Toadfish Monastery

Tangmalangmaloo  John O'Brien

The bishop sat in lordly state and purple cap sublime,
And galvanized the old bush church at Confirmation time;
And all the kids were mustered up from fifty miles around,
With Sunday clothes, and staring eyes, and ignorance profound.
Now was it fate, or was it grace, whereby they yarded too
An overgrown two-storey lad from Tangmalangmaloo?

A hefty son of virgin soil, where nature's had her fling,
And grows the trefoil three feet high and mats it in the spring;
Where mighty hills uplift their heads to pierce the welkin's rim,
And trees sprout up a hundred feet before they shoot a limb;
There everything is big and grand, and men are giants too -
But Christian Knowledge wilts, alas, at Tangmalangmaloo.

The bishop summed the youngsters up, as bishops only can;
He cast a searching glance around, then fixed upon his man.
But glum and dumb and undismayed through every bout he sat;
He seemed to think that he was there, but wasn't sure of that.
The bishop gave a scornful look, as bishops sometimes do,
And glared right through the pagan in from Tangmalangmaloo.

"Come, tell me, boy," his lordship said, in crushing tones severe,
"Come, tell me why is Christmas Day the greatest of the year?"
"How is it that around the world we celebrate that day"
"And send a name upon a card to those who're far away?"
"Why is it wandering ones return with smiles and greetings, too?"
– A squall of knowledge hit the lad from Tangmalangmaloo.

He gave a lurch which set a-shake the vases on the shelf,
He knocked the benches all askew, up-ending of himself.
And oh, how pleased his lordship was, and how he smiled to say,
"That's good, my boy. Come, tell me now; and what is Christmas Day?"
The ready answer bared a fact no bishop ever knew -
"It's the day before the races out at Tangmalangmaloo."

This topic has been moved to Davey Jones's Locker.

http://toadfishmonastery.com/forum/index.php?topic=2018.0

It seems that most people, or at least the media anyway, seems to recall Nail Armstrong's words as he stepped of the lander onto the moon's surface.  However, I have always been more thrilled by the first words spoken after the Eagle landed.  What do the siblings think?

Yarr!  Ye all be knowin' our favourite wench Chatty be sailing fer distant shores an she will nay be passin bye here agin.

So let 'ave three cheers fer 'er, ana round o' Cap'n's Deloights!  An' a sloice o' cake... 

We are experiencing what have now been officially described as the worst bushfires in Australia's history.

The official death toll has reached 108 and is is certain to go higher.  750 homes lost and counting.  The entire towns of Kinglake and Marysville have been virtually wiped out - hundreds of homes burnt to the ground with less than 1% still standing.  TV showed for example one house standing virtually untouched with all around reduced to smoldering heaps.  Overall it's a picture of devastation.  There are over 50 fires still burning in my home state of Victoria including three major fires threatening a number of towns.  There are also several large fires burning in more remote areas that may be of greater concern later in the week when it is forecast to warm up again.  Still concerns about winds which also are forecast to increase again.  We are by no means out of the woods just yet, there are certain to be more losses, lets just hope not on the scale of what we have seen so far, but I would not be too sure..

Mrs Blue and I have been thinking about just what we would take if we had to move out. No credible threat to our place as yet, but I heard that some of those who lost their homes in the Kinglake area (about 40 minutes drive from my house) saw the fire about 25 km away (you would think this was a safe distance) and the fire was upon their house within 15 minutes.  Terrifying.

I'll keep everyone posted as the story unfolds.

With apologies to Good morning Vietnam 



For all you northern hemisphere types shivering in your socks, I thought I'd let you know that yesterday in Melbourne the temperature was 37°C (99°F), today's forecast is for 43°C (109°F) and the following three days are forecast to be 41°C (106°F).  Overnight is is likely to only get down to 25-29°C (79-84°F), so sleepless nights seem the order of the day - thank heavens (actually my electrician) for the ceiling fan in the bedroom.

If this comes to pass it will be the hottest four days in about a hundred years.  After that it's still going to be around 30°C (86°F) for the rest of the outlook period, which is not as hot, but it's not exactly a cool change either.

Can someone please send me something cold, please?  Pretty please?

Just a quick note to wish everyone a happy new year, coz it's 2009 already over here.  All you US'ns will just have to wait 'til tomorrow!

Just a reminder to everyone that the most important day of 2008 approaches tomorrow:  The day when we all will know who will win the Great Race.  Yes, that's right folks, it's Melbourne Cup Day!  The day that stops a nation.  The greatest horse race in the known universe!

Ahem...

