Red Space Rocket

the planets by absolutwade

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.

These are the words of the wonderful Douglas Adams and they came to mind today as I was listening to an episode of the Scientific American Podcast.

They were interviewing a fellow about a bike ride around a scale model of our solar system. In this model the sun is at the museum and is thirty six feet from side to side. The earth is 1.2km away and is four inches across. Pluto is only an inch across and forty miles from the Sun there in Peoria, Illinois,

While it’s a long way from here I think the bike rides around the solar system sound like a great idea. It would give you a feeling for just how really big space is even if you haven’t been to the chemist lately.

Kevin Smith by Banshee1013

I just found out yesterday that Kevin Smith will be speaking for over an hour in Melbourne after the first screening of his new film Clerks 2 on August 25th. You can hear well known film directors speak in Melbourne but it doesn’t happen often so I figure that if you are interested in an opportunity to jump at
Read the rest of this entry »

Martin Luther King Jr. by dbking

And now something for students of history.

Martin Luther King was perhaps the most prominant leader in the Civil Right’s Movement in the United States and really interesting for that alone. I don’t claim to know a lot about him but I figure this doco would probably be as good as anyplace to start.
Read the rest of this entry »

Promo Still: boom-mic-still by openchannel

Yet another quick show about making film and television. I know from my own efforts in shoft film that both editing and sound make a massive difference to how films work.

Sometimes when you watch the deleted scences on a DVD they will be without proper sound or have just basic editing and it really shows. Sometimes it is hard to believe this is the stuff that finished films are made of it is so different.

THE TEXT FILES: FILM – EDITING AND SOUND

Monday 14 August 2006 10.15am
ABC Rating: (G, Rpt)
Duration: 15 mins

1890 Census machine by niallkennedy

I didn’t realise this was happening so soon until only a couple of days ago but tonight is the census night.

The basic idea is to collect information about what pretty much everyone is doing in Australia in terms of where they live, how much they earn and what they do for a job or study. All of this information is then compiled and analysed so that governments and others can make informed decisions.

Of course you are not going to get everyone and sadly some of the people who most need government help and those least likely to complete the census. All the same, according to this article in today’s paper, over 98% of households complete the census which is impressive.

And, I think for the first time, you can complete the census over the internet which is handy for an increasing number of people.

Look ma’ by Thomas Ritter

You’d probably never guess it sitting in a history class but what you learn and how you learn it is the source of some pretty big disagreements by all kinds of folk. It’s a complicated argument covering all kinds of issues but there are a couple of main themes.

I was reminded of all of this by thisarticle about it in The Age today if you are interested.

The first is the question of teachiing themes and issues or a sequence of dates and events as history. The first might involve studying wars by looking at a couple of significant wars and looking in depth at what happened and why. The “straight history” version might give you a list of years and battles so you’d know who fought who and when for the period of recorded Western history.

Of course, as someone says in the article, in classrooms most of what you learn is a mix of both of these approaches.

“The other thing I would say is that no practising historian would oppose themes and narrative. They are not alternatives. You can’t have narrative without themes and issues – unless you want some dry-as-dust compilation of dates and bare facts.”

I’d certainly recommend reading the article if you study history (which most students do). It help you understand what you study if you understand some of the reasons people think the subject is important, right, and wrong.

Sydney 156 – Harbour Bridge by Guillaume Chauvat

People have been talking about this for as long as I can remember and probably for a while before that.

The basic idea is to do away with state governments and only have the federal government and local councils. The benefit is pretty easy to understand, instead of having people in each state managing education, health, roads, planning and so forth this would all be done by the Federal Government.

The really local stuff would still be done by your council who would know local conditions within ten minutes drive of you.

There are certainly countries than run like this, England has no states, and perhaps one day we’ll adopt this model too. It would take a pretty big change in our constitution but that is difficult rather than impossible.

One arguments against is that Australia is a big place and what works in one state might need to be different in another. Another is that having state governments balances the power of the federal governement. At the moment we have the Liberal Party forming the federal government and Labor governments in most (of not all) states. Many Australians like that one party in government might work at one level but another works better at another level.

Anyhow the issue is on the books again and you can read an interesting article about it in the Age if you like.

Brand New Movie Camera by CarlosR

You might have noticed that I enjoy watching a film or two. I also find the process and meaning in film-making endlessly interesting. All that being true this fifteen minute show looks really interesting.

As an example how this stuff makes a differerent I know that whenever they start on closeups in low light in any thriller I watch that things are about to get even more tense.

THE TEXT FILES: FILM – CAMERA AND LIGHTING

Monday 7 August 2006 10.15am
ABC Rating: (G, Rpt)
Duration: 15 mins

If you are someone who makes short films I know that the book Film Directing Shot By Shot is really valuable for this sort of thing and goes into quite a bit of practical detail

Entrance, Auschwitz by Rod Monkey

Given that I just finished those Maus books I noticed this documentary about the rise of anti-Semitism in recent years. I think if you have been studying 20th century history this would probably provide information to help understand events like the Holocaust.

CUTTING EDGE: ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Tuesday 8 August 2006 8.30pm
SBS Rating: (WS)
Duration: 60 mins

Bocce II by prawnpie

I am nothing like as sporting as many people but really enjoy relaxing things like ten pin bowling, pool, and bocce. I didn’t even know Bocce existed until perhaps ten years ago when I friend was playing it at her holiday house.

Now I have two sets just in case.

For this reason I was delighted to see this story about a guy building a bocce court in his back yard. Of course you don’t need a special surface, that’s one of the great things about it – you can use any reasonably flat surface. However it’s good to see someone enjoying it so much that he went to all of this effort.

So if you don’t know about Bocce follow the link. It’s a quick article and at the end I think you might think of it quite fondly

pancakes! by roboppy

In my house I don’t know that we have much in the way of dishes handed down through our families but we do have meals that are a custom just in our household. One of these in pancakes.

I learned to make pancakes this way from my partner who got the recipe from a Winnie-The-Pooh cookbook she has had since she was a kid.

I start with 600ml of milk in a large jug, add two eggs then mix it all up with the stab mixer. Then I weigh and add 240 grams of plain flour and mix it all together with the stab mixer. The official recipe from the book says to sift the flour but I gave that up long ago.

Anyhow then the whole mix goes into the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight. You don’t have to do this but it does make the pancakes nicer.

Anyhow when the times comes for cooking we just use a cheap non-stick pan with some butter melted into it. Then we pour in enough mixture that the pancake is about an big as a bread and butter plate. When it is no longer liquid on top it gets flipped. I tried to learn how to do this just with the pan but never mastered it so I use a plastic pizza slice which means more pancake survive.

Once the second side is done (this is always much quicker than the first side incidentally) it goes onto a plate where we put either peanut butter or Vegimite on it (which I know sounds odd to some people). The you roll it up, cut it into slices and eat the slices.

Now I don’t know that any of that is profound or not. Perhaps it is similar or different to your pancakes. Either way this procedure is part of who were are as people and in that sense alone is worth telling.