see

Compare Wikipedia and Britannica

The vested interests that lie behind a constant carping against Wikipedia are much more than the corporate interests of the big publishers.

Wikipedia, being an online encyclopaedia that anyone (not just paid staff and consultants) can edit, challenges the whole ethos of neo-conservatism (or what I call the econo-rats, ie, economic rationalists).

The Wikipedia project has at its heart and soul a faith in humankind, altruism and generosity. At the heart and soul of conservatism is a skepticism of these, and a promotion of self-interest over community. Where the neo-cons gain influence, their values increase, and where community-minded enterprises gain influence, their values increase. With the neo-cons in many ways in the ascendancy today, is it any wonder that they love to hate people-based (not profit-based) enterprise?

But suck it and see for yourself
Encyclopaedia Britannica since 1768 has been pretty much unchallenged as the best encyclopaedia in the world. Feed it some search queries on topics you know something about. Then try the same queries on Wikipedia. I did with the following search terms, and out of five stars, overall I rate Wikipedia at four stars compared to half a star for Britannica:

Coffs Harbour in Britannica :: Coffs Harbour in Wikipedia

Permaculture in Britannica :: Permaculture in Wikipedia

Gregorian calendar in Britannica :: Gregorian calendar in Wikipedia

Samhain in Britannica :: Samhain in Wikipedia

Henry Lawson in Britannica :: Henry Lawson in Wikipedia

There is simply no contest. Apart from the greater content and useful graphics, the Wikipedia articles are richly hypertexted. And of course, I don't need to pay to get the full article because we Wikipedians aren't in it for money. Furthermore, Wikipedia gave me 25 external links for more information. Unlike Wikipedia and our Almanac, very few profit-based websites will ever give you that.

Of course Wikipedia isn't perfect. Its readers are currently working on 868,701 articles and there are bound to be some glitches, but they usually get corrected quickly -- if they don't, then you can have your say, unlike with the corporate encyclopaedias.

Support community over profits
But let's keep it in perspective and remember that in the age-old struggle between community versus corporate capitalism, the moneyed guys will never quit fighting. Neither should the people with the better cause quit, so let's counter the claims of the neo-cons (as with the racists, see below), whenever they are argued, as argued they will be at every opportunity. In other words, we can be activists for community values through supporting Wikipedia and similar projects, and it costs us nothing. That's an advantage we have that frustrates the neoliberals* as they don't understand the strategy or tactics. They simply do not understand why anyone would do something that can't be tallied in an accounts ledger. They are cynics who think they are born to rule the world:

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde at Wikiquote

If it's a bet between optimism and pessimism, spirit and cynicism, altruism and self-interest, I prefer to take the positive gamble every time even if I lose some of the time. On the whole, taken over a lifetime, I'm winning the bets and breaking the bank.

Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica (yes, there are accuracy problems at Wikipedia, but also at Britannica)

Note that the Neoliberal page in Wikipedia is disputed -- a sign of Wikipedia's strength, not weakness. That is something that simply doesn't happen in corporate encyclopaedias or the conservative mindset as a whole -- human debate and dissent are discouraged, as with the Patriot Act.

Tagged: wikipedia, encyclopedia, encyclopaedia+britannica, progressive, anarchism, activism

Patriot Act renewal blocked

Patriot Act renewal blocked. Congratulations, America. The world still has faith in you and knew you would someday start to break through Bush's phony war. Don't keep the pressure off him as there's a long way to go.

Tagged: patriot+act, usa, liberty, civil+rights, civil+liberties

Saturnalia, Roman Empire

Four major Roman festivals were held in December, including the Saturnalia which celebrated the returning Sun-god. Saturnalia (from the god Saturn) was the name the Romans gave to their holiday marking the Winter Solstice and many of our Christmas customs derive from it.

Saturn was a Roman cognate of the Greek god Chronos (Time). He devoured all his children except Jupiter (air), Neptune (water), and Pluto (the underworld, or grave). These time cannot consume. He carries a sickle, like the Grim Reaper, and we know him in our day as Father Time ...

Tagged: christmas, folklore, customs, ancient+rome, mythology, roman+mythology

Guestbook spammers

http://universite-lettres.ek-mantis.dk
http://porto-seguro-de.poem-2buy.co.uk
http://loan-officer-classes.giustiziamilitare.it
http://a-dvd-with-nero.property-gloucestershire.co.uk
http://arbeitsplatz-anzeigen.rasti.dk
http://de-la-pontificia-universidad-catolica-de-chile.web-helpers.dk
http://la-sante-universite.mjau.sk
http://train-the-trainer-seminar.phatsites.co.uk
http://loi-anti-tabac.muslimeen.co.uk
http://live-stream-voetbal.1click2-algarve-property.co.uk
http://cahier-de-charge-site-web.aissr.sk

All these sites have spammed my guestbook this week. Please visit these sites, do business with them, rip them off. Nyuck nyuck

Aussies to rally against racism this Sunday

Sydney: United against Racism Rally
What: United against Racism Rally
When: 1pm, Sunday 18 December
Where: Sydney Town Hall

Called by the National Union of Students, supported by Stop the War Coalition
Source: Acoustic Dad

Sydney: Harmony in the Park
Harmony in the Park has been organised for 3pm on Sunday the 18th December at Belmore park, located 30 seconds walk from Central Station in the city. The purpose of this gathering is to showcase cultural, religious, racial, ethnic harmony of all Australians.

Leaders from Australia’s sporting, community, arts, educational, religious and cultural domains will also be invited to attend, and to speak on promoting a culture of community harmony

Together, we can show that Sydney embraces diversity.
Source: fightdemback

Melbourne: Unity in Diversity
Celebrate multicultural Australia with a picnic for peace

A peaceful celebration of multiculturalism is planned for this Sunday, beginning with music and speeches at the State Library on Swanston St in Melbourne's CBD, thena festive walk to Treasury Gardens where families and individualsfrom all backgrounds and all walks of life are invited to a Picnicfor Peace.
Source: fightdemback


Tagged: cronulla, sydney+riots, sydney, australia, racism, activism, progressive

My novel online

An invitation to Wilson's Almanac members and friends to become involved in an untold Australian story ...

'Faces in the Street' A novel by Pip Wilson: http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/novel.html

Cronulla: Some random thoughts

At the risk of offending those who don't care for the songs and work of John Lennon, I'm going to lead this post with another of his quotes, and this is about the third time I've done it in a week, so please excuse me.

It comes from the 1970 song, 'Working Class Hero', which was a big international hit on one of his best albums and his first solo album, Plastic Ono Band.

"Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
Till you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see."

