Disrespect and hatred

Read this. Caution, it will make you cranky!

I know I read about Martin (poseur), Deveny (fool without bells), Lake (awesome book, love, right up there with Ant Lowenstein's "factual" and "truthful" questionable Question) and I just can't understand people with attitudes like Deveny and Lake, they have so little respect for anything witht he exception of what may destroy us.

Clueless television hosts on war and remembrance

Idiot statement of the day from Channel 7 Sunrise female host just now after they were talking about the Sandakan memorial service, now the 65th, whith an expected turnout of 500 attendees:

"It's good to see the focus becoming local after so long being concentrated in Gallipoli and France."

What a clueless bint!

Catastrophic bushfires? Never before

7 February 2009?

Hmm.

Try 6 February 1851.

H/T Max of NE on Blair's blog.

Finding the Fallen - Fromelles 2009 (ABC News feature)

Watching episodes of this program, Finding the Fallen, on ABC last year, along with another program about anthropologic war site digs in Europe I was fascinated by what could be found. The second program in one or two cases found property of a particular soldier which was identifiable and the soldier's descendents or near relatives were found and shown the items found.

The ABC together with the Australian War Graves Commission, The Australian War Memorial and the Australian Army have produced a special on the Fromelles Fallen.

Update:
This is about an Australian dig in Flanders.

Gems of idiocy via email...

Global 350

THE ISSUE
350.org is an international campaign dedicated to creating an equitable global climate treaty that lowers carbon dioxide below 350 parts per million.

350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide measured in parts per million (ppm) in our atmosphere. 350 ppm is the number humanity needs to get back below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. We are now very close to 390 ppm.

For some truly idiotic crap please visit this site.

Note the supporters (aiders/abetters), and the sponsors.

Supporters (I guess this means they're not contributing any of their hard earned)

Bill McKibben

Vandana Shiva

Abp. Desmond Tutu (hero my armpit!)

Dr. James Hansen

Dr Tim Flannery

Liz Thomson (link?)

Pres. Mohamed Nasheed

Bianca Jagger (Mick's ex missus)

David Suzuki

Van Jones

George Monbiot Moonbat (no link provided by me!)

Rachel Ward - actress, celebrity

Peter Fitzsimons - "journalist"

Jennifer Byrne - should have more sense...

Richard Neville - "futurist" whatever the fuck heck that is

Paul Loeb - activist

Deepa Gupta ?

Robyn 100 metres Williams

Greta Scacchi - another bloody actress/activist/celebrity

Sponsors:

GetUp!

Eureka Funds Management

Avant Card

Cafe of the Gate of Salvation

Baker & McKenzie

Thumper One

Henry Davis York Lawyers

Zen Studios

The Videoplus Group

***
And if that isn't enough, I also received this:

2009 Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History
There's just a few weeks left to apply for this award. Nominations are sought from an individual or a group for any work first published, produced or broadcast between January 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009. This may include a published book, documentary film, documentary for radio or television, CD-ROM, DVD, other form of multimedia or a series of these works. Apply online. Details: pmhistoryprize@deewr.gov.au or 02 6240 9047.

My question is:

Can you make it up yourself, or does it have to be, er, History?

Fascinating old stuff, anthropological things and Henry VIII

This would be so interesting!

I would like to know more about the sailors. It would be wonderful for complete skulls to be scanned and then computer faces generated using the markers to show us what these people looked like - it makes them more.... real? Is that the right word?

Olive Riley, world's oldest blogger

Olive passed away last year, however, a film was made about Ollie in 2004 when she was aged 104 and I've just seen it on ABC today.
Link to film information, and click on the study guide PDF link to see more photographs of Ollie.

It's a great yarn. Ollie was such a character!

Her blog seems to have been removed from Blogger, which is a shame. It was entertaining.

Update:
I received an email from a friend of Olive's. Eric has sent me a link to where Olive's blog is now, go and have a look! Olive Riley (missspelt Reilly).

