ausculture.com

Ah, another year gone. Where did it all go? Not on writing blog posts, obviously!  :-p  But before we head off with irrational optimism into what will likely be a challenging year, there’s just time to look back on some memorable sound-bites from 2008. Once again, Big Brother provided rich pickings...

“What we want you to do is try to climb up that momentum cabinet and put it there on the step.” – Kyle Sandilands, endearing himself to the nation by making a hilarious comment at 1 metre Rima’s expense

Um, actually, Kyle, it would only be a ‘momentum cabinet’ after someone sent it careering in your direction. And those mysterious horizontal objects are called shelves. A little electroshock therapy and you’ll be as right as rain.

“I've got 280 grams and she's got 410 grams.” – Brigitte, comparing her fake breasts to Rebecca's

“I regret these so much. I wish I got your size.” – Brigitte, to Rebecca

Yes, Brigitte – how they even let a girl onto BB carrying less than 0.8 KG of silicon augmentation is frankly unfathomable.

“...I have actually been inside Zoo Magazine, but not as an actual Spreadsheet or anything like that.” – Brigitte

“Isn't that every guy's fantasy – a cat-fight over boobs?” – Nathan Morris on Big Mouth, after Bianca and Alice have one of the biggest stoushes in BB history over, yes, boobs

“And if you could cry, that would be great for TV.” – Mike to 6 yo Mia, as her mum's about to enter the House

“You've just got to feed a little bit – just like a horse – but not feed it too much, you know, like give it a bit and it moves back, and then you give it a bit more and it moves back; don't give it all to her at once.” – Cherry, on his strategy for cracking Brigitte

There you go, Brigitte, your breast work was totally worth it – you’ve attracted Cherry, a real catch!

“It doesn't work! It does not work!” – Falsetto Travis, after inhaling helium from a balloon

“...your first name may be Albert, but your last name's not Einstein, mate!” – Terrence to Brigitte's father, who Terrence astutely criticises for spoiling

Rory: “Is there any reason why my bucket is very small compared to Ben's?”

Big Brother: “Are you experiencing bucket-envy?”

“I recently had my house cleared of spirits – and Tony is a total sceptic and he thinks I'm a complete idiot – but there were 21 spirits in my house!” – Rebecca Wilson, Big Mouth co-anchor

Um, right. Moving swiftly along...

“I've never had any indication of mental instability other than people in my ceiling.” – troubled 000 caller (not necessarily Rebecca Wilson)

OK, we’d better move on to the safe subject of science...

“...it's almost impossible that these black holes can devour the experiment or Geneva or the Earth.” – Prof Jim Virdee, Imperial College, on the risks presented by the black holes it's predicted the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment will produce

“...science is what we do when we don't know what we're doing...” – LHC scientist

So much for science being safe. Let’s dip our toe into politics...

“...I have my party meetings in front of the shaving mirror every morning, and sometimes I want to depose myself.” – quip on Q&A by Nick Xenophon, Independent Senator

“I love my country, but I think we should start seeing other people.” – Jeff, an American who vowed to renounce his citizenship should McCain win the Presidency, speaking on 3RRR – thankfully, he didn’t have to!

“This moment is especially uplifting.” – George W Bush on his party's loss of the Presidency to Obama

“I know that human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” – George W, leader of the Free World

George W will be sorely missed by collectors of bizarre quotes everywhere. And by no one else! And now, let us segue into the environment and assorted media nougats...

