Myths and Facts About Midges

Midges are fragile insects of the order of “true flies”. There are two groups, the biting family and the non-biters. In 2016 the ABC reported that the Sunshine Coast Council declared the midge outbreak the worst in fifty years. As a rule, the flies stick to coastal areas but were found as far inland as Nambour and Woombye.

The fascinating facts about biting midges.

The larvae and the midges themselves are a source of food for fish. Some species are the natural enemies of crop pests consuming aphids, spider mites and scale insects.
Biting Midges come out at dawn and dusk. They love humidity. Watering lawns in those time increases favorable conditions for the insects. On still, overcast days with high humidity midges have been known to attack all day long.
Wind speeds of between 6 to 8 kilometres per hour keeps midges away. A 50 cm steel fan produces wind speed of around 18 kilometres per hour.
Midges are small, around 2 mm. In comparison, the average mosquito is 6 mm long.
Baby oil, Dettol, and eucalyptus oil in equal parts is an effective repellent.
Thankfully, the life of the little biters from egg to adult is only 8 weeks.
Midges dislike direct sunlight or high winds. They are not around in winter months.
The flight speed of these biters is less than human walking speed.
Midges are found worldwide except Antartica. In the USA they are called no-see-ums, in Britain punkies. In Mexico they are called ‘hequenes’. Singapore and Australia call them sandflies although not every sandfly is a midge.
Only female biting midges suck blood as they need protein to produce eggs.
You can spot midges when the males swarm to attract females. Salisbury Cathedral in England once had a swarm so thick locals called the fire brigade thinking smoke billowed from the spire.
Midges breed in soft mud of intertidal zones, the areas above water at low tide and underwater at high tide.
Midges are indicators of pollution. When midges are about in tidal zones, it indicates normal oxygen levels in healthy water.
In Scotland midges are found in fens, bogs, and marshes. In 2017 the Daily Mail reported sixty-eight million midges plagued Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.
Midges live between the low and high tide levels in creeks and mangroves. One species lives in leaf litter. For most coastal areas, however, midges do not breed in grass or garden foliage.
Breeding occurs in spring and autumn.
A half moon or neap tide occurs every fifteen days and is prime time for the pesky biters.
Midges have sharp mouth parts. They don’t inject as such but saw a hole in your skin which is why their bites are worse than mosquitoes.
Midges inject saliva into your skin which has an anticoagulant. The body’s immune system springs into action causing the bite to itch.
Tourists are the first to complain about midge bits and wonder how locals can live with them. People who live in midge prone areas develop immunity from repeated exposure.
Household defense can be screens and ceiling or pedestal fans as midges hate wind.
Diethyl toluamide (DEET) is an effective personal barrier for exposed skin. Products such as Aerogard, Rid, Bushman, and Mosi-guard contain DEET. Herbal Armor is a repellant free of DEET.
Organic pyrethrins are effective as well as mosquito coils against attacks. Bifenthrin insecticide can be effective for up to three months but is a toxic chemical and should be handled with caution.

What are carbohydrates and do we need to know?

Carbohydrates? What are they and why should we care?

By A. J. Henry
We’ve all heard the term. It’s talked about in magazines and television interviews. Oprah’s health guru, Dr Oz says they are addictive. Heard alongside words such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and lifestyle programs, Carbohydrates, or refined carbohydrates are mentioned in some form or another. But what are they?

Carbohydrates are the main source of energy for the human body. They provide fuel for the brain and energy for working muscles.

Simple carbs contain just one or two sugars such as fruit. Carbohydrates can be either simple or complex in structure. The sugar used in ice-cream and candy floss is known as “empty calories” because they have none or very few of the vitamins, minerals, and fibre that benefit our bodies.

Complex carbohydrates are universally agreed to be better for us as they are processed more slowly and have good nutrients. Foods such as whole grains, fruit, vegetables, beans, and nuts are examples of complex carbohydrates.

The name comes from the chemical makeup whereby carbohydrates contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen.

Carbohydrates are not created equal.
Carbs are found in most things on this planet we describe as “living”. A tree, for example, uses sucrose, glucose, and fructose as soluble and non-soluble carbohydrate. In the foods humans eat, there are good and bad carbs.

Bad carbs are easy to recognize. All those happy yummy things we loved as kids, muffins, pies, potato chips, fruit juice, milkshakes, and lollies hide a dark side.

