Haiku 4

April's air stirs in
willow leaves...
a butterfly
floats and balances.

Tigger-what were you thinking?

"Tigger boning Tickle Me Elmo: Smart toys acting dumb
Stick a Tickle Me Elmo and an electronic Tigger together and they will simulate a really dirty sex scene, as captured on this video. Smart toys from different vendors are really overdue for combinatorial unintended consequences."
-Boing Boing!

Wheeeeeeee!

great glowing green bunnies!

"French genetic researchers created Alba for artist Eduardo Kac. Thanks to genes borrowed from a jellyfish, the albino rabbit glows green when placed under special lighting. In regular light, Alba appears like any other furry white rabbit. But place her under a black light, and her eyes, whiskers and fur glow a otherworldly green. "GFP Bunny" (green fluorescent protein bunny).

The French scientists created Alba using a process called zygote microinjection. In this process, the scientists plucked a fluorescent protein from a species of fluorescent jellyfish called Aequorea victoria. Then they modified the gene to make its glowing properties twice as powerful. This gene, called EGFG (for enhanced genetic fluorescent gene) was then inserted into a fertilized rabbit egg cell that eventually grew into Alba. As the cell divided, the "green gene also replicated and made its way into every cell of Alba's body.

"Glow in the dark" fish. these genetically modified fish were developed by a Taiwanese aquatic firm, Taikong Group. They are planning to reproduce these fish in numbers and sell them for pets."

-Green Apple.com

I hate to make light of genetic engineering, but wouldn't a glow-in-the-dark Easter Bunny be more efficient at getting around in the dark...hmmm

Let him call you sweetheart

Actual chronograph of posessed man morphing into vapour demon

Absynthe, anyone?

Visit the Virtual Absynthe Museum

Eye Candy!

click me!

No contender for Teddy Kennedy!

"Prime Minister, John Howard has dressed his bear “Winston” in a red running suit, ready for a busy day in Federal Parliament in Canberra.
Winston was named after Mr Howard’s own middle name.
Mr Howard has been Prime Minister in Australia since March 1996,"... and is best-known for his life-long impersonation of a blow-fly and for his assistance to President George Bush's marionetting skills...

See Bert Newton's bear, Belvedere

'Ghostly' chatter - fact or fiction?

"Electronic Voice Phenomena" (EVP)

"It's claimed the dead have found a new way of contacting the living.

Not by rapping on tables or spewing ectoplasm over a twitching medium, but via electronic signals.

Linda Williamson believes she has heard from beyond the grave

So-called "Electronic Voice Phenomena" (EVP) are supposed to be the voices of ghosts, made audible through static on the radio, or on tape recordings.

It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie - Ghost crossed with The Cable Guy perhaps. And in fact it is."

-BBC News

Tragedy- Whaling Ban lifted

Kiribati has joined the International Whaling Commission, which has been wresting with the highly contentious issue of turning over the global ban on commercial whaling.



You can help stop commercial whaling with our action kit. Send a letter in Japanese (Japanese PDF provided) to the Foreign Minister of Japan, put up posters in your community to recruit more cyberactivists or write a letter to your local newspaper.




Join the global whales action team

Rats in the net

As the Tibetan people wait for His Holiness the Dalai Lama's national address of 10 March, hackers in Beijing are working overtime to sabotage the cyber world of Tibet movement. Offices of the Tibetan exile administration have recently started receiving emails disguised as originating from Sonam N. Dagpo, "Additional Secretary" (sic) of the Department of Information and International Relations (DIIR) in Dharamsala, and purportedly carrying the text of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 10 March statement as an attached file.
-Boing Boing

haiku 4

now my loneliness
following the fireworks...
look! a falling star!

-Shiki

Get Googled, doubters!

OK- so a few weeks ago I was 'hassled' for saying Google is an Aussie thing. Maybe it might have begun as an American seed, but it's now proudly emblazoned with its Australianess.

Buuuuut if we stole google, it's only fair after they stole vegemite, photocopiers, electronic clothing tags and ugh boots...actually, you can keep the tags and the ugh boots...!

Too Blue

I have just found the website of my old radio station, 2Blu FM in Katoomba, Blue Mountains, where I had a show for about a year and a half. Now it seems to be just Blu FM. Is it any wonder I'd work at a station with a name like that...?

Click on the groovy dj (you can tell by the coke lined up on the console...) to see a virtual tour of the studio. It's trippy to see the space I spent many hours in, but in a spookily-realistic format...

Try the virtual room-spin and you'll see it from the point of view of a record...or the typical 2Blu punter...

haiku 3

"friend, that open mouth
reveals your whole interior...
silly hollow frog!"

