Koala Klones

No, we don't eat Blinky Bill.

A joint project between Parks and Wildlife, UQ, Dreamworld, Curumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, David Fleay's Wildlife Park and the Zoological Society of London has
resulted in the founding of the world's first koala sperm bank and the successful birth of a batch of IVF clone koala joeys.

The use of a searchable gene database allows screening for certain defects, such as bacterial and viral susceptibility, present in wild koala populations.

It's all good news for a not-so tasty Australian icon.

I do have to say though that the image looks photoshopped - it's probably just been artificially enhanced.

Eating Skippy

You have missed my Japanese presentation of Kangaroo sushi from a local sushi bar. Kangaroo is really delicious. And is an ideal meat. dataphage has a nice piece on roo-meat (which has yet to receive any name as nice as "venison") and contrary to the comments are not rodents.
The sad thing is that roo is mostly consigned to dog food in Europe. And nobody really seems interested in actually farming them.

Mmmm... television animals. Now I need to do a piece on eating Pooh.

And that was Halloween

Wow that exciting...

Why don't we have Halloween in Australia? Maybe it's just a stand against importing American holidays. Or that its too damn hot for costumes.

I have a cool replacement - water balloon fights with candy in the balloons. Somehow I can see injuries eventuating. Awesome.

Hey, Bikini's are a costume.

What did I end up doing for Halloween.

Well, it was raining so I didn't make it to the zoo. And I tried to watch Evil Dead 2, but got interrupted midway. Then, with a loan from a guild-member I finally got a mount for my Warcraft character. Going fast is cool. So now that goal is acheived I need to slow down the WoW usage.

*halloween*australia*water balloon*bikini*evil dead*wow*warcraft*mount*

R.I.P.per

And so the nation shed's a tear for Steve Irwin. The will the cry of "Crikey!" shall not be heard again while roaming the floodplains of the never-never. Well, at least until it's okay to start poking fun at a man who had poked quite a few things in his exitement filled life.

Irwin, being a prolific Australian, has reasonably raised the ire of many - especially Australians abroad who have to try and combat myths that the stubby wearing, mulleted enviro-warrior is not your typical Australian. He probably doesn't even rank as your average Queenslander. And he was bloody annoying at times. Still bloody annoying doesn't warrant a stingray to the chest.

What a way to go? Not only did he get a stingray barb to the chest (where the heart, lungs and other vital organs normally exist, for the biologically illiterate), video footage allegedly shows him pulling out the footlong piece of the offending beast (though not with his teeth), and starting to swim to the surface before (presumably) dying. Only 17 people have been confirmed dead from stingray incidents in the records, so Irwin's demise has been labelled a "freak accident" by practically all sources.

Queensland Premier Beattie has stepped up to the challenge and offered a state funeral too the Irwin's, should they choose it. Poor Bindie, not only does she bear that name, but her pops died while shooting footage for her first(?) documentary series of her own. That doesn't bode well for therapy. Hopefully the Australia Zoo and its associated franchises can continue its positive environmental message, the google legacy left by Irwin seems promising.

Colin Thiele, "one of Australia's most popular and successful children's authors" also died about the same time. Coincidence? Probably.

Sydney Brothel Offers Clients Fill Up Discounts

Dirty minds...

Sex is cheap enough as it is, I'm talking about fuel discounts. The brothel's owner, Madam Kerry, says its and attempt to "think outside the box".

The scheme is similar to those offered by supermarket chains like Woolworths and Coles. Show a docket and get a discount. However, to save some embarrassment at the petrol station by flashing your 30 minute love stub, you fill up your tank first and present the fuel docket to the establishment to get a discount when you utilise their personal services (if you know what I mean), sometimes as much as 20 cents a litre. As there is no commercial link between petrol stations and the brothels, you could conceivable go to the cheapest bowser and then still get this massive discount. You could probably stack your grocery discount on top too?

Other brothels seem keen to jump on the bandwagon, citing increased fuel prices contributing to a downswing in business.

They also don't seem to mind the press coverage and free advertising on the offers.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi

As part of my non-existent development of my non-existent political idealogy, I've recently been thinking of a new flag for Australia. This isn't just an idea I have, and thus I've stumbled across the apolitical organisation AusFlag.

According to AusFlag; Australia is only one of three UN nations with a defaced Union Jack for a flag, almost all polling shows majority public DISFAVOUR towards the current flag, and a majority never really selected our current flag anyway. Other useful information on the site is that Australians didn't really fight under our current flag in the major World Wars, our flag is easily confused with New Zealand's, and that Queensland's first flag really takes the prize for piss poor planning. Also a lot of flag designers like the Southern Cross, I personally think its a bit unpractical - it makes it hard for the kiddies to draw at school.

