The Pentecost River.

Disagreement Hierarchy

Wilson's prom

If u look closely.. there's the autographs of Phil Rudd, Angus Young, Bon Scott and Malcolm Young. They gave me this poster at their house in East St Kilda. Angus also gave me a Postmans hat - rather than his usual school cap- worn in one of the film clips

75 questions to ask yourself.

An old proverb says, “He that cannot ask cannot live”. If you want answers you have to ask questions. These are 75 questions you should ask yourself and try to answer. You can ask yourself these questions right now and over the course of your life.

1. Why not me?

2. Am I nice?

3. Am I doing what I really want to do?

4. What am I grateful for?

5. What’s missing in my life?

6. Am I honest?

7. Do I listen to others?

8. Do I work hard?

9. Do I help others?

10. What do I need to change about myself?

11. Have I hurt others?

12. Do I complain?

13. What’s next for me?

14. Do I have fun?

15. Have I seized opportunities?

16. Do I care about others?

17. Do I spend enough time with my family?

18. Am I open-minded?

19. Have I seen enough of the world?

20. Do I judge others?

21. Do I take risks?

22. What is my purpose?

23. What is my biggest fear?

24. How can I conquer that fear?

25. Do I thank people enough?

26. Am I successful?

27. What am I ashamed of?

28. Do I annoy others?

29. What are my dreams?

30. Am I positive?

31. Am I negative?

32. Is there an afterlife?

33. Does everything happen for a reason?

34. What can I do to change the world?

35. What is the most foolish thing I’ve ever done?

36. Am I cheap?

37. Am I greedy?

38. Who do I love?

39. Who do I want to meet?

40. Where do I want to go?

41. What am I most proud of?

42. Do I care what others think about me?

43. What are my talents?

44. Do I utilize those talents?

45. What makes me happy?

46. What makes me sad?

47. What makes me angry?

48. Am I satisfied with my appearance?

49. Am I healthy?

50. What was the toughest time in my life?

51. What was the easiest time in my life?

52. Am I selfish?

53. What was the craziest thing I did?

54. What is the craziest thing I want to do?

55. Do I procrastinate?

56. What is my greatest regret?

57. What has had the greatest impact on my life?

58. Who has had the greatest impact on my life?

59. Do I stand up for myself?

60. Have I settled for mediocrity?

61. Do I hold grudges?

62. Do I read enough?

63. Do I listen to my heart?

64. Do I donate enough to the less fortunate?

65. Do I pray only when I want something?

66. Do I constantly dwell on the past?

67. Do I let other people’s negativity affect me?

68. Do I forgive myself?

69. When I help someone do I think “What’s in it for me”?

70. Am I aware that someone always has it worse than me?

71. Do I smile more than I frown?

72. Do I surround myself with good people?

73. Do I take time out for myself?

74. Do I ask enough questions?

75. What other questions do I have?

AC/DC lane Melbourne

On my way to the Iron Maiden concert.

Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot

Back from Iraq

12 year old kids.... that rock.

http://www.vidmax.com/index.php/videos/view/4179

Do you care about your children?

"Absolute certainty" ..... the drug.. you can see it in their eyes.

Victorian bushfire Jan 2007

The wonders of makeup

Click photo for larger view

What Kind Of Brain Do You Have?

"Most people will see this dancer moving counter-clockwise because they use more of the left side of their brain and tend to be more logical and practical. People who see the dancer moving clockwise are right brain dominant and tend to be more risk taking and imaginative."




LINK

I've been visiting the above site since I first got the internet years ago.

MCG

Click here to see my new web site with Photos of MELBOURNE, where I live.

I just like it, Not my pic

Why does faith deserve respect?