Clearly, the ideas in that song are as relevant today as they were 35 years ago, and just as neglected by society at large. They inform, in a way, the comments I will make here. These are some completely random thoughts following this week's riots at Cronulla, a southern Sydney suburb.

* Drunken, tribal violence in Sydney is as old as the city itself. A hundred years ago, it was the "push" gangs of "larrikins", such as the Glebe Push, the Bantry Bay Devils, the Stars, the Golden Dragons, the Rocks Push, the Livers, the Forty Thieves, and so on. There were also many "razor gangs". In the 1960s there were frequent violent confrontations between the "bodgies" (equivalent to "rockers" in the UK) and "surfies". I believe that Cronulla was a venue for such riots. In my youth, the gang to fear was the "sharpies", and there were clashes between all sorts of rival gangs of thugs. Then there have always been rival "bikie" gangs: Sydney in 1984 was the scene of the Fathers' Day Massacre in which seven people were killed and more than 20 wounded in a shootout between rival gangs.

* We have already noted the cowardly ethnic bullying against weaker, disadvantaged groups such as the Chinese in the Gold Rush days. It has always been the strong against the weak, as the Australian psyche has a strong element of cowardly bullying. Many Australians do not wish to acknowledge that, but it is a demonstrable fact.

* Being a culture that in the main has a traditional nodding acquaintance with inter-group strife, Australia has as many words for "thug" as Eskimoes have for "snow", such as: "yobbo", "hoon", "hooligan", "larrikin", "ratbag". A bully by any other name ...

* A view of Muslims as religious extremists has been created in Australia by cynical, powerful people for personal and political gain. In fact, most Muslims in Australia attend mosque as infrequently as or less often than Christians attend church (in a nation where church attendance by self-described Christians is very low). I would hazard a guess that, proportionally, the Muslims of Australia have fewer extremists in their congregations than Christians do. Most Muslims are nominal Muslims, as most Christians are nominal Christians in our secular society. I have had a lot to do with Muslims in Australia and have no doubt about this.

* Research shows that most Australians spend many, many hours a week watching television. Television erodes the following: consciousness (particularly the imagination); interpersonal interaction; attention span; connection between social groups; connection to Nature; reading and self-education; awareness of corporate manipulation; and self-esteem (by the constant presentation of unattainable ideals of humanity). Until the TV problem is tackled head-on, little or no headway will be made in combatting Australia's urban and rural malaise. Very few social commentators are themselves free of the TV virus, and the virulence of the illness is scarcely known in this country. Television is watching other people have lives. Turn off your TV and live!

* The violent confrontations on Sydney's southern beaches were whipped up by certain talk-back radio presenters, and by a culture of fear and xenophobia fostered by the Australian Liberal and Labor Parties. Unfortunately, for all its laudable features, the Australian legal system is inadequate to the task of punishing wrong-doers and enemies of the citizens.

* Sydney is blessed with a long string of beaches on its Pacific shores. I don't know how many, but there must be at least 40, end-on-end, and ours is very much a beach culture despite the fact that most have been ruined ecologically. Cronulla is the only one of Sydney's many beaches that is accessible by rail transport. (The residents of Bondi Beach, probably the most spoiled and unattractive, and certainly the most architectually ruined beach of Sydney, used spurious "environmental considerations" to block a railway station; it was to keep out the riff-raff.) As a consequence, Cronulla is the easiest beach for poor and working-class Sydneysiders to access. The problems at Cronulla have a class dimension at least as important as a racial one.

* Most beaches of Sydney, in fact most places in Australia, have a pub and club culture which is proudly xenophobic, aggressive, boorish, dehumanisingly ugly and determinedly narrow-minded. The gambling and alcohol industries, until recently decentralised and fairly local, have become dominated by a very few mega-corporations, some of them transnational. To ignore the corporate factor of Australia's cultural disintegration and its consequences as exemplified by Cronulla, is a short-sighted view.

* A complaint against "people of Middle Eastern appearance" in these beach suburbs has been that "Aussie" women have been insulted and two lifesavers were bashed. As callers to Australia Talks Back, one of Australia's few relatively intelligent talk-back radio programs, have noted this week, lifesaver-bashing and sexual harrassment of women on beaches are as traditionally Australian as kangaroos.

* Sections of the media (especially Sydney's Daily Telegraph and Radio 2GB) have acted disgracefully this week. Most of the youth violence in Sydney is perpetrated by "Aussie" (read "Anglo-Saxon-Celtic") men, often egged-on by "Aussie" women. Outside Sydney, too, Australians all know that to be in the vicinity of any pub at closing time is to risk assault. The perpetrator is most likely going to be an "Aussie" -- I have a broken jaw and broken teeth as a grim reminder of good old Tamworth, NSW and its white lads. I also remember Wagga, NSW, and the police refusing to act after my car was trashed at night by about 15 white young men, because the culprits were the local football team. The white cops left me and my mate, who was crippled with Multiple Sclerosis, all night in the dark forest with the drunken young thugs and took my car battery, probably hoping that we would be beaten to a pulp. So let's hear no more about immigrants and their "unAustralian values", before I puke.

* Australia values literacy, up to a point, but derides learning -- and governments since the Whitlam era (when tertiary education was free) have overseen a progressive diminution of educational opportunity. (More than half of our 13- and 14-year-olds cannot find our nearest neighbour, Indonesia, on a map!) Cronulla's violence might be a foretaste of things to come if this is not addressed. (Of course, people will not read and grow if they are watching mindless soap operas and other crap on TV.)

* In Australia as in many Western countries, children from a very early age are taught to form into small groups to oppose other human beings, rather than to cooperate with them. Usually, tribal associations are formed among the children, by adults, according to nothing more than the locality in which the kids live. This legal form of child abuse goes by the euphemism of "sport". Until competitive sport is replaced by healthy forms of recreation -- which seems very unlikely in our lifetimes -- this kind of behaviour can be expected. The next pro-sport shockjock or journalist who complains about tribal violence should get his (or, increasingly, her) head out of his or her arse.

* There are indeed a number of "youths of Middle Eastern appearance" who are bullies. Not to acknowledge this would be folly. As the focus this week has been on Lebanese youths, we forget at our peril that they or their parents have come from Lebanon, which was ravaged by Israel's occupation, and its own antique tribal wars. A little understanding is called for, but so is the admonition that bullying, aggressive behaviour and revenge have no part in third-millennium Australia.