In a standard can of sugary soda there is around 24.5 grams of sugar. A big slice of chocolate mud cake has some 35 grams of carbohydrate. Large fries to go will contain 63 grams of carbohydrates. And let’s not forget a large burger value meal with cheese which will provide 1,620 calories or 6,778 kilojoules. But what does it all mean?

The average woman needs to eat about 2,000 calories or 8,368 kilojoules and a man 2,500 calories or 10,460 kilojoules. It means the large burger meal will supply more than half of the daily energy in one meal.

We need carbs for energy or we will die, right?
It is estimated the average adult needs around 1,300 calories per day just to stay upright. To put that into context, walking burns about 4 calories per minute. A one-hour walk along the beach will burn 240 calories. But get this if you sit on a problem and think it through that blob of grey stuff inside your skull and weighing just 2% of your overall weight burns a calorie and a half per minute.

The brain works by giving off signals from neurones which are then taken up by other neurones and these little suckers can take 20% of oxygen and around the same in sugar or glucose. Surly, a crème caramel donut would be welcomed by our brain box.

Why do we crave carbs and feel hungry without them?
According to Dr. Oz carbs are addictive because chemicals go from the gut to the brain and produce dopamine, a hormone that makes you feel happy. The brain releases many chemicals to make us feel good such as endorphins, oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine. Part of the reason for this is survival.

When danger is around the stress hormone cortisol alerts organs in your body to prepare to fight or flight. The happy chemicals are metabolised and we want to feel happy all the time. This leads to our brains searching for new ways to get a happy fix.

On way to do this is to munch into a fresh bread roll made from white flower. The problem in feeding our happy fix is researchers have now found bad carbohydrates cause heart attacks and more likely than not, cancer.

Here’s the kicker.
Humans do not need to eat carbohydrates. Yep! If you were King of the World for a day and banished all carbs to the netherworld, no one would die. In fact, as I have proved to myself, given time, no one would even miss them. It turns out our body after millions of years of evolution which created the most successful mammals on the planet can make its own glucose.

To further pile evidence against the humble carb, carbohydrates do nothing for us. Fats such as fatty fish, olive oil, and avocados along with proteins give the essential elements to build and repair tissue in the body. The Institute of Medicine in 2002 stated in a Dietary Reference Intake Manual that: “The lower limit of dietary carbohydrate compatible with life apparently is zero, provided that adequate amounts of protein and fat are consumed.”

It means that a short-term sugar hit is just that; in the long run does nothing for us.

How does the body make energy and where does it come from?

It all takes place in one of the largest organs in the human body, the liver.

The liver takes everything we eat and converts it into substances we can use. It can store supplies for when cells need them later on. The other important function is to take out toxins and turn them into harmless substances to be evacuated from the body. So when next visiting the bathroom, think of it as taking out the garbage.

A liver performs a host of functions such as getting rid of old blood cells and making proteins vital to blood clotting. But the one function of interest here is creating energy.
When we eat carbs, the liver kicks in to make sure the level of sugar or glucose in our blood stays constant. After a super-sized smoothie, our blood sugar levels would go through the roof if it weren’t for the liver removing sugar and storing it in the form of glycogen. When we are starving, the liver breaks down glycogen and releases the sugar back into the blood.

Liver cells also break down fat and protein by changing amino acids in food so they can make carbohydrates and fats to give us energy.

Although our big brains constantly demand a supply of glucose twenty-four-seven, our bodies can make it in a process called gluconeogenesis.

Why Are More Humans Sporting Beer Bellies and Love Handles?

When we overeat, especially carbs, and do not burn fat through intensive exercise the fat is stored and does not go away until needed. Fat is fundamentally high energy supplies called triglycerides. Fat is stored in the body in special cells called adipocytes. And it’s no surprise to learn the majority of fat cells are in the midriff section of human bodies.

There are also two types of fat: visceral fat which is stored around internal organs, and subcutaneous fat just under the skin resulting in the lumps, bumps and rolls protruding through our clothes. Subcutaneous fat is also the hardest fat to loose.

Junk Food is Not the Only Food Off the Menu

While it is obvious junk food should be eaten on rare occasions, other foods should be struck from our shopping lists. Avoiding breads and Bagels, bananas, dried fruit, starchy vegetables such as corn, potatoes including sweet potatoes, and beets.

For a comprehensive list of foods to avoid, visit Franziska Sprtizler’s health line.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/14-foods-to-avoid-on-low-carb

The Bottom Line

From an article by Christophe Kosinski and Francois R. Jomayvaz.