Some more videos from Pat Condell
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.channel&ChannelID=119389495

100 Movies

Me as a Simpsons character

The Meaning of Life

Enlightened self-interest and the common good



The most significant thing in life (the very focus of humanism) is the human being, and by extension, the human race and the environment in which we live. The happiness of the individual is inextricably linked to the well-being of humanity as a whole, in part because we are social animals which find meaning in relationships, and because cultural progress benefits everybody who lives in that culture. [10]

When the world improves, life in general improves, so, while the individual desires to live well and fully, humanists feel it is important to do so in a way that will enhance the well being of all. While the evolution of the human species is still (for the most part) a function of nature, the evolution of humanity is in our hands and it is our responsibility to progress it toward its highest ideals. In the same way, humanism itself is evolving, because humanists recognize that values and ideals, and therefore the meaning of life, are subject to change as our understanding improves.[10]
[from Wiki]

This short clip from the upcoming Simpsons movie made me laugh.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a book by Carl Sagan intended to explain the scientific method to laypersons, and to encourage people to learn critical or skeptical thinking. It explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science, and ideas that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking, and should stand up to rigorous questioning.




Sagan said if a new idea continues in existence after an examination of the propositions, it should then be acknowledged as a supposition. Skeptical thinking essentially is a means to construct, understand, reason, and recognize valid and invalid arguments. Wherever possible, there must be independent validation of the concepts whose truth should be proved. He believed that reason and logic would succeed once the truth is known. Conclusions emerging from a premise, and the acceptability of the premise should not be discounted or accepted because of bias.

Sagan presents a set of tools for skeptical thinking which he calls the "baloney detection kit". Skeptical thinking consists both of constructing a reasoned argument and recognizing a fallacious or fraudulent one. In order to identify a fallacious argument, Sagan suggests the employment of such tools as independent confirmation of facts, quantification and the use of Occam's razor. Sagan's "baloney detection kit" also provided tools for detecting "the most common fallacies of logic and rhetoric", such as argument from authority and statistics of small numbers.

Through these tools, the benefits of a critical mind and the self-correcting nature of science can take place. Sagan provides a skeptical analysis of several kinds of superstition, fraud, pseudoscience and religious beliefs, such as gods, witches, UFOs, ESP and faith healing.

_____________________________________________________________________________


# "Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grand children's time ... when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstitions and darkness."

________________________________________________________________________________

# "Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered. But whether there are *any* "miraculous" cures from faith-healing, beyond the body's own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue. Secondly, the expose' of fraud and error in science is made almost exclusively by science. But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost never done by other faith-healers."
______________________________________________________________________________

"Carl Sagan's message will not be congenial to many in today's society.

An ethic of superstition and refusal to consider evidence as relevant is growing. Some profit from this state of affairs, and seek to foster it. Many others have absorbed part of that ethic. All the more reason to pick up Sagan's readable, enjoyable, compellingly-argued, and very human book."

I took this pic through the windscreen while driving between Cairns and Townsville.

Didn't take it, just like it.

VCTORIA AUSTRALIA

MY new blog on VICTORIA AUSTRALIA

http://victoriaaustralia.blogspot.com/

Psycho Man Black Sabbath

Some Great Songs

Hell is home ~ Judas Priest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ickXAsstmAg
[ with Ripper Owens]

Squealer ~AC/DC
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7Z4ijIQYYNo

TNT ~ AC/DC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AtYkJ_eyHU

Disturbed ~ Droppin' plates
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k8duWCzmLo

Ozzy Osbourne ~ Perry Mason
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg3xyMN4vn4

Metallica ~ Battery [S&M version]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvqkwvA9i4Q

Australian Football

For a taste of the elite league of Australian Football -

AFL

- Click here to see a clip of some great Marks and Hits.

Black Sabbath with OZZY

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Jesus and Mo

Jesus and Mo

My Old ute

Led Zeppelin

Another all time favourite song

The Rover

A Very nice version from a Zeppelin cover band.

AC/DC

I've met AC/DC and been to their house a number of times.
I was having a beer with them when Malcolm came home with the brand new Highvoltage album and we all had a listen in their lounge room in St Kilda, a Melbourne suburb.

I'm in a couple of AC/DC Countdown clips.
Look for me in this clip of Baby Please Don't go. My head takes up half the screen at the 50 second mark of the clip. [ Long blond hair]

Metallica

One.

One of the best ever songs, from any band.
The clip is amazing too, leaves you stunned and lost for words.

Black Sabbath with Dio

Children of the sea.
One of my all time favourite songs.