Finally: was Cronulla an expression of a silent minority? No, it was the lily-livered bleatings of a noisy but large minority. Australia is deeply racist, deeply tribal, deeply bullying and deeply aggressive. The overwhelming larger part of its hagiography is about competition against one's fellow human being, whether we take into account the ANZAC tradition, the culture of the workplace, or the national obsession with any physical activity -- just as long as it's competitive. It is a world-view that's completely obsolete, and we can only hope that teachers and thinkers will strip it bare and throw it in the garbage where it belongs. This is the 21st Century and the world's people are all one species. Time to grow up and be modern, Aussies.

Tagged: cronulla, violence, sydney+riots, corporations, sport, competition, sydney, australia

Was Walt Disney's body cryonically frozen?

1966 Walt Disney (b. 1901) died at the age of 65. In his remarkable life he and his studios won Oscars for live drama, animated and documentary films. In fact, between 1932 and 1969 there were 26 Oscars from 64 nominations, the last being awarded posthumously for Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968).

Was Walt Disney frozen for posterity?
Cryonics is the science and practice of freezing recently deceased people, often so that in the future they might be brought back to life by medical science, if possible. When people discuss cryonics, or Disney, they very often mention that the famed animator was frozen. The story goes as far as to say that Walt’s body is stored under the Pirates of the Caribbean exhibition at Disneyland. This, however, is almost certainly a modern myth. Disney's own family denies that he was frozen, and insists that he was cremated on December 17 (official records confirm this) and his ashes left at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Los Angeles.

So where did the rumour come from? Steve Briggs, President of Alcor Life Extension Corporation in the USA, a cryonic company, believes that Walt's death happened to be announced in the media on the same day as a new cryonics company received publicity when it began, and possibly the two news items got conflated. The grand imagineer was fried, not frozen.

Tagged: trivia, folklore, disney, urban+myths, urban+legends

David Hicks wins UK citizenship

Looks like Aussie David Hicks might have a chance of humane treatment after four years of being cruelly and unfairly treated by the American Government in Guantanamo Bay. As his mother is English and he has now been given British citizenship, he might be treated the way Blair has demanded that British prisoners be treated (ie, no more torture and return to the UK).

But don't hold your breath, as Hicks has been abandoned by Australia's HoWARd Government for political advantage.

Military lawyer confident Britain will get behind Hicks
Judge rules in favour of British passport for Hicks
Behind bars with Hicks -- a theatrical representation

Tagged: australia, david+hicks, guantanamo, terrorism, torture, human+rights

Watching Auntie ABC: Turtles All the Way Down

Are you an Australian who listens to ABC Radio? Do you love it, but really, really, really get the shits with it?

Then here is the blog for you, and you can subscribe to posts by email (see the Turtles All the Way Down sidebar).

The blog regularly looks at ABC Radio National and how out of touch it is with its mandated audience: the whole Australian citizenry. It also keeps a watching brief on the decline of English usage on Australia's taxpayer-funded broadcaster. I think you'll find it quite stimulating.

Tagged: scose, abc, australia, australian, english, language, radio, grammar, spelling, pronunciation, journalism, radio+national

Stencil graffiti capital Melbourne, Australia

"Stencil graffiti has found its heart in Melbourne, Australia. No other city boasts such quantity and quality of stencil art."
Stencil Graffiti Capital Melbourne :: Downloads

Tagged: graffiti, street+art, activism

Beginning of Halcyon Days, ancient Rome

During the Halcyon Days, the Mediterranean was supposed to stay calm. Halcyon is Greek for a kingfisher (‘sea-hound’). The ancient Sicilians believed that the kingfisher incubated its eggs for fourteen days on the surface of the sea, during which time, before the winter solstice, the waves were still.

Alcyone was a Greek demi-goddess, the daughter of Aeolus, the guardian of the winds, and Aegiale. She is sometimes regarded as one of the Pleiades. More often she was thought of as the daughter of Aeolus. She married Ceyx, son of Eosphorus (Morningstar) and the king of Thessaly.

They were very happy together, but then Ceyx perished in a shipwreck and Alcyone (‘queen who wards off [storms]’) threw herself into the sea. Out of compassion, the gods changed them into the halcyon birds. Since Alcyone made her nest on the beach, and waves threatened to destroy it, Aeolus restrained his winds and becalmed the waves during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the "halcyon days", when storms never occur. The halcyon became a symbol of tranquillity ...

Tagged: folklore, customs, ancient+rome

Australian Muslim youth have their say

This new audio documentary, made up mostly of interviews with young Australian Muslims, gives a very illuminating perspective on what's really going on in their communities. Highly recommended to anyone who is forming opinions about the recent violence in Cronulla -- and that probably applies to everyone. People in any country with a view of Muslims as one homogeneous, think-alike community will particularly find this challenging, I think (but will they listen?).

"In Muslim communities across the world there’s an intense battle of ideas going on about how to confront extremism and isolationism; what it means to be a Muslim in a modern, globalizing world -- and how Muslims should live in non-Muslim societies. That same battle is happening here -- and Australian Muslim youth are on the frontline. Young Muslims see debate and diversity as a sign of strength and maturity."
Background Briefing

Real Media :: Windows Media :: Download MP3 :: Podcast :: Help

Tagged: cronulla, sydney+riots, islam, muslim, muslims, terrorism, multiculturalism, tolerance, religion, australia, youth

Wikipedia under fire again

Wikipedia, like any community-based project that undermines the power of capital, is under fire again and always will be until it stops being a threat. It comes with the turf:

"Syberghost writes 'The Register has fired off another salvo in their long-running war of words with Wikipedia, in the form of an article about the lack of "moral responsibility" from the operators of Wikipedia. Wikipedia users fired back less than an hour later, making the Register headline obsolete.'"
SlashDot

Wikipedia in the news
Wikipedia hoaxer apologises
Wikipedia Watch
Wikipedia should be your first -- not final -- reference
Uncyclopedia (Wikipedia parody)
WikiTestament: the free Internet Bible that anyone can edit
A "simple" version of Uncyclopedia - for Americans
Blogese Main Page :: Pirateopedia


Tagged: wikipedia, open+source, freedom+of+information, progressive, information, internet

Life advice

When you are in deep trouble, say nothing, and try to look like you know what you're doing.

Hello, possums! Dame Edna turns 50 today

"I was born in Melbourne with a precious gift. Dame Nature stooped over my cot and gave me this gift. It was the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others."

1955 Australian housewife superstar Dame Edna Everage made her stage debut at Melbourne’s Union Theatre. Dame Edna is the creation of comedian, author and poet, Barry Humphries.

Tagged: australia, comedy, humor, humour, theatre

Cronulla and the Gould-Wilson Effect

Pictured are my Gouldian finches, John and Elizabeth Gould-Wilson (named for their European discoverer and his wife), who live and fly free in my cabin. They spend all night and most of the day on driftwood perches placed near the ceiling in my shower recess, and they shower with me each morning.

