The Pete & Myf breakfast show scored its worst-ever ratings in the latest Nielsen survey, dropping 1 point to a 3.2 per cent market share — almost half the 6.3 per cent it began with last year.
Guy Dobson, content director of Triple M's parent company Austereo, said he had "loads" of potential replacements to consider, although he would not confirm whether McGuire and Crawford were among them. But he said the new program would be a "Grill Team-type show" with "sporting DNA running through its veins".
Wow, MMM management really have NO idea who their key demographic is at all do they? Its MMM, it isnt Fox or SEN or 3AW, jesus. It was always the kids, college-rock of the commercial stations. Were they blind and stupid when they axed Get This, which had huge ratings, and are now scratching their arses wondering why their ratings are in a hole?
I dont even LISTEN to MMM and I can see they are morons. Eddie McGuire? Come on now.
In her most famous song, Torn, Natalie Imbruglia sings of loneliness and shame.
They are feelings the Australian pop star is hoping to spare hundreds of thousands of women suffering with fistula, a condition which leads to stillborn babies and incontinence.
It is often seen as taboo, which compounds the suffering.
Is it terribly wrong of me to be hysterically amused at the juxtaposition of song and delicate issue? Surely she is not going to promote awareness with "Torn" playing liltingly in the background. o_0
Including being in the same street - it is literally 3 doors down from our current house. Heh.
We're going to accept the offer tomorrow and sort out some kind of deposit of rent and whatever to make it official, so it isnt 100% yet but they've basically said its ours.
Now the thing this means is, the move is going to need to be tackled completely differently. For one thing we dont need a removalist (thats $400 we save, thank god). But it *does* mean we need help and means moving our furniture down the road. There are no stairs involved, but there are large fridges, couches, beds, washing machines etc to be ported down the road. We'll work out trolleys and whatnot, but will probably need a workingbee weekend where we'd love some help carting the large items over (I for one am basically useless at that sort of thing, I cant lift to save my life).
Obviously any assistants who lend us a hand/arms would be fed and watered well - there'll be hearty grub in it for all. I'll keep yers posted anyway.
Hey at least no one needs to cart things round in cars :)
"Yes, I do"
(think about it)
One was this:
In September 1979, the psychologist Ellen Langer took a group of frail, elderly men on a week-long retreat, during which she asked them to live as if it were 20 years earlier. The men stayed in a converted monastery, which Langer furnished in a 1950s style; they listened to 1959's music (Hank Williams, Nat King Cole) and 1959 sports games on old-fashioned radios. They weren't allowed to talk about anything that happened after September 1959.
Instead, Langer organised discussions on "recent" events and "new" books, such as Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus; she screened Some Like It Hot. Participants who'd become dependent on carers were encouraged to dress, clean and serve meals as if they were younger. By week's end, Langer's dizzyingly audacious hunch had been confirmed. The men were standing straighter, walking better, and demonstrating more joint flexibility. They had stronger grips and better hearing; they scored higher in intelligence tests. (They outperformed a control group, who'd been on a parallel retreat without the time-travel aspect.) In turning back their psychological clock, it appeared, Langer had turned back their physiological one, too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandst
I'm now tempted to spend a week or two listening to nothing but 80s music, writing poetry and diary entiries on paper, watching Days of our Lives and eating Maggi noodles for lunch.
Or something.
I speak as someone whose greatest craving at this exact moment is not world peace and universal democracy or a rational and global redistribution of wealth, but a can of ice cold ginger ale.
God. So sad.
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/n
Do not mess with badass smackaroo. He will mess your shit up.
This could be good, I guess?
But riddle me this: why the hell are the only 3 companies tendering for our public transport system French, French and Hong Kong? I may be missing something fundamental about our economic status but is there honestly no Australian company that could stand to have the jobs and money flowing about by building and running Melbourne's trains right here in Victoria?
I mean, really? WTF.
In this collection of [Marina Hyde's] greatest hits columns, Hyde breezily checks the evidence of entertainers who once were just happy to talk about their favourite subject - themselves - but now believe their harebrained, half-baked, non-thoughts on war, cures for cancer, science and religion are not only worth foisting on the world but will "make a difference".
The scary thing is they are indeed making a difference.
...
She recounts Stone's attendance at the 2005 Davos World Economic Forum (!) where she grandstanded during a speech about malaria, offering $10,000 to buy mosquito nets for infected countries. By the end of the session, Shaz had browbeaten fellow delegates to pledge $1 million for the cause. And she didn't even have her ice-pick on her.
This all sounds dandy, but a year later, only $250,000 was given, so UNICEF had to come up with $750,000 - money that had to be diverted from other projects. Then there's the tricky detail that many of these nets are accepted by dirt-poor governments who sell them on the black market.
Hyde quotes economist Professor Xavier Sala-I-Martin, who was there when Stone made her emotional pledge. The professor wrote in The Wall Street Journal: "If the funds raised by (Stone) are wasted, she does not get expelled from anything, she does not have to pay back the donors (and) if her action turns out to cause harm (perhaps because she diverted funding away from other places where it could have saved lives), she will not be legally liable."
