BEST PRIZE EVA!!
Where are those typos? Find ’em and you’ll win this AMAZING painting kit! Banish boredom for at least ten minutes while you colour within the lines. A decent typo from within the pages of The Ektek Trilogy (obviously if it’s the panda then it might be better coming from the last one!)
Good luck.
And I’ll even send it to you!
WOWWEEEE!
Would love to write a searing diatribe about humanity’s lack of humanity to humanity and every other species but, hey, who wants to read that? So, instead, here’s Ursula Le Guinn.
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Thank you so much, Ms Le Guinn.
However
I can’t help feeling that I’d quite like my books to be sold like deodorant, or any commodity at all actually, but as they are quietly sitting unread, they must be ART!! Therefore, I am an artist. Whatever I make must be art and so on round the cycle. I art therefore I art.
And what’s more, I can honestly say I have not sold out. That’s reassuring.
And nothing to do with
Ursula Le Guinn
who is a great artist who has not sold out and completely deserves her Lifetime Award. I look forward to reading and rereading her work for many years to come.
An Irish journalist meets a baby seal and is he very glad he doesn’t meet the mother?
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/watch-monkey-saves-dying-friend-at-train-station-in-india/story-fnjwkt0b-1227164116227
This has been edited out of a program that explains that the hunter actually invited the attack by spraying female deer urine over himself. Genius.
If I was a deer I’d attack humans. Absolutely no question.
Incredulous woman can’t understand how theories of science appear on printed signs!
Go to the zoo with creationist Megan Fox and learn that zoos are failing in their duty towards humans. She loves the animals, why, she even got married in the zoo, but the notion of humans being apes is just hilarious. She reads ecologically informative signs in the various enclosures in an outraged tone – ‘Oh, humans are baaad!’ Megan thinks children should be entertained and informed about the eating habits of all the marvellous animals instead of learning critical information about destruction of habitat and loss of species. Megan says not all humans are bad. Hunters, for example, give all sorts of money to protect animals. Hunters conserve. Like in Zambimbia. (SIC) Hunters feed hungry people. The EPA buys weapons and donuts. They don’t clean up streams. It’s all political nonsense.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/06/brookfield-zoo-science-mom-audit_n_6271800.html
You really want more? Here is her incredulous visit to the American National History Museum with commentary from someone who actually thinks. Thank you, AnswersInEddas.
http://youtu.be/oNGAtFDm7OY
It’s a fairy tale. She’s just making it all up!!
My only comfort is when her children become teenagers they will revolt and start learning just to spite her. Oh, I cannot wait.
Megan Fox doesn’t want a relationship with nature. She is unnatural.
This video even includes masks and puppets. The call for a spiritual revolution seems such an incredible ambition I wonder how any of the featured thinkers can seriously proceed with their work. Still, we must do anything and everything we can to encourage people to think. If one person sees this and decides to change their life in the smallest way, then that’s got to be a good thing. We proceed. Throw another star fish.
Coot
On a walk in the park a friend gave me a newspaper clipping. One of her British friends had cut it from The Times of 11th October 2014 and posted it to her—snail mail! (Breaking the magic of the old-time paper trail, I did have to go online to discover when it was first published.)
It is entitled Read about autumn: it’s in animal handwriting and it is by Dr Miriam Darlington. She describes an area between the school and the railway track near the River Dart in England. She notices ‘calligraphy of the wild, a living landscape tracing everything that dragonflies, wrens, dippers and voles need.’ We don’t have voles in Australia, that I know of, but Melbourne photographer, Philip Millar, spends his urban lunchtime snapping surprising avian experiences.
Little Pied Cormorant lounging at freeway pilings
His waterway is between an electricity station and a railway depot and under a freeway. The birds face a fierce industrial aspect yet there they are, surviving.
White faced heron
The water’s edge is, like that of the River Dart, ‘fixed in concrete – engineering designed for the convenience of humans, not rivers—the water is kept flowing along one fixed course, that being a river, it would not naturally choose.’
