What's New At The Partial Marshalls
19th of July 2019:
So very long between sherbets for the monkeys and their musings on these pages.
Here we are again, 10 years later, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission and yet humans on this continent still get roped into to the Flat Earth nonsense, courtesy of North Americans. The monkeys could rant and screech and fling poo and masturbate furiously, but no. This time, the monkeys will lean on the facts, or insofaras the facts are presented, via Wikipedia.
The background, for the uninitiated, is that there is the global time standard, Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC. Thanks to British Scientists and what was GMT, there is an agreed time reference on the planet that runs through Greenwich. This means that the time in eastern Australia is different to that of western India and that of the time on the Hawaiian Islands. This is logical if a person looks at their watch then looks up in the sky. Relative to the UTC standard, the time to the observer will be either be earlier or later, morning evening or night.
A numpties guide to the geoid, over, here is an abbreviated time line of events in Houston time, Honeysuckle Creek (Canberra) time and UTC.
|
|
Houston |
Honeysuckle Creek |
UTC |
|
Apollo 11 Launch |
08:32:00 July 16 |
23:32:00 July 16 |
13:32:00 July 16 |
|
Lunar Orbit |
12:21:50 July 19 |
03:21:50 July 20 |
17:21:50 July 19 |
|
LunarLanding |
15:17:40 July 20 |
06:17:40 July 21 |
20:17:40 July 20 |
|
Lunar EVA |
21:56:15 July 20 |
12:56:15 July 21 |
02:56:15 July 21 |
Note that, in lots of places on the planet on the day of the moon EVA, it was already the 21st.
Indeed, the dolts that celebrate the moon landing in Australia on the 20th of July this year, will actually be doing it on the 19th, North American time.
19th of June 2018: It is common knowledge to the readers of these pages that the monkeys spend lots of time screeching, flinging poo and masturbating.
All of this activity between writing Shakespearian sonnets and penning this drivel.
The monkeys want to tell everyone who reads this garbage that the monkeys had a wank.
There was a so called "head of steam", and then the monkeys recently had a wank.
No big deal. The monkeys masturbate lots. When the other activities are not happening.
What mystifies the monkeys is the human misery that stems from people who can not do the same and take their frustrations out in other ways.
Indeed, the monkeys' theory, while gazing at their navels and pleasuring themselves, is that a lot of human misery would be resolved with more humans wanking.
The monkeys think that it not only cleans the pipes, it settles the brain, as well.
However, as whacky as it sounds, one of the monkeys other theories is that climate change has a direct causal link to earthquakes and volcanic activity. Lots of relatively new and violent storm activity causes extra pressures on tectonic plates and the planet responds accordingly.
Anyway, back to wanking.
Humans have been taught that masturbating specifically and sex,in general, is a dirty,filthy and shameful activity.
Humans have also been taught that female humans are lesser beings, too. But that is something that the monkeys have touched on before and is potentially another essay for another monkey diatribe.
The monkeys do not have the same brain washed programming regarding sex and wanking and just do it and get on with life.
Why can't humans?
It seems like a broken record, but the monkeys point the finger at religion.
If they have control of a simple human mind and fill it with baseless rubbish, then they have control of the human. And any other humans who believe that there is a sky being in human form watching them while they enjoy some self pleasure. But, again, some human beings cannot let go to the myths that they have been fed and some are bullied into believing that tripe.
Take away the religion, take away the notions that wanking is evil and humanity would be a happier place.
People can ask themselves: "Are you okay?" Then follow straight away with the question: "Have you had a wank recently?"
The monkeys other news is that they are going into space, albeit into low Earth orbit, otherwise known as "LEO".
A corporation is building a space gateway in LEO and the monkeys have signed up and are going, as soon as it is built.
The vision is to use a series of heavy lift rockets to get the initial payloads into space, then use a mix of humans, bots and drones.
The initial trickle of humans and monkeys going into space will eventually grow to where is it is expected that thousands will be able to travel to the space gateway and return to Earth or perhaps use the gateway to travel further into the solar system.
The Arthur C Clarke vision of rotating space ports will be happening very soon.
30th of November 2017: The Monkeys are Australian monkeys.
However, if the reader knows anything about the Wallace Line, then none of that makes any sense.
Regardless, a bunch of Australian monkeys has a unique perspective on not only humanity in general, but also a peek at the subset that is the Australian humans.
And what an odd bunch some of them are, hiding and disguising their poisoned bigotry under the cloak of religion. And forcing the tax paying population to pay extraordinary amounts of public funds to discover what is already known about the wishes of the populace: They no longer wish to discriminate against anyone when it comes to marriage.
Now the vote has been taken and the politicians must act, along come the road blocks to defer or delay the legislation becoming law.
This legislation has been enacted in many other first world legislatures and the world did not end and the invisible man in the sky did not appear in these countries and start smiting people.
Why can't the Australian humans entrusted with this task just do it too?
Religion.
In the same way that the elephant in the room with regards to the historic attack and abuse cases in the global entertainment industry clouds what is the root cause of the problem.
Religion.
Men get away with these crimes for years due to some ancient texts that says that they are allowed to behave that way. Ancient texts that are used as the apparent basis for morals and humanity is a vehicle for piss poor behaviour that is not appropriate in 2017. Their power is in the ancient books and the ancient books are the power.
Bigots hiding under funny hats are the reason for women being treated like dirt.
And, the older the religion, the deeper the bigoted roots.
Do you want to be able to be treated differently and have the sanctioned capacity to treat others differently?
Have an ancient book of fables as your backing.
And that is why these things are hard to change. The religious leaders use that power to get what they want and do what ever they need to do to perpetuate the power. That includes using the church and church funds to sway the politics of a country. And this is what is happening in Australia. Despite not paying tax, the religious hierarchy seek to use their congregations and their positions in society to lobby politicians.
Some politicians in Australia have recently been shown to bow to the suasion of this lobbying.
Anyway, enough ranting about the bigotry and power of the religions.
Something happened in our Solar System recently that surprised lots of humans across the planet: We had an interstellar visitor.
This is no surprise to the monkeys. They read about this in a science fiction book some years ago.
Arthur C Clarke wrote a book called Rendezvous With Rama. This book outlined a visit to the fictional solar system by an advanced civilisation who sent tubular shaped craft.
But the difference between the book and humanity in 2017 is that there is not the technology available today to chase and land on the body that has been spotted in real life.
Moreover, the continued feudalism that is perpetuated by humans is stopping the forecast advances of the Science Fiction writers of decades ago. Consider where the writers of the past saw 2017. They never painted a picture of a world of human beings still stuck on the planet or in low earth orbit.
There is lots of science that is happening in the Realiverse. One scientific project is a collaboration of three separate groups of scientists looking for gravitation anomalies caused by the interaction of supermassive black holes and neutron stars. This global team is called the International Pulsar Timing Array.
Even if this research is right at the borders of your understanding of how scientists scan the skies for changes to the space between us and the remote events in the universe, at least you are now aware of the Project and can impress people at parties with your new knowledge and you can recite the Project's name.
5th of October 2017: Coming up to the anniversary of the last missive from the monkeys, they somehow feel compelled to pen more drivel.
Especially seeing humans are doing human things to each other again. And baffling the monkeys with lots of things perceived as polar opposites to bad/naughty/evil deeds.
Not much seems to have changed, in a sense. Way back in 2014, the monkeys reported on tears on TV. It has happened again. However, nothing seemed to happen as a result of a male human being getting tearful on the box. The monkeys suspect that the same result will come of the latest tears on The Box. While the tears of a man on the television might be good for ratings, it looks and feels like other bodily emissions when sweaty hands are clasped in prayer. A person talking to themselves in their head, hoping that an omniscient, omnipotent, and all powerful man in the sky will a. Listen to them talking to themselves and b. Acting on those wishes, seems to the monkeys to be pointless. Unless the person with sweaty palms gains some sort of psychological benefit from talking to themselves, but not acting on those thoughts.
Which leans toward today's monkey religious rant. What happens to these people who wake up to themselves, accept logic into their brains and realise how much of their lives that they have wasted performing pointless rituals and talking to no one but themselves. How do they adjust? Is there a period of embarrassment? Is there a realisation that, instead of praying, they could have been acting upon the circumstances of the time? And all of the missed opportunities? Meanwhile, there are billions who still have nothing but faith and live a life of ignorance, pending the day that they too come to the same conclusion. If they are that lucky.
Anyway, back to the source of the tears and the self flagellation of a nation. The monkeys see lots of humans who have lost empathy. There is an open wound that has healed then been stabbed open again. So many times the wound has been opened and sealed that a crusty callous patch of skin is left. The nerve endings have been destroyed and have not reattached themselves.
The monkeys are tapping into their conspiracy theorist sides and thinking that this may be a deliberate ploy. To get the human population desensitised to the horror that one person can inflict on others. If it happens often enough and in greater numbers, maybe people will care less and less. The monkeys care. Considering there are seven billion humans and very few caged, screeching, poo flinging, masturbating monkeys.
Maybe it's like talking to an oncologist or a radiologist or a surgeon who specialises in cancer. They want to talk about the statical reason that you have made an appointment to see them. It is all about the numbers that relate to patient survival. There are billions of humans on the planet. If we lose a few dozen or a few hundred or a few thousand, there are lots more where the dead ones came from.
Except that, as mentioned before by the monkeys, the brain matter splattered all over the bitumen that used to be in a human's head may have had the current, formative or future answer to a science, maths, technological or engineering problem that has held humans back.
Which is the source of another problem that faces Australians of both sides of the so called Same Sex Marriage debate. No one on the humanist side of the fence wants to speak in opposition to the legislation being changed back to allow homosexual couples to get married in this country because that would be hypocritical. And those opposing gays and lesbians getting married want to ensure that religious sexual repression continues, otherwise that would expose the lie that is religion. And because god and jesus is a strong enough argument.
Back in the Realiverse, men and women flew a spacecraft into the atmosphere of one of the Solar System's gas giants. Deliberately. Because they wanted to.
To send a spacecraft 7.8 billion kilometres then to “de-orbit” Cassini into Saturn is, in the monkeys' opinion, amazing.
To use the common parlance of the Interweb:
Because Science.
Because Maths.
Because Engineering.
Because Technology.
This may be the first time in a while one of the planets that are considered celestial vacuum cleaners (no pun intended) has hoovered up some detritus from Earth.
21st of October 2016: The monkeys are back on the air after the longest break from penning drivel.
No excuse for not banging out this nonsense. Especially when there is only so much poo flinging, screeching and masturbating that monkeys can do. Then there are the idle, in between times, when the monkeys watch and marvel at what humanity gets up to.