All my life I wanted free birds living with me, and only got around to doing it nearly a year ago. And all my life, whenever the subject came up, people expertly told me that it was impossible to do, and that they would crap all over the house, spread disease and chew my books (the birds, that is, not my advisers).

The fact is, I have had no problems at all. As they aren't in contact with other birds they catch no communicable diseases so they pass on none to me. They don't share my taste in literature. Gouldians weigh only 15 grams each and thus their excrement is negligible, and they do all their shitting right onto the floor near the shower drain. When I turn on the shower in the morning, most of the tiny bit of mess immediately disappears. Any stubborn bits are removed by me with a long-handled toilet brush.

This is what brings to my mind the Gould-Wilson Effect, as the scientific community calls it. Because I have an area to clean up that is about the size of my footprint, I take the brush each morning and swish it around over an area about the size of a page of writing paper -- in other words, I clean up twice as much as needed because it's as easy as cleaning up exactly the amount required. Given the motion of sweeping, the length of my arm and of the brush, it is actually easier to clean up double the dirty area than the dirty area itself.

Then, because I have the brush in my hand, I do a bit extra just for the hell of it -- a bit of a brush of the wall, a bit on the floor, a brush on the glass shower doors. It's the natural thing to do when one has a brush in one's hand and when one is already wet in the shower -- whereas it is an unnatural thing for a dry, fully clothed person ever to desire to clean a shower. Housework, after all, is for the birds.

Consequently, my shower is far cleaner than it ever was before I had the birds. In other words, the introduction of a purported detrimental effect has, in fact, produced a salutary one greater than could have been produced without the detrimental effect existing.

"When the fear of an undesired effect leads to a greater salutary effect than anticipated, and greater than could have been attained without the stimulus of the undesired effect, this is known as the Gould-Wilson Effect"

When the fear of an undesired effect leads to a greater salutary effect than anticipated, and greater than could have been attained without the stimulus of the undesired effect, this is known as the Gould-Wilson Effect. As a principle, it does not have a perfect predictive power, but ought to be taken into consideration when any new problems arise in any field, such as racial violence seen this week in Sydney.

Nothwithstanding my remarks yesterday about Australia's long history of racism and the "playing of the race card" by Australian politicians, and also notwithstanding the fact that I can't predict the future with or without reference to the Gould-Wilson Effect, I think it likely that the amount of social clean-up that will emerge from the small amount of shit in Cronulla will lead to a greater cleanliness than existed before the shit came down. Time alone will tell.

Meanwhile, please take note that a neo-Nazi group and a prominent right-wing shock-jock helped stir up the trouble at Cronulla, and that the leader of the Labor Party is in blatant racism-denial as much as John Howard. Note, too, that for some incredible reason, there was insufficient police presence on the streets of the southern beaches last night to intercept tens of carloads of trouble-makers arriving to cause further violence. The State Government should be held to account for this incredible inaction.

Tagged: australia, cronulla, racism, islam, muslims, human+rights, muslim, gouldian, finches, gouldians, finch, bird

Cronulla: Only people can stop John Howard's mob

Now that racist violence has broken out in Cronulla (southern suburb of Sydney), Australia's reactionary Prime Minister John Winston Howard must be made accountable by the citizens.

We can not expect the media to do it because of the high concentration of media ownership among Howard-supporting conservative owners. (According to Reporters Without Borders in 2004, Australia is in 41st position on a list of countries ranked by Press Freedom.)

The first thing he must do is publicly condemn John Stone (former treasury secretary and National Party senator) for his article 'Some will not integrate' and Stone's statement: "I am thinking of founding the Queen Isabella Society" -- referring to Isabella of Castile, the notoriously cruel ruler of Spain who, with her equally horrendous husband Ferdinand, created the Spanish Inquisition, ordered 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion, expelled Muslims, and so on.

Queen Isabella is a heroine of the Neo-Nazi Stormfront organisation (see this discussion page) for "liberating" Spain from the Muslim Moriscos (one of history's bloodthirstiest chapters of two-way oppression and racism).

Then sack Alby Schultz

Then he must sack Liberal backbencher Alby Schultz who told The Australian: "We've got to tighten up on the way all people that come into this country -- particularly those people coming from a country with a history of anti-Christian behaviour -- apply for citizenship".

Of course, neither of these men is responsible for racist violence, and John Howard's statement today that "Australia hasn't suddenly become a racist country" is risible (see pix). It has long been a racist country. Today, December 12, happens to be the anniversary of anti-Chinese riots that broke out in Australia in 1860, leading to the dreadful Lambing Flat Massacre of 1861.

Then, in the early 1890s, John Norton (a prominent publisher and long-serving Member of Parliament) and the Anti-Chinese League helped organise a march of tens of thousands (sources differ, perhaps 50,000) of Australians through the streets of Sydney with the purpose of kicking Asians out of Australia. Even the motto of The Bulletin (Australia's best-known magazine) was "Australia for the white man", and writers like Henry Lawson wrote terrible racist things with impunity.

John Howard uses race to divide and rule

Then, let us not forget Howard's own Children Overboard scandal, his MV Tampa scandal, and his SIEV-X scandal, all predicated on using latent and actual Australian racism as a wedge issue in order to attain and extend personal, party and class power.

There is more, much more, that can be told of appalling racial violence in this country, almost always manipulated by cunning politicians to entrench their power by the old "divide and rule" tactic. As John Lennon wrote, "Only people know just how to change the world", and only people can force John Howard's distasteful extreme right-wing government to change and rein in those who sow division in society for whatever sick purposes. Howard will definitely not do it unless forced, and that means relentless pressure from all quarters.

Howard incites Racial Hatred with Racist Laws
Race Riot Nationalists spread to third Sydney suburb
"Ugly face of racism in Australia'' -- Premier Morris Iemma
Pacific Highlander blog on Australian Racism

Tagged: australia, cronulla, racism, islam, muslims, human+rights, muslim

The Power of Nightmares

Have you seen it yet? Better than Fahrenheit 9-11. As we suspected, Al Qaeda doesn't exist. It's a neo-con wet dream. Thanks, Baz le Tuff for showing me this BBC documentary. Check out the links in the Yellow Pages and watch it for free, or purchase a copy through Cafe Diem!, our online store.

Tagged: al+qaeda, disinfo, disinformation, terrorism, iraq, war, peace, progressive, neo-con, neo-cons, war+on+terror

Senator Eugene McCarthy dies at 89

"American senator Eugene McCarthy, whose grassroots campaign against the Vietnam war in 1968 forced President Lyndon Johnson from office, has died, writes Ned Temko. He was 89."
The Observer

Thousands gather for WTO protests

"Crowds are gathering in Hong Kong for the first of a series of protests against the World Trade Organisation summit being held there this week.