“A study in 132 severely obese patients (BMI 43 kg/m2) with a high prevalence of type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome showed that participants using a low-carbohydrate diet lost more weight than those using other diets…”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5452247/

This study by Hussein M Dashti, MD PhD FICS FACS,¹ Thazhumpal C Mathew, MSc PhD FRCPath,⁴ Talib Hussein, MB ChB,⁵ Sami K Asfar, MB ChB MD FRCSEd FACS,¹Abdulla Behbahani, MB ChB FRCS FACSI PhD FICS FACS,¹ Mousa A Khoursheed, MB ChB FRCS FICS,¹ Hilal M Al-Sayer, MD PhD FICS FACS,¹ Yousef Y Bo-Abbas, MD FRCPC,² and Naji S Al-Zaid, BSc PhD^3.

Conducted in 2004 into the long term effects of a low carb diet on 83 obese patients over 8, 16, and 24 weeks of treatment found decreased LDL (bad fat) where as the good fat HDL increased significantly. The study concluded “…it is safe to use a ketogenic (low carbohydrate) diet for a longer period of time than previously demonstrated.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2716748/

To Have Selfie Smile Hiding Knife

By A. J. Henry
Parody, lampoon, satire, burlesque, pastiche, take-off, spoof, skit, sendup and ‘Yo momma so fat’ routines are just a few of the words we have to poke fun of each other. And as long as it’s funny, it don’t matter, or does it? Here is a ‘light-hearted’ look at what makes something funny and why we laugh.

Why do we laugh in the first place?
Laughter was first taken seriously by a French doctor back in the eighteen-hundreds. Guillaume Benjamine Amand Duchenne de Boulogne was a neurologist tinkering with the nervous system. With a name like that he must have caused many nervous, tittering introductions. We’ll call him Benny for convenience. Benny was a serious doctor who discovered the benefits of biopsy. He was at the same time nutty.
So what has this got to do with laughter? Well, the good doctor carried a box with him. Clamps attached electrodes to a volunteer’s face. The box was as we would know today a mini facial taser and the jolt of electricity made people grin. It must have been a hoot around Benny’s breakfast table, “Hey, kids, a funny thing happened at the surgery.” Buzzzzzzzzzzz!

What Benny discovered was that humans use a variety of smiles and laughter.
Fast forward a hundred or so years later and a couple of dudes named Gervais and Wilson expanded Benny’s research into laughter and put it on a timeline. Around four million years ago, give or take a few million, the first humans laughed. I mean, really laughed.

While Benny could make people grin with a jolt of electricity, he could never get a real laugh (and there’s no surprises there.) True laughs use mouth muscles called the zygomatic major and eye muscles called orbiculares oculi.

This kind of chuckling is called after one of Benny’s names, the Duchenne smile. Remember that when taken your next selfie. Instead of “Cheese” say “Duchenne”.
Our fur-covered knuckle-dragging ancestors didn’t have much to say to each other because their vocabulary was limited to like zero. They relied on grunts and gesticulations. A rustle in nearby shrubbery signalled something was afoot, a Sabre Toothed Tiger for instance. For early mankind, danger lurked everywhere. When the rustle was one of their own jumping out from the bush, tension was released in the form of laughter. It sent a message that there was no threat. The victim of the practical joke realised they’ve been had and also laughed. Pretty soon, others watching this pair of goons joined in the merriment.

Comedy fulfils a need humans have to be social animals. Straying from societies norms is called ‘benign violations’. What makes us laugh has many theories.

The Theory of Reduced Tension.
Yep, just as the name says, we laugh because we let go nervous tension. One theory supported by Sigmund Freud was put forward by English philosopher, Herbert Spencer. His idea was that energy is built-up by false expectations. It goes someway to explain why getting turned down for a dance at the school prom is hilarious… even though it’s not funny at all.

Superiority Theory.
This one goes back to Aristotle and Plato. Aristotle says (in a roundabout way) we laugh at a homeless drunk struggling to pick up a cigarette butt from the pavement because we feel superior to him—unless you are that drunk who in turn is laughing at his friend whose head is jammed in a trash can which makes him superior to his frined–and you get the picture.

Incongruous Juxtaposition Theory.
This one is a favourite shtick for many comedians. It means that we are told of a situation and expect it to be so, only to find out it is something else. Philosopher Immanuel Kant summed up comedy by saying, “The sudden transformation of a strained situation into nothing.”