Of course, for the people of this planet, there has been a healthy mix of evil and good and middle of the road muddling that is neither the former or the latter. Perhaps, in some ways, the muddling is the worst of it because that smells of inertia.
Which is the subject of the local news: Four years on and A.C.T. voters appear to have voted another Labor Greens coalition government back into power. The monkeys see this as a combination of indolent voters keeping the current course and some very cynical vote buying with a promise to provide a solution to piss poor urban planning.
Who would have thought that, if you sandwich lots of people into suburbs with postage stamp sized blocks, there would be vehicular bedlam when all of the people leave home to be at work at nine o'clock in the morning?
In many senses, little has changed since the last monkey missive at the time of the 2012 A.C.T. elections. Except that there appear to be more ghettos and ghost towns in and around the Territory.
Apart from all of the disenfranchised voters who will not be serviced by the tram.
Monkeys are cynical bastards. They see all of the Territory's revenues propping up the construction and the operation of the tram. A fiscal vortex will suck the funds dry and the consequence of which will be a diminution of the real public transport backbone: The bus system.
And the hospitals and the schools and all of the other infrastructure provided by the local government.
Then there is the bedlam that is George Street in Sydney. Canberrans need to make the three hour trip up the highway to see what a mess is one of Sydney's former principal thoroughfares.
The monkey quote from 2012 still applies: “You get who you vote for.”
And there are the bizarre things that are happening in the U.S.A. Speaking of politics and voters and elections. There is the other world view of the strange goings on across the biggest pond, on top of the monkeys' other species take on the odd things that humans get up to.
Exactly what did the Republican Presidential candidate mean when he said: “I will look at it at the time. I'm not looking at anything now. I'm looking at it at the time. ... What I'm saying is that I'll tell you at the time, I'll keep you in suspense.”
Anyway, moving away from politics and over to the pervading evil that has plagued humanity for millenia: religion.
The monkeys want to know the answer to a question from all of the people who read this rubbish: If religion is obviously such palpable nonsense, and all of that underlies religion is fiction, what of all of those questionable deeds perpetrated under the name of a bunch of gods?
No one person seems to be able to point out that all of the bigotry, genocide, rape, war, mutilation, etcetera, that is happening right now, has it's basis on a handful of morally questionable fables and myths that have no other record in human history. Except for a handwritten transcript from desert dwelling ancients.
And don't get the monkeys started on the canonising of Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu.
And here comes the monkey's much needed uptick after many paragraphs of bile.
So much to report so many scientific news, a lot of it the monkeys' favourite: Space and Astronomy.
There is the Juno mission, (topically) ExoMars and Schiaparelli, the Higgs Bison, among other notable advances in what humans know and have learned. Also, there is the new estimate of the number of galaxies in the universe. The old count was out by a factor of ten.
Which is the most exciting thing for the monkeys. The thought that someone, or some team, somewhere in the world has the job of counting galaxies. This is a delicious thought for the monkeys in that there is a higher probability that there are more sentient beings on more planets in more solar systems in more constellations in more galaxies who are, hopefully, making fewer mistakes than the sentient beings on this planet.
As an aside, and as an modest Sci Fi fan, the monkeys can recommend the new Sam Harris Ted talk about AI. Sufficed to say, AI is coming and people need to think more and deeper about the future and living with AI. Better dust of those Asimov books again.
8th of February 2016: The Monkeys have been on holidays and have not had a chance to update these pages, thus the relative silence.
The monkeys have been schooled in many academic disciplines without the mastery to become an expert but enough grounding to be opinionated while sounding authoritative.
One of these subjects was Economics.
However Dear Reader, please don't confuse Economics with Home Economics. The Monkeys were, co-coincidently schooled in that too, enough to learn that there was a sickness in the High School system in the 1970s that was hell bent in turning out housewives who would have no other place in society, at that time, other than bear children and look after the household.
But that is another rant for another chapter of the Monkeys' Musings.
So the modest amount of Economics taught to the Monkeys included the paradigm that we all have very stark choices with the limited opportunities given to us.
This includes the Monkeys, who choose to belt out this drivel rather than play computer games, travel to the far reaches of the internet or masturbate.
We all have similar stark choices given to us. The individual human, a country's government, a company board, a religious organisation. Those choices are products of either logic or imagination.
The logic part is easy. A company board makes decisions for the ongoing prosperity and longevity of the corporation. One can imagine that these choices are borne of lots of the senior decision makers within the company arriving at considered conclusions.
The imagination part is harder. An individual may want to pursue a line of study that could ultimately lead to becoming a world beater in their chosen field of academics. These choices are usually made by children and teenagers who are not old enough to (legally) vote, drink alcohol or perform lewd acts with a sexual partner.
This is the First World story. These are kids of privilege.
The Monkeys want to know about the bulk of humanity who are left to whither. What of them and their aspirations?
The Bangladeshi boy who aspires to be a botanist. The Eritrean girl who wants to be a doctor. The Sierra Leonean girl who wants to be a economist.
But they can't. And they probably won't.
And, as we come to the punch line of the Monkeys' other species view of humanity, their contribution to the improvement of humanity and their plight will most certainly be nought. These kids will never be given their opportunity to be a part and help.
It gets worse. These children and their brains could possess the answers to a raft of questions that have failed humans to this point in their history.
The opportunity for these kids is lost in wars, tribalism, famine and economic racism.
They will never go into space, win Nobel Prizes or take a seat in the United Nations.
The Monkeys are glad that they don't have to worry about humanity. Their's is simply observation.
If this Monkey thesis has depressed you, go and read the latest news about the “discovery” of a ninth planet in the Solar System.
Yes, the Monkeys know that the debate about the status of Pluto is ongoing, but the demotion is official and comes from a bunch of people on the planet with huge brains. Get over it and move on.
2nd of December 2015: The Monkeys have been quiet recently. So busy with other projects that bashing out Shakespearean sonnets and this drivel has taken a back seat.
Canberrans, laudably, are trying to get rid of the introduced Indian Mynah birds. These birds invade the suburbs and take over, displacing or replacing local fauna.
Recognising this, there has been a campaign to eradicate this pest.
The monkeys think it will fail. Without a shred of science, but with some monkey logic and seeing what happens in suburban Canberra and surrounds, sadly, they will never leave.
The suburb that the Monkeys lives in has an aggressive trapping and euthanasia group. Such that any birds that move into the area are here and gone very quickly.
Not much fun for the Monkeys as there is little opportunity to catch them and eat them.
Has anyone spotted the problem?
No, it's not that the Monkeys are omnivorous, it is the fact that there will be a never ending supply of birds.
Birds are captured and killed. That leaves a void. Birds from outside the neighbourhood see the rich pickings of dog food and human detritus and move in to fill the gap.
The lack of effort from Mynah bird action groups in adjoining suburbs and on the urban fringe will mean that, while one area where Mynahs thrive and another area nearby that is constantly losing feral birds, there will always be a cycle of bird movement between the two areas.
The Monkeys often wonder about the Mynahs living in the bush and how they will always live and breed without hindrance. This population, and populations of birds in the city centres that are never trapped, will forever feed those suburbs with few or no birds.
And why the laboured logic about feral birds? The Mynah story described above is an allegory, an analogue to human movement in the world today, especially when it comes to the ongoing problems in the Middle East.
Despite the humans who kill lots of other humans, there will always be other humans, in other parts of the region or other parts of the world who will be Mynahs and flock to fill the void.
Some humans will never tire of killing and other humans will never tire of flying in to replace those lost.
And the cycle repeats.
Sadly, this is the constant thesis of the monkeys, evidence of the way humans treat other humans.
Allegories aside, the monkeys want humans sent to camps.
No, no, not the camps that were a feature of both sides of the war of the 1930s and 1940s, but boot camps.
Moreover, logic and reason boot camps where humans are given rigorous and accelerated learning of those two disciplines.
The monkeys are keen for people to learn how to think critically and sceptically and not to so quickly yield to bullshit.
For some people, if you offer to sell them a bridge, they will automatically reach for their wallets. Instead of thinking, “Hang on, that won't fit in the boot of the the Commodore” they will have visions of the Tower Bridge in the backyard.
Perhaps an indictment of those of the so called “Internet Age”.
Speaking of the Internet, that is thematic of certain memes: “This is why the aliens won't stop and say hello to us.”
6th of August 2015: Many subjects are taboo because of religion. Probably the last is death and dying.
Which immediately raise the monkeys' hackles. What are the god bodies trying to mask? What do they want control of? Which financial market are they trying to skew?
Ultimately, the goal is to frighten people. There is an implied threat if there is anything amiss with the dying, death and burial process.
This is the thinking of lots of ancients who have been fed nonsense by those who were trying to control them. It is not the year 2015? Or is it?
Those poor old people who grasp tighter and tighter onto the fables about the “after life” they were told at sunday school and are now too scared to let go of rubbish. The “what ifs” that must plague their minds and garbage that rolls around and around their minds as they get closer to death.
The Monkeys suppose it is fed to everyone, regardless of their age. And therein lies the reason for organ donations being so pathetic in Australia: Baseless fear and superstition means that otherwise usable body parts either being stuck in the ground or in an oven.
The Monkeys want it to be known that, when they cark it, they will no longer need their bits.
(With the caveat from Bad Santa in his letter to The Kid, insofaras there are Monkey parts that just can not be recycled.)
And what do the people who peddle this nonsense get as a result? More bums on seats, more money for the church. Get them when they are poor, get them when they are ignorant, and most importantly, get them when they are vulnerable. Exploit the ones who are about to die. Exploit those who are looking after those who are about to die. Exploit anyone else who is in spitting distance of the who process because you are sure to ensnare more doubting bums onto seats.
Who gives a toss about the people involved and how they feel, so long as you can get them sitting in the pews?
Which is the basis for all of the mystery and superstition behind dying. Proselytising.
The monkeys encourage the readers of this drivel to think about all of the religious ceremony and labour involved in dying, death and burial. So much show and fanfare for the cycle of life. Consider the older times when dying and death were more sedate and less involved.
People got sick and died and were interred. It happened. These days the people who are not sick, dying or dead are scared. Scared not to take a superstitious misstep lest bad things happen.
Which is the divide between those people who pretend to care about us all and effectively do nought and those who do make a change and are deep into the here and now. The Here and Nowers are those who don't have time or a taste for superstition and baloney and who are more interested in logic, reason and real stuff. These are the news makers that embrace technology and science.
This is the uptick for most of the Monkey musings these days: Get the stuff off the monkeys' chests that is bugging them and move onto stuff that is happening in the Realiverse.
Where do the monkeys start? There was the news about the Large Hadron Collider team starting new experiments; the Philae comet probe woke up again and started to send tweets; the talks about global targets for the end of fossil fuels, the flyby of Pluto.