In terms of planning Ausflag's competition guidelines provide some nice rules towards planning a good flag. Tips on uncluttering, non-dating and simple colorful designs that work on reality based flags (need to move, fold, obscure, reduce and enlarge etc.)

In terms of the flags, I really like the idea, look and concept of the Reconciliation Flag (pictured on the right). I also liked the red earth, yellow sun and bounding kangaroo flag, its definitely better than the roadkill kangaroo flag (pictured on the left). This one is also nice, I wonder if the squiggly bit is a homage to the Rainbow Serpent, a core creator/guardian spirit in Australian mythology.

My other picks out of their numerous galleries are:

• Really simple
• Lock and Key
• Shooting Star
• Holey
  

What are my deisgns for a flag?
I want something simple. Lines and Circles. No Stars. No Crosses. No writing. No crests or other fancy emblems. No kangaroos. Meaningful colors. I don't want black or white, both have racial connotations.
Green - Life; Australia has a very important ecosystem with high levels of biodiversity on precarious edge. Red - the Earth; this also represents the people, "dust to dust" and all that, the land has also been very important in Australia's history and prehistory. Blue - Ocean; as our national anthem mentions, our land is girt by sea, water is a highly valuable commodity on the driest continent, and so its importance should be represented. Yellow - Sun; the sun is a very strong influence on Australian life, yellow also relates to gold.
My two basic designs are either the cross based one, or the geographically representative horizontal one (red, gold, green, blue - land, gold, rainforest, ocean). Yeah, they're shit. I did that 12:30am in 5 minutes. They also look pretty bright and African/Carribean.

Anyway, it's just idle thinking. It's good for you.

If you could recreate this nation, what would you do?

Pee without Water

Apparently Queensland is in the worst drought ever... (again...)

While we seem to have a total aversion amongst the populace against drinking treated waste (that there really isn't any non-waste water source - even rain is pretty impure these days) - some advances in water conservation technology have been made to help us out.

Taking a slash at the local shopping center, I came upon the new invention of waterless urinals. Although blatant sales and marketing, the website does have some good information on why urinals are gross, why current methods suck, and why care about water conservation. They focus on actual hygeine, rather than just odor blocking as well as water conservation; good on 'em.


More on waterless urinals at ABC Science Show. There's also some links for other companies with waterless urinals - waterless no-flush (US) and watersave Australia - they seem to just focus on water conservation/odour blocking only though.

The Amazing World of Podcasts

I am getting so into Podcasts.

What got me hooked on this phenomena:

Sexy Lala at TikiBar TV (oh, it is hilarious too)

It's educational too. You get entertained and learn how to make cocktails all in one. And even better it's free. If its not free and educational, I'm not subscribing. I guess that makes me an intellectual tightwad or something. Screw you.

Anyway, after enjoying nonstop TikiTV for 3.4 hours, I needed more. What else does iTunes offer for free subscrition? Can't go past a bit of man's man How To directives straight from French Maid TV (you can't tell me that's not educational! - there is even saftey warnings).

For true educational goodness I can go to Nature's podcast, which must be clever, it's hosted by a guy with a really annoying British accent. Nevertheless, the interviews and inside science goss is pretty good. Though it does get hard to actually concentrate on other activities when you are actually trying to listen to your background noise I've found.

Another true educational (and free!) find was TalkSushi, it may not instantly make me a magnificent Japanese speaker. But, I can feel more confident knowing that i understand pretty much the whole lesson on ordering food, and of course the one on rude Japanese slang, downright. YOSH！

Japanese, British, French, and ... errr... Tiki... these are all foreign podcasts - but Asutralians are in on this gig too.

You no longer have to stay up late, at home, till about 10pm-ish to catch Chaser's War on Everything. If you are American (or anywhereelsian) and want to learn about modern Asutralia, jump on board. I'd call it Australia's answer to The Daily Show (can't get that on podcast, Comedy Central tightwads), but don't hold me on that claim. These satirists are willing to get themselves arrested in the name of good humour.

John Safran himself has acknowledged that over 2 hours of him talking about politics, news and miscellaneous crap with aged Catholic priest Father Bob could be construed torture minus the songs, nonetheless JJJ still has Sunday Safran available (and its educational too!), and i am still subscribed to it. Safran is way better suited to TV (or at least commercially broken up radio). Editing helps some people piss you off less.

Lastly I just subscribed (like as I am typing these words...) to JTV, which apparently I can download on to my PSP if I'm game for it. However I need to delete all that porn I "accidentally" downloaded into my memory card and can't get out (sadly this true). JTV better have some good Fisting to make up for it.

I just found two more podcasts that are looking good: Ask A Ninja and SciFri (which one looks more serious?)

Hello Australia!

Back home.

It's been a week.

"It is good to be home,
But it sucks to be at home"
-zayzayem

fo' shizzle