It goes someway to explain why when on holiday I caught a fish in my swimming trunks. Why it was swimming in my trunks is anybody’s guess?
We’ve got an idea of why we laugh, but what about those who make us laugh?

What has Paul McCullough, Ray Cameron (Michael McIntyre’s father), Michael Roof, Doodles Weaver, Drake Sather, Micke Dubois, Max Linder, Simon Bent, Andrew Koenig, Ray Combes, Toney Hancock, Freddie Prinz, and Robin Williams got in common? You guessed it; they were all funny. They also committed suicide which is no laughing matter.

Next Act: The Dark Side of Humour.
Sigmund Freud in 1905 quipped, “Humour was the fun-loving id making itself known despite protestations of the conformist superego.” If you’re chortling into a bowl of cereal over that one, your are alone. On the other hand when Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte was on the hustings to garner supporters he tried his hand at comedy. He joked about a girl who was mob raped noting she was so beautiful the town’s mayor should have been given first privilege—no one laughed. It was not funny because it violated normal social behaviour.

While it is true, humour confronts life’s shadowy side, it must fit with ‘benign violations’.
Does this mean that because the stand-up gagster sees the dark side of life, it brings he or she down? It appears this may be the case.

In an eight-part series on CNN called The History of Comedy, it examines the impact of telling jokes and the tie-in between depression and drugs.
One episode entitled Sparks of Madness looks at issues facing the people who make us laugh. It reveals many are themselves troubled. Stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt, who won a Grammy Award for best comedy album, said, “A lot of comedians are people that are very introverted, very shy, very sensitive to humiliation… a little narcissistic, a little damaged.”

Psychologist Daniela Hugelshofer put forward the idea that joking acts as a buffer against hopelessness and depression.

In order for a subject to be funny, it must violate (in the nicest way) the every day. Something normal becomes unsettling and threatening. When Australian comic Carl Barron joked about his childhood, he quotes his father repeating an oft said threat to an unruly child, “Do you want a smack?” Barron highlights the absurdity of the question by mimicking his younger self answering, “Oh, yes. I’d love one!”

Another aspect of standing on stage in the glare of spotlights sees the comedian in the control of a situation in which they would otherwise be one of the crowd. A nobody.
A 1975 study of fifty five funny persons found they were fairly intelligent with higher than average gifts of the gab. It also found a huge eighty percent of them sought therapy.

To read more…

Gas and Capital Hill Flatulence

Questions from the mug punter:

LNG Storage Tanks

Gas and Capital Hill Flatulence

During a conference hosted by The Australian Financial Review, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull expressed his alarm over a report published by the Australian Energy Market Operator. It said the country is running out of gas supply.
How can this happen in a country that is the ninth largest energy producer in the world?
The PM went on to say, “What you need to do is deliver on outcome. What Australians want is a result. They want energy security, energy that is affordable, and we need to meet what we agreed in Paris.”

In November 2016 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) met to hammer out an agenda to limit greenhouse gas emission. Parties to the convention agreed to implement measure to reduce carbon emission to around 55 per cent of current emissions.

With this in mind, Mr. Turnbull went on to say, “If the answer is ‘close down coal and move to gas’. Well, Where’s the gas?” A reasonable question when faced with the reality that over the next seven years aging coal-fired generating plants will shut down. Investors fear the construction of new ones as desirable as sinking money into a black hole—a coal mine no doubt.

Where’s the gas and other questions have to be looked at in the context of the big island we inhabit. Australia has the largest deposits of gas on the planet. A $230 (AUD) billion investment in liquefaction and shipping facilities was pumped into LNG projects several years ago. Natural gas is regarded as a major energy source for the next century and Australia is full of it. It is estimated that the reserve is around 3.921 billion cubic meters. The problem is, we are not alone. The Untied States,

The problem is, we are not alone. The Untied States, Russia, and Qatar also have big reserves. The price of gas is pegged to oil prices and the movement has been mostly south.

Australia is flooding Asia with gas causing a regional glut. The price per gigajoule has collapsed. Japan buys gas (our biggest buyer) at half the price Australian manufacturers pay. The Minister for Energy Josh Frydenburg declared the wholesale price of (our) gas is being pushed up by demand for limited supply. Gas exporters, in attempting to meet contracts signed years ago, are raiding domestic supplies to fulfill contracts. It means the country with the most reserves of natural gas has none left to use at home.