"Some 9,000 police officers will be on duty in case of trouble.

"Other demonstrations are planned for Tuesday - when the summit opens - and the following Sunday."
BBC News

Google news on WTO protests :: RSS :: Hong Kong People's Alliance on WTO

Tagged: wto, progressive, activism, hong+kong

Cyndi Boste, a truly great singer-songwriter

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the home of my musician mate Chris Green and spent a great afternoon with him and his friend, Cyndi Boste. For such a talent she's a nice, unaffected person. She has some great yarns about messages in bottles, beach-flotsam bottles like this one I snapped recently, only hers have real messages in them.

“American roots-influenced Australian singer-songwriter Boste sounds like her Alabama trailer park has just been flattened by tornadoes – and I mean that in the best way. Her husky blue voice wraps allusive tales of bad treatment and regret in passion and surprising warmth..." **** (four stars)
The L.A. Times

I was a little bit familiar with her work, and liked it, but since then I have seen a video of the gig she did at Bellingen's Cool Creek Cafe last week, and now I'm a fan. All I can say is Cyndi's one of the best singer-songwriters I have heard since I don't know when. Her original work is blues/folk/country/roots/rock, with flavours of some of her influences, Joplin, Dylan, Bolan, Cohen and Browne, and I can imagine Bonnie Raitt and KD Laing singing her songs. Her songs are songs -- her voice is great but they could be covered by many singers as the tunes and lyrics are excellent, as is her guitar work. Songs like 'Leaving Batterham Behind' and many others are so moving -- I'm no music reviewer so I can't find the words.

From her site: "Formerly a private 'discovery' for a few, Cyndi is rapidly gaining a wider audience. Late 2004 saw her on a two-month European tour with Barb Waters taking in Germany, Holland, Belgium, Scandinavia and the UK. Back home, Cyndi was chosen by US country blues legend Eric Bibb to support him on his 2005 Australian tour through March and April."

Check her out at www.cyndiboste.com, read the reviews, listen to some samples and grab a Christmas present from her CDs online. And spread the secret!

For future reference, I've linked Cyndi's site in the Links list in our sidebar. And I dips me lid to Chris Green for his passionate promotion of this unsung singer's remarkable talents. Without him, I would never have known. The battle is with the Australian music industry, which seems to be looking for gimmicks, and Chris has put his finger on it, so he's doing his bit.

Tagged: music, blues, australia, country+music, independent+music

Scaling day (L'Escalade), Geneva, Switzerland

This festival honours the night of December 11, 1602, when the citizens routed the Savoyards, who were scaling the walls of Geneva. Shops sell chocolate bonbons representing the soup pots the women used on that night to throw hot water on the invaders. Tonight they will be enjoying masquerades and parties. Presumably the people of Savoy will not.

The term escalade means "scaling" and refers to the Savoyards' use of ladders to storm the city's walls. The attack was successfully repelled, over 200 of the enemy being slain, while 17 only Genevese perished. Filled with joy at their rescue from this attack, the citizens crowded to their cathedral, where the theologian Theodore Beza (1519 - 1605), leader of the theocracy, then 83 years of age, got them to sing the 124th Psalm which has ever since been sung on the anniversary of this great delivery.

The Escalade festival takes place from Friday through Sunday on the weekend closest to December 11, the day of the Savoyards' ill-fated invasion. Near the cathedral of St Pierre is the arsenal which now houses the historical museum, in which are preserved many relics of the Escalade, including the famous ladders.

Tagged: switzerland, folklore, customs

Noise for a New Generation

"Make Some Noise is a global campaign by Amnesty International that mixes music, celebration and action to protect individuals wherever freedom, justice and equality are denied.

"Thanks to an extraordinary gift from Yoko Ono -- the recording rights to 'Imagine' and John Lennon’s entire solo songbook -- we are harnessing the power of music to inspire a new generation to celebrate and stand up for human rights.

"The launch of Make Some Noise -- set for 10 December, International Human Rights Day -- will see the release of a bundle of exclusive singles from the Black Eyed Peas, The Cure, Snow Patrol and The Postal Service. This first bundle of singles will be followed in early 2006 by the release of an array of new versions of iconic John Lennon tracks from top artists, including Avril Lavigne.

"Our aim is to attract one million new supporters worldwide. We’re not here to talk about the past, tug on the heartstrings or show images of suffering. We’re here to make a positive impact on our world and collectively raise our voices to make as much noise as we can for human rights."
Amnesty

Tagged: amnesty+international, amnesty, human+rights, john+lennon

The killing of Norman Mayer

1982 US: Demanding an end to nuclear weapons, Norman Mayer (b. 1916) was shot and killed by the United States Park Police after threatening to blow up the Washington Monument. Ten hours into the negotiation, Mayer jumped in his van and started to drive off, threatening to become "a moving time bomb in downtown Washington". The police opened fire, striking Mayer four times – twice in the head.

Eyewitness: "I Never Heard the Word 'Bomb'"

At least one passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 924 maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar as he frantically attempted to run off the airplane shortly before take-off.

"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.

"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."

When the incident began McAlhany was in seat 24C, in the middle of the plane. "[Alpizar] was in the back," McAlhany says, "a few seats from the back bathroom. He sat down." Then, McAlhany says, "I heard an argument with his wife. He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'"

Alpizar took off running down the aisle, with his wife close behind him. "She was running behind him saying, 'He's sick. He's sick. He's ill. He's got a disorder," McAlhany recalls. "I don't know if she said bipolar disorder [as one witness has alleged]. She was trying to explain to the marshals that he was ill. He just wanted to get off the plane."


McAlhany described Alpizar as carrying a big backpack and wearing a fanny pack in front. He says it would have been impossible for Alpizar to lie flat on the floor of the plane, as marshals ordered him to do, with the fanny pack on. "You can't get on the ground with a fanny pack," he says. "You have to move it to the side."

By the time Alpizar made it to the front of the airplane, the crew had ordered the rest of the passengers to get down between the seats. "I didn't see him get shot," he says. "They kept telling me to get down. I heard about five shots."

McAlhany says he tried to see what was happening just in case he needed to take evasive action. "I wanted to make sure if anything was coming toward me and they were killing passengers I would have a chance to break somebody's neck," he says. "I was looking through the seats because I wanted to see what was coming.

"I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official."

In the ensuing events, many of the passengers began crying in fear, he recalls. "They were pointing the guns directly at us instead of pointing them to the ground," he says "One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel."