I awake.  Its still pitch black.  While I try to decide if its time to get up my watch alarm goes off.  So much for staying in bed!  I drag my sorry arse out of the warmth of the sleeping bag and quickly don some warm clothes.  I make my way out of the tent and greet Davo as he emerges from his.  We quickly grab a bowl of cereal and wash it down with some orange juice, no time to boil the billy now!

We grab our fishing gear we got ready the previous night.  Ouch, my head hurts!  What time did we stop drinking the bourbon  and coke round the camp fire last night?  Must've had only a couple of hours sleep!  No time to worry about that now.  We make our way down to the beach that forms the bank of the Murray River where we camped and put our gear in the boat.  We hop in, start the motor and then slip our mooring.  We head down stream in utter darkness - the moon set several hours ago - using the spot to light our way, being careful not to look directly in its beam.  There it is, the snag we picked yesterday arvo.  We go past it and turn the boat around approaching the snag from down stream.  As we gently come up to the snag Davo ties us off and I allow the boat to settle in the current.  Once we're sure that all's OK I kill the motor.

We got the timing right, it's still black but a few minutes later we notice the faintest glimmer of light in the eastern sky.  Not quite time to drop our lines in yet, so we take our time baiting the hook using a red torch to see what we're doing.  Now we wait.  The eastern sky turns from the faintest grey to dark purple, the sky overhead from pitch black to deep indigo.  As the east lightens to a darkish mauve we begin to see our surrounds in a ghostly monochrome.  Soon the eastern sky is a light mauve, with purple above fading to indigo in the west.  As if on cue, the dawn chorus begins.  Birds of all description sing out the coming of the new day.  Still the eastern sky lightens, we can see our surrounds in washed out pastel colour, it's time, so we drop our lines over the side.

As we sit there, still it gets lighter.  We can see in dull colour around us as an enormous flock of sulfur crested cockatoos flies overhead, deafening us with their raucous calls.  The "cockies" don't believe in such an early start as the other birds who have well and truly gone about their business by now.  A little later a pelican flies by, gliding just below the tree tops with the occasional languid flap of its wings.  He has an appointment down stream, we may see him this evening as he makes his way back.  The eastern sky works its way through pale mauve, green orange until it is a brilliant gold.  Just then the fierce golden light touches the tops of the surrounding river red gums, high up on the banks around us and they explode in a riot of greens and olives and gold as if caught by ethereal fire.  We hear the cockatoos down stream and catch a glimpse of them as they cavort at the next bend in the river.  As they fly up to tree top height they are caught in the sunlight.  The flock looks like a pool of liquid gold.  Glistening.  Stunning.

We wait for a bite, it is morning.

I have stayed out of the Obama thread, US politics is not really my thing, you know.

However, now that it looks like Obama has the Democrat nomination wrapped up I have been thinking about the last few months and what it may mean.  It seems to me that the bitter fight between Obama and Clinton has most probably made sure that neither can be elected as President.  Both sides were throwing plenty of mud at each other and I am afraid that in this circumstance some of it will stick.  This is because only a few voters really get to decide who gets elected.  In most democracies, with a two party system, what you usually find is that about 40% of voters will vote for each of the two main parties regardless of what happens, 10% will vote for minor parties and those who believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden and it is the final 10%, the uncommitted voters who choose from one election to the next who gets in.

Neither Obama nor Clinton exactly covered themselves in glory during this long acrimonious campaign and I think it highly unlikely that they will have attracted many of the important group.  Its even worse, from the Democrat POV, since it seems that many of Hillary's supporters seem to have adopted the line that they would rather not vote than vote for Obama, at least in the only election that really matters.

From the POV of an Australian (and I suspect much of the rest of the world), it really makes little difference who gets elected.  The USA has a track record of thinking that what's right for the US is right for everyone, and frankly, despite all the good you do in the world (and that is a lot) your government seems to have a very poor grasp of how they are perceived in the rest of the world.  Terms like parochial, unrefined and lacking finesse spring to mind.  I don't know why this should be so, since so many of your country men are very knowledgeable about the world and its history and certainly do know how to act as members of Western civilisation.  I can only assume it must be something that happens when they get into public office - perhaps their brains get wiped by some monstrous zombie ray when they walk into Congress.  (Mind you, our pollies are not really any better, to be fair - perhaps its just a consequence of power.  I do tend to agree more and more with Churchill's assesment that democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried.)

So I'm not barracking for either side in the upcoming US election, unless one of the candidates suddenly begins to show some awareness of things outside the USA.  Of course, showing that might mean that he cannot get elected.  I don't know, your electoral process baffles me.

Avaarst there me 'earties.  It 'ave become appar'nt that thar be some 'earabowts wot be 'avin a bit o' trubble lernin ter talk proper, loike a pirate.