Oil-Gas-supertanker-after-various-repairs
The simple answer to where’s the gas is that we give it away.

If this policy of largesse to the rest of the world is to be continued, then what are the alternatives? Mr. Turnbull in another statement said, “What we don’t want to do is pursue a 50 per cent renewable energy target like that of Bill Shorten and the Labor Party which will drive up energy prices and put at risk our energy security.”

The future electricity price across most of the country is set to rise. Closing down the coal-fired power station at Hazelwood in Victoria has sent the wholesale cost skyward. Energy prices are being driven up by the Coalition Government doing nothing—apart from contemplating where the gas went.

The mug punter queries renewable energy and wonders if it is as expensive and risky as the PM insists. Research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows that, even without a carbon price, wind energy remains 14 per cent cheaper than new coal-fired energy, and a whopping 18 per cent cheaper than new gas. Keep in mind this is in a country with the biggest reserves of gas.

As for its reliability, in the years 2010 to 2013 wind powered 31 per cent of electricity generated in the US. While the ever reliable sun rising at the dawn of each day accounted for 16 per cent of power.

The Coalition’s energy policies appear to be in a quandary. In saying they will honour the Paris accord, coal generation will give way to gas. There is no gas because it is exported. What gas is left for the local economy cost twice as much as what our Asian neighbours pay. Households are paying more for electricity. And yet the Government does not want to go the renewable path as it will drive up costs.

The one constant to be relied on is gas ever increasing on Capital Hill.
canberra

RISE OF THE HUMBLE HAMBURGER

And how it conquered the world

By A. J. Henry

The term ‘fast food’ was coined in the 1950‘s, but the demand to ‘eat on the run’ is older, eight-hundred years earlier.

The warlord Genghis Khan, in leading his nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia to conquer much of Eurasia, had little time to stop and eat. His Mongol warriors fed themselves while riding on horseback, halting only at sunset to sleep. In the 13th century, the trusty steed not only carried them to battle, but also featured on the menu. Marco Polo observed one pony could feed 100 men for a day. The cavalrymen placed slices of raw meat under their saddles. Constant pounding beneath the weight of the rider broke down connective tissue and fat to resemble ground beef. This combined with heat from the animal resulted in a crude, if somewhat hairy, patty.

Germans were among the first to recognize the potential of this new form of processed meat. Adding capers and onion enhanced the flavor and the Hamburg sausage appeared in amusement parks, fair, or sold by street vendors.

The name hamburger (which has nothing in common with meat from the thigh of hogs) originated in the European port of Hamburg. Masses of European migrants sailed the Elbe to escape the revolutions of 1848. The first port in the Trans-Atlantic crossing was New York. The new arrivals demanded restaurants serve food that reminded them of home. Minced beef, lightly salted, and mostly raw was mixed with onions and bread crumbs served in a bowl. Called ‘Hamburg Style American Fillet’ the dish was a hit with emigres.

The style of burger eaten today came into popularity around 1885. Who created it first is unknown. A few contenders come to the forefront.

Charlie Nagreen (1870-1951) devised a way of flattening ground steak and dishing it up between slices of bread. Nagreen became known as Hamburger Charlie. A customer in Fletcher Dans restaurant was in too much of a hurry to stop and eat. Old Dave, as Danes was known, served the impatient diner with a beef patty between Texas Toast (bread sliced double the thickness of a regular sliced loaf). Over in Europe, Otto Kuasw was frying beef patties in butter served with egg between toasted buns. The 1891 Hamburg restaurant advertised the meal as Deutsches Beefsteak.

Industrialized society saw wide-ranging change in the early 1900‘s. Mass produced affordable food, that could be eaten outside the family home, by the working class, while on the move, were in demand.

Walter Anderson opened the first White Castle restaurant in Wichita, Kansas. His cooking method used hygienic spatulas to turn beef steaks over a flaming grill. White Castle was also the first to serve burgers wrapped in paper inside a carton. In 1954 located alongside the bustling Route 66 in San Bernardino, the McDonald brothers opened a restaurant making hot dogs and hamburgers in the fastest time possible. Their mascot was a hamburger faced chef called ‘Speedee’.

Nineteen-sixty saw American society fall in love with automobiles. Hamburgers sold at drive-in theaters were delivered by waiters called carhops. The newly created McDonald franchise had an updated mascot: a clown named Ronald McDonald. Drive through service was the new initiative whereby customers no longer needed to leave their cars. Cars became the new dining rooms. So popular were burgers with Americans in the sixties, average consumption soared to three burgers per head per week.