McAlhany said he saw Alpizar before the flight and is absolutely stunned by what unfolded on the airplane. He says he saw Alpizar eating a sandwich in the boarding area before getting on the plane. He looked normal at that time, McAlhany says. He thinks the whole thing was a mistake: "I don't believe he should be dead right now."
TIME Magazine

Australia's Yeti or Bigfoot, the Yowie

1882 A letter appeared in the The Australian Town and Country Journal, written by a naturalist, HJ McCooey, who reported seeing a strange creature in the bush on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, in 1880. The location was in wilderness between Bateman's Bay and Ulladulla.

This is one of the earliest recorded sightings of what may have been the Yowie, a mythical creature not dissimilar to America's Bigfoot or Tibet's Abominable Snowman, or Yeti ...

Tagged: cryptozoology, cryptid, fortean, zoology, biology, australia

John Lennon by Andy Warhol

John Lennon, killed 25 years ago today

1980 Former Beatle John Lennon (b. October 9, 1940) was shot dead in New York by deranged 25-year-old fan Mark David Chapman ...

"Lennon died at 10:50 on a Monday night. America was a much simpler place, a three-channel country where broadcaster Howard Cosell announced Lennon's death on 'Monday Night Football.' He started the avalanche of grief that became my generation's where-were-you-then moment, like the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11."
Imagine a world with John Lennon

John Lennon's music still shines on
John Lennon to be honoured
Continued Lennon covers: Amnesty offers charity downloads

Tagged: john+lennon, beatles

American Govt's 'torture flights': dedicated blog

We've been following CIA 'torture flights' (or 'rendition', to use a US Gov't spin word) in the Yellow Pages.

Good to see a blog dedicated to this subject: Reykjavik Transit:

"'When the C.I.A. is given a task, it's usually because national policy makers don't want "U.S. government" written all over it,' said a retired C.I.A. Some of the C.I.A. planes have been used for carrying out renditions, the legal term for the agency's practice of seizing terrorism suspects in one foreign country and delivering them to be detained in another, including countries that routinely engage in torture."

Tagged: torture+flights, rendition, usa, cia, human+rights

Music world mourns Loved One

"'THE world didn't get to hear the Loved Ones and the world lost out,' music writer and broadcaster Clinton Walker said yesterday.

"That's a popular view in Australian music circles and one that echoed around the country following the death of Gerry Humphries, the Melbourne band's charismatic and influential lead singer.

"The 63-year-old, English-born musician died in London on Monday from a heart attack. He had been based in the English capital for most of his life, away from the music industry, since enjoying brief success here with the Loved Ones and with his later outfit the Joy Band."
The Australian

Baz le Tuff and I saw him in 1354 at Mulwala (Mud Wallow -- Ongo Bongo!). I doubt that either le Tuff or Humphries remembered, but I did.

More

New: The Louisa Lawson and Henry Lawson Chronology

I invite readers to check out the four-page chronology of the lives and times of Louisa Lawson and her son Henry Lawson, two Australian I greatly admire. It's my own private research for a personal project, but I thought it might interest others so I present it as is.

It's always under construction and can never be complete, but I hope it will be of use to other Lawsonians and give the casual reader some interesting perspective about the lives of Australia's most famous writer and his mother, who was called 'The Mother of Women's Suffrage' by the suffragettes of her day, in a country that pioneered the vote for women worldwide.

Henry Lawson: Much more than a "bush poet"
Australian politicians and educators, particularly conservative ones, tend to promote the myth of Henry Lawson as a homespun rural author, and consequently, although there is some truth in it, a bucolic view of Lawson is very widespread – he has been washed in antiseptic and billy tea. For example, one website says "Henry Lawson lived in the country on a selection in Sapling Gully approximately 6 kms. from Mudgee in New South Wales." In fact, from the age of 17 to his death at 55, Lawson spent almost his entire life in Sydney, a bustling world city twice as populous as San Francisco in his heyday 1890s, where he mixed with the bohemian and (often extremely) radical intellectuals and activists of the era, as did his mother for the last 37 years of her life.

The 'naughty nineties' was a time of incredible ferment in Australia, a sort of 19th century version of the 'swinging sixties', one of those rare decades in which art, literature, social turmoil and bold new ideas explode on the scene. And explosion is not too strong a word: when Henry's associate Larry Petrie bombed the steamship Aramac, the Sydney Morning Herald reported "The Aramac explosion makes the eighth trouble on board ship within almost as many days". After "jolly swagman" Frenchy Hoffmeister and sixteen other unionists committed arson at Dagworth, Henry's mate Banjo Paterson wrote a song about Hoffmeister's suicide (or was it murder?), and 'Waltzing Matilda' has since been Australia's unofficial national anthem.

It was a very different Australia from today's in many other ways, a time when the great gold rush had petered out and diggers from all over the planet were either settling down or going home; when a country that had already hosted two of the world's first ten World's Fairs was gripped in drought and our first Great Depression that closed the majority of banks; when the continent's British colonies were lurching towards Federation and a nation was being born with the second-highest standard of living in the world – while one quarter of Sydney children died before the age of five. It was also a time when people called each other "Mr", "Miss" or "Mrs", and they invariably replied to each other's emails and phone messages.

A large part of Henry's writing, especially his poetry, was political, swinging between what we would call today "left" and "right". Progressives and reactionaries, unsure of what to do with him, have preferred to ignore him or make him a kind of literary jackaroo. Louisa Lawson's life, too, probably because she was both poor and in many ways excessively progressive for her times, has been virtually swept from public consciousness despite her incredible achievements. I hope this chronology might in some small way help to correct the historical revision of the whole 'Lawson myth', by showing these two Aussies in context.

The Life and Times of Louisa Lawson and Henry Lawson: A Chronology

Tagged: henry+lawson, louisa+lawson, australia, radical, history, radical+history, progressive, suffragism, feminism, suffragettes, australian, literature

Farewell back, Auntie Jack

Good to see that Auntie Jack is making a comeback after 30 years with a DVD out for Christmas, and a tour planned for the New Year.

As many Australians will recall, the Auntie Jack team appeared here before Monty Python, but drew on similar inspirations such as Spike Milligan, The Goons, and Peter Cooke & Dudley Moore, and gave us a very whimsical, Pythonesque kind of humour (but with more pathos) and a hit song that was number one for 22 weeks.

Who can forget Auntie Jack's "I'll rip yer bloody arms off", Norman Gunston, Slim Arthur, 'Wollongong the Brave' and Kev Kavanagh, Teenage Butcher?

See youse round like a rissole!

Tagged: australia, humor, humour, comedy

Bush jokes

Thanks, Starlight from Omniparticle, for sending these.

