and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
At breakfast time!
The call came, “There’s an anteater at the bar”.
The breakfast room cleared in a flash and we all headed down the path, past a couple of lagoons, ignoring the Caimans and Capybaras, a Sunbittern and Rufesent Tiger Herons.
And there it was, outside the bar, meandering across a grassy patch towards the road, majestic and weird …
Mark Baker in today’s Age …
THE disgraced former boyfriend of Prime Minister Julia Gillard took a leading role in the purchase with stolen union funds of a Fitzroy unit bought in the name of a union crony, new documents reveal.
The documents also confirm that Ms Gillard intensely managed legal work on the 1993 transaction – without advising her senior partners at law firm Slater & Gordon of the involvement of boyfriend Bruce Wilson.
It even mentions the words “slush fund” and Mr. Baker follows up with this … Sold to the union man … on the questions that should have been asked and weren’t at the Canberra news conference which Julia hoped had put the matter to bed.
There is, of course nothing new about this news, although the Age has studiously avoided the story. Bear in mind that two reporters – Glenn Milne and Michael Smith – last year lost their jobs for trying to covert this. It’s worth following the links simply to read how a quality journalist eventually polishes a story that the blogosphere has worked up for him over many months.
It really can’t be an accident and is the timing not a bit sus, overshadowed by Mr. Slipper’s departure?
Has the Age decided to play a part in saving Labor from its disastrous leadership or are there really new documents that the Age knows are going to make them look foolish for continuing to ignore the story?
Shame, really …
Julia made an impassioned attack on the AbbottAbbottAbbott for his misogyny in her passionate defence of the nice Mr. Slipper. The government stood firm at her back, the filthy AbbottAbbottAbbott must go, the nice Mr. Slipper must return. The usual independents agreed.
You’ve got to feel sorry for the lovely Julia, attacked for nothing more than being a woman.
And admire the way she came out swinging … the defiant victim of sexism taking back the night … and the nice Mr. Slipper.
Oh, Mr. Slipper has resigned.
I guess that’s what happens when you flex your mussel … instead of your brain.
After two nights on the Pixaim river we headed to the very lovely Araras Lodge, an absolute jewel in the Pantanal.
There are several lagoons adjacent to the lodge and a boardwalk that takes you through some fine forest to a tower. From the top of the tower you have a view of the surrounding plains as well as the nearby forest canopy. The wildlife abounds.
There is also a bar just a short and pleasant walk from the lodge. A good place to haunt during the hottest part of the day … if you can drag yourself away from the pool.
The forest yielded Olivaceous, Great Rufous, Straight-billed and Planalto Woodcreepers, Cream-coloured Woodpecker, Blue-crowned Motmot, White-wedged Piculet and many more. Plus Capuchins, Marmosets and Azara’s Agouti. Around the lodge it was necessary to keep the birds off your plate!
Some of the stars (click on the photos for a better view) …
Chestnut eared Aracari.
Hyacinth Macaw.
And next … to the bar at breakfast time. The best excuse ever!
When darkness falls there is a changing of the shifts. The same habitats are exploited by a different suite of animals, sometimes in a different way.
Over a few nights of spotlighting we compiled quite a list of night birds and mammals.
Birds included the Pauraque, Spot-tailed Nightjar, Nacunda and Band-tailed Nighthawks, Great and Common Potoos, Boat-billed Heron and Great Horned Owl.
Mammals included Crab-eating Fox, Crab-eating Racoon, White-lipped Peccary, Red Brocket and Marsh Deer, Tapir and Fishing bats.
Of particular note was the Brazilian Rabbit. How do you tell a Brazilian Rabbit from a common rabbit? By careful inspection of its pubic region, of course.
The most spectacular find was on our last evening when we had excellent views of an Ocelot.
Unfortunately, I have no photos taken at night to share but I did come across a Great Horned Owl at its day time roost …
Gypsy women once formed part of the Mercedes slave labour contingent.
Presumably the technology that Mercedes used to discover that Alan Jones would say something very crass about Julia’s dad a few days later came from them.
Otherwise, how else could Mercedes give notice that they would terminate their sponsorship deal because of his offensive comments three days before he made them?
On October 12, 1492 Columbus landed somewhere in the Bahamas, thus becoming the first person to see the Americas, apart, that is, from those who’d lived there for more than 10,000 years and Leif Erikson and his crew.