-anon

Ingrid whips up a fury

At Christmas, there were global tidal waves and and the sky turned black with locusts just minutes from where I live. All that was missing was the seven horsemen of the Apocalypse! At any given time, it's easy to forsee the end, but now, with this new threat, Cyclone Ingrid, all superstitions may be renewed (yay, OCD...!)

Today, I am posting from a town with a population of less-than 1000 called Lockhart, New South Wales. By coincidence, this is also the name of one of the main sitting-duck localities when Ingrid rips through...

"Cyclone Ingrid hits Qld coast
A cyclone as powerful as Cyclone Tracy, which flattened Darwin just more than 30 years ago, is crossing Cape York Peninsula near Lockhart River.

The category four cyclone has winds of up to 240 kilometres an hour and is continuing to intensify, but there have been no reports of damage.

A cyclone warning is in place for communities from Cape Melville to Cape Grenville, and from Cape Keerweer to Mapoon on the eastern Gulf of Carpentaria.

At 6:00am AEST, Ingrid's destructive core was over coastal parts of Lockhart River near Mission Hill.

The bureau is warning of a tidal surge in the area as the cyclone crosses the coast.

About 20 people were moved to higher ground in the Lockhart River community overnight as Ingrid approached the coast.

But Superintendent Michael Keating says Lockhart River police are not reporting any problems.

"There are strong winds in the area at the moment - 80 to 100 kilometres but there's been no damage to any structures, no damage to any trees, so the majority of people are sheltering in private residences," he said."

-ABC News Online (for more, click on the map)

Love that Lorem

Sprung badly, Wagga Art Gallery- I was just linking to this site in the last post when I noticed a spiel that was completely comprised of Lorem Ipsum text- the gobblygook-producing site that is used as dummy text.

It's a shame this site is not more illustrated, especially when the National Art Collection is constantly on display, let alone quite a plethora of national standard art...

Have a good look at Lorem Text- it's funny how often randomly-lettered words look familiar...

Spectral sands

This week, Tibetan monks have been creating a sand mandala at the Wagga Art Gallery. Starting on Tuesday, they have been working all week from 10am-5pm and tomorrow is the dissolution ceremony.

These pics were taken yesterday morning after an an hour of chanting, which I attended...well, my body and whatever amount of my subconscious I could arouse, thanks to sleeplessness, toxin/morning fatigue and the distracting cries of a kid beside me.

But, once I concentrated beyond the surface static, I percieved patterns in the richly textures of interlacing ribbons of voice.
Powerful and delicate, deep and textured;- almost fugish in its manner of one deep voice setting the next phrase and sonic motif simultaneously with the echoing chants of the group of monks, like the bones upon which all intricacy was woven.

Bold phrasing like a vein from which flowed intricate capilliation, a mighty, land-forming river feeding to smaller, geography-obediant streams which sustained the final fabric of each sound.

The entire universe, or so we believe, is comprised of ever-vibrating molecules. Sound is the further vibration of molecules in eminating waves. When we experience sounds they change our very molecular structure.

Mantras embed subcosciously communicative information. Words are chosen through careful meditation so that the very sound the word is meant to equal that which it names. "Om" is the key example, as the tambre of the word is said to be the very sound of the universe as a whole...

...and speaking of the universe as a whole, I have read that the smallest form in the universe and the universe itself, are of identical shape; the Double-Helix. I read this a while ago.
(Please comment if you can help me clarify this...)

Hum mane padme hum.
(You are the jewel of the lotus)

A gay ol' time with Spongebob

"A hip square as a sponge is a good or a bad thing? On the one hand, a sponge might soak up information; so maybe it's intelligent. On the other hand, it can soak up other people's energy and money; so maybe a sponge is lazy and a user."
Slate

"LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Conservative Christian groups accuse the makers of a video starring SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney and a host of other cartoon characters of promoting homosexuality to children.

The wacky square yellow SpongeBob is one of the stars of a music video due to be sent to 61,000 U.S. schools in March. The makers -- the nonprofit We Are Family Foundation -- say the video is designed to encourage tolerance and diversity.
But at least two Christian activist groups say the innocent cartoon characters are being exploited to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.

"A short step beneath the surface reveals that one of the differences being celebrated is homosexuality," wrote Ed Vitagliano in an article for the American Family Association.
The video is a remake of the 1979 hit song "We Are Family" using the voices and images of SpongeBob, Barney, Winnie the Pooh, Bob the Builder, the Rugrats and other TV cartoon characters. It was made by a foundation set up by songwriter Nile Rodgers after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in an effort to promote healing."

Want more?
The Corroboree

"If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."

Nimbin Webcam

Visit the Nimbin Hemp Embassy Web cam...