"President Bush is taking more liberal positions. For example global warming. He used to be against it. Now it's the Republican plan for heating homes this winter." -Jay Leno

"At the trial Saddam insisted he is still president, he is still in charge, despite the fact that his people disapprove of him and his top assistants are all in jail or going to jail. No, I'm sorry, that's President Bush." -Jay Leno

"There are rumors circulating that because of the CIA leak investigation, Vice President Dick Cheney would resign and Condoleezza Rice will take his place. Due to the complex nature of the arrangement, it had to be explained to the president using puppets." -Jay Leno

"The results from the Iraqi election are coming in and the Sunnis are claiming that the election was rigged. So looks like they got an American-style democracy after all." -David Letterman

"Here's a reminder to Iraq: The crooked voting machines are due back in Florida by Friday." --David Letterman

"Karl Rove testified in front of the grand jury for the fourth time. This is the fourth time in front of the grand jury. In fact this time he had to give his testimony standing up. See the first three times he lied his ass off, so he had to stand up." --Jay Leno

"You know I love New Orleans, they're vowing to hold Mardi Gras this year come hell or -- no pun -- high water. This is interesting, they've always had a Mardi Gras drink called the Hurricane. They're not going to serve that this year, but they've got a new one called the FEMA. It's strong, it hits you about a week later." --Bill Maher

"I think the president is losing it. The BBC is reporting that Bush told a group of Palestinian ministers that God told him to invade Iraq. You see, that's what happens when you mix the New Testament and Old Milwaukee."--Bill Maher

"Now here's some sad information coming out of Washington. According to reports, President Bush may be drinking again. And I thought, 'Well, why not? He's got everybody else drinking.'" --David Letterman

This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm (oh how I wish everyone would use emailStripper!)

Tagged: bush, dubya, humor, humour, jokes

Feast day of St Nicholas of Myra (Santa Claus)

Nicholas (Nikolaus) (c. 270 - 345/352) became a Bishop of Myra in Lycia, Asia Minor when quite young. From this fact arose the old European tradition of Boy Bishops, who reigned from December 6 to 28, in a parody of church officials ...

The German-American Thomas Nast and other immigrants popularised their ‘Saint Nicholas’ and other Christmas traditions in the USA. The tall, thin European St Nicholas gradually became a fat, jolly, red cheeked old man, with a contracted version of ‘Saint Nicolas’ as his name: Santa Claus. One theory for this unaccountable transition in appearance of St Nicholas imagery may be the influence of Hotei, the Laughing Buddha; strikingly similar in nature and benevolence.

The Coca-Cola Company featured in its advertising a Santa Claus designed by artist Haddon Sundblom, which helped to popularise the design of Santa that Clement Moore and Nast originated. To this day Santa Claus still appears on Coca-Cola products each year around Christmastime. Santa Claus was not dressed in red and white until Coke gave him that apparel, in its own corporate livery. In fact, St Nick was a fur-clad elf, and quite sooty:

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack ...
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf ...
''Twas the Night Before Christmas', or Account of a Visit from St Nicholas
Either by Clement Clarke Moore or Major Henry Livingston Jr (1748 - 1828)

Tagged: christmas, customs, folklore, lore, santa+claus

Happy birthday to WNMC-FM

Happy first birthday to WNMC-FM, Traverse City, Michigan, USA. By arrangement with Wilson's Almanac, Eric Hines and the crew broadcast readings from the Book of Days each morning in the breakfast time slot. Make a great day, Eric and friends!

The chances of being killed by terrorists

"According to Ross Gittins (Sydney Morning Herald, 16/11/05) the statistical chance of any Westerner dying in a terrorist attack is 0.0001 per cent.

"Even Americans, the most prominent, powerful and, therefore, the most vulnerable Westerners are nine times more likely to die falling off a ladder, he claims. So, what chance has your average Aussie got of being the unfortunate victim of a terrorist attack? Notwithstanding the tragic bad luck of those killed and injured in Bali, New York and London, the chances of an Aussie like you or me dying at the hands of terrorists are infinitesimal."
Jane Caro, New Matilda, November 30, 'Terror Australis'

Tagged: australia, terrorism

Somebody tell About.com to say 'D'oh!'

Dotcom shoots self in foot with its Americocentrism

Everyone on the Net knows about.com/ -- it ain't great, it ain't bad. We'd all read it more often if it weren't a framed hive of blaring ads.

It has newsletters you can sign up for, no matter which of the world's nations you live in. The trouble is, it is mandatory on the form that you give them your "Zip Code". No zip code, no sub.

Now, as there is one country in the world (read "on the Net") that has zip codes, and probably 190 that don't, isn't this a bit like making it mandatory to fill in the age of your pet kangaroo or the name of your local Reichstag member? Perhaps about.com should make it impossible to subscribe without telling them the name of your monarch, or that of your local arondissement.

If About.com would like to revise their practice so that the vast non-American majority (95%) of humankind can fill in their forms, who knows, they might find a sudden surge in subscriptions. Of course, on the other hand, they can just keep on getting pretend zip codes included in their market research statistics, which I suppose are then passed on to their trusting advertisers.

Tagged: americocentrism, america, usa

Australia's Flying Taylors

1909 Florence Taylor (Florence Mary Taylor; 1879 - February 13, 1969), the first woman architect, structural engineer and civil engineer in Australia, flew in a glider at Narrabeen Heads, New South Wales, becoming the first Australian woman to fly.

Her husband, architect-engineer George Augustine Taylor, who designed and built the glider following the principles of Lawrence Hargrave, made Australia's first flight in a heavier-than-air craft on the same day.
George Taylor, a drinking buddy of Henry Lawson's (they were both members of a small and exclusive group of carousers called the 'Dawn and Dusk Club'), and founder of the Wireless Institute of NSW in 1910, had built a biplane with a box-kite tail for balance, from coachwood, covered with oiled calico.

The location of this pioneer flight was about one kilometre from where this almanac was produced between 2001 and 2003.

Lawson & Co: people and events associated with Henry and Louisa Lawson

Tagged: australia, aviation, history

UN questionnaire

A world survey recently conducted by the UN posed the following question:

"Could you please give us your opinion about the food shortage in the rest of the world?"

This was a huge failure due to the following reasons:

In Africa, no one knows what "food" is.
In Western Europe, no one knows what "shortage" is.
In Eastern Europe no one knows what "opinion" is.
In South America no one knows what "please" means.
In the US no one knows what "rest of the world" means.

Leunig's silent protest over Van Nguyen

Australia is and always has been quite distinguished for its cartoonists, and Michael Leunig is one of the best-known living practitioners of the art.