Meanwhile in Japan, US service personnel introduced burgers to the Japanese. In a country known for its cuisine, variations were created; fish, rice, and shrimp burgers were added to the menu. The oddest adaptation to come out of Japan is the ‘Wild Out’ burger which does away with buns altogether having the contents held between two slabs of ground beef. And yes, it is held and eaten the same way as a regular burger. Not to be outdone, a London restaurant took three weeks to create a wagyu beef (Japanese name for cow) and gold leaf lobster burger costing eleven-thousand British pounds–possibly the most expensive in the world.

According to reference.com, McDonald’s has 33,000 restaurants worldwide including 200 in China. That equates to roughly 225 million hamburgers sold every year.

While attempting to conquer Eurasia, the Mongol invader’s fluky creation for ground meat became the underlying basis for the humble hamburger. A cheap quickly cooked meal that conquered appetites of the world.

The Art of (not) Writing a Standout College Application

By A. J. Henry

In 2016 the Chief Executive, Mary Curnock Cook of the UK based Universities and Colleges Admission Service released a profile of opening lines by applicants for college admission. The candidates were asked to write the reasons for continuing further education; what interests spurred them to make the decision. The opening lines revealed an overuse of time-worn platitudes and a general lack of originality.

The challenge is in taking hackneyed phrases and adding novelty following the Edward George Bulwer-Lytton influence.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (for those who have never heard of him) is somewhat infamously remembered for the opening lines to his novel ‘Paul Clifford’ published in 1830: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is an annual competition for writers to submit their best, miserable opening lines.
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/index.html

Here are the top five college admission statements written in the Bulwer-Lytton style.

1. From a young age I have been fascinated by…bones, especially the ones in a museum because even though they look dry and stink a bit, they can tell us what happened in the old world of humans before printer inks came in cartridges, and I have observed in films about archaeological sites such as Jurassic Park where women’s shorts look sexier than ones found in shopping centres, and this must tell us a lot as to how they managed to get those big stones up so high.

2. For as long as I can remember I have… wanted a degree in Hospitality Management. I believe it will give people skills as a team leader and motivate the waiting staff you see in restaurants waiting round doing nothing, as well as filling the bowl next to the register with packets of mints while the golden cat with swinging paw is trashed because only a person with a degree would know to do that.

3. I am applying for this course because… Art History is significant in understanding visual communication, especially in discerning tattoos on women’s legs, which are highly influenced by the Renaissance period, and although tattoo art is understood to enhance attractive individuals, an overweight tyre technician smelling of body odour and Yeeros wanting a mandala on his corpulent hairy butt may be modernism, but I think it is disgusting.

4. I have always been interested in… drama because it has been around for 2000 years and I want to be a Drama major because I’m sick of being a Dram queen, and this course will be challenging, especially as actors scare me and I can’t find a word for it so I made one up: artifex scaenicusphobia.

5. Throughout my life I have always enjoyed… wondering what all those strange things are on the ground until I discovered coprolites, it was then I wanted to be Paleontologist to recognize the spirals and annular marking, or undigested food fragments in the fossilized fecal remains, I mean you wouldn’t want to accidentally tread on one.

Cycling For Health and The Unexpected

Let’s establish from the outset my attitude to exercise—I don’t like it. Sure, there are those who get a thrill from it, a rush of endorphins to make them feel good for the rest of the day, but my drive for exercising is that if I don’t, I will die, or get fat—whichever comes first.

It can also be said that a cardiovascular workout is not without danger.

My bicycle had been neglected sitting as it did on the patio. Tires were deflated from lack of interest. Last maintenance on the old two-wheeler was, let me see, oh, yeah, never. In a moment of uncharacteristic exuberance, I upended the bike for overdue TLC. After tediously cleaning road grime from the gears and repacking bearings with grease, I put the bicycle back on the patio for day one of new found health.

Years ago, the suburb in which I live was once a mining quarry. Cavernous pits were left after excavating sand for construction work. The pits filled with water and are now lakes around which the suburb is built. Pathways skirt the lakes, some twenty-three kilometers all up. Cycling along the pathways is a great way to do things not liked, such as physical activity. For one, there is not the ever-present threat from cars. Cars and cycling are fraught with perils. Pedaling along a path beside a lake. What harm could there be in that?

