Beyond The Fringe

Mt. Cooroora, one of the several fascinating extinct local volcanic plugs revered by the indigenous people of the Sunshine Coast, is the site of the dreaded yearly King of the Mountain race at Pomona, not far from our place. Since the aboriginal people considered, we have heard, this mountain as a place of sacred women’s business … unsurprising considering its breast-like shape … the race is perhaps inappropriate. Every fourth Sunday in July, bevies of idiot fitness addicts grunt their way to the top and hurtle down. We choose to climb the mountain only on special occasions - the last time was at the turn of the millenium.

They came with the torrential rain during the past month to inhabit the bush and compost heap on our property. We’ve never seen these species before … anyone who knows what they are, we’d love to know. The pink tentacled monstrosity is particularly weird.

After some gambols round the webosphere during another BlogShares database collapse …

The bottom two could be stinkhorns? The red specimen also looked a bit like this fungus - Aseroe rubra. There’s more info about the bizarre Australian stinkhorns here.

Rarely are we interested in participating in these ever more ubiquitous days of blog solidarity, however given that our upcoming election may pivot around environmental issues, here’s our contribution.

Let’s face it, follks, both major Whorestralian parties are off the mark when it comes to ensuring our environment and we who have plundered it survive. Neither party is willing to address the main issue adequately - that our consumption levels are far too disgustingly gluttonous for sustainability. Both parties preach a blind necessity of population growth for productivity growth without questioning the longterm viability of this profligacy or the patent lack of common sense in promoting ever increasing gobbling of resources and abominable expansion of concrete slums along the Australian coastline. Both Libs and Labs are paid off by lobby groups, from industry, religious groups and workers, which mean these issues are submerged. Look no further than the recent Gunns debacle in Tasmania, the rape of democracy in Queensland with forced council amalgamations which will assist developers at the expense of the environment particularly in the South East quarter, the Traveston Dam horror, the ghastly influence of the loony Exclusive Brethren in our elections, not to mention the insidious and historically all pervasive intrusions of the male dominated Catholic church nuthouse with its destructive, self-interested policy of rampant human reproduction.

Sneaky, our opportunistic scrub turkey agrees with our major parties’ shortsighted economic irrationalism. Without human waste, Sneaky’s lifestyle would be greatly impoverished.

One of our properties’ delightful indigenous identities paid us a visit this afternoon, feasting on the young tender grass shoots emerging since the recent rain.

Take note, Brisvegans - the feeding of the habits of the profligate industrial corporations and unsustainable agricultural enterprises who use the lion’s share of the water in South East Queensland, predominantly to maximise their export profits, will have a permanent, disastrous effect on the ecosystem of the Mary River if the Traveston Crossing dam is constructed.

Anna Big Thighs is not backing down on either Beattie’s dictatorial dam proposal or Council amalgamations, though she has whined in the understatement of the century, “To be frank, I think we could have and should have handled it better along the way”. With an environment impact report due out this month, Big Thighs also admitted “Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull could knock it back on environmental grounds.” Here’s hoping.

Travis the endangered Mary River Turtle comes to Brisbane again this weekend

After being a hit with the crowds last Sunday at Northey St Markets, this Saturday 6 October, Travis, a 40 year old Mary River Turtle will be in New Farm Park from 8:30 - 10:30am.

Bob Brown, Senator and Parliamentary leader fo the Greens will be at New Farm Park at 9:30am to meet Travis in “person” and discuss the threat to the Mary River Turtle posed by the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam on the Mary River.

The Mary River Turtle is an endangered species and occurs in only one river - the Mary River a couple of hours drive north of Brisbane!

To find Travis and Trevor (Travis’s human size counterpart) enter New Farm Park from Brunswick St and follow the internal road to the childrens playground. Travis and his support crew will be in that area.

For further information please contact Tanzi on 0405848375.

Hope to see you and your family there.

Please forward this message to anyone who you know who would like to meet Travis,

Kind Regards,

Australian Freshwater Turtle Conservation and Research Association (AFTCRA) Inc. and the Save the Mary River Co-ordinating Group.

As we forecast, Kevvie won the day by a handful of votes to allow U mining in states that want to permit it, while maintaining a ban on nuclear power stations. Perfect for us and our SA and NT U investments, and not so pleasant for all those holding shares with U interests in any other state perhaps. Monday’s stockmarket opening will be very interesting indeed!

Lady Downer pranced out with his rodent master’s logical wedgie, moaning that

The Labor Party’s position on uranium is a classic case of hypocritical opportunism in politics and cynical opportunism.

As a past master of both the above, Lady Downer would of course know. The posturing twit went on to bleat piously that

We think that nuclear power makes a very valuable contribution to reducing greenhouse emissions and climate change is a serious issue, we have to find serious solutions to that problem.

Lady Downer promised to take Rudd and Rann on a junket to vist a Chinese nuclear power station so they can see where Whorestralian U ends up.

