Extinct Animal of the Week VII

Falkland Islands Wolf

"The Falkland Islands Wolf (Dusicyon australis), also known as the Warrah and occasionally as the Falkland Islands Dog, Falkland Islands Fox or Antarctic Wolf, was the only native land mammal of the Falkland Islands. This endemic canid became extinct in 1876, the first known canid to have gone extinct in historical times."

Knitwear Hunk IV: Mikhail

Here's the last one!



Mikhail, 33, is a foreman on a hydroelectric-dam construction site. Misha has recently become engaged and when he's not overseeing building operations and logistics - in his dark-grey sweater/mitten/cap ensemble of course - he dabbles in recreational hunting.

Hemp

Found an interesting article this morning:

"Farmers push to overturn hemp food ban" - ABC News

Come on, are people still scared of hemp/marijuana and what they think it will do to our society?! I'm not going to go on about the benefits of growing hemp crops...we all know it's good and sustainable.

I did want to note that Latvians have been growing hemp for many years (it's even mentioned in old folk songs) and it isn't uncommon to find 7-foot high plants growing in country gardens. I remember going out to the countryside last year and eating fresh homemade hemp-seed butter spread over black rye bread...mmmmmmmmm.

I even found out about this product (pictured below). Pretty much a commercial version of shake!


















[translation: 'bio Hemp crumbs']

A dream come true...

Back at home (in Adelaide) we have always had this big old Pianola, a beautiful thing, and plenty of scrolls with old-timer songs. One of my favourites was "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas". I'd pump on the pedals, watching the scroll rotate and the keys amazingly play by themselves. And I'd sing along, and the notion of a 'white Christmas' was so distant, so fantastic, and so comforting....and I'd never imagined I would ever experience one.

Now I'm looking out the window, and there's fresh fallen snow on the ground, big beautiful snow-flakes are gently falling, and I look up and seagulls are gliding through the wintry sky...my first white Christmas, and I'm getting a bit sentimental...forgive me.

Merry Christmas.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the treetops glisten, and children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white.

Extinct Animal of the Week VI

Thylacine

"The thylacine was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger, the Tasmanian wolf, and colloquially the Tassie tiger or simply the tiger. Native to continental Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, it is thought to have become extinct in the 20th century. It was the last extant member of its genus, Thylacinus, although several related species have been found in the fossil record dating back to the early Miocene."

This one I feel particularly sad about...and despite most evidence to the contrary, I like to believe it still exists.

Knitwear Hunk III: Dimitry

Dimitry, 38, is happily married with two young daughters. Dimitry holds a prestigious government job and savours weekends away at his country property, pottering in the garden in his dashing ochre vest.

Importer/Exporter

Beer to hop down the pitch

With the Australian cricket team performing rather horrendously in the current Ashes series, it seems editors are bored and are showing off their impeccable intellectual fitness in the field of pun-forgery.

After a lacklustre performance by Australian cricketers in my hometown of Adelaide, Hurley-snogging blond spin-king Shane Warne suggested that little-known Western Australian bowler, Michael Beer, would be a good selection for the third test in Perth. In a surprise move, the selectors picked Beer and whether the story was actually rather boring or a distraction was needed from the Aussies' sporting failures, editors seemed to think the news needed a gentle buff with the pun-chamois.

I noticed this headline first:










And after some quick and simple searching I found more and more, they were having a field-day with this one...

"WA spinner Beer in Ashes brew" - AdelaideNow


"Aussies find Beer at bottom of the barrel" - BBC


"Why spinner's rise to Test recognition wasn't all beer and skittles" - SMH
-Extra points for the use of the old-school idiom


"No Beer on England's menu" - Herald Sun


"Struggling Aussies turn to Beer" - lords.org


"Frosty Beer on menu for Perth Test" - ninemsn


"Warne likes WA's Beer" - Sportal

And in the short (I found all of these in about five minutes) search I came across these two headlines related to the story but with no mention of beer, froth, barrels or brewing:

"A well Warne idea" - TheAge

...and my favourite...

"Cricket Australia ask 'who you Warne-a call? - Pom buster!" - Reuters
-come on....have you got aaanything else to do??


Reading all these puns has put me in a froth (sorry)


UPDATE:

Thanks to inked-up fast-bowler Mitchell Johnson, maybe my conclusions about Australia's performance in the cricket were a tad too premature.

UPDATE:

They weren't...

Pleasing pegs

Image by 'Shopkins-Fossick'

Looking through a really rather good blog called 'Shopkins-Fossick' I came across this post on plastic pegs found in local alleys and lane-ways. The fragile, disintegrating pegs are immensely delightful and the aesthetic conjures memories of buffalo grass, oxidised Hills-Hoist poles, the funny (but delicious) taste that a garden hose gives to water, lemon trees, corrugated iron, and sour-sobs. *Big smiley emoticon*

Knitwear Hunk II: Kiril

Kiril, 27, is a good-hearted economist from Omsk. Married and with his first child on the way, Kiril enjoys socialising on the weekends and thinks his handsome jade-green vest is perfect for a casual dinner-party.