“...remember, saving the environment is everyone's responsibility – so just leave it to them!” – Rove

“His password is my name – to everything.” – a well-known radio personality, referring to her husband

“‘I eat sausages raw – have done for years.’ That's my kind of Australian!” – David Koch, Sunrise

“We had mastiffs.” – Nelson Aspen, Sunrise

“I love her to death.” – a Victoria man who set fire to the house, knowing his wife was inside – the woman survived, and defended her husband

“...I've come to believe that the best defence against the Black Dog is to get a real dog.” – Bill Leak

“...believed to be the first time in Olympic history a Briony and Sharleen have teamed up for an event.” – Peter Hanlon, The Age, on Cole and Stratton's appearance in the three-metre synchronised diving final

“Did a great job of rubbing Marino off...” – commentator Lori Chizik on a player getting past Lightning defender Angela Marino, Dandenong Rangers v Adelaide Lightning, WNBL Round 4

“I tell you when World Youth Day'll come – is in 9 months' time!” – HG Nelson, following World Youth Day

And finally, this, from Seven’s reality cop series The Force. The officer has just found a handful of jewellery in the suspect’s shorts during a frisk...

Officer: “You don’t know what’s in your own shorts?”

Suspect Lance: “No, they’re not my shorts, mate.”

If you sat through this evening’s rather sycophantic Howard Years on ABC1, you may have noticed that, according to Costello, John Howard was all for preferencing Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party in the 1998 Federal Election. Nice. Well, were their policies really so different? “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” The reason Howard’s line became infamous, of course, is that refugees were treated like prisoners – and in fact had, in many instances, less rights – and many were returned to regimes where they faced almost certain death.

On Wednesday, SBS is screening a doco which promises to be anything but sycophantic towards the Howard government. A Well-Founded Fear follows the fates of some of those political refugees and their families. It is reviewed in The Age’s Green Guide (13/11/08) by Jodie Pfarr:

“If ever there was a program to make you feel ashamed to be Australian, this is it. And we should all be detained and forced to watch this incredibly powerful and moving documentary and learn from one of this country’s most contemptible acts: deporting genuine asylum seekers to countries where their lives are again endangered...  ...This documentary shows humanity in its best and worst light...”

There are even claims that the Government used false passports to deport detainees to their or other countries. A report into the treatment and fate of over 250 deported refugees is to be presented to the Government and the United Nations. That will not be our finest hour.

But how many of us will actually watch A Well-Founded Fear? Rather less than the 21 million Jodie Pfarr would like, I suspect. There’s plenty of US pap on offer – Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, House – and the trend is towards custom video channels online, where any news is likely to be of the E variety and the choice for hot doco perhaps a behind the scenes with The Veronicas.

One person I can pretty much guarantee won’t be watching is John Winston Howard.

► A Well-Founded Fear screens Wednesday, 19th November at 8.30pm on SBS.

Image: The Age

“Wot, no link-posting site?!” Yes, it’s true – the portal at ausculture.com is taking a smoko – possibly several. We’re going to look into different software options (ones that actually work) and better spam-defeaters. And by ‘we’ I of course mean Patrick, over in Sydney. My input has a lot more to do with ranting about things with tenuous links to Australian culture!

Meanwhile, with less time deleting spam, I’ll have more for writing rants – bet you can hardly wait! If you have a link, scoop, comment or suggestion feel free to drop me a line at . Complaints can be sent to , and we promise to look at them by 2108. Hey, it’s probably better service than you’re getting from your mobile provider.

There’s a new, better Australia emerging, and we’re working towards a new, better Ausculture to make sense of it. Stay tuned...

I liked episode 1 of The Hollowmen. A lot. Episode 2, um, not so much. That was the one about making some relic of the past pollie Ambassador to Ireland. Sure, it had it’s moments. But it was kinda like one long joke, where you have to wait 20 minutes for the punch line (Kochie style!) However, I hung in there. And if you didn’t, you missed some of the most brilliant satirical comedy we’ve ever produced.

ABC1 screened two 6-episode series back-to-back, which was a mistake – I’m sure that decision caused many viewers to fall by the wayside before the later eps. Episode 4 of Season 2, Vulnerable to Attack was perhaps the best of the lot:

Ian, in grave voice: “We have got a problem.”

Murph: “Right?”

Ian: “Involving National Security.”

Murph, sounding concerned: “Right?”

Ian: “Information’s come to hand indicating there’s a strong risk that we could be in danger of being attacked.”