At the ALP conference, Rudd floated the generous idea of loans to Joe Blow to introduce water and energy efficiency solutions into their homes - this could be good news also for EVZ. Clean coal was on the agenda as well, with the ALP promising large sums for investment in tech. Will CXY benefit as it should?

Phillip Adams commented once that most Australians could name plenty of sports heroes, yet they’d struggle to name one hero of the intellect. Very depressing - there are so few people who appreciate intelligence and intellectual pursuits, especially non-competitive ones, as opposed to footy and cricket brawn, boobies, beer and all that turgid shallow stuff. Give me a good book any day and a fine red doesn’t go astray either. The epic thud of beefy gladiatorial thighs colliding and choruses of oy oy oys are not my cup of tea.

At the Whorestralian school I attended, kids who didn’t participate in sport were considered freaky geeks. And if one was very good at sport and *still* prefered to read a wonderful book, it was worse - one was regarded as a frightening, pathetic mutant. If it was not for one decent mate, I would have literally starved. Books delivered us to another world, other times, where our own minds created the accompanying video. No home entertainment centres back in the good old days. We, the avid book athletes, used our imaginations.

We would exercise with weekend book reading races. I remember reading Lord of the Rings in a weekend which *really* annoyed my mate - it took him three days. Our most favourite explorations were into science fiction, reading everything we could lay our hands on, delving and plumbing school and public libraries, and begging parents to add to their small collections where from our passion first arose. My particular joys were H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine”, Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End” and A.E. Van Vogt’s “Voyage of the Space Beagle”. From the third, I found my true calling in life as a nexialist, a crossover specialist in alien cultures and science, as from my experiences outside my family hearth already, those skills might be very useful.

The fourth book which spellbound me was Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cats Cradle” - a quirky, witty satire perpetrated through the sci fi genre. This book confirmed for me that there were others out there who thought as I did - that the bulk of people on the planet refuse to learn to control their own base stupid natures and thus threaten their own and the planet’s existence. Ice-nine became a secret code word between my mate and myself for the atomic bomb, overpopulation, pollution and above all for ‘the stupids’ - those who should know better yet couldn’t be bothered altering their life patterns in time to save us all. As Kurt recounted

“Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”

*We* were in the know - and *they* were (and are) the aliens. Voluntary simplicity is more easily achievable in a virtual, bookish world.

Kurt died yesterday at age 84. I don’t think he would have minded carking it - he’d had a great innings.

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

He’s gone past the edge now. Kurt - good on ya. I never knew you, but if I had, you could have been a mate.

The U spot price has hit $113/lb - even higher than we thought it would reach. The average yob probably doesn’t have much idea of the significance of the U price crossing the magic $100/lb mark, but we’re willing to punt they soon will when the media kicks into gear next week. Suffice it to say that a year ago, the U spot price was $44/lb. So right now, we’re looking at a 157% price increase in that time.

Supply is short, demand is high. That means only one thing - the U price is going to continue to rise, and so will U stocks. Just about any U stock, in all probability. Some avid pundits are even contemplating an astronomical $1,000/lb spot price.

China has 100 nuclear reactors either proposed or planned. Russia’s energy goals call for as many as 58. Toward that goal, Russia recently announced it is tripling the amount of money it will spend on nuclear power between 2008 and 2010 to $5.7 billion.

In the US, there are 28 applications for new power stations from now till 2009.

If the predicted U bubble expands exponentially with a tidal wave of despo mums and dads, the weeks to come will be *very* interesting.

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The folks from FunkyPix2 have a series of photos of this week’s tsunami which devastated Queensland doomsayers, rapturites, real estate sharks and other drooling nincompoops. We’re in awe of people’s ability to put natural events in our place as much as the ability of natural events put people in their place.

Before Hastings Street was demolished, we had positioned ourselves to capture the first wave’s impact on Noosa’s trillion dollar vulnerable asset - see right.

Our sympathies of course go out to our neighbours in the South Pacific who were affected by the natural disaster.

Thanks to 40c for reminding us of Chief Seattle’s wonderful speech which we reprint here to help spread the word.

THE EARTH IS PRECIOUS

In 1854, the “Great White Chief” in Washington made an offer for a large area of Indian land and promised a ‘reservation’ for the Indian people. Chief Seattle’s reply, published here in full, has been described as the most beautiful and profound statement on the environment ever made.

Chief Seattle Speaks (1971 Revision)

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

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Kevvy has a new site up for airing the outcomes, transcripts and vids from the ALP’s National Summit on Climate Change. Sadly, there’s no facility for interaction, no forums, no blogs. Despite their apparent fascination for broadband tech, as media whiz Trevor Cook points out, Kevvy’s team is behind the net-times!

Nevertheless there’s some interesting-looking downloads on carbon trading at which we’ll have a closer look soon. As yet we can’t spot anything on U, though there’s clean coal info.

We wonder how many Laborites will be inspired enough to put their money for the first time into the enticing range of cleaner energy tech stocks on the market.