23rd of May 2015: The monkeys have finally thrown another monkey off their backs. Yet another person with psychological issues is no longer the monkeys' problem. Again. Such relief when the monkeys realise that they no longer have to carry and protect and humour a person harbouring a serious mental illness. Especially when some people simply cannot understand new technology.
It should be noted that the monkeys have had a little break from writing tripe, despite what human beings have been up to in the past couple of months. Lots of religious stuff that is illogical, unreasonable and inhumane. And yet, the world still turns, we are weeks away from this year's Winter Solstice and another billion kilometre trip around the solar system is almost under the monkeys' belts. Give or take a few million kilometres.
Of note is the addition of another Marshall Family recipe. This recipe, Roasted Pumpkin Chips is a new favourite which can become a meal, in itself. Roast pumpkin is, as is whole roast garlic and whole roast onion, simple, cheap and delicious. And don't be afraid to leave the skin on. You can eat the whole lot. Consider too, there are only three ingredients, if you don't count your cheese accompaniments.
The monkeys are fixated on the subject of cancer. Not unreasonably. The readers of this drivel may have picked this up. The current quandary doing the loops in monkeys' brains is: What were the radiological effects on human beings from the nukes dropped at the end of WWII. Aghast are the doctors treating the monkeys to find out that sheets of blackened skin fell off as a result of the radiation oncological treatment, last year. It is the IT help desk answer to a user's complaint that doesn't feature in the canned responses: Well, that shouldn't have happened. It did. It wasn't pleasant. And it seems to compliment the ongoing bone pain as a result of this part of the monkey's cancer treatment last year.
The monkeys don't complain. Their's is observation and measurement, like all good scientists, but it certainly is not a fiction borne of imagination or attention seeking. Monkeys are too busy for nonsense and are offended by suggestions that it is all in their heads. Outrageous is the suggestion that contrived pain would be sorted out by a visit or visits to a psychologist.
Perhaps an Australian raven's call would be appropriate right here.
8th of March 2015: The monkeys are not going away. The monkeys are not shutting up about people with imaginary friends in the sky.
The monkeys current thesis is that atheism is akin to vegetarianism.
The monkeys elect not to eat meat. Atheists choose not to believe in deities. There is a rational choice not to eat meat, insofaras the simplest and most elementary diet available to humans in the last 2.5 million years has been based on picking food off trees and digging things out of the ground. Added highlights were stealing the unfertilised birds eggs out of nests.
The monkeys must note here the mathematical disparity not often made plain to cartoon watching dolts: sixty five minus two and a half equals sixty two and a half.
Folks, this mean Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty existed sixty million years after the death of the dinosaurs. Dry your eyes and get on with life. Or sit back and enjoy another episode of the Flintstones with a new outlook.
Meat was a luxury in the old days. Protein is expensive. For so many humans today, meat is still a luxury, and yet the first world experience is that there are so many meat choices. The dodgey parallel being drawn by the monkeys is that theism is the same: Pick a deity. Pick a prophet. Worship an idol. Fight to death for your imaginary friends.
Which leads the monkeys to yet another recent revelation. If the holy books that people live and die for are all based on bunkum, what of all the characters portrayed? Are humans supposed to believe, even though a particular human is dished up as a character in any one of these fictional books, that this character was actually alive and kicking hundreds or thousands of years ago?
If you don't accept people's versions of fantastic stories of deities, then can you also discount those people and the associated fantastic things they did a long time ago?
They monkeys have been busy deleting fantastic gods, fantastic prophets, fantastic stories and fantastic places from their collected ancient histories to clear the mess. The short Monkey version of human history is severely abridged, when unverifiable rubbish is traded for lines of more credible accounts.
When the time travel device is derived and used to see what really happened, those calls to inspect those purported great days in religious history will take a back seat to Things That Really Mean Stuff in human beings' past.
Like all of the meat apologists that the Monkeys meet, the monkeys see parallels in those poor sods who will not consider a life without god.
Otherwise, the grim human news is those politicians who trade their own beliefs and humanity on a platform to get themselves into office. This is especially so for those wanting to get elected or re-elected on the right side of the political spectrum. Getting tough on crime and criminals is the mantra fed to dull witted voters or those with long standing persecution baggage who want to use the political system to address their psychological issues.
The monkeys have highlighted this human phenomenon before, again tying those on that end of the political end of the spectrum with those with a fierce belief in imaginary beings in the sky.
Back here in the Realiverse, NASA's probe Dawn is drawing nearer to Ceres in it planned orbit of the dwarf planet, in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Tracking it's way through the Solar System, Dawn has had it's encounter with another dwarf planet Vesta before moving on to Ceres.
Again we can see and celebrate real things that matter borne out of clever human beings and their visions and those who are brave enough to support and fund these ideas.
2nd of February 2015: So, this may be the last of the Monkey's navel gazing sessions, given recent criticism of the seemingly endless tirade against idiots who believe in nothing. Perhaps this is the reason for the silence over the holiday break. Maybe the Monkeys were merely basking in the warmth of the mild Australian summer of 2014/2015 and couldn't be bothered to pound out a diatribe in the interim.
The criticism of the Monkeys is based on perceived negativity and the perception that the Monkeys apparently go on and on and on about those of faith.
Faith. This is the thesis of today's Monkey Rant.
The Monkeys believe that faith is intellectual cowardice and laziness. People of faith give their lives (and sometimes their liberty) to belief systems that they, themselves, admit to defying logic. The answer is to wrap themselves in the safety blanket that is faith. That comforter that produces nothing except an inner warmness.
The monkeys see the parallel with movies and television that ask viewers to leave their brains in a bucket at the door to suspend belief in reality. Much like the current cinematic and little screen dross that is produced in certain countries, to assuage certain religious minorities. Who thinks that one culturally diverse country has an unusual preponderance of just the one people of one faith. This is the net effect when you their watch films and television.
Which the monkeys want to highlight in this missive. Who believes this tripe? The nonsense in a solitary tome, the propaganda idiocy borne of a religious minority?
Does no one think critically any more?
What are people reading? What are people watching and listening to?
How about some other species questions to stir the foment?
In Space News, the Rosetta space craft is on a joy ride, piggy backed onto the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) that is hurtling through the Solar System.
Apologies to the Space Nerds who already know, but there is a fabulous web page on the European Space Agencies' site that shows the journey of their space craft.
Therein is the start of the wonder to the amount of thought and imagination that has gone into this effort. Some very clever people have devised this mission to get this machine to a lump of rock in space.
To change the subject again, the Monkeys have hit yet another birthday. This time, they are still around to talk about it.
Monkeys used to think that birthdays didn't seem to matter much. This was in the old days. These times were in the past, before cancer. These days, every milestone is important.
22nd of November 2014: We are all screwed, of course. Monkeys and humans alike.
The Solar System, as well as the Galaxy, as well as the universe, are all one four dimensional billiard table with balls perpetually bouncing off each other.
(This is avoiding the notions of universes colliding and other dimensional elements interfering with our “quiet” corner of the Cosmos.)
On a micro level, the billiard table that is humanity may or may not survive the self absorbed, self sustaining, self prophesised cataclysm that will end it all, as discussed earlier by the monkeys.
Whatever is left over will be cleaned up by a random asteriodal cataclysm, a product of the billiard table which is the Asteroid Belt or any other red, white or white ball(with a dot).
Again, as suggested by the monkeys earlier, more humans need to look at the sky. Not to search for their sky gods or whatever primitive and childish notions of imaginary entities. They need to look at the sky and understand that their fate lies with the heavens and physics and stuff we can all see and feel.
Or not.
The monkeys see humans who are always “butt hurt” about something or other. They are altering the billiard table existence of all other humans while these individuals fail to sort out their problems.
HTFU School may be the answer. As suggested above, go to a dark place, away from city light scatter, and look at the interstellar region near our solar system. Look at our corner of the Milky Way. Try to comprehend the enormous distances between solar systems, between star clusters, indeed, between galaxies. Then go back to the people who have cannoned off you while you were “butt hurt” and apologise and just get on with life.
So the monkeys, on a completely different subject, want to know what is next? We have been schooled in cancer. The monkeys have been through the cancer sausage factory and have come out the other end. Is life supposed to be “normal” again? Are the monkeys supposed to look closely and deeply into their navels and consider “what's next”? What do monkeys do differently to prevent a re-entry into the cancer sausage factory?
Sleep is crap for the monkeys at the moment (sorry to bleat) and the 4 AM preoccupation is nearly always these questions, tossed over and over throughout the grey matter.
9th of November 2014: As has been stated many times on these pages, the monkeys are not the same species as humans. This gives an outsider's view of the planet and what humans get up to. Very similar to all of the extraterrestrial species who watch, catalogue and record the Petri dish that is planet Earth. (Minus all of the cool technology and toys that ET has, of course.)
One other species observation that the monkeys have noticed is that humans are Labradors. Labrador dogs were bred as hunting dogs with an ability to dive into water to retrieve shot fowl. Show any Labrador water and he or she will run straight into it and go for a swim. The other thing a Labrador loves is food. Give this breed of dog food and they will eat the lot. Give the dog more food and the dog will eat that, too. The animal will continue eating until they die, given the chance.
This appears to be the current first world human existence. Notwithstanding what Dr Karl says about the ready convenience of food in 2014, humans now eat and eat and eat until they die. Humans, compared to their existence 50 years ago, also have access to lots of processed food options that appear to have a deleterious affect on them, but that is the subject of another Monkey Diatribe.
This eat until you die behaviour is good business for lots of people. Just go to a local park or oval to see all of the Labrador people being tortured by fitness bods. The fitness people know the secret. They know that, if they stick the wrong food in their mouths over and over again, they will have to do endless squats and crunches on the grass with the rest of the Labrador people. They know that garbage in equals garbage out.
The monkeys are guilty, of this behaviour, too. Very late to realise the notion that “six pack abs start in the kitchen”.
It's good for the medical profession, too, with fat people filling up doctors surgeries and hospitals all over the first world.
The answer then is simple, isn't it? Don't eat. Fast.
This notion of food denial is contradicted in the shiny pages of magazines in the newsagent. The general advice is to eat all day to stave off hunger. However, that eating regime sounds like the fuel required for elite athletes and not semi sedentary humans who work in service industries in the first world. Sitting on your backside, looking at the screen of a computer does not require lots of calories. Which is grist for yet another Monkey Diatribe.
Labrador people aside, the latest cancer update is that there is not much to tell. The monkeys would like to know if they have been cured or have they simply been treated.
The monkeys don't know.
Suffice to say, the monkeys are back to normal, albeit the new “norm”.