Murph: “Jesus Christ! Do we know who’s behind it?”

Tony: “What d’you mean?”

Murph: “Like, is it a terrorist cell or –”

Tony: “What are you talking about?”

Murph: “Who’s going to attack us?”

Tony: “The Opposition! Who were you talking about?”

Murph, after long pause: “Ah, sorry.”

Tony: “Mate, this is serious – the PM is –. We’re vulnerable to attack, is the point.”

Murph, with sigh of relief: “Right.”

Tony: “I mean, for some reason National Security as an issue has just fallen off the public radar.”

Mel: “What I’d give for a bomb-blast!”

Surprised looks

Mel: “No one killed – just to get it back on the radar.”

The group discusses the problem

Tony: “You know, you want people to feel scared and secure at the same time.”

What a great line. It’s exactly what Dr. Nigel Spivey sees as imbuing the crucifix with such power in the BBC series How Art Made the World. The believer is scared by the imagery of torture, with its association with Hell, and feels secure through the dying for our sins bit, with the promise of redemption after death in Heaven. And this certainly isn’t a trick lost on governments, either – it’s the favoured way of getting draconian legislation passed without a revolt. Want to pass the Patriot Act? Simple – just scare the public with the spectre of terrorism and reassure them with how much safer they’ll be if they no longer have the right to trial!

Mel’s comment is, um, explosive, too. And later during the ep Tony talks about letting in some terrorists, then passes it off as a joke when he sees there isn’t backing for the idea. If a wheat supplier can accept bribes from a military dictator, it does make you wonder what our government is capable of. Fortunately, I think the answer is not nearly the same level of malevolence as the US one. But we should never get complacent – or rather we should stop being complacent! Anyway, back to the story.

Phillip comes up with a proposal for massive cutbacks across the sprawling defence departments. Tony, horrified, says in a private meeting “You sack so much as one sniffer-dog and the headline’ll be ‘PM soft on Terror’!” and goes on “We should be handing out cheques like star-knives!” His Central Policy Unit eventually comes up with the idea of creating an additional defence agency, the umbrella Australian Homeland Security Agency. The episode ends with a preview of the new Government ad that’s been put together to spruik it to the Australian people:

Male voiceover, in reassuring tone: “There’s never been a more important time for vigilance. That’s why beginning [Insert Date Here] the Federal Government have moved to set up The Australian Homeland Security Agency. It’ll co-ordinate all arms of our Intelligence and protective services. It’ll keep us even more secure. The Australian Homeland Security Agency. Protecting you; protecting us all.”

The ad is scheduled to be aired before the upcoming Federal Election. Improved security? For Tony’s job, you betcha.

Images: ABC

At the risk of having the site renamed Yankculture, I’m going to take the ball from the last post and run with it. As one of the two countries that was roped into the second war in Iraq on false pretences, increasing the risk of terrorist attacks on our own soil, what happened in New York on the 11th of September 2001 is of great significance to us.

Conspiracy theorists have a nasty habit of undermining conspiracies. There’s often a total lack of objectivity, and a desire to ‘believe’. Four Corners’ screening of the BBC doco was significant because the ABC series is a current affairs heavyweight, and the screening seemed to strongly imply there was a case to answer.

The veracity of the footage of Tower Seven collapsing neatly in 6.5 seconds is not in question. And it seems blatantly obvious that no steel-reinforced tower block could fall in this way due to fire (let alone one that utilised fire-protected steel girders), and, indeed, none ever had.

It appears to be a controlled detonation, one so carefully prepared that the roofline remained perfectly level as WTC 7 went down. And the only time such an event could be expected not to raise suspicion would be in the aftermath of a much bigger incident – in other words, if Government agents were responsible for it being wired that demonstrates they had prior knowledge of the attacks on the Twin Towers.