Extinct Animal of the Week V

Short-tailed Hopping Mouse

"The Short-tailed Hopping Mouse (Notomys amplus) is an extinct species of mouse from open stony (gibber) plains with desert grasses, low shrubs and sand ridges in the area around Charlotte Waters, near Alice Springs in Central Australia. The last record is from June 1896."

Knitwear Hunk I: Oleg

I recently bought a small book of knit-patterns published in Soviet-era Russia from a local second-hand store. Translated, the title would be 'For you, ladies', but it only has patterns of male sweaters...ha. Over the next week or so I'll be posting scans of the four featured Russian dudes who are lucky enough to know women with top-notch knitting skills.

I present knitwear hunk number 1, Oleg:


Oleg, a physics major at University, lives with his mother in St. Petersburg. He likes to collect exotic fishes and enjoys brisk autumns because he's always cosy in his charcoal/brown buttoned sweater.

Copy-editors are real pun-ks...

After reading my post on Christmas no-nos in journalism, a friendly commenter sent me a link to another terrible headline. This one is a ripper, check it out:

"It was Nick Cave and the bad speeds as Australian singer crashes car into speed camera" - December 09, 2010

If you find any more, let me know. Who knows, I might even start up a 'trite headline of the week' post.

Steve Bell on Wikileaks

Extinct Animal of the Week IV

Kangaroo Island Emu

"Kangaroo Island Emu or Dwarf Emu (Dromaius baudinianus) is an extinct member of the bird family Casuariidae. It was restricted to Kangaroo Island, South Australia...The species became extinct in approximately 1827."

Sviridov

Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov

A fallacious inference...

The people at Urtext Film Productions from Adelaide have been releasing interviews filmed in portrait on their blog 'Portrait Mode'. I've watched them all and the idea is brilliant, I'd like to see more. The simple videos are of a high quality and the portrait 'mode' gives the stories a very personal atmosphere. Aaaanyway, there are more interesting things going around, BUT, I discovered one interview very amusing...Chris. Vimeo won't let me embed the video so you're going to have to scoot over there yourself.



Chris was in a first-year philosophy course (which I dropped) with me and I remember his zealous questioning and querying from the front row of the lecture hall. It seems Chris has developed his I'm-a-smart-philosophy-student aura, it's hilarious. I've included some of the transcript below:

When you do philosophy...apart from learning specific things about...the arguments Descartes gave for skepticism or the arguments Leibnitz gave for the existence of God, you learn the far more generic skills of just being able to analyse and criticise arguments...

If I'm on the phone and somebody is trying to convince me that...they should have received their order yesterday because they placed it at this time and this time and this time, well I can sorta look at that and see the structure of the argument and go 'well no, there's a fallacious inference being made there! In actual fact you've still got two days to wait because blah blah blah'.

Okay, this is a very trivial example and obviously you don't need training in philosophy to do this.

Ha ha ha...blah blah blah

Xiu Xiu

See ya later maaate! That's me for the day..I'm off home.

'Tis the season for jolly old journalism...

I occasionally have a look at The Advertiser's online manifestation called Adelaide Now. I don't usually get my news from this site but sometimes I find myself needing to catch up on what's going down in Adelaide town (really?...did I just rhyme?..sorry). The Advertiser is a News Limited publication and a scour of its pages (paper or electronic) often ends in disappointment...go figure.

Today I was scanning the headlines and saw this:


Christmas themed headlines are cringe-worthy at the best of times, and I wasn't at all surprised to see this on a Murdoch website. The thing is that the article is actually from Australian Associated Press and doesn't feature the terrible pun.

For a wonderful blog entry on tacky Christmas no-nos in journalism, see this article by newspaper editor John McIntyre.
McIntyre ends the piece with this:

Some readers (and, sadly, some writers) lap up this swill. It is familiar, and the complete lack of originality comforts them. It is for such people that television exists.

After a quick search I found two other terrible tinsel-decorated headlines from Australian publications:

"It's not ho-ho-hopeless" by Jemis Anning for the Illawarra Mercury

...and...

"Xmas Day should be a holiday: unions" by Andrea Hayward for the Sydney Morning Herald


Ho-ho-hoes

Half-awake in a fake empire...

That 4/3 rhythm, Matt Berninger's sweet-sweet Baritone, the majestic horn refrain at the end... thank you.

Stay out super late tonight
Picking apples, making pies
Put a little something in our lemonade and take it with us
We're half-awake in a fake empire
We're half awake in a fake empire

Tiptoe through our shiny city
With our diamond slippers on
Do our gay ballet on ice
Bluebirds on our shoulders
We're half-awake in a fake empire
We're half awake in a fake empire

Turn the light out say goodnight
No thinking for a little while
Let's not try to figure out everything at once
It's hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
We're half-awake in a fake empire
We're half awake in a fake empire

Extinct Animal of the Week III

Quagga

"The quagga (Equus quagga quagga) is an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra, which was once found in great numbers in South Africa's Cape Province and the southern part of the Orange Free State."