The feature web site on the front page of themarshalls.tv has changed. Way back in 1998, in the infancy of the InterWeb, years before Y2K, a person by the name of Michael Paine posted the Carl Sagan Baloney Detection Kit. This was a guide for the debunking of nonsense against the forces of reason and logic. The monkeys alway revisit the page as a ready reference, especially when the Great Aussie Bullshit Meter pings.
4th of October 2014: Is it wrong to deride deluded people?
Is it wrong to pick on a bunch of people who have imaginary friends in the sky?
Those who have yet to grasp that they have been fed nonsense since birth. Those that are trussed up in a system that stops reason and common sense and has a single source of reference. Those who are forced to recycle the mistruths and folk tales.
Exactly how many people in this country can honestly say that they “believe” or have complete “faith”?
So, the monkeys want to know why this rubbish is protected and propped up in Australia in 2014.
We, as Australians, defend to the death your right to believe in something that is a bunch of ancient fables. Apparently.
And some ancient fables get much more media time and support in the media than other made up rubbish. All those particular deluded people have to do is cause a ruckus and, suddenly, there is another, unrelated group of people who jump to the first group's defence and their right to believe in nothing. Ordinarily, the second group rushing to the defence of the first group also struggles with reality.
Hello, McFly?
As always, the monkeys are not the same species, but they can not help themselves wondering when, or if, the upright bipedal naked apes roaming this continent will stop.
Religious nutbags aside, the cancer news is that the treatment has finished.
The monkeys have, in sequence, been poisoned, been sliced and diced and have been irradiated.
The last was probably the worst, with an empathy for those poor bastards who suffered radiation burns in WWII. It is one thing having a radiation source focussed on one part of your body from many angles for a couple of minutes every day for several weeks but it is another to see slabs of your flesh peel off as a result.
So, the monkeys can return to a normal life, whatever that means. Akin to a payout after the 2003 Bushfires. You have your money, now go forth and go back to whatever it was you were doing before and pretend that nought happened.
By the way, there is no anecdotal warning from the monkeys for the readers of the monkey diatribes to ward off cancer. Being fit and active and attempting to do the best with your weight and the types of food you stuff in your face will not prevent cancer from happening. We are all a statistic. The monkey's cancer is a statistic, now. All elements of the prognosis, treatment and results will be part of a statistical set for future use and abuse.
30th of August 2014: What the monkeys forgot to mention in the last diatribe is the hipocrisy involved with some of the apologists for some of the current human crises.
On one hand, an apologist may laud and support the apparent plight of those people doing dastardly things to others, all the while being seen to remonstrate others who do similar, if not, identical deeds or misdeeds.
The monkeys think it is odd for someone to bankroll and defend the malevolent largese of some people while making a show of the seemingly criminality of others. The two faced efforts of some goes unreported.
But it must be seen and be puzzling to millions of people on the globe.
In the First World, the news is awash with tears on TV. Who cares?
And, now for something elucidating, here is a cancer update from the monkeys:
Although now in Phase 3 of treatment for breast cancer, with a daily dose of radiation, the monkeys feel like they've been “collecting underpants” for a very long time. Making profit is the end result, but even the monkeys don't know what comes in between.
Underpants Gnomes - Explained
Are the monkeys being pessimistic or are they just sick of it? Pardon the pun.
30th of July 2014: Backing the right horse is a gamble. This is probably self evident for most but to simple simian minds like those of the monkeys, spelt out like that, it makes it plain.
However, in the world today, right now, there are those who have backed one group over another, skewing the balance of many of the so called “trouble spots”. The result is something that baffles the simple simian minds and it all suggests ancient tribalism. Moreover, when one group relies on centuries old fables to lay claim to their right to brutalise others, a dull set of monkeys have to ask: Where is the humanity in that?
Of course, the brutality comes at a cost and one group has to fund the weaponry that is used by others to brutalise a third group. That either means that regimes must either be directly or indirectly armed, directly funded or indirectly funded, direct vocal and “moral” support or indirect support.
In the end, it appears that the first group are apologists for the second group slaughtering others.
History's mistakes are littered with the same situation of supporters of failed regimes.
Perhaps the simple message from dopey simians to humans is to be careful who you back. Take care which horse you put your money on. Especially when it's all about what your “gut” tells you and the potential outcomes. Perhaps you have nothing to lose and you are happy to make someone else rich when your gamble does not come off.
To give this missive the “up tick” it desperately needs, NASA reports that, for the first time, a man made machine traversing another world has finished a marathon. The Opportunity Rover has been driven more than 42.195 kilometres on the surface of the planet Mars.
This excites the monkeys given that it relates to human endeavour, it is a scientific achievement and it is real and here and now.
If it would only promote more humans to do more of the same.
The monkeys would also like to say G'Day to the folks from Oregon. The web site is popular there, as it is in Brazil, but for slightly different reasons.
8th of July 2014: By the way, something that the monkeys neglected to mention during their Portuguese cancer rant yesterday was the addition of yet another Marshall Family recipe. From days past. In the era when we were all veggos. And simple and cheap food was core to our existence.
The recipes page has had the Marshall Family Pumpkin Soup recipe added to it.
With a bowl of our style of pumkin soup, bread and sour cream, there is nothing else you need for sustenance. So simple and filling.
7th of July 2014: Now for the cancer news:
It’s official! The monkeys have had enough, are over it, don’t want to play anymore!
They are as one, feeling sooky, teary, morose and sorry for themselves.
How do people cope with this shit over and over again?
Maybe these monkeys aren’t as evolved as some people.
The monkeys have now had their cancer cut out of them and are (nominally) cancer free.
This is good news, except the monkeys are now lop sided and still have no hair.
The pain and discomfort of the surgery is... a pain.
The monkeys are now just waiting for Stage Three...
On a brighter note, the monkeys wanted to recognise a statistical “blip” on the themarshalls.tv web site. Visitations to our web site have spiked and the monkeys wanted to say hello to all of the Portugese speaking people to our virtual home in the websphere. (Check out the portion of the radar map that is South America.) Whether they come from Brazil (Brasil) or from Portugal, they have been hitting themarshalls.tv in droves.
In order to share some culture, here is the Google translation of the Australian expression:
"Going off like a frog in a sock"
in Português:
“Saindo como um sapo em uma meia”
Olá!
23rd of June 2014: The monkeys, as you all know, have cancer. This is pretty well understood. What baffles the monkeys is why they are currently receiving regular unsolicited phone calls from vendors trying to sell them funeral insurance, life insurance or asking for donations to cancer research organisations.
Cynical, evil, jaundiced, skeptical monkeys think that their identities have been sent to these agents by the many cancer related sites they has trawled to find information about their cancer. Remember that the monkeys, in their many idle times, have been to the end of the InterWeb and have had to go back to the start again. This means that there is a lot of internet history related to their travels that could be garnered by anyone interested in exactly where the monkeys go on the InterWeb and what they look at and read.
If the monkeys were paranoid.
Maybe it is just coincidence?
Whatever it is, the monkeys are not ready to lay down and die just yet, but they are ready to give up body parts soon in the name of being "cured".
Anyway, that is the substance for this week's carcinoma update from the monkeys. The “tit lop job” is immenent. The worst bit about the impending operation is being ill just before being admitted to hospital. All the things that can go wrong, went wrong, and now the monkeys look like elephants. Picture that mess in your heads.
If it helps, here is a random link to a random picture of a random bald chimpanzee.
Otherwise, the monkeys cancer is just dandy. Thanks for asking.
18th of June 2014: People are bastards. People are bastards to other people. People are bastards to animals. (And don't the monkeys know it...)
To mark this, themarshalls.tv hosts a Bastardry Page.
Now, before the readers of this page get their knickers in a twist and complain, all of these words are regular English lanuage words. You will find them, along side certain words that begin with the letters “S”, “F” and “C” in the bloody dictionary. Some people are bastards about certain words and will get upset when they are used. Perhaps there are underlying reasons for this concern for individuals, and these people should look up at the night sky on a clear night and have a look at What Is Really Important.
Anyway, the word “Bastardry” is apparently uniquely Australian. So it is apt that the monkeys write to highlight people accused of bastardry.
Given that the Bastardry Page is written and kept up to date by the monkeys, we can commend it.
Suffice to say, verbiage aside, the monkeys have slotted new words into the Bastardry Page.
7rd of June 2014: Humans are pathetic. (Before you write to the monkeys and complain, don't apply the common use pejorative to what the monkeys have just written, but use the traditional meaning, derived from the root word “pathos”.) Human beings think they are so wise and so important and (in some circles) the centre of the universe.
Instead, the whole existence is relatively insignificant.
Does anyone appreciate how insignifcant we are?
In the depth and breadth of the universe there is so much of enormous size and enormous distances which beggar comprehension.
In amongst it all is a relative speck of dust: A blue marble which is part of a regular solar system in yet another galaxy.
It is a challenge for people to write down the maths involved: (Assuming that ours is a typical bunch of planets) Multipy nine planets by 500 thousand million stars by 100 thousand million galaxies.
The monkey calculate that this is:
9 x 5 x 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 = 450 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 planets
from
50 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 stars
This web site may give the readers of this drivel some perspective, if, and only if, you are able to wrap your brain around what is being described:
An Atlas of The Universe
Good luck.
3rd of June 2014: Tonight's is a quick edit to acknowledge the work of Klaus Knopper, the person who instigated the live CD/DVD Linux Distro revolution.
The Knoppix web site is newly installed as the featured link on the Home Page of themarshalls.tv.
31st of May 2014: The monkeys sometimes think that militant atheists should be a little kinder to people who believe in a god.
The monkeys are careful to say “a god” because the god of the Hindus is different to the god of the Jews which is different to the god of the Mormons which is different to the gods of the ancient Scandanavians. More specifically, Krishna is not Brahman is not Yahweh is not Elohim is not Jehovah is not Allah.
Anyhow, the centre of the monkeys thesis is that telling believers that they are deluded and that they are fantasising is presenting them with the unpleasant choice of safety versus jumping into an abyss. There is genuine fear for those who have been fed nonsense for all of their lives when logic is provided. What do they have left when a hole has been rent out of their existence?
This is the fear of all of the religions and why they gang up to have fallacy love ins. There is a fear, especially via the the InterWeb, that they will become irrelevant when it is explained that their stories are just a bunch of fiction. The worst of it in Australia is the legislation that makes it a crime to pick on religions.
When all else fails, coerce a politician to make laws to protect your lies.
The monkeys have said before, science and logic, delivered by the InterWeb, are the greatest enemies of those people who have invisible friends in the sky.
