Red Space Rocket

Maus beim essen by Duesi

I just finished the first of those Maus books I mentioned and it is really quite affecting. I know the terrible things that were done to Jews and others in the Holocaust but to real such a vivid and personal account really brought it home for me.

I recommend these even more than I did a couple of days ago for what that’s worth.

I also learned today that he wrote another book called In The Shadow Of No Towers which is about how the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York affected him.

yr7A bunsen burner prac by Bangkok Patana School Science Department

Once of the podcasts I listen to pretty regularly is called Science Talk and is from the Scientific American magazine.

They don’t assume you know much about science but still talk to top scientist about really interesting things in a way even I can understand.

You do do worse than to give it a listen.

Wise Old Kelpie Sheep Dog by brendon2553

A fact of Australian life is that while there are many pet dogs there are also many dogs who very literally work for a living.

This wonderful article in Slate in actually American but it gives you a really good idea what being a working dog is all about. It’s not especially long but I know I had a much better understanding of what working dogs where about by the end of it. As a bonus is it quick heartwarming in the way it is written.

I Wrote This Novel… by nuclear_sky

Like many folk I use Wikipedia quite a lot and think it’s a wonderful resource for finding out a reasonable amount about a particular subject. Clearly is falls short of having a primary or original sources of information or, for that matter, a second hand source.

A good new feature in Wikipedia is that pages come with a cite this link.

This gives you the information you need, all formatted correctly, if you want to refer to something when you are writing. There are different styles of doing this but they all boil down to saying where you are getting your information from with enough detail that someone else could check it.

For example if I was using some information about working dogs from the Wikipedia artile I could use the Harvard style of citation which would look like this in my bibliography.

See Wikipedia, Working dog, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_dog (as of Jul. 29, 2006, 03:16 GMT).

Darwin – David Gulpilil signing autograph by happy-snapper

Just recently I was looking at the study of Koorie Students in VCE and it made me realise how little Australian history I know from before 1788.

With this in mind I noticed the following show on telly this week.

OUR HISTORY: INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS – LIVING IN COUNTRY

Tuesday 1 August 2006 10.25am
ABC Rating: (G, Rpt)
Duration: 10 mins

If you have a bit more time there is a very well regarded feature film showing at the moment called Ten Canoes. While I have not seen it yet I believe it is quite accurate in its depiction of life in that part of Australia before European settlement.

If you are inclined for a bit of information in text and right now the article on Wikipedia, Prehistory of Australia, is really interesting and full of information about early Australian history.

Folder by ShutterCat7

Yet another show on the telly that looks interesting. I’ll just give you their description since I haven’t seen it.

The Text Files: Newspaper Reports

Monday 31 July 2006 10.15am
ABC Rating: (G, Rpt)
Duration: 15 mins

There is more to news stories than meets the eye. This show won’t fully explain it but it looks like it might give you a good starting idea of the way stories get written.

Minneapolis Times front page by schoolio

I can’t speak for other people but I know the local paper only turns up at my house every now and then. Yesterday was one of those lucky days and I noticed that the Werribee Times has some of its stories online.

It’s only a few stories but I figure it’s better than getting no local news at all.

Maus by tiefseefisch

I was at the library yesterday and happened to notice both volumes of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale which are comic books by Art Spiegelman so I borrowed them both.

It must be ten years since I first heard of these books and it is almost thirty years since they were written. They are drawing in stark black and white and detail both the author’s often difficult relationship with his father and his father’s story of surviving the Holocaust.

I am not much of a reader of comics (or graphic novels) and have only read a couple of dozen pages of this so far. So far I am really impressed and certainly plan to finish them both. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to describe it as compulsory reading but it is certainly worth having a good look at and think about.

question by kostaki

I am no expert on blogs but I will answer what questions I can. If you want to leave questions as a comment on this entry I’ll do my best to answer it or perhaps give some suggestions about how you might answer it.
Read the rest of this entry »

Werribee River by Sarah Q

I am doing an assignment that I need photos of my community for. As it happened I decided I was thinking of a social community so I took a bunch of photos myself of the people I see most weeks.

However just now I searched Flickr for local photos and got a heap of results with terrific photos of local places.

Just doing this assignment has got me thinking that community can mean a bunch of things ranging across people, interests, geography and activities. If you had to choose ten photos for your community what would be in them?

Mine was people but it would just as easily be places, people or simply meaningful objects.

reading list by fb

I was interested to see this story about some popular and interesting books being released in special versions for teenagers. This struck me as a terrific idea because some teenagers are not big readers and this makes these important ideas available to them in a shorter form.

If you are a reader of longer books you can always read the regular edition to so everyone wins as far as I can tell. I don’t think they’ll have armed guards stopping teenagers reading the originals.

The books they are starting with are Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves. All of these interest me but I haven’t read any of them. Perhaps I might hit the library in a few months are start with the kids version, it’s better than knowing nothing at all about them.

Woody Allen & Conal Fowkes by Zigmont

Well it seems that today is a big day for me encouraging folk to watch more telly. On Friday the 28th at 1pm (so it’s one to set the video for) there is a documentary on SBS called Mamadrama – The Jewish Mother in Cinema.

Given my interest in sterotypical characters and general love of cinema I think there’s a good chance this would be really interesting. Here’s the blurb –

The Jewish mother character has been pivotal in Yiddish, Israeli and American cinema. This documentary examines how the affectionate portrayal in early Yiddish, and Hollywood studio silent films, developed into the comical caricature of Hollywood film.

It goes for 90 minutes.

St Edmund’s Church, Sedgefield by alalsacienne

That show I mentioned a few weeks back, Time Team, has another episode coming up.

A man called Alan Luton found more than 100 Roman artefacts in fields around Sedgefield where there was no evidence of Romans found before. Time Team was invited to try to find some answers.

Tuesday 25 July 2006 6.05pm
Duration: 55 mins

Snow Cave by Captain Warren

I don’t claim to know a lot about Buddhism but I have heard good things about the book of Cave In The Snow. As it happens I have been too lazy to read this book although I know there is a copy on my shelves at home. Happily there is a documentary on SBS on Monday the 24th July at 5pm about this woman. Here is a quick summary.

British-born Diane Perry was ordained as a Buddhist nun at the age of 21 and took the name of Tenzin Palmo, after battling the blatant sexism within the monastic order. In 1976, she isolated herself in a remote Himalayan cave where she immersed herself in Buddhist meditation for twelve years.

I figure I’ll either learn everything I wanted to know from this or else I will be suitably interested to actually read the book.

petrol station in Gobi by rkchapman

There are all kinds of arguments and theories about saving petrol and electricity and I guess some of them are valid.

UPS, who deliver parcels, have a system where they do as many right hand turns as possible to minimise the time their cars sit still and idle. This is talking about in the USA so to manage the same trick here you’d need to maximise your left hand turns.

It might not make much of a difference for a single trip but when you have heaps of cars making heaps of trips the little savings add up.

Anyhow here’s the article if you are interested.

I also see to remember reading somewhere that you are less likely to have an accident while turning left rather than right in Australia because you don’t have to cross oncoming traffic.

Things like computer navigation make ideas like this possible to actually do. What else do you think might be worse considering to save fuel or energy?