Riding a bicycle is easier than jogging. Constant pounding on the pavement is high impact. It gives me a headache, not to mention swollen ankles. Pushing pedals build leg muscles and is easy when compared to other sports. Easy that is until finding that unexpected hill. Cycling allows you to discover hills you never noticed in the car. By far, the best thing about cycling for strength and stamina is the choice. You can choose easy or intense. Today I decided on the first option.

Not long into my ride, a snake slithered across my path—physical description: long and brownish, classification Pseudonaja ( not that the scientific classification was uppermost in my mind at the time. I Googled it when safely back inside my house). Snakes are common in the area. Almost everyone in Australia has encountered a snake at some time. A small number get bitten, mostly on hands and legs. The little knowledge I have of the reptile is their ability to sense vibrations. A human stomping along a path is felt by the snake long before the trekker spots it. Soft tires along a smooth track are something unexpected. And then there’s that other thing, a minor but not insignificant detail—long and brownish snakes are deadly.

I swerved to dodge the serpent.

The snake, however, was less than impressed—or grateful. As I passed it leaped up and bit the back of my shirt. I glimpsed the creature in my shadow as I sped away fleeing from the thing that now clung to my back like a scene from a horror movie.

Nothing prepared me for leaping snakes at fast moving bicycles—as it seems, not fast enough. Some would suggest fleeing a slithering reptile the best way to get into an aerobic heart zone. Fortunately, the snake dropped off and I avoided an ugly showdown. Me and Rattlesnake Jake—okay, it wasn’t the Mojave Desert but a suburban walking track—it could have been ugly just the same. I continued riding at a grandmotherly pace.

Dimmer, Dimmer Little Star

alien Astronomers in the months past have been beside themselves over the discovery of a star with a name resembling a phone number having erratic flickering. I didn’t think much of the news as I thought stars were meant to twinkle. Our kids are taught from an early age of stars twinkling and sing about it in a well-worn nursery rhyme. The star named KIC 8462852 is a mere 1480 light years from Earth. Not only does the star feature a boring name, instead of the more original Brobdingnagian Plasma Bubble 9, it has baffled scientists into spending lone nights twirling knobs on telescopes in bewilderment.

When a scientist suggested it was a Dyson Sphere, all agreed it must be a credible explanation. A Dyson Sphere has nothing whatsoever to do with cyclonic vacuum cleaners or Air Blades invented by James Dyson and found in public bathrooms, but rather the brainchild of Olaf Stapledon who created the concept in his 1937 novel ‘Star Maker’. As with many imagined creations, Freeman Dyson in the 1960’s decided the idea of a megastructure encircling a star to harvest the star’s energy is doable. The hypothetical megastructure may take many forms such as Dyson swarms, satellites in the stars orbit, or a more sci-fi image of a Dyson shell engineered from solid material encapsulating the star. An alien megastructure similar to the Death Star in Return of the Jedi (1983) sitting out there in space and feeding on the star’s energy could explain why the star lost almost twenty percent of its brightness since first observed. Disappointingly, I dialled the star’s name 543, 8462, 852 hoping to connect with an oriental soup kitchen only got a recorded message telling me, ‘Your call could not be connected, please try again’.

The star attracted the attention of boffins manning NASA’s Kepler space telescope and became excited, as much as anyone can be enthused after staring for years into the void of outer space, by the sudden dimming of KIC 8462852. The prospect stumbling upon an advanced civilization with technology bigger than Donald Trump’s hair sweep was exciting.

The SETI institute has been the ‘permanent ears’ to listen for alien signals and extraterrestrial intelligence for the past thirty years. Scientists pondered on whether the alien structure would fire laser pulses directed at Earth. Laser beams immediately conjure images of the walking aliens destroying mankind as they did in H. G. Wells’ War of the World. A laser pulse is different to a continuous laser beam. The record for the shortest laser pulse is four femtoseconds. I have no idea what it means but I will try to work femtosecond into future phone conversations from call centres.

Recent press releases from NASA has quashed the idea of intelligent beings building a superstructure around the star and believe the curious dimming of light is due to natural phenomena, asteroids and such. Apart from which, a signal from a distance of 1480 light years from earth to arrive today, would have been sent just after the fall of the Roman Empire. I like to think the aliens, being intelligent life forms, got sick of waiting for a reply and went home.

Not Tim Winton

Let’s be absolutely clear that the person pictured above is not Tim Winton but someone who bears an uncanny likeness to him.