Anyway dopes who believe fiction is real aside, this is the latest cancer update from the monkeys:
- Phase One is over.
- No more chemo.
- Yay!
- Job's on to regrow the blonde curly locks.
- (And some of the rest of the body hair that has been lost since early on in the year.)
- Next stage is the the tit lop job.
- Not before some much needed R & R.
- Because chemotherapy is very, very hard work.
The other news, related to cancer and politics is the decision of the federal legislature in the USA to cease it's pursuit of it's citizens who use marijuana to mitigate the effects of cancer.
As pointed out in the debate in the US House of Representatives, many of the state legislatures have already recognised that doctors can prescribe so called “medical marijuana” to cancer patients to provide relief for the suffering from the manifold effects of the disease.
The monkeys wonder when the Australian governments will catch up.
Will the law enforcement lobby attempt to pressure the state, territory and federal governments to continue to stump up money so cannabis users can continued to be prosecuted?
13th of May 2014: The monkeys love to watch politicians squirm. Whether they sit on the world stage witnessed by more and more of the seven billion humans on the planet while they lie, obfuscate and wriggle their way through their corrupt days in power, all the way stroking their egos. Or whether it is one of our local gaggle, like the Federal Treasurer who, akin to the little boy on the naughty stool, can not comfortably dish out pain to those of little or no privilege.
In tonight's budget speech, our Federal Treasurer knew, deep inside, he was one of those who sailed through the tertiary education system paying little or nothing to attend because he happened to live in the days of privilege. While those who set up a free university system undoubtedly did it with notions of egalitarianism, the product meant that rich, poor and middle class all had the opportunity to study after high school or college at the peoples' expense.
Nowadays, Australian tertiary education looks, feels and smells more like the North Americans system where the students of today are the unwitting tax payer (seemingly) forever. Perhaps our politicians, who have all done very well, thank you, out of the old system, look at the U.S.A. and picture a future where poorer kids miss out, middle class kids mortgage themselves into debt and the rich kids have mummy and daddy pay for it all.
All of the opportunities for the struggling students to join debating clubs, student representative councils or other extra-curricular activities have been anulled by way of economic strangulation. Who has time for the pastimes of the past times when you have to clean toilets, pull beers or make lattes?
28th of April 2014: Well, the catholics have outdone themselves. Not one, but two popes of the last 100 years have been canonised. Think about it, they are now officially saints.
The only analogy the monkeys can draw is one of a football stadium. When you are short of cash you have to sit up the back and squint at dots running around a big green expanse. The more money you have, the closer you get to the playing field and the closer you are to The Action.
If you are loaded, you get to sit right up close.
This is the elevated status of these two dead men. They have gone from being also-rans to those who get to rub shoulders with the Big Guy in the Sky.
Because of the actions of some mortals down here on the ground, there is a direct affect on their heavenly entities in the after life and their status within that realm. Beyond the fact that they were JC's representatives here on earth while they sat on the Big Chair, they currently get extra special regard in heaven.
This makes notions of aliens in volcanoes and gold tablets in hats and decades long desert treks and ageing men in caves taking child brides simpler to comprehend and digest.
Which (sort of) leads the monkeys to yet another observation of contemporary humans and the ancient bigotries that are still practiced. All humans are bigots. All humans are taught bigotry. Bigotry is still practiced throughout the planet. The finest practitioners are some of those numbskulls mentioned earlier.
From their pooey cages, the monkeys are stunned to watch the first world gasp in faux horror whenever a new bigot is revealed, knowing, deep inside, that they are all part of a nonsense system that, at one instant, they rail against bigotry as the worst of anti-humanist practices and yet, they will happily vote for bigots, pray for bigots and pay money to see and hear bigots.
It's the chardonnay/latte set who have the economic power to do all of these things.
Simultaneously.
At the same time.
23nd of April 2014: The monkeys had a shocker last night. Yesterday's post was full of misspellings and grammatical errors. Too busy with bile to get it right.
These mistakes have all been rectified.
As the monkeys delve more into all things cancerous there will be further updates posted here.
As well as more posts about the monkeys' wellbeing.
22nd of April 2014: In attempt to keep things positive, this portion of the monkeys' musings is about human scientific and technological achievements in space.
While the monkeys have callouses on their knuckles from dragging them on the ground, the International Space Station is up in near earth orbit, circling the globe at a great rate of knots. There have been so many countries that have contributed in the effort to build and maintain a permanent facility in space.
Notwithstanding daft movies whose blu-ray “special features” are more enthralling than the feature and, also, all of the attempts, as mentioned previously on these pages, of homo sapien knuckle draggers who retard to progress of science and technology with their centuries old mythology, scary stories and baseless superstitions, the Station still moves forward in it's contributions to the world and the advances people on the ground derive as a result.
There are two immediate actions that the readers of this drivel can perform to get the same sense of wonder and awe that the monkeys get, at what is being achieved by all of the women and men involved:
1. Go outside at dusk or at dawn and catch a glimpse of the Station. NASA has a Spot The Station web site that can list when you can see the Station sail overhead. You punch in your city and the web site will tell you when to next expect to see the orbiting Station. The ISS is big, relative to other orbiting objects and is easily identified.
2. Check out the Ustream ISS web site where you can see the Station and the earth live on your computer screen. Part of the live feed is picking up the Station and Ground Control audio at the same time, if there are activities on at the time.
Now the nice stuff is out of the way, the monkeys can give a cancer update:
- Yes, the monkeys still have cancer.
- Yes it is still inside them.
- No, there are no specific dates when the cancer will be removed from the monkeys.
- Yes, the monkeys are still bald.
- Yes, the monkeys feel like crap, most of the time.
- No, there hasn't been any miracle cures for cancer since the monkeys made it public.
There is so much the monkeys have learned since being told of the carcinoma diagnosis confirmation. The monkeys have found out that mammograms are only partially effective. There is a significant portion of the population that mammograms will not show tumours. There have been advances in technology that have led to more accurate and less painful early detection of breast cancer. This technology is called Molecular Breast Imaging (MBI) and has not had widespread acceptance and uptake because of the huge footprint and the huge investment made over the last couple of decades in digital and analogue mammography devices.
Very personally, the monkeys have made another discovery: Not only does the chemotherapy drugs make the monkeys feel like crap, everything also tastes like crap. This is true for most food and beverages, but everything that does not taste like crap is rendered bland.
Very controversially, then there is the new knowledge that marijuana has been demonised because of the psychoactive components of the plant when you burn it. When it is not burnt and it is properly cultivated, there are broad medical applications of the plant, notably it's use for cancer patients for their treatment of haemorrhoids.
Sorry, more cancer humour.
The battle with the federal bureaucracy in the U.S.A, with regards to marijuana, has moved forward in the last 77 years. Some States of the Union and some countries are experimenting with legalisation and regulation, contrary to the federal statute. Moreover, proper studies of the medicinal use of the plant, which have not been driven by corrupt law enforcement attempts to highlight the harm, are putting science behind the anecdotes.
Think of all of the politicians and bureaucrats across the world and temporally, who have made it into office on the basis of their hard arsed stance on weed.
However, debate is silenced and people are thrown in gaol simply because the plant is classified as a Schedule 1 drug and illegal.
10th of February 2014: Well, it's official: The monkeys have cancer and can tell the world. (And any aliens who tap into the InterWeb.)
Which is something that has the monkeys fired up about. The monkeys are having chemotherapy to get rid of the tumour.
No, the monkeys are not pissed off at the fact they have cancer. That comes under the banner of “shit happens”. Given there is no underlying cause for the cancer, like cigarettes, the monkeys can not attribute their tumour with one smoking gun. (Very black cancer punny humour already.)
No, the monkeys can not get upset that they are about to be poisoned with chemotherapy drugs which will cause a myriad of side affects. As one wag pointed out, the monkeys will not have to pay for a brazillian wax for a while. (Still more dark cancer humour.)
No, the monkeys are not cranky that they will have to put their lives on hold for a period while they go through the cancer treatment.
The monkeys are livid that it is 2014 and that religion is the number one reason the monkeys can not be given a pill to fix what ails them.
So much science and bleeding edge medicine is retarded by religious cretins. People with invisible friends in the sky, people whose limited imagination and intellects have meant that they have not moved on from the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. People who literally believe in horse rides to some magical place called heaven, planet wide floods and virginal births. People who use their corrupt positions to sway countries and politicians. People who make shit up, minute by minute, to enable them to slow or stop technological advances.
Not only do we not have hover boards, sentient robots and regular space travel within the Solar System but we can not divert the resources fed into useless and wasteful religions in order to fix relatively simple things that affect all of humanity.
The monkeys are forever waiting for the day where science, logic, technology and reason are to prevail on the planet.
Instead, the monkeys will have to make regular trips to an oncology ward to get their tumour out of their bodies.
The solution for people who want their hover boards, sentient robots and regular space travel within the Solar System is to quiz a politician. (If you live in a Western democracy or equivalent. Probably dangerous, otherwise.) Ask your politicians if the religions in your country enjoy tax free status. Ask your politicians if the religious bodies regularly have their books independently audited. Ask your politicians if the money collected by the religions, whatever the source, goes off shore. If so, what mechanisms are used and is that information publicly available. Ask your politicians what the total wealth is of the religious organisations in your country and, if the numbers are not regularly published, ask why they are not publicly available. Do your religious entities pay award wages for all of their workers? Are some expected to work for free?
And it goes on. The source of the power is money. Always has been and will always stay that way, unless people start asking these questions. Someone, somewhere is bathing in the gold reaped from some poor bastards who can barely afford to feed and house themselves.
21st of January 2014: ***SPOILER ALERT***
The monkeys know who is going to win this weekend's Triple J Hottest 100 countdown for 2013.
If you want to know, check out:
The Warmest 100 returns in 2013 with a socially-sourced prediction of the world's largest music countdown!
If you care.
If you think Sunday's countdown is "...world's biggest music democracy!...".
If you don't think the results are skewed.
If you think that not all unsigned artists are represented.
If you don't think that a biased system can produce a balanced and representative outcome, such as is the case in many tin pot democracies.
Does the autocracy always decide who leads? Or is it the people?
Just because a tune is played over and over and over again, does that make it popular or more memorable. (or pehaps less forgettable...)
If those programming the music decide the playlists and the incessant replay of the same limited number of songs, is that fair and reasonable for those who have to listen to some band's tripe repeatedly?
The monkeys don't think so. Especially now that Triple J apparently plays gospel music.
(...speaking of monkeys, check out the top 20 for 2013.......)
1st of January 2014: The monkeys have added yet another recipe to the Marshall Family Recipes page.