Janes Randi Education Foundation.

"AS OF APRIL 1, 2007, we will no longer be accepting unsolicited challenges, but will instead be issuing challenges directly to individuals who have a sufficient media profile and some sort of academic recommendation."

Randi discussing the James Randi Educational Foundation with penn and Teller.
Short clip

Life On Mars

Detective Chief Inspector Sam Tyler, is hunting a serial killer when he gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973.

The TV series is named after the David Bowie song "Life on Mars?", which is playing on the iPod in Tyler's car when the accident happens, and on an 8-track tape when he awakes in 1973.

Life on Mars Trailer 1

Another song featured on the soundtrack, in the second episode, is "Live and Let Die" by Paul McCartney and Wings. Initially permission was refused for use of the song by the record company but they sent the episode direct to Paul McCartney. Almost immediately, his assistant phoned back and said 'Paul loves it. You can go ahead and use it'."

I like this pic and I don't know why.

The Bush Tucker Man

Season 1 Episode 1




In a battered army truck, his home a simple roll of blankets, Major Les Hiddins seeks out and records the different kinds of bush food and medicines used by Aboriginal people for thousands of years.

He's a bush survival expert for the Australian Army and travels alone through the vast, almost totally unpopulated lands of northern Australia to carry out his unique job. And despite the solitude he's a chatty, humorous man who is as entertaining as he is informative.

An Open Letter to Prince Charles

Richard Dawkins

Sunday May 21, 2000

Your Royal Highness,

Your Reith lecture saddened me. I have deep sympathy for your aims, and admiration for your sincerity. But your hostility to science will not serve those aims; and your embracing of an ill-assorted jumble of mutually contradictory alternatives will lose you the respect that I think you deserve. I forget who it was who remarked: "Of course we must be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out."

Let's look at some of the alternative philosophies which you seem to prefer over scientific reason. First, intuition, the heart's wisdom "rustling like a breeze through the leaves". Unfortunately, it depends whose intuition you choose. Where aims (if not methods) are concerned, your own intuitions coincide with mine. I wholeheartedly share your aim of long-term stewardship of our planet, with its diverse and complex biosphere.

But what about the instinctive wisdom in Saddam Hussein's black heart? What price the Wagnerian wind that rustled Hitler's twisted leaves? The Yorkshire Ripper heard religious voices in his head urging him to kill. How do we decide which intuitive inner voices to heed?

This, it is important to say, is not a dilemma that science can solve. My own passionate concern for world stewardship is as emotional as yours. But where I allow feelings to influence my aims, when it comes to deciding the best method of achieving them I'd rather think than feel. And thinking, here, means scientific thinking. No more effective method exists. If it did, science would incorporate it.

Next, Sir, I think you may have an exaggerated idea of the natural ness of "traditional" or "organic" agriculture. Agriculture has always been unnatural. Our species began to depart from our natural hunter-gatherer lifestyle as recently as 10,000 years ago - too short to measure on the evolutionary timescale.

Wheat, be it ever so wholemeal and stoneground, is not a natural food for Homo sapiens. Nor is milk, except for children. Almost every morsel of our food is genetically modified - admittedly by artificial selection not artificial mutation, but the end result is the same. A wheat grain is a genetically modified grass seed, just as a pekinese is a genetically modified wolf. Playing God? We've been playing God for centuries!

The large, anonymous crowds in which we now teem began with the agricultural revolution, and without agriculture we could survive in only a tiny fraction of our current numbers. Our high population is an agricultural (and technological and medical) artifact. It is far more unnatural than the population-limiting methods condemned as unnatural by the Pope. Like it or not, we are stuck with agriculture, and agriculture - all agriculture - is unnatural. We sold that pass 10,000 years ago.

Does that mean there's nothing to choose between different kinds of agriculture when it comes to sustainable planetary welfare? Certainly not. Some are much more damaging than others, but it's no use appealing to "nature" , or to "instinct" in order to decide which ones. You have to study the evidence, soberly and reasonably - scientifically. Slashing and burning (incidentally, no agricultural system is closer to being "traditional" ) destroys our ancient forests. Overgrazing (again, widely practised by "traditional" cultures) causes soil erosion and turns fertile pasture into desert. Moving to our own modern tribe, monoculture, fed by powdered fertilisers and poisons, is bad for the future; indiscriminate use of antibiotics to promote livestock growth is worse.

