Pretty Girl...

Nick and I have been invited to a dear friend's 'Farewell To the 30s' birthday party to mark the start of his fourth decade.

The invitation said fancy dress, so we thought it would be appropriate to simply go as ourselves.

To get you in the mood here are three cocktails - just be sure to mix them as Nicky directs:

Manhattan
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
2 1/2 oz bourbon whiskey
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 maraschino cherry
1 twist orange peel
Combine the vermouth, bourbon whiskey, and bitters with 2 - 3 ice cubes in a mixing glass. Shake to foxtrot rhythm. Place the cherry in a chilled cocktail glass and strain the whiskey mixture over the cherry. Rub the cut edge of the orange peel over the rim of the glass and twist it over the drink to release the oils but don't drop it in.

Bronx
2 oz Gin
1/2 oz Orange Juice
1/2 oz Dry Vermouth
1/2 oz Sweet Vermouth
Shake (to a two-step beat) all the ingredients in a shaker with ice and strain into a cocktail glass

Martini
1 1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz dry vermouth
Add ice cubes and shake to waltz time. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an olive or a twist of lemon.

-- Nora

Eee, When I Were A Lad...

There's an obesity epidemic among kids because they eat too much junk food and watch too much TV, right?

Wrong:

"If you look at the decline in walking and cycling among children it is far more dramatic than any changes in TV watching trends. The average length of commute to school has doubled in the last 20 years. That is probably a function of educational policy."

The researchers also carried out a review of around 50 previous studies on the relationship between the amount of television watched by children and physical activity. "We found the association is close to zero," Prof Biddle said.

The researchers concluded lack of exercise rather than diet was to blame for the rising childhood obesity levels in Britain.

We'll drink to that. Here's a Big Fluffy Zombie.

Mix, drink, repeat...

-- Nick and Nora

Shock! Journalist Twists Truth.

What is it about so many journalists that they can't leave a story to stand on its own merits?

Sometimes it's just the juvenile belief that 'beating it up' will make a good story better, although it usually only makes a good story hysterical and one does not mean funny.

Other times, however, it's about supporting the journalist's and media outlet's biases, as evidenced last weekend by the astonished reporters of the Sydney Daily Telegraph and again this weekend by another employee of the same journal.

The behaviour of Liberal NSW Senator Bill Heffernan at a courtyard press conference called by Labor Senator Stephen Conroy was reported for what it was in The West Australian newspaper - a politically opportunistic bit of heckling at what was little more than a doorstop conference.

But that wasn't enough for the Daily Telegraph, which, in a poorly written and subbed piece, reports:

PM's right hand man asks: what's email?
By Nicolette Burke

PRIME Minister John Howard's right hand man yesterday admitted he was Internet luddite who had never sent an email in his life.

Let's look at that again:

PM's right hand man (He isn't - the story's final paragraph states "...Senator Heffernan... is seen on some matters as an agent for Prime Minister John Howard.)
asks: what's email? (He didn't - he said: "I've never sent an email in my life.")

Further, journalist Burke said Heffernan:

...admitted he was Internet luddite...

He does no such thing. The definition of 'luddite' is, according to the American Heritage Dictionary at dictionary.com:

1. Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment. 2. One who opposes technical or technological change.

At no time did Heffernan say he opposes the Internet, much less advocate destroying it. He simply made a juvenile remark which appears to place him among the many people who've never used email - a group that includes many older professionals.

Burke's distortion and ridicule play to the same self-interested audience as Federal Labor with their announcement this week of 'Broadband for everyone!' It's a bread and circuses promise, with the ability to rapidly download the latest movie trailer a trade-off for the economic disaster that will befall Australia within 12 months of the election of a Federal Labor Government.

-- Nick

Gareth Hunt

Sad to note the passing of Gareth Hunt, Mike Gambit of The New Avengers.

May I suggest a toast to the man who courted Purdey for two years - but never scored - with a Sparkling Hunt Cocktail.

-- Nick

Good Riddance

Building workers at the offices of Fine Art Logistics Ltd might not know much about art but they know crap when they see see it:

(Hole And Vessel II - valued at £350,000) ... was probably thrown in a skip by mistake during building work at the offices of Fine Art Logistics Ltd, according to a judge at the High Court... The judge held that the work was probably destroyed at a waste transfer station.

It wasn't just the builders who thought it was rubbish:

Refering to the lost work, Mr Justice Teare said: "It is not possible for me to describe it. One expert described it as sensuous and sexy, the other as clumsy and somewhat absurd."

-- Nick

Clause Clawed

Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles reports:

FOUR years after B-movie Lana Clarkson (I can't find that movie title in the Internet Movie Database) was found shot dead at his LA mansion (isn't Lana a female name?), legendary rock producer Phil Spector (oh, is he is the subject of 'his'?) goes on trial for her murder (ah, Lana was a female!).

Oh, well. They're not journalists because they're bright.

Neither, apparently, are Whitcomb's sub-editors. The headline reads:

Rock legend's murder trial to begin

Wait a minute - was Spector the one who was murdered?

It's all very confusing.

-- Nick

It's Hotter In The Australian

It was a warm last three months in the Northern Hemisphere apparently but the story got even hotter by the time it reached The Australian newspaper two and a half hours later.


Agence France Presse's wire story reported the tale as 'adding fire to global warming concerns' while The Australian's edit was 'fuelling further fears of global warming' and, in effect, both agreed that global warming was to blame.

But AFP allowed the mitigation of El Nino and noted:

...El Nino rapidly weakened in February, as ocean temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific cooled more than 0.3C and were near average for the month.

However, The Australian expunged all mention of El Nino and hysterically pronounced:

...a review of computer climate models suggested that global warming could transform the North Pole into an ice-free expanse of open ocean at the end of each summer by 2100.