I 'ave dun me 'omewerke and 'ave compiled a list o' suggestions ye can pracktiss and ye'll be talking loike a pirate in no toime!

Pleeze note that this list be written in Henglishe fer the easy consumtshun of Land Lubbers, so enny pirates wot look in 'ere may become a bit confuzzed, but that be sommat we'll jest 'ave ter risk ter 'elp out those less fortunate than ourselfs.

How to Speak Like  Pirate

• Try not to over do the creative spelling - a few changes gets the idea across without making it too hard to read
  


• When creating a spelling, it works best for short common words.  For example I becomes Oi.  Similalry like can become loike.
  


• Dropping the h from the beginning of words is a common touch, generally an apostrophe to indicate that a letter is missing is a good idea, especially if removing the h makes another English word OTOH adding an extra h to the beginning of words starting with a vowel, hespecially e works well if not overdone.
  


• Replacing vowels with an apostrophe can sometimes be eff'ct've
  


• Adding e to the end of some words can add to the effect, for example fishe 'ead stewe
  


• Changing the vowel to one that has a similar sound can work, err werke
  


• Longer words can be altered, but generally it is best to keep most of the word intact and just change some part of it to a phonetic equavalent for example relations, could become relashuns.
  


• Part of the joke is that pirates are uneducated and childlike, so using common spelling errors of children can be good.
  


• Remember, these are not rules and you do not have to apply all of them, at least not all in the same sentence.
  


• Try to develop your own style, but remember that this is meant to be fun and if you make your 'Piratese' too hard to understand it can make it hard work for others and spoil it a bit.
  


• Also, never forget that wantonly misunderstanding what others say is an integral part of Pirate intercourse, feel free to indulge.
  

Hy guys,

Figured we needed somewhere to ponder all those things that are so perplexing in life, not the big ones, like life, the universe and everything, or why do the female of the species always go to the toilet in pairs and such like, but the smaller things.

I'll start it off with this one:

Why do the makers of vending machines always make the dispenser so low and awkward to get things out of?  Why can't the dispenser be above waste height where you don't have to bend right over and risk bursting a disc?

Hi Siblings,

I read today that the Answers in Genesis mob have opened a new "Creation Science Museum" in Northern Kentucky.

Now I am all for anyone having their say and I absolutely do not want to prevent these guys from having theirs, even though I am diametrically opposed to what they are saying.  Had they called their shiny new theme park "Bibleland", "Genesis World" or some such thing I would have a quiet little chuckle to myself at the inanity of their ideas and that would be that.  However they have chosen to call it a museum (and a science museum at that!) which looks to me like an attempt to borrow credibility from genuine museums to make their totally unscientific nonsense appeal to the uneducated.

It seems to me that there are really only two possible explanations for this, either these people are deliberately spreading untruths (that is, they are lying) or they really do believe the crock they are spreading.  IMO, the latter is the most likely, which brings me to wonder how can reasonable, rational people counter this cancer that seems to be expanding in our world today.  I heard on the radio this morning in an item about this so-called museum that a recent survey of adults in the USA revealed that about 50% do not believe in evolution and think that mankind was created in its present form within the last 10,000 years.  Can this possibly be true?  Frankly I find it hard to believe.

It cannot be that the scientists are not spreading the message, I would find it hard to believe that any significant proportion of people in the western world would not have at least a passing acquaintance with the basic idea of evolution and the actual age of the Earth - at least that age being in the billions of years rather than thousands.  So it must simply be that for some reason these people, probably as children, have heard these concepts but have had their minds closed to them by some other idea implanted earlier.

The USA has been a world leader in technology, science and reasoned thought for most of the last century, but unless this gross misdirection of it's children's education is remedied it will not be so for long.  China and India are growing at phenomenal rates and their children are not being burdened with total BS masquerading as science.  Within just a few decades unless the US can reverse this retreat from reason, I fear it will become a backward, inward looking and probably largely fundamentalist state with little relevance to the modern world.  This would be a great tragedy and IMO a complete abandonment, indeed betrayal of of the high ideals upon which the country was founded.

Personally if this terrible outcome comes to be, it will be as if we have all lost a good friend.  What can we do to prevent this?  How do we counter, in an effective way the likes of the Creation Science Museum?  I don't know and the that lack of knowledge scares me.

Sibling Bluenose

I was in two minds whether to put this here or on the joke thread, but here goes.

I was idly browsing a newspaper site when I found reference to something called Conservapedia which IMHO is the funniest web site in the Internet.  Funnier than any comedy site because it is not intended to be funny, these guys are serious!  They seek to redress what they see as the "liberal anti-Christian and anti-American bias of Wikipedia and Google".  Of course, God is an American, why didn't I think of that?

