KIROKAZE
almost home
Mike Driver
Jules of Nature
if i look back, i am lost
macklin celebrini has autism
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Not today Justin
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Monterey Bay Aquarium
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JVL
JBB: An Artblog!
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Kiana Khansmith
Kaledo Art
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Xuebing Du
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@yallambie
The pod bay doors are already bolted shut
The “Infinite Monkey Theorem” is the idea that an infinite number of monkeys striking keys at random will eventually type up any given text. While the concept of infinity is not something we can easily get our finite heads around, as a hypothesis it works as a reminder of how biological intelligence really does differ from random probability. “Do we even need a monkey at the keyboard anymore?”…
No tyrannos
I’m what you could call a fan of democracy, but you know, sometimes when I look at the results, I do wonder a bit. In Yallambie while we build a long road tunnel costing $26 Billion using mostly borrowed money, I can’t help but think, will there be fuel to run the cars by the time it’s all finished? Or people left to drive them? In the light of recent events overseas it’s easy to look at the…
History has its icebergs
Dougal, do NOT press… In a list of the greatest blunders of human history, being remembered as the bloke who might have prevented one or another, either through action or inaction, is not something anyone wants to be noted for. Who would want to be that sailor who went up to the crow’s nest on the Titanic on a lookout for icebergs, but left his binoculars locked up in a cabinet below decks? Or…
Ghosts of Christmas past and present
Over the years, the Antipodes have imported, reinterpreted and added to many of the Christmas traditions that have come to us dashing through the snow out of the British Isles. In perhaps the earliest example, Joseph Banks wrote in his journal on board Cook’s HMB Endeavour on Christmas Eve, 1769 that he had been out in a ship’s boat off the coast of New Zealand and had shot several geese for his…
Living history
Is 50 years a long time? Halley’s Comet photographed in the skies over Rosanna, February, 1986. (McLachlan) That’s a subjective question and the answer probably depends on your perspective and personal life stage. A 20-year-old is going to tell you that 50 years is an immense amount of time, but someone aged over 50 is probably going to see it as little more than the blink of an…
Larrikins
It’s said the former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke could down a yard of ale, or 2½ pints in just on 11 seconds. While the late Robert James Lee Hawke maintained he was on the wagon all that time he was in The Lodge, the idea that the PM enjoyed the occasional long cold frothy became part of a carefully crafted political image. Film of Hawke famously celebrating into the wee small hours as…
The Lost Chord
Stepping out into an unknown world while a second one watched on, it’s hardly surprising that the astronaut was a little tongue tied. “That’s one small step for (a) man, that’s one giant leap for mankind.” Those are the famous words spoken by Neil Armstrong as he stepped forth from the lunar lander onto the surface of the Moon in July 1969. The words are usually quoted without the “a” which is…
Pigs might fly
United States Union Army General John Sedgwick is most remembered these days not for his military prowess but for his famous last words. Late in the American Civil War while inspecting the battle lines, the General is supposed to have said to his soldiers, “Why are you dodging? They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance…” before falling dead with a Confederate Army sharpshooter’s bullet…
Winging it
“D’, there’s a baby possum in my room.” Perched on the back of the computer chair, cute as can be and with a furry tail to boot, our son understandably thought he was dreaming. “I woke up and found him staring at me.” Adorable, I thought, as I went to throw a towel over a gorgeous ball of fluff in an attempted capture, but immediately the little critter launched unexpectedly across the room…
A Maniacal Cackle in the night
Can you hear it? Floating in on the warm night air from the outside, the hysterical laughter of something foreign, frightening, and possibly dangerous, unseen but lurking in the nocturnal dark beyond. Who or what could it be? A runaway clown from the circus? An escapee from the local lunatic asylum? Well, come to think of it, you can come right in here fellas and make yourself at home. I’m sure…
The King's Christmas Pudding
The idea of writing down a set of instructions telling you how to prepare and cook a particular food goes back a long way, almost as far back as the process of writing itself. The oldest surviving recipes of all were inscribed on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia nearly 4000 years ago, recording lists of ingredients in spidery cuneiform script that look today like a chook jumped straight out of…
A long way from Flanders Fields
Of canaries, ducks and class consciousness
Stepping ashore at Sydney Cove in the early years of the 1800s, you might have been struck by the sight of the canaries on the docks and in work gangs further across the settlement. It’s a little remembered thing now, but convict era Australia was greatly populated by these canaries. Not the little yellow singing birdie type favoured so much today in the kitchen by people wanting to give the cat…
Fricasse of Kangaroo Tail
When it comes to the word “mankind”, it seems to me like there’s been something missing from the language all along. You see, leaving aside all the current bickering about the proposed questions in the next Australian census, the androcentric narrative that is most of written history is sort of a half story. It may be stating the bleedingly obvious, but in case you hadn’t noticed, one half of…
The Authority of the Gun
They say guns don’t kill people, that people kill people, but in 1906 at Yallambie it was a subtle distinction wasted on William Alfred Wragge. In July of that year William, the second youngest son of Thomas was shot dead at the bottom of the garden in an accident where it could be said that no one pulled the trigger. Dr Cole, the coroner investigating the incident, ruled “that there was…
If the cap fits
You know, it would be fair to say that of all the multifarious sartorial styles people have worn throughout the ages, it has been that thing they put on their head that has most defined social standing. The cloth cap of the working man, the bowler of the professional and the stove pipe topper of the ruling elite – these are all hat styles that are familiar, but there are literally hundreds of…
Smoking as an Olympic size sport
If I owned a bucket filled with all things that I had wanted to do in one life, I think I’d turn it upside down right now and have a good long look for the hole I’m sure must be down there somewhere. It’s true the bucket list of all we mean to get done never quite measures up to our expectations, something the Spanish call, “mañana, mañana” but I’m wondering if what I have is really less of a…
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