The latest addition to the list, the Fruity Bix Cookies recipe, is one of the recycling types of recipe where you can use the crumbs in the bottom of a breakfast cereal packet to create lunch box food for little monkeys.
Oddly, the monkeys have had a lot of time on their simian hands but at the same time they have been neglecting the regular upkeep of these pages.
The monkeys blame the Muses.
Pathetic excuses aside, the monkeys are currently worried about human males who are scared witless about human female bits.
Call it what you like: The wadge, the pudenda, the vulva, the privates. Some men are petrified of them.
Notwithstanding it is where ninety nine percent of all humanity emanates from, in a purely mechanical sense, there are many men who are afraid of womens' genitalia.
Perhaps it can be a cultural thing or a fear generated in childhood, but regardless of the cause, it appears to sway the way one half of humanity treats the other.
As a consequence, it seems that human society, religion and politics is driven by these men and their fears.
The monkeys think that there should be pre-employment tests that can weed out these people.
Maybe they can be sent to rehabilitation groups where their phobias can be sorted out.
Or maybe there is a problem that the monkeys need to sort out: That notion that humans can set aside their left brain complexes and treat each other equally.
The monkeys simply drop their shoulders and exhale deeply and thank themselves that they are not the same species and have to deal with the same mucked up issues.
14th of December 2013: The monkeys were about to write that they have been busy updating this site and posting new stuff. The positive way to assess this statement is that it is partly true.The negative assessment says that the statement is all bollocks and the monkeys have stopped bludging and have finally got around to working on the site.
The monkeys have tarted up (pardon the pun) the Recipes on the Links page and have included Jan's Fish Curry recipe.
17th of October 2013: The monkeys have been neglecting the upkeep of themarshalls.tv again.
Oh well, what can you do? Spank them?
Anyway, after a long time off, the monkeys have got another Marshall Family perennial recipe and posted it on the Recipes page of the site.
The recipe has fed many a vegetarian Marshall child in their growing years. A quick and simple recipe for a family after work, school and day care.
These are in the days before the Marshall kids became omnivorous.
The recipe is for Spinach and Mushroom Quiche - 3 Ways. Your choice of base.
5th of September 2013: If you had a tough time at school, turn away now. Follow this link and get the hell out of here, because the next few paragraphs contain stuff you may find disturbing. You have been warned.
The monkeys think that high school was the hardest 10 years of their lives. The monkeys struggled to fit in, mainly because the general school population was not their intellectual peer group, as the monkeys have dicovered all these years later.
This is the perenial problem of the dolts who go to school with nerds: They know that there are smarter people in the world, but they simply can not grasp how much smarter these people are and can not grasp what these people know. This is why nerds will get beaten up in the playground and classroom. It frustrates the hell out of lesser beings.
This is one of the bases for religion. You don't want smart people with a grander view of the Universe getting an upper hand on things. People will know the truth about imaginary friends in the sky and recycled fables about things that, allegedly, happened centuries ago.
Nerds aren't welcome in High School. Nerds have to suffer the cool wankers, the sporty wankers, the retarded thugs and the rich wankers.
While nerds may inherit the universe and drive the biggest corporations and government departments in the world, they have to survive high school first.
The rates of suicide and self harm because of the treatment of the high school nerd is, in essence, a darwinian gladitorial thing.
You come out of the other end of the high school sausage factory as a nerd with the rest, who are dolts, who receive their dolt so-so academic results. This means that you, as a nerd, have survivied.
What you, as a nerd, accomplish in high school does not matter when the school is busy pitching what they do at the median student. Yes, occasionally, there is the odd teacher that gives a damn about the exceptional students. This treatment is exceptional in itself and is demeaned by those within education whose pitch is egalitarianism. Or more plainly, equal rights for dolts.
But in the end, who are the teachers? The teachers themselves are those senior high school and college students who did not have the university entrance scores to do physics and medicine and law and economics, classical musical training and accounting. (The monkeys deliberately put the accountants at the bottom of the list)
Maybe it's punishment meted out by the also-rans: Teachers who attained mediocrity who use the sausage factory to derive the same, or lower reults from their charges.
All of this public money so we don't offend the idiots who don't care, anyway.
Lucky the monkeys are another species and can't interbreed with humans.
9th of August 2013: The monkeys love their sport. Mostly their AFL. The monkeys have observed that the rest of the codes cannot compete with the AFL on many levels.
This has a lot to do with the so called “modern game” and how the game is marketed. Also, the AFL has had many wins with repect to the inclusion of all comers. Compare the Anglo line up of the old days to the multicultural players of 2013.
The only thing missing is sexual equality.
Picture either a woman playing first grade AFL or a league of female players with the same status and air time of the male players.
Football is no stranger to indigenous Australians. White people were witness to a game like football being played by the indigenous folk in the early days of European settlement. This game was colloqiually know as Marn Grook.
Move forward to the present day and there is a representative bunch of football players who have that heritage and play their hearts out in the first grade of the AFL.
Something the monkeys have been meaning to mention for some time is the television show which reports and celebrates the efforts of indigenous AFL players. The show is called Marngrook and is (currently) on ABC3 and NITV every week during the footy season. The Marngrook team talk to the current day and the past indigenous heroes of the game.
The show has none of the gloss and production values of the maintream media and doesn't appear to take itself too seriously. But what is does offer is a unique look at the game.
If you love your footy and haven't seen the show, the monkeys can recommend it.
As they say on the idiot box: “Check your guide” for the programme times.
(In today's speak: Check out your TV's EPG.)
The Marngrook web site link has been slotted into the Sport section of the links page.
20th of July 2013: The monkeys are atheists, as discussed earlier on this page. One of the elements of theism that worries the monkeys is the promise of an after life. The promise that, if you believe in all of the fairy stories and nonsense from the pulpit, you get a ticket to an eternal life after this bout of mortality. Fine and dandy, you get to rub shoulders with the Big Guy in the Sky and his inner circle of prophets and angels and saints, etc. For ever. Because theists struggle with the physical sciences, this trip is always upwards, away from the ground, like a celestial escalator or elevator to The Beyond.
However, all of the time spent in a corpreal existence is just a waiting room of sorts. You do your time, here on earth, then you, in what ever form you become after your body no longer draws breath, make the journey to this special place. Which makes the monkeys wonder why all of the people who believe in a omnipotent being wait. They know what's in store. They believe. They accept the irrational that they could not seperate after childhood.
This leaves the rational thinkers, the people whose fantasies are more likely to come from the pen or typewriter or computer of a novelist rather than a single tome, the people who believe in independent thought and facts, to worry and concern themselves about the here and now.
Which is the centre of the monkeys thesis (read: diatribe) whereby god bodies don't give a damn about now. They don't care about the future. They couldn't care less about what is about to happen next because they are going to a magical and better place.
That worries the crap out of the monkeys.
This is why atheists probably need to understand the deluded better.
As always, the monkeys' drivel these days seems to be two part efforts, so here is part number 2:
ICT people are not understood by others. While most people sit on the periphery of technology and most first world people are technology users, they accept that a deeper understanding of computers, etc, is for those who are paid or otherwise work in this arena. Akin to the people who watch and marvel over the bloke who is operating a backhoe to dig a trench and accept that there is a occupational niche for everyone, the observer generally can not appreciate the working life of the operator.
This is probably true for most “doers” and “watchers”. (Consider the poor aliens watching this planet right now and their contemplation of human beings.)
The monkeys want to plead a special case for people in the computer industry and the mindset of an administrator or programmer or analyst. They think differently. They approach problems in a differnet way. They probably have a different outlook on things.
And, to tie today's Diatribe Number 1 with today's Diatribe Number 2, the probability that someone who gets their jollies from heavy metal music, science fiction novels and technological gadgets is going to be an atheist.
29th of June 2013: The news (this time) is all positive. (For a change.) Today, the monkeys are focussing on four wheel driving and the vast interior of this continent. (No bile, the monkeys promise.)
If you are lucky enough to drive or fly across Australia, you will learn that it is flippin' huge, flat and red. There are parallels between the fabulous panaromas shot by the Curiosity rover on Mars and the centre of Australia. This has been mentioned by the monkeys earlier on these pages.
Anyway, if you follow these links, you can track a convoy of 4WD vehicles as they journey through the Australian Outback over the next couple of weeks:
4wd Tours - Great Divide Tours
SpotWalla - Trip Viewer - Simpson Desert Safari 1-13 July
25th of June 2013: The monkeys have made mention before of the relationship between people's perception and reality.
However, the monkeys want to turn this on it's head and explore the notion that people just can't count. People who know the monkeys know the story that Catholics can't count. If your name is Dave and you add one and one and arrive at three, maybe you have mucked it up.
Perhaps if more people investigated the facts and had not gone off half cocked, they may have discovered some truths. If they are interested. If they have the testicular fortitude to put their claims to both of the humans accused of wrong doing.
Anyhow, the monkeys are inspired. The monkeys love the Google Loon Project. The story is that Google have launched the embryo of a idea that will float internet points of presence in the stratosphere via balloons at 20 000 metres.
Initially, the monkeys thought that something was a amiss and there would be a humorous punch line associated with the story. But no, this looks like a genuine attempt by a giant computer corporation to provide the internet to everyone.
This is not like eco-friendly toilets, that have already been invented, for no one in the third world.
The Google Loon news has prompted the monkeys into action and has spelt the death of the Windows pages on themarshalls.tv.
The dated and moribund Windows Links page will be replaced by more relevant content, via a new page. Watch this space for changes.
14th of June 2013: The monkeys are bemused by the “sudden increase” in the prescription of testosterone to Australian men. The reports suggest that emasculated men are fronting up to their GPs in droves and are demanding to be prescribed testosterone supplements.
There are two issues here. Number one is the pharmaceutical companies laughing all of the way to the bank because of the sales of their drugs. Look at the pharmaceutical company paraphernalia on your GP's desk. Add it up.
The second is fat men. Fat men who look like women. (Sorry ladies...) Fat men who don't know how to manufacture their own hormones. And have lost the ability to do so naturally.
Instead of making GPs and drug companies rich, all blokes have to do, according to the monkeys, is to pick up a set of dumbbells. Or check out your wife's “bits”. Or, perhaps, challenge another bloke to a pissing contest.
Or, how about getting down onto the floor and just doing some push ups on a regular basis?
Also, importantly, both men and women need to do kegel exercises. Test your manhood by training your pelvic floor muscles as you would the six pack under the tub of lard.
Which leads the monkeys to the most vital DIY testosterone boosting strategy: Look critically at the quality and quantity of the food males shovel into their mouths. There is so much food that is cheap and easy to get and makes you fat and plays havoc with your blood sugar.
The testosterone myth is akin to the human female dysfunction myth. Both are apparently able to be treated medically.