Incidentally, one worrying aspect of the hysterical opposition to the possible risks from GM crops is that it diverts attention from definite dangers which are already well understood but largely ignored. The evolution of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria is something that a Darwinian might have foreseen from the day antibiotics were discovered. Unfortunately the warning voices have been rather quiet, and now they are drowned by the baying cacophony: "GM GM GM GM GM GM!"

Moreover if, as I expect, the dire prophecies of GM doom fail to materialise, the feeling of let-down may spill over into complacency about real risks. Has it occurred to you that our present GM brouhaha may be a terrible case of crying wolf?

Even if agriculture could be natural, and even if we could develop some sort of instinctive rapport with the ways of nature, would nature be a good role model? Here, we must think carefully. There really is a sense in which ecosystems are balanced and harmonious, with some of their constituent species becoming mutually dependent. This is one reason the corporate thuggery that is destroying the rainforests is so criminal.

On the other hand, we must beware of a very common misunderstanding of Darwinism. Tennyson was writing before Darwin but he got it right. Nature really is red in tooth and claw. Much as we might like to believe otherwise, natural selection, working within each species, does not favour long-term stewardship. It favours short-term gain. Loggers, whalers, and other profiteers who squander the future for present greed, are only doing what all wild creatures have done for three billion years.

No wonder T.H. Huxley, Darwin's bulldog, founded his ethics on a repudiation of Darwinism. Not a repudiation of Darwinism as science, of course, for you cannot repudiate truth. But the very fact that Darwinism is true makes it even more important for us to fight against the naturally selfish and exploitative tendencies of nature. We can do it. Probably no other species of animal or plant can. We can do it because our brains (admittedly given to us by natural selection for reasons of short-term Darwinian gain) are big enough to see into the future and plot long-term consequences. Natural selection is like a robot that can only climb uphill, even if this leaves it stuck on top of a measly hillock. There is no mechanism for going downhill, for crossing the valley to the lower slopes of the high mountain on the other side. There is no natural foresight, no mechanism for warning that present selfish gains are leading to species extinction - and indeed, 99 per cent of all species that have ever lived are extinct.

The human brain, probably uniquely in the whole of evolutionary history, can see across the valley and can plot a course away from extinction and towards distant uplands. Long-term planning - and hence the very possibility of stewardship - is something utterly new on the planet, even alien. It exists only in human brains. The future is a new invention in evolution. It is precious. And fragile. We must use all our scientific artifice to protect it.

It may sound paradoxical, but if we want to sustain the planet into the future, the first thing we must do is stop taking advice from nature. Nature is a short-term Darwinian profiteer. Darwin himself said it: "What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature."

Of course that's bleak, but there's no law saying the truth has to be cheerful; no point shooting the messenger - science - and no sense in preferring an alternative world view just because it feels more comfortable. In any case, science isn't all bleak. Nor, by the way, is science an arrogant know-all. Any scientist worthy of the name will warm to your quotation from Socrates: "Wisdom is knowing that you don't know." What else drives us to find out?

What saddens me most, Sir, is how much you will be missing if you turn your back on science. I have tried to write about the poetic wonder of science myself, but may I take the liberty of presenting you with a book by another author? It is The Demon-Haunted World by the lamented Carl Sagan. I'd call your attention especially to the subtitle: Science as a Candle in the Dark .

Dave's, Richard Dawkins

Resource Page

A nice collection of video clips
... that might make you think.

Ray Mears

Ray Mears wiki link


Over the last decade the name Ray Mears has become recognised throughout the world as being an authority on the subject of Bushcraft and Survival.


Ray's TV shows are enjoyed by many because of his down to earth approach, his obvious love for his subject and the empathy and respect he shows for indigenous peoples and their cultures.

Ray has spent his life learning these skills and is truly a master of the subject he calls Wilderness Bushcraft.