Hyde also has a go at Saint Bono's hypocrisy in living tax free in Ireland: "Driving around on roads paid for by teachers, and nurses and plumbers - the very people he'd appeal to for donations when an African village needed a well. Or indeed, a road."
And then when Ireland limited the tax-free status to artists to an income of $625,450, Bono uprooted to Holland to get a better tax rate.
Very interesting, I'd like to have a read of this book. I would love it if she goes into the sham that is Jim Carrey and
Look em up on youtube and weep. Or laugh. Or both. Seriously, you won't know what to think.
Oh and Rob - Attack!Attack are CHRISTIANS as well. Now that explains everything.
- Music:ow my freakin ears
Rather unhelpfully (and surely not unintentionally) above that was an article headed "Foreign Students May be Forced to Leave". The juxtaposition made me do a doubletake, til I read it and realised it's about the dodgy education colleges/faked work experience to get visas issue.
Nothing at all to do with the article below it. Yet, such provocative placement and wording.
I know, I know, the Age has gone to shit in a handbasket, but tch... really....
Go spend some time in Canada and you rethink that, mkay? If I dont even need to wear thermal underwear, it ain't that bad.
... i drew this on a magazine page.
We sadly won't be going to see Kronos Quartet after all. In the end, we realised we couldnt afford the tickets :( Oh well.
Sorry to anyone who was hoping to catch up!
I hadn't, in fact, really wanted to raise the "Indian Violence" issue at all, though it does vex me vaguely (the media's representation thereof, more than anything else).
But yeah. Sharpies. Melbourne in the 70s and 80s generally, come to that.
I didn't grow up in Melbourne, I'm a latecomer. I've lived here since 1992, but I first came for a visit/holiday in late 1988, after I'd finished yr12 (the concept of Schoolies was something I found pointless and crap, I felt quite superior in my childish way, trotting off to Melbourne on my own to live with a boyfriend for 3 weeks instead!).
Melbourne even 20 years ago was quite different than it is now. It was dumpier, a little rougher and sadder. The trains and trams were still old, the Young and Jacksons and Waterfront Worker's pubs were still somewhere you wouldnt set foot in if you had any sense. TISM sang songs about bogans punching mods in Fosters carparks. Hey Hey its Saturday was still on TV. Bands still played at the Old Greek in Richmond, and goths - so I've heard - gathered at an alarmingly decrepit, condemned looking creaky old building perched on the riverside by Punt Road (what was that place called? I dont recall now).
When I read about sharpies, and Sunbury, and AC/DC going down Swanston St on the back of a flatbed truck; when I see footage of early Hunnas gigs and Birthday Party gigs and the craziness of 80s arthouse Melbourne that movies like Dogs in Space capture, I wish I'd been around a little ealier. It seemed like a time more chaotic, creative and original than today's cultured, manicured, lovelier Melbourne.
The story page on their website leads to even more treasures:
Back when we first started knitting, good ol' Brunnie was the centre of Melbourne's textile industry. Nowadays things have changed, hardly anyone knits in Australia ... gone are the days when we made custom cardigans for the sharpie gangs in 1970's melbourne.
That leads to a link from Perfect Sound Forever about the Sharpie movement in the 70's - another uniquely, oddly melbourne thing.
And reading *that* brings perspective to the current woes about street violence. It seems bad now, but Romper Stomper reminded us of 80s skins beating up Viet kids in Richmond, and the Sharpies reminds us that bogan kids from Broady swarmed the train lines every weekend, itchin for a fight.
Some things remain the same, they just put new clothes on.
I am willing to pay anyone handy and with the tools (wrench and such, I suppose) whos free Friday or Saturday to come have a look at it :)
Otherwise I'll call a plumber, but I thought if anyone needed some spare pin money I'm happy to hire ye!
Also, we need someone tall to replace some light globes :/ Niiiiickkkk....
MOST Australians will be aware of the controversial practice of placing non-citizens without a visa in immigration detention. Some may also be aware that on 14 occasions, the United Nations Human Rights Committee has found that this policy violates Australia's obligations under international human rights law. However, very few appear to be aware that under the Migration Act, a non-citizen who is detained is liable to repay the Commonwealth the costs of his or her detention.
...as at June last year the daily charge for an individual to be held in immigration detention was $125.40, which amounts to $45,144 per year. Given that many non-citizens (including children) have spent years in immigration detention, it is not uncommon for these debts to amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This is an issue that was examined by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration, which in December issued its first report related to its Inquiry into Immigration Detention in Australia. The committee recommended that as a priority, the Australian Government introduce legislation to repeal this regime. Accordingly, in March, the Government introduced the Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Bill 2009 into the Senate. The bill proposes to amend the Migration Act to abolish the liability for detention costs of a non-citizen who is detained in immigration detention, as well as provide for the extinguishment of all outstanding detention debts.
The Opposition has indicated that it intends to oppose the bill's passage.
That this law even exists is disgusting. That anyone would oppose getting rid of it (on what grounds, exactly!?) is beyond words.
http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/20203/t
Tempted to give it a try, not tonight though, it looks a bit fiddly. Maybe a weekend esperimento.
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