The perfectly vertical collapse of the 110-storey Twin Towers (WTC 1 & 2) seemed odd even at the time. Given that the planes impacted, and the resulting fires happened in, the upper third of each tower, how could the massive steel supporting structure completely fail – simultaneously – over the entire height of the buildings? You would expect to see at least the lower two-thirds of the central supports still partially standing.

A hundred and ten storeys is incredibly tall. Such a building requires great strength, and in the case of the Twin Towers most of this strength was in the central columns. Even an intense fire in the upper storeys wouldn’t negate the strength of the central columns lower down.

Again, what we saw looked like a controlled demolition. And carefully timed detonations on the central columns, upper to lower floors in succession, would explain the collapse, which neatly raised the buildings to the ground in seconds.

I’m mindful of the human cost of that day. It’s not an event that should be exploited for trivial conjecture. But the ramifications should claims of Federal wrongdoing be accurate really make Watergate seem like a parking violation. And the Bush Administration is still in office...

Today marks the seven year anniversary of the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. “9/11”, as it soon became known, has since been used to justify war, heavy-handed foreign policy and an attack on US civil liberty. In fact, according to a source on documentary Bush’s War, Donald Rumsfeld put war in Iraq on the table the very same day. (Rumsfeld was formally part of the Nixon administration, and praised by Nixon as being “a ruthless little bastard”.)

Conspiracy theories have abounded since, with reportedly over a million web pages devoted to the subject. But for many, it’s simply inconceivable that US Government personnel could have had a hand in the events of that day.

However, there is clear evidence that, 60 years earlier, the US Government not only had advance warning of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but had been goading the Japanese into carrying out an attack. It resulted in over 2,300 military and civilian fatalities.

Conspiracy theories can be pretty out there – far fetched and lacking in evidence. But when you see, say, video clips of a 47-storey office building, not hit by a plane, collapse neatly in 6.5 seconds, it’s time to sit up and pay attention. This is the case with Tower Seven of the WTC. And you can view the footage in this three minute trailer for the BBC doco the ABC’s Four Corners screened on Monday.

It reveals that thermite could have been used to simultaneously cut through Tower Seven’s steel supporting pillars, without leaving easily detectable explosive traces. And it’s certainly hard to see how anything other than a controlled explosion could have caused what’s seen in the footage. The images here both show the building mid-collapse – a textbook demolition.

Of course, if Tower Seven was wired for take-down, this raises the very strong possibility that key figures in the US Government knew of and at least partially orchestrated the events of 9/11 well ahead of time. Three thousand civilian fatalities. It’s a chilling thought.

We have a close affinity with the United States. We’re both former colonies of Great Britain – vast, unexplored lands far from what was once home, rising to great challenges. But the US became insular, and more so following 9/11. We can learn from their mistakes.

Images: BBC

So I stumbled across an opinion piece in The Australian claiming (more or less) that there are no good Australian Beers.

Full of wonderful hyperbole. Rather misleading on that one important point.

Sure, much of the local beer that gets promoted to us is awful, adjunct lager crap. The same goes for imported beers though - personally I’m sick of having average euro lagers marketed in Australia as premium beers at premium prices. Some of them are almost enough to make me want to drink Crown Lager. Almost.

Still, saying that Australia doesn’t have good beers because of the poor quality of some popular local beers is akin to saying that we don’t have good wine because people drink Passion Pop.

As for the tendency to serve the beer extremely cold. I think that’s sometimes forgivable. When it’s 35 degrees celcius you don’t have much choice but to serve the beer a little bit cooler. Granted, it’s a bit of a double edged sword in that it can mask good and bad beers. However, if the beer is really, really skunking ordinary then the usual trick around these parts is to turn the beer into something else by adding lime. Not beer, just a nice cool drink on a hot day.

For anyway looking for a starting place to find some good Australian beer, Murray’s have just released their limited edition Best Extra Porter so if you’re a porter lover, get in quick.

Hey, did anybody check out the list of the best 100 Australian web 2.0 apps?