Check out their page on Dinosaurs, it's a hoot!

The whole site is full of this sort of stuff.

I had to stop myself laughing - people were beginning to look strangely at me, oh, well yes, that is normal, but on this occasion it wasn't my fault...

Sibling _{still laughing} Bluenose

Ere - DaveL,

Oi fink they be onter us.  Ave a gander at this.

D'yer fink they'll find our sekret breeding program?  Oi werked pretty ard to ensure all them wild night parrots be dedd, so we could corner the market wiv our kaptive bred berds.  Oi must've missed cleanin one up on me last field trip an now the orforities are on the look out.

Ow long till we can start shippin berds to our customers?  'Aven't we got enuff bred up now to be able ter releese summe?  Oi been offered over 100,000 dubloons per berd iffe Oi ken supply summe before Easter.

I'm going to kick this off with some thoughts I have been pondering over for some little while.

The only thing I would ask the reader is to read all of this article before jumping to any conclusions.

What is a human being?

When I think about this subject I have a number of thoughts/ideas rather than a simple (and simplistic) definition.  In my view a complete adult human body is not the definition, because people suffer injuries or disease and lose body parts all the time and these things do not make them any less human.  I had my appendix out a few years ago ( It was actually quite an emergency, it had ruptured and yet I never felt the extreme pain that is usually associated with the condition.  Thank God I have a good surgeon.  [I am aware of the irony of that statement from a confirmed athiest, but the expression conveys the desired strength of meaning, so I will stick to it.])  Anyway, I do not consider myself to have been diminished in any way because of it.  My uncle lost his lower leg after a motor cycle accident many years ago, it certainly never made any difference that I can detect as to his "human-ness".  I am sure we can go on about all manner of similar things, people who have been born without various limbs, yet live full and fruitful lives and so on.

So it seems obvious to me that an intact body is not what makes us human.  Of course, the parts removed (or never there in the case of birth defects etc) obviously are not a human, my appendix has no existence outside my body, although it is (or more correctly was) human tissue, it could never be considered to be a human being in its own right.

What makes us human must be something to do with the "me" part of me - and to be fair, the "you" part of you too!  What is that, though? 

Well, my maternal grandmother died from Alzheimer's disease (actually it was pneumonia that eventually finished her off, but that is really quibbling).  It was pretty obvious to anyone who had known Nana that well before her physical body had died, or indeed was really physically very sick, the "Nana" part of her had departed, never to return.  We know that Alzheimer's is a disease of the brain, and similarly for people that suffer catastrophic brain injury and so on.  So it seems pretty obvious to me that "me" is a property of the brain, whatever else it may be - you may call it a soul, I call it an emergent property of the electro-chemical behaviour of the brain and nervous system.

So where am I going with this?

Today when I was driving I passed some "Pro Life" protesters outside an abortion clinic, as I often do, since it is on my way to work.  It made me think about the issues and I suppose it crystallised something in my mind.  The whole basic assumption of these people is flawed, IMHO.  They label an embryo a "baby" and then get all excited about "killing" it and call it "murder".  Now the main thing I am trying to get to here is that I think these people are neither bad people nor acting without good intentions, but they are IMHO misguided.  They are attributing to a small bunch of human cells that may not even have a nervous system at all, a property that it certainly does not have - the property of what it is that makes a human being.  Or worse, they are talking about potential.  If that is their argument then they should also be protesting about every time some couple do not have sex, or use contraceptives, because there is a lost potential to have a child.  Or what about all the spontaneously aborted embryos, which happen to be more than those which successfully carry to term?  If we talk about potential we are really getting ourselves very confused.

So we are not talking about potential, we are talking about an actual property that makes us human beings.  Does my thumb have this property?  No, of course not.  Does my arm?  It has a nervous system, but it does not have a brain or consciousness, so no it does not.  Does a new-born baby?  It is not so easy to see, but it is certain that a newborn does not have any sense of self or consciousness - if indeed it has that much- above that of say a cow or a sheep which we quite happily dispatch to the abattoir (well, at least most of us do, in any case very few people would equate a human life with that of an animal). So again no, a newborn does not have that quality that makes us human.  In fact, it does not acquire that property at least until some time after the nervous system has fully myelinated and the child has reached a point of full self consciousness.  When is this?  I don't know.  A newborn does not have this, but a normal child of 6 does.  So sometime, at a guess based on my own limited experience as a father of two now adult children, between the age of about 2 or 3 months and 6 years an infant becomes a human being in much the same sense that you and I are human beings.  My best guess is at around the age of 18 months to two years, but I am not wedded to that figure, I admit it is only a guess.