Of course, it's all bull.

Not only does NOAA - America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - know only too well where it's funding is coming from but cherry picking periods of time:

(Headline:) Earth bakes in hottest quarter on record

...is a guaranteed way of bending statistics to your desired point of view. Since when was December-February a 'quarter' in the common understanding of the term?

-- Nick

Reporters Astonished

More Labor bias from the media:

Doleful Debnam admits he can't win NSW election
By Simon Benson and Kate Sikora

PETER Debnam has thrown in the towel with just seven days to go with an astonishing admission that his party won't win.

Debnam has done no such thing. What he actually said was:

"If the Galaxy poll is correct, then Labor will win next week's election and you will get more of the same for another four years," he said. "This election in a week's time will be your only chance until 2011 to tell Labor what you think of them. If the polls are right and Labor win the election, this will be a very bad result for the people of NSW."

Such confabulations are part of the wishful thinking aspects of malignant narcissism rampant among left wing 'thinkers'.

-- Nick

Far Away In Another Part Of Town

Ray Chesterton makes a point about 'reality deprived' celebrities:

The attraction criminals have for celebrities has long been debated without a satisfactory answer being delivered. One theory is celebrities living in an artificial world of film-making, or other cocooned environments, cannot recognise the danger in thrill-seeking with the notorious.

It is sanitised association. Close enough to shake hands. Detached enough to feel safe. It's similar to a condition known as "reality deprivation syndrome", which causes insulated celebrities to become involved in political causes. Actor Martin Sheen is a serious case, often getting arrested at anti-war rallies and such.

... and highlights how their detachment from the real world is viewed by those they celebrate:

Acclaimed musician Leonard Bernstein, the genius behind West Side Story, once staged a fundraising cocktail party in his penthouse apartment for the Black Panthers, a murderous radical group in the US in the 1960s. Film director Otto Preminger also supported the Panthers, who violently murdered police and each other before fading away in the 1970s. The Panthers repaid the generosity of Jewish Bernstein and Preminger by calling them "kosher Zionist racist pigs".

Other famous self-deluding mugs include Bob 'Hurricane' Dylan, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Mike Farrell, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Jamie Foxx and Bonnie Raitt, and most of the media.

-- Nick

This Desolate Shore

A predictable reaction from the Religion of Peace:

On Friday, a man had telephoned Allan Lotfizadeh, the CDP candidate for the western Sydney electorate of Auburn, and said: "You Christian pig. You are dead", Mr Nile said. Yesterday, Mr Nile said, a man approached a CDP election worker at Granville and asked her where he (Mr Nile) lived, and what he had against Muslims. She had then said: "Tell Fred Nile I am going to act out my faith on him".

-- Nick

Challenge To Modern Religion

Britain's Channel 4 points out the obvious.

(Warning: It's even longer.)

-- Nick

Update: Religious fanatics threaten heretics.

History Lessons

Who said history doesn't repeat?

(Warning: it's long)

-- Nora

Don't They Know There's An Epidemic On?

News Limited reports:

AN overwhelming majority of Australians see themselves as overweight and say the way body image is portrayed in the media has a significant impact on the way they see themselves... The findings are based on answers from more than 5500 people who responded to a survey on NEWS.com.au in February.

It could be the result of reading too many News Limited stories telling them they're fat.

Just like Tom Cruise.

-- Nick

What Can You Expect From The Mentally Disturbed?

How hilarious that the Poofs On Parade in Sydney last night mounted a float (pun unintended) in support of the release of Islamic convert and self-confessed Australian jihadist David Hicks.

As Tim Blair reports:

A reminder, on the night of Sydney’s gay and lesbian Mardi Gras, of how a recently-removed government once treated its non-breeder community:

While the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, it regularly executed homosexuals. Islamic jurists in Kabul and Kandahar only differed on the method of killing. One group of scholars believed the condemned should be taken to the top of the highest building in the city and hurled to their deaths, while others advocated placing them in a pit next to a wall which was to be toppled on them, so that they are buried alive.

Thus homosexuals call for the release of one who would kill them for being homosexual.

The parade also included its annual calls to be rid of Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, further demonstrating the homosexual community's inability to see further down the track than their next orgasm or 'rights breakthrough'.

The fact is that a Liberal Government, for all its 'oppression' of homosexuals, offers them the best long term chance they have to not be 'hurled to their deaths' or crushed by walls.

A Labor Government - the party of which imported radical Islam to bolster its own political ambitions in various Australian electorates - would go soft on these same Islamists and ensure Australia follows the French path towards '2030, then we (Muslims) take over'.

A homosexual vote for John Howard is a vote to stay alive.

What strange bed fellows.

-- Nick

Winter Wonderland

Ah, the change of the seasons - the shrill call of a referee's whistle, the brisk, cold breeze across the try line - nothing heralds the approach of winter like the prospect of football and hot tofu.

-- Nora

J'Accuse

Having trouble getting your unpopular waterfront development approved by the local council? Just point the finger and accuse your opponents of homophobia:

...the couple says (the dispute) has included a gay hate campaign against them... An opponent of the development, local councillor Rodney Cooper, denied he was homophobic, telling ABC Radio he feared the development would turn Penguin into "another carbon copy of many places down the southeast border of Australia now".

By the way, when did you stop beating your wife?

-- Nick

Update: More bullying fails:

A TRIBUNAL has cited free speech in dismissing a complaint that broadcaster John Laws vilified homosexuals. The complaint was made by gay rights activist Gary Burns after Laws called US Queer Eye For the Straight Guy star Carson Kressley a “pillow biter” and “pompous little pansy prig” during a show in 2004.