Oz in 30 seconds
GetUp! Claims to be an independent, nonprofit, Australian community organisation “working to re-invigorate Australian democracy through wider participation and direct campaigning”. They also claim to have a membership of more than 180,000 – which is more members than all Australian political parties combined.
Oz in 30 seconds is a competition that was open to everyone to create a 30 second political ad, which highlights an important issue for the 2007 federal election. The ad should be memorable, informative, passionate and creative.
The winning entry will be screened on national, prime time television, in the period leading up to the 2007 Australian federal election.
Voting is underway with just over a week left (it ends on July 25).
The best 8 will be determined by publici voting, another 2 will be the “most viewed” videos.
A celebrity judging panel will make the hard decisions between the top 10 shortlist. All finalists will be invited to a gala awards night at the Sydney Opera House, August 1, 2007.
Some are atrocious – for an example, type in “liar liar pants on fire” and watch that video.
Another shocker is “I have a dream”
However, there are some that show talent and a clear, well-constructed message – search for “oil”. Another quirky one is “liagra” with the tagline, how long can john howard keep it up.
Cosmic conspiricies
European site with every conspiracy known to human kind:
There are UFOs, Jesus appearing in windows, NASA photographing ET – everything you need to give you nightmares or giggles.
There’s an Aussie UFO story: On the evening of 20th January, 1988, Sean Knowles was driving his mother, Faye, brothers Patrick and Wayne and the families two pet dogs across Australia’s Nullarbor Plain to stay with family in Melbourne. While heading east of Perth to Mundrabilla along the
at about 1.30 a.m., the car’s radio suddenly began to malfunction. At 1.45 a.m. Sean spotted what he presumed to be a truck with only one headlight working up ahead.
As it approached, however, he could see that there was a strange ball of light hovering above the truck, which was now driving erratically on the wrong side of the road. Realizing he was in danger of a collision, Sean quickly swerved narrowly missing the wayward truck.
Not long after, another car passed the Knowles’, with what appeared to be the same bright light travelling above it. Perplexed, Sean turned the car around to follow the glowing object, but before long, the ball of light had doubled back again and was, this time, in pursuit of Sean’s car. Everyone in the car was thrown into a state of panic as Faye and the children screamed at Sean to get out of there fast. Sean tried to turn the car once more, but it was to late, the object had already caught them up and landed with a thump on top of the car.
Bright beams of light filled the inside of the car. Patrick, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, felt as if his ‘brains were being sucked out of his head’. The dogs were going crazy and everyone in the car thought they were going to die. What Sean thought initially was the movement of the car going forward at 200kmph, was in fact the car being drawn up into the air by the object. Faye, who was in the back seat, opened the window and actually touch the object. She felt something which was warm and spongy, like some sort of suction pad. Recoiling violently, she became hysterical and began to scream. When she pulled her hand back in, it was red, swollen and cold. Patrick, in the front seat, rolled his window down only to engulf the inside of the car with a black, ash-like substance and a smell which smelt like ‘decomposing bodies’.
The family’s voices became distorted, sounding as if they were talking in slow motion, and their hair stood on end. Then, suddenly, the car dropped back down to the ground, bursting one of the rear tyres. It was not until this point that Sean realised the car had been in the air. After regaining control of the vehicle, Sean managed to stop the car, enabling the family to exit the car and run for cover in some nearby bushes.
They watched petrified as the object, which resembled ‘an egg in a cup’ hovered above them. Emitting an electrical humming sound, the craft circled around in the sky above while beaming a searchlight down on to the ground, as if looking for them. Eventually, to their relief, the craft disappeared. For around 15 minutes afterwards, their voices remained distorted while they desperately tried to change the tyre. Then to their horror and surprise, the craft returned.
The family quickly jumped into the car and drove towards the Mundrabilla Roadhouse, some 40km away, as this was the closest inhabited building to them. In Sean’s frantic attempt to get to the Roadhouse, they clipped a kangaroo on the way, badly denting the car, but this didn’t stop them driving at a frantic pace until the service station was in sight. It was at this point that the craft disappeared out of site. On arrival at the Mundrabilla Roadhouse, the family, visibly shaken, reported their encounter to two truck drivers. An attendant at the station said ‘I thought at first they were trying to be funny, they were excited and scared. When I got near to the car, I noticed an odour which smelt similar to hot insulation’. Faye’s hand was still swollen and the dogs had began to lose clumps of hair.
The site claims: On September 11th 2001, BBC World reported at 4:57pm Eastern Time that World Trade Center Buiding 7 had collapsed – 23 minutes before it actually did.
They have footage where the building is still seen in background.
“Building Seven was 47 storeys, modern in design with structural steel throughout, yet symmetrically collapsed in 6.5 seconds, was someone leaking information? No steel framed skyscraper has ever collapsed due to fire, before or after 9/11, most people who find out about WTC7, believe it was brought down by a controlled demolition, even demolition experts agree.”
And in Just added: Film Evidence That Proves NASA Airbrushed Out Moon Anomalies.
Microwave Cam
There are a lot of sites that describe microwave oven experiments. Some only describe the effects of microwaving various objects. Some sites may have before and after pictures and there are many videos out there too, but the videos usually suffer from poor focus as the autofocus commonly tries to focus on the door mesh instead of the items in the microwave compartment.
This site, though, actually gets a camera front row, centre, to give you a clear picture of what goes on in that mysteriously dangerous world of tame radiation.
Some of the most fascinating videos of items being nuked include:
-
CD – a mini lightning show takes place
-
Gold leaf – Gold leaf produces a similar light show to what a CD creates. This is a bit friendlier to handle than microwaving a CD though. CDs often start to smolder and start to burn, but this gold leaf gives off a good light show and doesn’t burn unless it shrivels into a small clump.
Kidzpage
On a rainy day during the school holidays its fun to play games online so heres a rainy day site just for the kids.
You can play games but also print games and colouring pages, try some puzzles and check out the clip art. There are hundreds of free online games for kids to play
In the online game section, there are simple but entertaining word search games, where you drag your mouse over the grid full of letters to spell words on the search list.
The logic puzzle is a great test for older primary school children. It involves what used to be called “reading comprehension”. You read a passage then complete a puzzle with the right answers.
Classic Short Stories
“Classic Short Stories” is a great, free online resource that offers readers a wonderful selection of short stories and light prose.
The Web site is dedicated to the short story and to those interested in reading light prose.
The webmaster laments that fewer and fewer people these days read short stories and says this is unfortunate–so few will ever experience the joy that reading such fine work can give.
The goal of this site is to give a nice cross section of short stories in the hope that these short stories will excite these people into rediscovering this excellent source of entertainment.
Search the website to find great reads from the likes of Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas, Poe, Mark Twain, and other legendary authors.
Twain’s “Burlesque Biography” is very dry and witty. It is his family’s biography with a little bit of autobiography in it:
”It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry down too close to your own time–it is safest to speak only vaguely of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I now do. I was born without teeth–and there Richard III had the advantage of me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest. But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have been a felicitous thing for the reading public. How does it strike you?”