Interesting to see Gnoos on there. I’m surprised the site was up long enough for Ross to rate it. Also, I’m not going to name names but some of the other sites on the list have already closed down. Go click through and have a look at some… be mindful of the ones that probably wouldn’t call themselves Australian unless you were buying a round.

Anyway… I think that’s a sufficient dose of abrasiveness for the moment. After all, the many people who put hours of hard work into ausculture.com every day are undoubtedly just insanely jealous.

Still, I was looking at the list and noticed a few other sites that had simpy whacked a crappy theme on top of Pligg. I say “other sites” because that’s exactly what ausculture.com did. As I was looking at these sites though, I noticed that 95% of the links were straight into the websites for major Australian newspapers. Honestly, I think that is kinda missing the point. Part of the reason people liked Digg in the first place was in the charm of sending truckloads of users to small and obscure sites to look at really interesting content. That the Digg effect usually brought those sames sites to their knees was part of the fun.

It’s not so much fun when your social news aggregator is just giving you an alternative top ten articles on the major online newspapers. Those sites already have most popular lists.

Of course, this causes me to ask the question “Is there any room for an Australia social news aggregator?” - particularly one that is aggregating more that four sources and concentrating on Australian content?

I’d have to say that so far, it’s looking like a no from where I’m sitting. Anyone have a different opinion?

Maybe there is, but that such a site would have to do more than reskin pligg (or reddit.) I notice, however, that perthnorg isn’t just a reskin and their traffic looks less-than-stellar.

Possibly related stuff elsewhere

• Nielsen: Digg Traffic Sucks. Mashable: That’s What She Said
• The 30 Top Social Bookmarking Web Sites on ebizma.com.

I drank a coke today, which is not that rare an occurrence. What was rare however was the less sickly feel to this sugary, caffeinated beverage. I was most surprised when I glanced at the ingredients list. This is what I saw:

Cane sugar? I thought they had done away with that in the 80’s?

Unofficial tagline: ‘Giving ET an extra colon’

Welcome to the first extra:terrestrial, a look at environmental change as it relates to Australia, it’s values, culture and way of life. Or I might just find some beach volleyball jpegs and shove in a line about the increasing need for good sunscreen...

Today is World Environment Day 2008. (I’m sure it would be quite unkind to point out that the UN has allocated just one day of the year to this but an entire year to the potato.) The double-whammy of penning the words “...environmental change as it relates to Australia, it’s values, culture and way of life”, and doing so on World Environment Day is frankly freaking me out – not the way we roll round here. I mean I’m the kind of guy who’s much more likely to post a film review the day it closes than the premiere. If at all.

But I digress.

Australians live on a knife-edge ecologically. While there are vast expanses of land, most is unsuitable for agriculture or large-scale habitation. We have ‘cheated’ nature by using irrigation to make arid land fertile, but as the rains fail longer than any drought our food bowls are starting to become dust bowls.

Also on a knife-edge: the atolls of Tuvalu

The Woolworth/Safeway group has started placing ‘Fresh Market Update’ ads on TV to reassure customers that their storm-damaged Queensland fruit and dust-covered South Australian vegetables are still top eating. (The cheery spruiker also extols the virtues of the potato – the UN would doubtless be delighted.)

In A journey down the not-so Mighty Murray, the ABC’s AustraliaWide paints a graphic picture of a river system in crisis. Though not helped by mismanagement – “Y’now, all fairness to Karlene Maywald, the only thing she’d know about water is when she’s sitting on the toilet seat.” says fisherman Eric Hayward of the Minister for the River Murray – ultimately it’s lack of rain that’s causing the dropping river levels.

Just about the whole of mainland Australia below the tropics is affected, with even south-east Queensland on Level 6 restrictions. Victoria might like to think of itself as ‘The place to be’, but with Melbourne reservoirs down to 30%, it’s Tasmanians – who are using only 1% of their major river’s water – for whom things are going swimmingly.

The good news is that there’s been an amazing seachange in Aussie attitudes to the environment, and next time I might take a look at that. That’s if I can’t find the jpegs...