In the USA this event is celebrated on the 2nd Monday of October, thus today most states are celebrating the day that Christopher Columbus got fairly close to almost discovering America.
What better day, therefore to acknowledge Eratosthenes of Cyrene, born around 276 BC, died around 195 BC. He rose to prominence as the third chief librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria, the centre of scholarship of the world at that time. An edited brief biography filched shamelessly from Wikipedia has it thus …
He was a mathematician, geographer, poet, athlete, astronomer and music theorist. He invented the discipline of geography as we understand it. He invented a system of latitude and longitude.
He was the first person to calculate the circumference of the earth (with remarkable accuracy), the first to calculate the tilt of the earth’s axis (also with remarkable accuracy). He may also have accurately calculated the distance from the earth to the sun and invented the leap day In addition, Eratosthenes was the founder of scientific chronology; he endeavored to fix the dates of the chief literary and political events from the conquest of Troy.
He calculated the circumference of the earth over 2,200 years ago and this is how he did it.
Eratosthenes had been told that the shadow of someone looking down a deep well would block the reflection of the Sun at noon on the summer solstice in the Ancient Egyptian city of Swenet (which happens to be on the Tropic of Cancer). This put the sun directly overhead. He also knew, from measurement, that in his hometown of Alexandria, the angle of elevation of the sun was 1/50th of a circle (7°12′) south of directly overhead at noon on the same day. Assuming that the Earth was spherical (360°), and that Alexandria was due north of Swenet, he concluded that the distance from Alexandria to Swenet must therefore be 1/50th of the total circumference of the Earth. Egypt had been sufficiently well surveyed for the distance between the two cities to be known to be 5000 stadia. He rounded the result to a final value of 700 stadia per degree giving a circumference of 252,000 stadia.
The stadion, like the British Standard Handful, is not a precisely fixed quantity but if we assume that Eratosthenes used the “Egyptian stadion” of about 157.5 m, his measurement turns out to be 39,690 km, an error of less than 2%.
By comparison Columbus set sail 1,700 years later believing the earth to be about 25% smaller than it really is.
A couple of days of river cruising turned up Marmosets, Capuchin and Howler Monkeys. Capybara were common, Marsh and Red Brocket Deer were seen occasionally. The Giant Otter chose to spend a little time watching us each day …
Yacare Caiman and Green Iguana represented the reptiles, and so did the Common Tegu. At first glance this appears to be a Varanid, a family that is well represented in Australia, in fact it’s not that closely related … another case of convergent evolution.
Snakes were mainly absent. Where was my Anaconda? This one let us have a good look, I’d be delighted if anyone can identify it for me …
Birds are plentiful along the river, they included Black-capped Donacobius, Undulated Tinamou, Bare-faced Curassow, Blue-throated and Red-throated Piping-Guan, Hyacinth and Yellow-collared Macaw and Sungrebe.
Star of the show … Sunbittern.
Oh, and there goes another Piranha, this time in the talons of a Great Black-Hawk …
In its drive to promote only the politest of speech,Mercedes has announced that it is about to reclaim Professor Bunyip’s luxury car for this outrageous piece published recently.
It would be impolite of me to ask Mercedes to comment on this …
Daimler-Benz … avidly supported Nazism and in return received arms contracts and tax breaks that enabled it to become one of the world’s leading industrial concerns. (Between 1932 and 1940 production grew by 830 percent.) During the war the company used thousands of slaves and forced laborers including Jews, foreigners, and POWs. According to historian Bernard Bellon (Mercedes in Peace and War, 1990), at least eight Jews were murdered by DB managers or SS men at a plant in occupied Poland.
Doubtless an unconscionable slur, isn’t it actually the case that they took Hitler’s car off him for suggesting six million Jews died of gas or something?
“Master, Alan Jones has said a rude thing”.
“Oh, little grasshopper”, said the Zen master glancing up from his Google News page of bushfires, plane crashes, terrorism, mayhem and murder, “What will you do?”.
“I shall take away his Mercedes“.
“Well, I’m sure that will please the Labor party. Do they purchase a lot of Mercedes, I mean, other than those that are milking their union members for all they’re worth?”
bobmcgee 