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.

WoWed to Death

One of the things I've been greeted with since I got home is that a lot of my friends are now big WoW fans. It's not so much a geek thing, it's more that there isn't much to do out in regional Australia. And at least we get broadband coverage. And computer violence is much better than street violence (though, they still occasionally still practice that).

I'm not going anywhere near anything as beautiful as WoW until I have a job. I would get addicted way to quickly without anything else to root me down. But I have been doing research. And it does look cool. It means I can't play Anarchy Online anymore (even though its free).

But alarming is a spate of deaths related to WoW addiction and obsession. Whether its age old catass-ing, violence springing from online disputes (okay link is not WoW),or probably the most disturbing one I came across was a South Korean couple who let their baby starve to death while they went out for "or just an hour or two" to the local Internet Cafe for WoW, and instead ended up staying there over 24 hours. Say What?

And they laugh at me when I say I'm a bit wary to start playing it just yet.

(Side note: a lot of these incidents come out of Asia - I don't know if this says something about people's growing addiction to technology there, or that they more likely to be crazy urban legends)