12th of June 2013: The monkeys have done a tidy up and reorganisation of the cinema links of the links page.
The monkeys like their cinema, with the movie endings that nobody sees because the bugger off before the end of the movie, (Who sat all the way through the last Iron Man?) the thumping sound systems (in "selected" cinemas) and the monster screens. A 50 inch plasma and an awesome stereo does not provide the same "vibe". (To paraphrase a Famous Australian Flick - that we can't mention in Law School - It's all about the vibe.)
Anyway, the Australian Cinema section has been hived off the Media and Entertainment section of the links page.
5th of June 2013: The monkeys have an armchair ride on their view of humanity. Not being from the same species, their perspective is akin to aliens landing on planet Earth to assess the sentient forms of life.
Mind you, sentience can be broad when applied. For a fleeting moment, as described by Douglas Adams, any creature in our world can have this shared understanding of it's environment and a wonder about stuff before the lights go out.
Which is the navel gazing introduction to the monkeys assessment of what has come out of the mouth of Michael Douglas in the recent past.
Again, to digress, the monkeys have been schooled in logic. This means that you apply more reasoned logic than the following syllogistic assessment:
My dog has a tail.
All kangaroos have tails.
(Ergo) My dog is a kangaroo.
Micheal is afraid to offend Catherine, so he used the dog and kangaroo logical leap to find an excuse why he has throat cancer.
This is as disingenuous as the allergy specialist that says a kid's chronic health problems are nothing to do with her cigarette smoking parents and more to do with the pet cat.
Fur balls.
It amuses the monkeys to watch humans dance around the truth.
1st of June 2013 #2: Something that slipped in, under the radar, was a relatively recent entry to the Bastardry page. Not flagged by the monkeys, mainly because of the bile ball that was present at the time would have produced many many unpleasant words on these pages. Now that the monkeys have let a little time pass, the actions of a cur can be mentioned on these pages a bit more evenly.
1st of June 2013 #1: The monkeys want to help people, by way of a community announcment. Most of the monkey's posts here are semi useful and informative, in those times between monkey bile and rants.
The monkeys got a call from one of those "fix your computer" scammers recently. Straight away, the monkeys realised that this is big business. Not only was the sub-continental caller female (all of the others have been men) but the background noise suggested that there were dozens of these people making calls to other English speaking people across the globe.
These scams and scammers are well known. They claim to represent Giant Software Companies and Big Telecommunication Companies to fix your computer. Much like god botherers who say they have had direct communication with Bog and His Holy Angels or some bearded guy with a gold Alice Band, the scammers claim that your computer is sending them error messages.
They suggested to the monkeys, as they have in the past, they can fix your Windows computer. To do this, they want you to go to a legitimate software company that sells remote control programs, download and install the ridgey-didge software and then proceed to take control of your PC to "fix it".
Monkeys know a modest amount about PCs and computers and (cough, cough) Windows. Any claim that a single PC's errors are being shot down your interweb connection to a Giant Software Company or a Big Telecommunication Company is bunkum. Because Bill Gates is not Linus Torvalds, Windows PCs will always generate errors. None of these errors will cause you enough grief to stop you using Facebook, surfing Google for recipes or playing Freecell. Even the dreadful looking yellow and red ones.
As an aside, the monkeys want to know if the RSPCA will want to know if one dumb animal is cruel to another dumb animal?
Anyway, as mentioned, the monkeys know a little bit about computers, so they strung the sub-continental woman and her "supervisor" along for at least 30 minutes. This is the monkey's community service to you all. Wasting their time trying to find a Windows Start Button or attempting to execute "Windows Key R" on a Linux desktop, in monkey logic, prevents them preying on others with less or no knowledge of the workings of PC operating systems, etc.
The monkeys can commend this strategy to other geeks and nerds who DO have an idea what these heels are up to and want to waste their time. If you can either act dumb, as the monkeys did, or quickly start a Windows VM session, have some fun and see how long you can keep them on the telephone for.
19th of May 2013: Initially, the monkeys were very perturbed about the news out of Newtown (Connecticut) & Boston (Massachusetts) until the monkeys realised that this appears to happen in the U.S.A. all of the time. Joe Nocera from the New York Times reports that, to date, more than 4000 people in the U.S.A. have died as a result of guns since the deaths of the 28 people in Sandy Hook. A mere five months. Pace that out on your simian digits. Just one hand is needed.
But the good news is that the official number of people living in the United States is about 300 million. That is ship loads of humans. It would take lots of guns in lots of people's hands to put a dint in that number.
Which has to be the rational answer to all of those people dying. And all of those US citizens being being maimed and injured by guns. There are just so many people in the United States that, when a few thousand are MIA, that is an acceptable ratio between the living and the dead.
Who cares that a minority have corrupted the words of a bunch of secular men from a couple of centuries ago? So long as the people of the U.S.A. can shoot each other to death.
Down here in Australia, we apparently put a stop to gun violence, after a series of episodes where men got guns and killed lots of people. Apparently it is harder to get a semi automatic or automatic firearm in the Commonwealth of Australia and set about unlawfully killing lots of people at the one time.
Away from the darker side of humanity, and, perhaps to a lighter side, the monkeys ponder the words “bastardry” and “bastard”.
While Bastardry may be a special Australian word describing the callous actions of one person over another, Bastard has a deeper and more traditional etymology. In the old days, when religion seemed more important and the various churches of the planet held sway over the sexuality of billions, to create a child while it's parents were not married, was deemed to be shameful and forever labelled the child. Pity the poor bastard and his journey through life. And what of the children of the bastard and their children?
In 2013, who cares? Who will worry about children born and the state of the relationship of it's parents?
Which is the happy/sad story of same sex couples with children of their own. In Australia, we are all caught up in the religious foment of the so called “Same Sex Marriage Debate”. All of those kids must be bastards by definition. While the religious right wing pushes their sexually perverse point of view on the hapless Catholic Labor politicians and the clueless Anglican/Protestant Liberal politicians, the status of the children of these gay and lesbian partners are left dangling.
But Australia is a backwater country on a nondescript planet in a so-so solar system on the outer arm of galaxy in the further reaches of the known universe.
Who cares what we do and how we treat each other and on what we base those decisions on?
As Carl Sagan once said, the atoms in your left hand could potentially have come from a dying sun billions of years ago. That mass and that explosion may have no relation to those atoms in your right hand. And this recycling of material will continue billions of years after we are gone, despite the pithy decisions we make right here and right now.
23rd of March 2013: The monkeys like Richard Dawkins. Not so much that he is an eminent scientist, not so much that he is an atheist but more so that he is so damn arrogant. Some of his written work says to the reader “Sit down, shut up and listen to what I have to say.” Monkeys think that this is a gift. In the same vein as those who can talk incessantly, and may get in trouble for talking and talking and talking. (especially when they talk about themselves and their sporting prowess) The monkeys think that their detractors miss the point: It is not verbiage and drivel. It's a gift that few of us have.
Which leads the monkeys onto the subject of this missive: Inbreeding. Darwin apparently studied many life forms while arriving at his thesis about the nature of evolution and how all things that are alive today got to be here. The monkeys enjoys the Dawkins view of thing living, because he doesn't perceive humanity to be a pinnacle of existence, but merely one species of many that have had their very specific DNA to arrive at this point in time. He will tell you about the arrogance of religion to conclude that we are the chosen ones, the elite among species, the ones apart from the rest.
Darwinism and evolution says that our sentience is happenstance.
The monkeys believe that it can be squandered if we pursue certain paths and neglect to look at the stars and see our future.
One way to waste away as a species is to insist, as some cultures, tribes, religions, races and others reckon, by way of marrying within your own kind.
The perils of this path are akin to dog breeding. Simply put, the pure bred dog within the limited gene pool has a much shorter life expectancy than that of those dogs that come from a variety of breeds. If your human partner shares the same grandparent as you do, what are the risks of genetically induced birth defects? The extreme example, but minor difference if your mother expects you to marry and have kids with someone else from your own race, religion, etc.
Consider the people that you know. Has a man's mother decided that he can not marry and have children with his partner because she is not from the same ancient religious group? Does the mother expect that he will marry and have children with a woman from the same religious group? What are the expectations for the kids of the second relationship? Is there a greater chance for genetically derived defects such as short sightedness?
Which is one of the beauties of Straya, as depicted by Dorothea Mackellar, whereby we have a diversity of genetic material and less opportunity for genetic aberrance.
On a lighter note, the monkeys are in the midst of the 2013 running season. With one arduous half marathon under their belts, the rest of the season runs until September. Not much happens during the winter months, however autumn and spring are usually busy times for runners.
One of the joys of being a monkey is that monkeys are a running family. We all enjoy a run (notwithstanding leg bones that grind on other leg bones for some.) and we get comfort and stress relief from a jog around the block. Which is a late lesson for some monkeys, who have discovered that less is to be gained from shoving shovel fulls of the wrong food down their mouths with no thought about the consequences. If nothing else, it means more lard to carry around when pounding a Canberra road early in the morning when you down buckets full of processed food, simple carbs and alcohol.
Be honest with yourself. You know how it works.
27th of February 2013: The monkeys' word of the day is “torpid”. Randomly, like so much of what appears here, it may not mean much ot many people.
Anyway, the monkeys have set about hacking the web site and adding new stuff, especially the employment links. These were a bit dated and needed revamping, for some apparent reason.
Which leads the monkeys to another random thought: What is a hacker?
To make it personal, to you, is a hacker someone with malevolent motives trying to attack computer systems for profit or idealogical reasons?
This is the common perception.
As probably mentioned before, a wise man once said to the monkeys “Perception is reality”.
Without delving into a laboured dissertation on the history of the expression “hacker”, the current use is a perturbation of the original. The monkeys are hackers, in the traditional sense, however a note to the reader with a simpler mind and simpler goals and simpler motives, the monkeys are not hackers in the perjorative sense.
Get it right.
17th of February 2013: The monkeys have had a bile bubble rise and cause a torrent of venom when the ACT Labor government officially opened the Arboretum.
At the cost of dozens of human lives, thousands and thousands of animal's and bird's lives and destruction of hundreds of thousands of trees. All this for a bunch of imported trees.
The last big bushfire to hit Canberra was in 1982. This cycle is about twenty years, give or take a few years. So, at the time of the next El Niño event early next decade, there is a good chance that the Arboretum will suffer the same fate.
Have some pity for those people who are moving into the new housing estates along the Molonglo river. They will be the new Duffy and Chapman of Canberra, living on the Western urban fringe. Potentially, they are next in the firing line when the next big fire roars through the ACT.
