Category: News and Events

Do as History Teaches

It’s that time again, the time when the Australian swim team goes off to the Olympics and – to the general consternation of the nation – totally fails to dominate. Our swimmers pick up some silvers, some bronzes and maybe a few golds, and the press fills up with questions about where it’s all gone so wrong.

The thing that everyone fails to remember is that this is the Olympic Games, not the Commonwealth Games. In the Commonwealth Games we slaughter everyone, because, frankly,  we’re the only people in the Commonwealth who can actually swim. At the Olympics we face the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese and a horde of upstart, wildcard nations that luck out by stumbling over a single brilliant swimmer. Faced with all that competition we actually punch well above our weight, but there’s still hand wringing and gnashing of teeth every time we win a silver (or, the horror! a bronze) rather than a gold.

To those who are upset at our team’s performance in the pool – or elsewhere – I say shut up and listen to some TISM.

Holy Calamity, Scream Insanity

Herp Derp Particle

The HerpDerpParticle Twitter feed is one of those things that first makes you laugh, and then makes you weep for the future of humanity. It does nothing but retweet insane twitter posts about the probable discovery of the Higgs Boson, which can mostly be categorised into three types…

1: Liberal atheist European scientists have found the God Particle, thus proving that God exists and hoisting the evil, science-worshiping, communist, agnostic, atheist, anti-American, Darwinist, liberal, gay, Muslim, perverts by their own petard.

2: Liberal atheist European scientists found the God Particle on July 4th, thus proving for all time that God loves America more than any other nation on Earth and condemning all evil, science-worshiping, communist, agnostic, atheist, Darwinist, liberal, gay, Muslim perverts to Hell for electing Barrack Obama.

3: All science is an evil, communist, agnostic, atheist, Darwinist, liberal, Anti-American, gay, Muslim, pervert plot and all the truth you ever need is in the Bible.

It’s this kind of thing that makes me reconsider living on this planet.

Later: But this cheers me right up 🙂

A Black Spot on the Sun

Bloody clouds!!

So, my plans to observe the transit of Venus were stymied by a massive slab of overcast that rolled in over the city just before sunrise. Justin and I had been intending to take my telescope up to Kings Park to watch, but there wasn’t much point – we headed over to Maylands anyway and had breakfast at Milkd.

I ended up alternating between the Mount Wilson and Mauna Kea video feeds, so at least I saw it, if not exactly with my own eyes.

As Justin said, roll on the 2016 transit of Mercury!

Europhoria

I haven’t been paying much attention to Eurovision this year – work has been a nightmare lately and I’ve mostly been coming home, grabbing something quick to eat, then crawling into bed. But I had dinner over at Rebecca and Dom’s last night and watched some of the second semi-final, so I have some thoughts on that.

What I heard of the Netherlands seemed to be a cheerful little song, even if the Native American head-dress seemed a little culturally insensitive. Sweden’s song was nothing really special, but there was something about Loreen’s voice and performance that… I dunno, it just had something that kind of lifted it above its parts (and is probably responsible for its winning). Georgia seemed to have no idea what they were doing – as Rebecca commented they seemed to have looked at all the winning entries for the last 30 years and tried to incorporate elements from them into their act – with the result being a horrible mess. Slovakia got confused and sent a Whitesnake impersonator, while Lithuania sent Scott Summers. Turkey featured a posse of dancing bat-men who periodically turned into a boat. The song didn’t really grab me, but after re-listening to it I can perceive some of its latent merits.

What I found particularly interesting about this year was the use of video screens to overcome the “only six performers” rule. Several of the acts featured extra – often computer generated – dancers. It’ll be interesting if they allow that next time.

Don’t know if I’ll watch the final tonight. We all know who won and I need to be up early to get into work tomorrow (supposed to be my day off I might add!).

While on the subject of music and dancing, how’s this for a marriage proposal? There’s been a lot of debate over whether it’s a viral marketing campaign or not, but it genuinely seems to be authentic…

Tupac Pepper

He didn’t have an ‘H’ on his forehead. Dead giveaway.

I’d just like to point out that while the technology used to resurrect Tupac Shakur at Coachella over the weekend is impressive, it’s not a bloody hologram!

The company that makes it can call it a hologram all they like, but that doesn’t make it one. The technology to create 3d images out of light simply doesn’t exist outside of sci-fi movies. Hell, it may not even be possible. The thing that was stalking around the stage with Snoop Dog and Dr Dre was simply an advanced version of Pepper’s Ghost.

Don’t believe the hype people.