Now I am not suggesting for a single moment that we should degrade the status of newly born babies and encourage or excuse infanticide, only that I believe an intelligent and honest assessment of "humanness" must conclude that new born does not have that quality which we call a human being. Thus using the point of birth as an arbitrary point of what we legally call a human being, is safely on the side of caution, being before the child acquires that quality which we quite rightly value. Perhaps it may well be better for most purposes to use the end of the second trimester, but in extremis I have no problem with late term abortion from the point of view of destroying a human being and I think for legal purposes relating to medical procedures I think birth is a better end/beginning point.  It is just easier to use an earlier, less controversial decision point - end of second trimester - for most purposes and require some sort of review for later interventions, but we should not kid ourselves that we are doing this for any real reason other than to assuage our conscience, it does not IMHO bear up logically.

I have deliberately avoided the issues of women's reproductive rights here.  Those arguments have been made very well by many other people and do not need me to re-iterate them, except to say that I agree that those arguments have merit and i strongly support any woman who had had to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy.  I have personally known several women close to me that have made this choice and they have had my unreserved support, and still do.  No woman would place herself in this position out of choice, it is an abuse IMO to subject her to the sort of taunting and offensive behaviour that the Pro Lifers seem to go for.  Let alone those zealots that think they have the right to kill doctors who work in these places.  I am sure that they think they are acting in an entirely moral way, but anyone who equates potential with an actual living breathing human being probably with a spouse, children, parents, relatives and friends and justifies taking away the latter with all its consequent grief etc in order to protect mere potential has a very distorted view of reality IMO.

I know that this is a controversial idea, and I am fully prepared to receive a blast about it, but I just feel that the emperor has been wearing the new clothes for too long and it is high time someone pointed out the fact that in fact he is naked.  An embryo is not a human being.

Sibling Bluenose

http://www.lost-civilizations.net/past-life-mars-viking-labeled-release-experiment-life-mars.html

After reading a couple of unsatisfactory media reports about this, I Googled up the above article.

Very interesting, to say the least.  It seems that if there were life forms, not all together unlike some of those on Earth that inhabit extreme environments, present on Mars when the Viking landers performed their experiments, that the process used may well have killed them.  This being since the scientists of the day were looking for the wrong type of life.  Easy to be wise after the event and we should not forget that the existance of Earth-bound extreme life, such as that around deep sea volcanic vents and so on was not even hinted at the time of these missions.  However, it seems that a re-examination of the results leaves the question most definitely open for re-interpretation.  Let us hope that future exploratory craft can conduct tests in a less potentially lethal manner.  I wouldn't want the inter-planetary police coming round complaining about microbicide and wanting to use some great big kill-o-zap gun in retribution.1

Sibling Bluenose

Reveal some of the things that set you apart from the crowd!

---

I don't like soft towels.  I hate it when they have had fabric softener put in with them in the wash.  I like scratchy towles.  The sensation of all those little sticky-out scratchy bits of cotton on my skin is almost, well, you get the picture... 

Sibling Bluenose

It is only 13 days into the Australian summer and already much of the country is at least as dry as it is at the end of summer.  The bushfire season is worse already than it usually is in February/March.  We have major bushfires burning in three states - New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.  In Tasmania one fire has claimed 18 houses in a coastal town, in Victoria the fires have burnt over 400,000 hactares (about a million acres) and are currently burning on an approximately 280 km front.

We are expecting warm weather and high winds tomorrow (Thurdsday 14 Dec) in Victoria.  The situation is very dangerous.  Only substantial rains will extinguish most of these fires and although some rain is predicted for late tomorrow in a cool change, it is unlikely to be anywhere near enough.  Indeed if the predicted rain eventuates and it is not quite heavy, the cool change may do more harm than good as it changes to direction of the fire's advance towards towns not currently threatened but relatively close to the fire.

Volunteer and professional fire fighters are stretched to the maximum and where possible give priority to protecting private property, but already a number of well known alpine tourist facilities, such as Craig's Hut and one of the chalets at Mt Buller have been burnt to the ground.  The toll is likely to rise, we can only hope that people are not included in that toll.  so far we have been lucky and there have been no reported serious injuries, but regretably, it is hard to imagine that we will get through this season scott-free.

Sibling Bluenose

I tried to load a recipe to the new Recipe section, put in all the ingredients, added the method etc, then pressed the [Save] button and - nothing happened.  the form I was filling in disappeared and the recipe did not appear in the list.  Did I do something wrong?

Sibling Bluenose