Not a Photoshop

And nobody's claiming that it's art, either.

Still Life with Fugitive Banana

(Image produced with the GIMP).

More Elusive Than Elvis

Until now.

Sick, Twisted Puppy

By Request

A US Percy class nuclear submarine during an emergency surfacing drill. The distinctive bulge of the boat's Global Location And Navigation System is clearly visible at the bow.

Friday Dog-Blogging

Lesser Known Dog Breeds

Serengeti Giraffe Hound

Like its distant cousins, the greyhound, the pharaoh hound and the ibizan hound, the Serengeti Giraffe Hound is a gaze hound, bred for the sport coursing small game. The breed was established by the Rev James Huffington, an Anglican missionary to Africa in the mid nineteenth century and keen follower of the sport of coursing (he was, in his university days, a devoted beagler).

The Giraffe Hound's intended prey were marmosets, lemurs, and other arboreal creatures in cautious enough to descend to ground level. According to Huffington (whose testimony is generally considered unreliable) his dogs eventually excelled in the sport of hunting down and retrieving such game. To what end is not clear. Others are more skeptical of the breed's suitability for any purpose.

The Giraffe Hound is strictly an outdoor dog, and therefore unsuitable for anyone living in a flat or small unit. Despite the breed's appalling reputation for health problems - chiefly hip dysplasia and hypertension - it nonetheless enjoys some favour with those who hate cats and possums.

The Micro-Miniature Poodle (Nanoodle)

This controversial, recently recognised, breed has replaced the chihuahua as the smallest of the dog breeds. At less than 1mm in length from head to anus the Micro-Miniature Poodle (or Nanoodle) is barely visible to the naked eye.

The illustration is a scanning electron micrograph of a nanoodle sitting on a wooden porch.

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Friday Dog-Blogging

Another great moment from the career of Gympie Flyer,
Australian Racing Legend.

Albion Park, 1983 - despite a leg injury Gympie Flyer held the lead right from the start and finished first.

Believe It or Not

It must be a slow news day. According to the front page of today's Age, a man claiming membership of a non-existent group of disadvantaged Australians was awarded $525,000 compensation for events that couldn't possibly have happened but even if they did happen it was all intended for his own good and it's only by today's standards that anybody did anything wrong so any alleged harm he might have suffered was completely unintentional.

(Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo)

The Very Proper Gander

(A timely tale for a nation of hysterics)

Not so long ago there was a very fine gander. He was strong and smooth and beautiful and he spent most of his time singing to his wife and children. One day somebody who saw him strutting up and down in his yard and singing remarked , 'There is a very proper gander.' An old hen overheard this and told her husband about it that night in the roost. 'They said something about propaganda' she said. 'I have always suspected that' said the rooster, and he went around the barnyard next day telling everybody that the very fine gander was a dangerous bird, more than likely a hawk in gander's clothing. A small brown hen remembered a time when at a great distance she had seen the gander talking with some hawks in the forest. 'They were up to no good' she said. A duck remembered that the gander once told him that he did not believe in anything. 'He said to hell with the flag, too,' said the duck. A guinea hen recalled that she had once seen somebody who looked very much like the gander throw something that loked a great deal like a bomb. Finally, everybody snatched up sticks and stones and descended on the gander's house. He was strutting in his front yard, singing to his children and wife. 'There he is!' everybody cried. 'Hawk-lover! Unbeliever! Flag-hater! Bomb-thrower!' So they set upon him and drove him out of the country.

Moral: Anybody who you or your wife thinks is going to overthrow the government by violence must be driven out of the country.

James Thurber, Fables for Our Time and Illustrated Poems.

And to hell with the flag, too.

Breakfast Time for Kev

Word of the Day - Hubris

The picture says it all, really.

Saturday Dog-Blogging

Celebrating Gympie Flyer, an Australian Racing Legend.

A dog with more heart than Phar Lap.

Southport 1982 - Gympie Flyer coming home at full pelt.

Giving 'Em the Wrong End of the Stick

Nothing sets the blogosphere on fire like a good rant - like this splendid example of the genre from pommygranate.

Moved by recent events in Burnley, Lancs*, where Matthew Carter, a binman, has been forbidden to wear a St George Cross over his dreadlocks, pommygranate takes the angry stick to anyone who might approve of the ban:

I despise you for dreaming up and enforcing rules such as these. Rules that make people shake with anger and seek solace in the arms of truly unsavoury folk.

I despise you for making this man feel guilty about taking pride in his own country. (original emphasis)

The rant's being quoted, and linked, by such luminaries of the right as Bernard Slattery, who says:

This letter should be so widely read that whole floors of federal, state and local government offices are squirming with terminal embarrassment.

Rolling on the floor laughing their arses off is more likely, unless there's actually a secret Federal State or even local council Department of the Old Dart somewhere, that's actually been running the UK for years. A hidden politically correct leftist enclave of the bureaucracy, paying back the Mother Country for Gallipoli, Singapore and other assorted past wrongs, by making life for the English as silly as possible. And there's poor old Gordon Brown thinking he's running the country.

Elsewhere Harry Clarke's giving good rant on the Haneef farce:

The press and the infantile, leftwing blogosphere are having a field day making conjectures that foster views of the innocence or guilt of Mohammed Haneef...

Australia is fast becoming a nation of hysterics who rant over perceived injustices and perceived moves toward totalitarianism even when faced with a possible investigation of a threat of terrorism to our citizens. To the know-all peanuts who pursue this line: Let the AFP and the courts do their job. Have a non-adolescent level of patience and keep a sense of proportion.