Fishing Egret
It is wonderful that, despite being human, writers continue to write about survivors in an urban landscape and photographers continue to illuminate our understanding about sharing our world with other species.
Philip Millar blogs at http://nouveautwitch.tumblr.com/ and http://flipmil.tumblr.com/
Dr Miriam Darlington blogs at http://wild-watching.blogspot.com.au/ and tweets at: https://twitter.com/MimDarling
A clear day at the corn farm before the flight of fancy blasts off.
Directed by Christopher Nolan, Interstellar begins in dust and dirt and gritty reality at an American farmhouse – could be anywhere, anytime. Reality gets grittier, we find we’re in the future and feeding people, lots of people, is getting tougher. A neighbour burns his okra and we’re down to corn and the wind blows the dirt off the world. The atmosphere is making people sick and the educators are making children ignorant. And from there, off we blast into a flight of fancy, rocketing Kubrick’s 2001 into 2014 with marvellous space spectacle and far-fetched wonder.
For fully corn-fed people these humans are able to wormhole through logic into a terrific entertainment. But. What of our relationship to nature? Why is blight about to eat all the corn? How comes the planet Earth to be in such a sad state? Any thoughts Dr Brand? “We must confront the reality that nothing in our solar system can help us.” Okay, let’s not go there. What hope can you offer Life, Dr Brand? “We’re not meant to save the world. We’re meant to leave it … ”
Planet trashed, move on. Oh, I can’t stop thinking, wouldn’t it have been good to get some understanding so that when the humans go out to find a new world, new solar system, new galaxy, they’re going to take with them some wisdom? Like maybe, don’t trash the next one? “Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.” Huh? Why not? Every other species is expected to! Where is it expected to die? The next one or the one after that?
Where is the sense of humanity learning from past mistakes? Oh, the fruit loop teacher who is the tool of anti-science revisionism gets to say, “And if we don’t want to repeat of the excess and wastefulness of the 20th Century then we need to teach our kids about this planet, not tales of leaving it.” How stupid and dull is that?
Instead Interstellar glorifies the continuing push to explore and conquer and leave a bunch of litter at every planet we can. Could it be ironic? Maybe. There is one appositely named character who gets his moralistic comeuppance but generally, the human species looks set to continue as it always has. Trashing this world, trashing the next world, trashing the next galaxy. Trashing through the wormhole. Looks cool, sounds amazing but Interstellar turns our backs on nature – apart from human nature and I guess that counts for something – but really people – pick up after yourselves!
I could go on complaining about the script, the casting and the nonsense but go see Interstellar – at the biggest screen possible – it’s surely not educational but it is extremely entertaining!
I mean terrific as in filled with terror. It’s the first time I’ve noticed public opinion rise against this bizarre pageant of money, cruelty and lust we call the Melbourne Cup. I congratulate Sam de Brito on his fantastic opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Cup – that will do me. Please read and share it.
Picture from the Illawarra Mercury of the remains of the day, 2014 Melbourne Cup
de Brito’s observations are balanced and passionate. It’s well worth the read. It evokes another wonderful article from some years ago by Marike Hardy, The Melbourne Cup: It’s a truly revolting spectacle published in The Drum.
I’ve been both heartened and surprised by the many posts in Facebook over the last few days as people describe their saddness at the death of two horses in 2014’s carnival. Yet so many horses die each year as a result of the racing industry. Have people never thought about how many horses are bred, how many hopes are pinned on how many hours of training? I’m only glad that people are starting to think now. What can we do about our relationship to horses? Where does the money go?
Here are some facts about horse racing in Australia
Here’s a link to an interesting blog about retiring horses. They don’t mention the wastage during the training period. Only a small percentage of horses actually make it to be professional runners, just like humans. Imagine all those Little Athletics Club children. How many of them become full time athletes? What happens to all those racehorses
But for the utter last word on The Melbourne Cup, watch Kenny.
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