Oh, and Eric has also told me of a new "Oldest blogger in the world", Elvira Oliver in New York.

Work makes you free

This made me cry.

Plastic is not forever

Well, well, well. Who'da thunk it?

Works of art and historical pieces held in galleries and museums around the world are degenerating and disintegrating.

Priceless historical pieces, for example, the first plastic toothbrush, are crumbling.

A handful of unstable, "malignant" plastics are responsible for most of the carnage. Cellulose nitrate was the first widely used plastic (it dates to the early 1830s); it was used to make the film in reel-to-reels. It's remembered today for being a notorious fire hazard: Billiard balls made of cellulose nitrate would occasionally explode on contact, and the plastic was responsible for the destruction of many early movie theaters, as hot projection booths caused the film to catch fire. For safety reasons, cellulose acetate, the material Gabo used, began to replace cellulose nitrate in many applications in the 1930s, though it wasn't any more durable. Because both plastics were based on readily available plant matter (cellulose is the main component of a plant's cell walls), they found widespread use until the 1970s, despite their flaws.

More recently, manufacturers and artists have turned to latex and wholly synthetic plastics like PVC or polyurethane. But these plastics have also proved feeble over the long term. At a molecular level, plastics are long chains of a single molecule repeated over and over. Such long chains would be uselessly brittle on their own, but chemists realized they could add chemicals, called "plasticizers," whose molecules work their way between the chains and soften the plastics up. This greatly increased malleability, and virtually all plastics today employ plasticizers. Unfortunately, plastics will squeeze the plasticizers out over time. This process pushes the chemicals to the surface of the object, leaving the underlying plastic fragile. Different plastics deteriorate in different ways under different conditions, depending on what plasticizers or dyes were added. But the end result tends to be forms of matter rarely seen outside the reject piles of industrial chemistry labs. You can recognize "bleeding" or "weeping" plastics by the slimy plasticizers pooling on their surfaces. Other plastics push powder to their surfaces and feel sugary to the touch.

Myself, I'm quite taken with the exploding billiard balls, it would sure make a game of pool at the pub interesting!

It gets worse:

Worst of all, when plastics weep and bleed they can corrupt everything around them. Chemicals evaporate from their surface and acidify any moisture inside a display case. This causes mini bouts of acid rain that in turn eat away at the plastic in nearby objects—as well as any cloth, metal, or paper in those objects. Curators can lay down special carbon cloths beneath a plastic object to absorb some acid, but some plastics have to be quarantined immediately. Museums have also used plastics to coat nonplastic objects like silver (to prevent tarnishing) and paintings (to prevent flaking). But plastic coatings often "bloom" and turn opaque or "crizzle" (i.e., wrinkle) like dried rubber cement, changes that can damage the very object the coating was meant to preserve.

Read more.

I bet those enviro bags have a half life much longer than the crumbly, cracky plastics self destructing in the museums and art galleries of the worl.

Thanks to Minicapt!

ABC Now, Mummy Detective: Crypt of the Medici

Fascinating! It's on ABC1 now!

More info here.

MUMMY DETECTIVE: CRYPT OF THE MEDICI Digs Up a Dynasty to Learn How They Lived and Died; Mummy Detective Dr. Bob Brier Hosts Special Spotlighting Investigation of Medici Family Members and Their Centuries-Old Crypt.

Get your money's worth!

Update:

FLORENCE, Italy, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Was it malaria, as claimed? Or was it a double murder, as rumored? What killed the two sons of Cosimo I? After half a millennium and a fascinating scientific investigation, these and other lingering questions may finally be answered. MUMMY DETECTIVE: CRYPT OF THE MEDICI follows a team of Italian specialists, joined by mummy expert and TLC presenter Dr. Bob Brier, as they exhume the bodies of Italy's ancient first family and use the latest forensic tools to investigate how they lived and died.

I found it very interesting.