Denigrating the AFP, indulging in conspiracy theories and, most importantly, trivialising the pursuit of terrorist saboteurs in Western democracies is irresponsible behaviour. (original emphasis)

Well, I have to agree with Harry on that first point - maybe we are becoming a nation of hysterics. The evidence of pommygranate's post and Harry's post certainly support that view. Read them and you might find yourself in hysterics too.

* - an English town not far from Manchester but the best part of 13,000 miles from Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra or any of Australia's provincial cities - such as Perth.

Movie Classics

A still from the long forgotten Australian silent film The Cabinet of John Winston Howard.

Serving Suggestion

What about me?

... It isn't fair
I've had enough, now I want my share
Can't you see, I wanna live
But you just take more than you give

Haneef admits it: "I was arrested"

Q38. Do you recall me saying that. That you were under arrest.

A. Yes you arrested me um, but I didn't know that, ah then you, you said that I have been ah involved in terrorist activities. But I deny that I have been involved in any...

Q39. Okay. Do you agree that I told you at that time that you were under arrest for providing material support to terrorist organisation.

A. Well I haven't, I, I haven't provided...

Q40. Okay. I understand that but I'm saying to you, do you agree that that's what I said to you.

A. Well I, I've submitted to you for whatever reasons, you have ah taken um top clear myself from whatever charges I am being put on.

Q41. Okay. I'm just asking you whether, do you recall me saying that you were under arrest.

A. Yes.

More here (PDF).

Phil Ruddock is spitting chips that this damning admission was leaked to The Oz.

Egging Brendan

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, might find himself with a few things to explain about his handling of the Education portfolio, back in the day:

THE long-held secret of which nine Australian Research Council grants were vetoed by former education minister Brendan Nelson may soon be out, with the affected researchers to be asked whether they want the details made public.

...

Dr Nelson vetoed three projects in 2004 and seven in 2005 (one of which had been rejected in 2004, suggesting there were nine academics involved). These Discovery projects - believed to be in the social sciences and humanities - had been approved by ARC peer review.
(National Rupert Daily)

Any embarassment that might cause our Brendan, will come on top of being made a liar by Kevin Andrews' decision that Doctor Muhammed Haneef - reckless supplier of mobile phone facilities to family members who later turned out to be terrorists - will go into immigration detention if he ever takes advantage of his grant of bail. Last Thursday, The Times of India reported:

Refusing to go into merits or otherwise of the case of Haneef, who has been detained for the last nine days, or divulge details of the investigation, Nelson said there was "no intention to detain him (Haneef) beyond a period that is considered by the judge as appropriate."

The report, ironically, is headlined "Haneef case: India promises Australia all help". Pity it looks as if the promise was obtained under false pretences, making it completely void. But what do integrity and good diplomatic relations matter when you've got an election to win.

(Cross Posted at Larvatus Prodeo)

Go Ahead, Be Stupid - It's Your Democratic Right!

CHRIS UHLMANN: On a personal level, were you expecting to see some signs of a turnaround in the polls by now?

TONY ABBOTT: I think it would be fair to say that you always tend to expect that good government will get a political pay-off, and so far that isn't happening. But I remain reasonably optimistic.

I mean obviously Chris, the public have a right to vote for whomsoever they wish, and they have a right - if they wish - to replace a good government with an inept Opposition. I mean, they have that right.

But nevertheless I guess I have always been pretty confident in the basic good sense of the Australian people. So we'll just keep going forward up to the election and hopefully beyond and see what happens.

(AM, 16 July 2007. My emphasis.)

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo

Guns Don't Kill People - Doctors Kill People!

According to a comment at Club Troppo, doctors are a bigger threat to community safety than guns. And this, being the internet, the commenter, Phil, had the links to prove it.

First there was this report in The National Rupert Daily, "Hospital Bungles are Killing Scores":

AUSTRALIA'S first national report into serious mistakes in public hospitals has found at least 130 avoidable instances in which patients died or were put at serious risk.

Operations or investigations on the wrong patient, or the wrong body part, accounted for the biggest share of the mistakes, at 41 per cent of the 130 "sentinel events" recorded in 2004-05.

...

Stephen Bolsin, associate professor of patient safety at Victoria's Geelong Hospital, said there was no evidence hospital safety had improved since a landmark 1995 report showed that up to 8per cent of hospital patients would be the victim of a preventable mistake - and 10 per cent of these would cause permanent disability or death.

"Safety breaches in Australian healthcare are killing more people than breast cancer or road accidents," Associate Professor Bolsin said.

"But it doesn't get anything like the attention ... there's no evidence things have changed over the past 10 years."

I don't know the death rate from breast cancer, but it seems to me that Professor Bolkin is indulging in hyperbole when he says that the Australian healthcare system kills more people than road accidents. A quick check of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's Road Deaths Australia: 2006 Statistical Summary reveals this fact:

In 2006, there were 1,601 persons killed in 1,456 road crashes. Comparing the number killed with the previous year, this was a 1.6% decrease (1,627 persons killed in 1,472 crashes).

So the comparative scores are: road traffic deaths - 1,601, patients killed or put at serious risk by the health system - 130. If Associate Professor Bolsin's claim is correct we still have around 1,500 iatrogenic deaths to account for.

Phil's other link is to this page at the Sporting Shooters' Association of Australia web-site, titled "Doctors: A Health Issue". Here you'll find plenty of reports and links on the health risks of health care.

There are plenty of adjectives to describe this sort of reporting. "Honest" and "truthful" aren't among them.

(Cross posted at Larvatus Prodeo)