Tuesday 19 August 2008

Clarence Valley artist wins NSW Indigenous Arts Fellowship

Her Seven Spirits art exhibition will be touring parts of Canada and the USA from September through to November this year.

Alison has her own website at http://www.indigenousinteriors.com.au

Her work is also displayed at the Visual Arts Network.

Painting displayed here is Echo of Instinct, 2007 (acrylic on canvas)

Whatever happened to Julia Whatsaname?

I'm finding it hard these days to find the real Julia Gillard under the inconsequential bumph on education that is piling up in the media.
Where did that feisty fighter go? Was she squashed under the weight of the Rudd camp's expectations that Deputy PMs should be rarely seen and never heard?
Speak up, Julia - a lot of us wouldn't mind a ginger sheila as prime minister after the stairway to Kevin collapses.

Monday 18 August 2008

"Moggy Musings" [Archived material from Boy the Wonder Cat]

A weighty musing:
According to ABC News 33% of all cats and 41% of all dogs in Australia are overweight. I can purr with satisfaction because I am the same svelte shape I have been for the last ten years or so. Of course it is a different matter for my little canine friend, Veronica Lake - she has a very noticeable middle-aged spread. More walkies is the way to a long life, Veronica!
A power of the press musing:
On Friday 13th June The Daily Examiner ran a story about a three-legged female three year old Staffy-cross named Missy who had run off after being hit by a car in South Grafton. A week later Missy was recognised by an Examiner reader and reunited with her owner. A happy ending all round.
An if pets could vote musing:
A recent AP-Yahoo! News poll found that pet owners favour McCain over Obama 42 percent to 37 percent, with dog owners particularly in McCain's corner.
Wonder what their pets think?
http://news.yahoo.com/page/election-2008-political-pulse-pets-and-politics;_ylt=Ap5H5fOjo.KDBuOPBCDKTHOs0NUE
A fly away home musing:
Diesel the Northern Giant Petrel rescued on Wooli beach at the end of May, buddied with another petrel by the Australian Seabird Rescue (Ballina), has been released back into the wild.
Congratulations to rescuers Erin Brady and Kasia Stack for alerting Clarence Valley Wires to Diesel's plight.

It's official according to the Parliamentary Library- the Internet didn't play a big part in the 2007 Australian federal election

According to the an Australian Parliamentary Library research paper, candidates standing at the November 2007 federal election did not make much use of the Internet during their electoral campaigns.

The Australian Centre for Public Communication at UTS reported that most candidates either did not use the Internet at all, or else used it in a very limited way. Within four days of polling day, one-third of Commonwealth MPs had not created a personal website, 90 per cent did not have a MySpace page and only a handful (6.6 per cent) had a blog. Fewer than six per cent had a Facebook site, a podcast or had posted a least one video on YouTube.[88] It was also noted that the most successful and innovative postings were those of bloggers and election commentators, such as Antony Green of the ABC.[89] All of which suggests that use of the Net by politicians has some distance to go before it is a major influence on electoral outcomes in Australia.

The research paper appears to wonder just how much new media might have affected the election outcome, but doesn't address the fact that many under 40s are now getting their political news from online news sites and blogs, if U.S. Pew Foundation survey results can be extrapolated to Australia.

Nor does it take into account the fact that traditional media in Australia is taking a hit from this apparent change of reader allegiance, with many advertisers bypassing print media according to the Australian Press Council.

The only thing proven by our politicians failure last year to widely engage with the Internet, is that political debate moved passed them and was mainly conducted without their direct input.