Below is his protest over the callous execution in Singapore of the young Australian, Van Nguyen:

"There are no cartoons this morning as I make my protest to the Singapore government. It's as futile as marching in the street but, as far as I'm concerned, every bit as necessary. Following is what I'm sending to each member of the Singapore government and every Singaporean ambassador/high commissioner in the world for whom I can find an email address - sans Leunig.

"Beneath a wafer thin veneer of modernity, civilisation and sophistication the government of Singapore is again revealed as a stunted, brutal oligarchy with scant regard for the rule of law.

"The government claims its barbaric policy of state sanctioned murder is in place as a deterrent to the commission of certain crimes yet, after fifteen years, executions are still occurring at the rate of one every nine days. In the social laboratory that is the United States of America, the only place in the world where valid comparisons can be made of the deterrent value of capital punishment, irrefutable evidence shows there is no such deterrent value.

"And even if the evidence was to the contrary Singapore reduces its own judiciary to the role of rubber stamp. With mandatory sentences the government refuses to allow the Bench to take account of individual circumstances, reducing defendants to a mendicant role after the judicial process has concluded and ensuring the power of life and death remains with the oligarchy.

"This judicial sham operates against a background of Singapore maintaining strong diplomatic and economic relations with region's largest manufacturer and distributor of illicit drugs, the Burmese military junta. The hypocrisy is self evident.

"As Singapore stands cheek by jowl with its great and powerful friends, the US and China, the brutal death of one more young man will be just another indication, if they notice at all, that the little trading state has as scant regard for human life as they do. Singapore can try to cloak its brutality in a shroud of law and order but that is as bogus as its rule of law and its democracy."

I dips me lid to Sydney Almaniac Mark Kennedy for sending.

Tagged: van+nguyen, australia, singapore, execution, capital+punishment, human+rights, death+penalty, cartoons, cartoonists, protest

Screensavers

Baz le Tuff sent me this link for some incredible screensavers. I've seen 'The Lost Watch' and 'Mechanical Clock' ones on his desktop, and they are definitely the best I've seen, but he says they hog the power a bit.

The Almanac also has some popular screensavers, free of charge, with no spyware etc, and lighter on the juice.

Cobra guy video

If you get the creeps with snakes as I do, you'll hate this vid.

Fossil discovery supports theory that birds are living dinosaurs

"A perfectly preserved fossil of a feathered creature that lived 150 million years ago has provided further evidence to show that modern birds are living dinosaurs.

"The fossil is a complete skeleton of an Archaeopteryx and shows it had features common to birds and a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called therapods.

"Scientists said the feet of the fossilised Archaeopteryx were anatomically almost identical to those of therapod dinosaurs, which pointed to a common ancestry for both groups. Archaeopteryx had many bird-like features such as feathered wings and a wishbone but it also had distinctly reptilian traits including jaws with teeth, a bony tail and claws on its fingers."
Independent

Tagged: intelligent+design, evolution, dinosaurs, science

Eureka Stockade, landmark of Australian history

We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other,
and fight to defend our rights and liberties.
The diggers' oath was not sworn before a deity, but a constellation


1854 Australia: The Battle of Eureka Stockade, an uprising of Victorian Gold Rush gold miners against the State of Victoria; six troopers and 22 miners died in the civil revolt by gold miners against the officials supervising the gold-mining regions of Ballarat. Although the revolt failed, it has endured in the collective social consciousness of Australia. As Mark Twain wrote, "It was the Barons and John over again ... it was Concord and Lexington".

Eureka has been variously described as the birthplace of Australia's democracy, republicanism and multiculturalism. It is often regarded as being an event of equal significance to Australian history as the storming of the Bastille was to French history, the Easter Uprising to the Irish, or the Boston Tea Party or Battle of the Alamo to the history of the USA. Its multicultural heroes include an Italian writer (Raffaello Carboni; read his book), a freed African-American slave (John Joseph, who was the first to be charged with sedition), a former German soldier and sundry American democrats, Canadians, Irish rebels and British Chartists. The first incident was the arbitrary arrest of a physically disabled, non-English speaking Armenian, wrongfully charged with assaulting an officer ...

Tagged: progressive, australian+history, radical, australia, history, eureka, liberty, gold+rush

Van Ngyuen, in memoriam

There will be no Wilson's Almanac activity today out of respect for Van Nguyen who today will be killed by the Singapore state, and in protest against capital punishment everywhere.

Van Nguyen hangs today
Timeline: The life of Van Nguyen
Your say on tributes to Nguyen
Mother meets Nguyen for last time
Nguyen lawyer describes painful journey
Van Nguyen in pictures (.swf file)

Tagged: van+nguyen, australia, singapore, execution, capital+punishment, human+rights, death+penalty

International Prisoners for Peace Day

International Prisoners for Peace Day

In recognition of war resisters in all countries imprisoned for opposition to war and conscription.

"December 1st, 1956, was the first time War Resistor's Iinternational (WRI) 'celebrated' Prisoners for Peace Day. This was done by publishing a Prisoners for Peace Honour Roll and calling on all members of WRI sections to send postcards and letters to the prisoners."In fact, this focus has remained the same over the years. The only difference with todays' list is that at that time, the list consisted of conscientious objectors to military service who were imprisoned and those who were performing substitute service. During the years, the list has been altered several times. Nowadays it includes anyone who is imprisoned for non-violent actions against war and war preparation ..."For more information visit the War Resisters' Iinternational website." Source

"The first edition of the 2005 Prisoners for Peace list and campaign pack is now available in English (HTML; PDF for A3 paper; or PDF, for 8½x11" paper), German (HTML or PDF, eight pages A4), French (HTML or PDF, eight pages A4) and Spanish (HTML or PDF, eight pages A4).

"You can also read the 2005 Prisoners for Peace appeal here in English, German, French, or Spanish." Source

Tagged: war, peace, war+resisters, conscientiuous+objection, progressive, peace+movement, resistance

Swords into ploughshares

"Peace is paying dividends in Sierra Leone. The same civil war that depleted the country of tools and work is now providing ample raw material for recovery: weapons. Enterprising blacksmiths and metal workers convert them into farm implements so that a Kalashnikov becomes hoes and axe heads and a rocket launcher transforms into pickaxes, sickles and even school bells.

"The indisputable heavyweight champ is a tank (or a heavy duty 16 wheeler) that can provide a year's work for 5 blacksmiths, turning it into 3,000 items vital to equip a farming village of 100 families. Jobs, tools, agriculture. It isn't everyday that what you long for comes true."
Good Gifts

Good Gifts Homepage: this organisation, new to me, appears to be endorsed by very many charities.