Tim Winton the author of Dirt Music, of which I am a third of the way through copying by hand, writing with my left hand, would not wear a false moustache and Johnny Depp reading glasses, even if those items appear to be added by some tacky little app on a smart- phone. The person in the photo coincidently looking like the great author is probably not aware of the resemblance. Just as the real Tim Winton would not be aware that I own a t-shirt exactly like the one in the picture of someone who is not Tim Winton.

To make things absolutely clear, sixty tweets of this same picture with the caption Not Tim Winton were tweeted since 2015 and should put to bed once and for all any notion that this is Tim Winton in disguise. Further proof that this imposter pictured above is not the esteemed writer is in the power band around his right wrist. Anyone, and especially one with the acute observational powers of an award-winning author, would know that a piece of micro fibre plastic with a pissy bit of magnet would do no more than create a rash, and would not wear one.

The person in the photo who is not Tim Winton has probably never heard of Luther Fox and believes dirt music is a tune miners hum as they blast out canyons of rubble in the Western Australian landscape.

It would not be unreasonable to assume that the Twitter page set up by the person using a picture of Tim Winton and adding false face furniture to look a bit like DS George Toolan in A Touch of Frost, except with more hair, is Not Tim Winton and has nothing to do with him and just being a bloody nuisance.

Ten Reasons Why Politicians are Scary

If you don’t think the smiling face printed on a sheet of Corflute and hung from a front yard fence is scary, think again. Chances are that smiling face is the effulgent kisser of a politician and it is indeed spooky.

Politicians do not set out to be purposely scary– most are ordinary people in everyday relationships facing everyday concerns like most citizens. It is the system that turns them into Hannibal Lecter–okay, perhaps that is over the top, but stay with me on this one– or Baby Jan Hudson with the sugary appeal of Willy Wonka. Your average politician can be as unsettling as a blind date with Norman Bates in an empty tea room off the main road. The adversary system of getting to the top in government forces them to act, and act in a very creepy way all in the respectful manner of diplomacy.

The techniques candidates are coached in to get ahead in the system of government turns a nice person into a monster, albeit a smiling, cheerful one, and is part of political strategy. Just as a football trainer gets his or her players to bulk up through weight training and toughen up by ignoring the pain barrier in endurance workouts, so must the representatives toughen their minds to eradicate weaknesses such as compassion and empathy and tune into their disturbing, nightmarish traits.

The following are ten key techniques to developing a formidable persona.

1. Discrediting: Sometimes called the ad hominem argument is a technique where research is done on an opponent’s history to discover indiscretions like that time as a uni student getting busted for a nudie run in the car park.

2. Fear Mongering: Is essential in garnering the opinion of the voting public to scare the bedevil out of them first. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it makes people jump at noises outside their window.

3. Heroism: Boasting about past successes is a technique for success. If that fails, get a selfie with the latest sporting sensation or a six-week-old puppy.

4. Lying: Universally accepted as an essential skill in the tool box of creepy behaviour– lying is at its best when pointing out that the opposition is liars… bigger liars than you are.

5. Obstructionism: Delaying tactics is the deliberate preventing of a process for no other reason than to show you can.

6. Filibuster: A truly frightening politician can summon the power of rhetoric to bang on ad nauseam until the house is comatose to prevent the passage of, or a vote on a bill.

7. Passing the buck: No candidate of a political persuasion can hope for success if they accept responsibility, regardless of their guilt. To become spine-chillingly good in the service of the public you must believe someone else is to blame.

8. Placating: Is a must-have skill in all public and televised debating whereby the audience is singled out as being clever, smart, or just damn sexy. It is a most unnerving skill when used properly—that is, your opponent’s arguments suggest the audience is a bunch of low-life jug-heads.

9 Smear Campaign: employs the technique of logic conflation. It means that complicated notions and ideas are merged into thirty-second sound bites or simply one or two words; climate change science becomes ‘enmeshed corruption’, civil rights becomes ‘leftwing ideology’, and a complete screw-up by a government minister is reworded as ‘favourable spin’.

10. Image: the public persona as seen in the media. The smiling face printed on rigid plastic sheets and hung on star posts outside polling booths is not the result of a casual happy-snap, but hours of tweaking in photo-manipulating software to reduce jowls, lightening eye-bags, remove grey hair and whiten teeth. To use an unaltered image would be in total disregard of political strategy and would require further training in the ten points to success, or how to be frighteningly nice in the political arena.