Bile aside, the monkeys were excited about the recent celestial events that were news in the last few days. Perhaps more humans should pick up and read a science or science fiction book rather than a pointless religious tome to gain some insight into these amazing happenings. The monkeys can recommend Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama as a starter. Picture the Chelyabinsk meteor striking the ground in a heavily populated city, like Paris.
Then, and only then, will humans change their focus and look outward for a threat, instead of each other. The monkeys look forward to the day when pettiness and all of the bigotry and all of the religious strife become converted into energies related to science and learning and discovery.
Sadly, humans need this kind of jolt to change their perspectives.
8th of January 2013: The monkeys get it wrong. Sometimes. No ape bashing the crap out of a keyboard is always going to get it 100% right. So, when the monkeys found this gem on the internet, they knew that the proper pronounciation of the simian hometown had been amiss all this time.
Make sure that your sound is turned on.
Speaking of the hometown and happenings, the tenth anniversary of the 2003 Canberra Bushfires is approaching. It has been reported that some victims of the event will be boycotting the Labor Party sponsored shindig.
As reported here, the monkeys are still bitter and twisted about it all and concur with those who are planning a parallel event. The Beattie Government in Queensland did not prop up maladministration and mismanagement in the public service at the time of the health department “crisis” in Gods Own all those years ago. This was not the experience of the Stanhope Labor Government after the 2003 firestorm. Notwithstanding Stanhope doing his best Vladimir Putin impression in the days before the fires, much work was done to denigrate those employed to find out the truth about the dozens of deaths related to the fires and to support those complicit.
The monkeys have never gone and will never go to an ACT government sponsored 2003 bushfires anniversary event.
18th of December 2012: Stephen Fry, per a recent monkey musing, noted that the Roman Catholic church has conspired to cast him and all of the people in the world who seek a relationship with someone of the same sex as aberrant. This is called sexual discrimination in 2012.
The monkeys, while sitting in their cages, contemplating their simian navels, have also concluded that many other forms of discrimination are directly or indirectly a result of (big “C”) Catholicism and religion in general.
Go ahead and think of a flavour of discrimination still perpetuated in the 21st Century and make causal links back. The most popular form (and a favourite with the monkeys) is that dished out to half of the humans on the planet: Women everywhere are demonised by religion. Ironic that great slabs of female humans subject themselves or have religion thrust upon them, simply because they have a different set of genitals.
On a seperate issue, but again, applying monkey logic, the ACT Greens lost seats in the October election because of their nonsensical policies.
The monkey logic says that many in the three ACT electorates were peeved at losing free plastic bags at the checkouts in the shops and voted accordingly.
Perhaps the Greens (and those in Labor) would have done better to consult with the public about the proposed changes before inflicting “good ideas” on the populace.
Many households are probably like the monkeys', with cupboards and drawers full of plastic bags they have to purchase every time they go to the shops. Who thinks to take bags with them when they go to the shops? Who wants to carry a bag full of bags when they go to the shops?
Again, this relates to a recent post by the monkeys when they were venting about the state of Narrabundah Hill.
To digress, the monkeys know some Americans, however, not all of those Americans come from the United States of America. This is because America, or the Americas, are two continents joined by a narrow land bridge.
You can be like the monkeys and use the term “American” loosely and upset one of the other five or six hundred million people who do not hail from the U.S.A. To differentiate (but perhaps not to discriminate...) the monkeys prefer monikers like “Seppos” or “Yanks” as terms of endearment for our “English language” cousins from the opposite side of the Pacific.
<Monkey Mirth>Speaking of America and Americans, watch out, the Summer Solstice is just days away! </Monkey Mirth>
13th of December 2012: The monkeys surf so much that they sometimes believe they have reached the end of the Internet and have to go back to the beginning and start again.
This works until they find yet another gem, especially when the “precious” takes a broad swipe at those who believe deities and their zombie sons.
A wealth of such material comes from the (now dead) Christopher Hitchens. Christopher Hitchens was a foil to those fundamentalist religious types, in the same vein as Richard Dawkins.
The monkeys have come across a You Tube video of Christopher Hitchens rewriting one of the four versions of the ten comandments of the old testament. There is also the original Vanity Fair article, if you don't have access to You Tube, for whatever reason.
The monkeys think that the original ten commandments are like hand me down clothes. Those old and slightly tatty clothes passed down from your brother or cousin which don't exactly fit but were the height of fashion in their day. Sadly, the bibles used by the various religions are written by men, transcribed by men, translated by men, printed by men, blessed by men and blindly accepted by the faithful. However, hand me downs are not new clothes.
30th of November 2012: OK, it is time that the monkeys became po-faced and stopped screwing around.
The monkeys have, in the past, thought that the notion that the world will end on the 21st of December this year to be very, very funny.
However, NASA is now officially worried. They think that some people (the monkeys have to restrain themselves and not call these people “nutbags” or “oddballs” or “loonies”) are taking this too seriously and there is the potential for them to harm themselves or others.
As always, there is no science behind the notion. People should revisit the Sagan page and review the dot points. Moreover, people should think science and reason instead of hysteria.
Monkeys are cynics and say that religion is a better idea. Right now. The principal message from religion is to suffer lots and give all of your money to the church because shit will be so much better for you in the so called “after life”.
Mein gott! That was a big call from the Monkeys. Believing in invisible beings in the sky is better than any illogical notions that the world will end. So many shades of grey, aren't there?
We are on the thin edge of the wedge, regardless of the “doomsayers”, with humans buggering up the planet at an accelerated rate. Good news, however, there are other planets in the solar system ready for humans to inhabit and destroy. Read all about the proposed vegetarian colony planned for Mars. Buy yourself a one way ticket for half a million dollars. If you don't like the heat generated by global warming, here on Earth, why not travel to our red neighbour and settle down to a chillier lifestyle, sans enough oxygen to breathe, without the appropriate apparatus.
24th of November 2012: The monkeys are seeing the same old, same old happen in the world again.
The residents of the ACT have voted in the Labor-Green coaltion. Again.
Maybe we can have some more bizarre decision made this term, such as the 2006 call to change Narrabundah Hill from a public amenity for walkers and runners into a bunch of permanent cow paddocks used by cattle for two weeks a year. Why do we have permenant fences for temporary cows? What was the answer given by the bureaucratic hack who answered the monkeys questions about the many (then new) fences on the hill in 2006? “It was the best thing we could think of at the time.” Well, there has been much and little said about mitigating the risk of future catastrophes on these pages, none of which said anything about hiring the incompetent senior public servants again or acting like nothing happened via new “forests” and suburbs and the like.
The expression “You get what you pay for” can be changed to “You get who you vote for”.
Aside from 4 more years of the same old, same old, the other news is that the monkeys have learned that Catholics are sexual perverts. Old news to some, especially given the hostile Australian press about continued abuse by the clergy. Stephen Fry speaks about the Catholic Church not being a force for good in the world. Mystified as to why his choices about lifestyle and sexuality have him branded as aberrant by the Catholics, he notes that these decisions are made by celibate, unmarried, child abusers.
Indeed, the monkeys have read the “Sex and God” book by Dr Darrel Ray, which argues that the various religions are the ultimate in sexual perversion, making humans do so many things that are not what had been practiced until the times of agriculture and so called “organised” monotheistic religions.
Maybe, in the future, when religion is even more irrelevant that it is today, people can act the way they are programmed and have sex without the guilt and without the threats.
12th of October 2012: The monkeys are confused. The CORC instructions on the Scott web site said that campsites could be put up after 3PM on the Thursday before the event. The Marshall's campsite was marked out with pegs and tape and rope earlier in the week and a sign left to say whose it was. Subsequently, the whole lot was removed by CORC because a new and unwritten rule that said that no campsites were allowed to be constructed before 3PM on the Thursday before the event.
You would expect CORC to be very busy running and organising the event. Too busy to be going around Stromlo Park (There is no longer a forest at Mount Stromlo, it was burnt down by Labor in 2003) to be ripping up campsite tape and stakes and cord and tossing them in the garbage.
CORC owes the monkeys some money for tape and pegs and rope.
Now that the monkeys have that bile off their chests, this year's Marshall campsite is here:
Decimal: -35.317579, 149.024255
HMS: -35° 19' 3.2844" 149° 1' 27.318"
Looking forward to seeing you at the race.
Also, be aware that Uriarra Road is closed at the Cotter Road end and the only way to Stromlo Park is via John Gorton Road or Coppins Crossing Road. That means that access from Eucumbene Drive (for example) is via the new suburb of Wright.
10th of October 2012: This time every year the monkeys alert the readers of this drivel to the Marshall's campsite for the Universe's Greatest 24 Hour Mountain Biking Event. This year is no different. Later this week the monkeys will provide map co-ordinates for the location of Team Marshall.
It must be noted that this set of latitude and longitude may not work on a portable GPS device and the planning to come and visit our site will have to involve a computer that has access to the internet and can run Google Maps, Bing Maps, Google Earth, etcetera.
Otherwise, just consider yourself lost.
Watch this space for this year's update.
For the Scott 24 Hour virgins, be there for the start. As promoted in earlier years, the start for most of the first riders in the race is a Le Mans start. Lots and lots of mountain bikers will be running to their bikes for the first lap, which is very entertaining to watch. Again, repeating previous year's warnings, be early to ensure you get through the Saturday morning traffic jams and get a car park and get down to the pavillion at Stromlo Forest Park.
The starter's gun goes off at midday on Saturday, so make sure you are there with plenty of time to spare.
1st of October 2012: The monkeys think that human beings are neanderthals.
In primate terms, and considering recent discoveries about the lineage of humans versus neanderthals, none of the previous statement makes any sense. Taken literally.
Looking at the metaphorical, the monkeys believe that humans should be at or beyond the Clarke/Kubrick vision of advancement of the species. And yet, we are still stuck in the past with war, tribalism, racism, sexism and religion.
Pointless.
The monkeys, perhaps, are stuck in the past and the future, with a universe created by the SF writers of the last century, who painted a 21 Century full of what is possible. Alas, it is 2012 and we are like a broken phonograph record, being constantly pulled back into the past instead of going the other way.
On a brighter note, Americanisms are being supplanted by real English, from proper English speaking people. Perhaps riding on the back of Rowling's successes. (Funny, we can now say “Rowling” like we may say “Dickens” or “Bronte” or “Shakespeare”.) The tide of English corruption emanating from the U.S.A. Is being countered. If only more English speaking people had access to the OED's Shorter Dictionary and understood the roots of our language and could celebrate it's wealth and diversity.
Which leads monkeys to the trivia question posed in the recent past: Which is the country with the greatest population of English speaking people? Nobody here got the right answer, first time.
30th of August 2012: Per Duck Duck Go and The Free Dictionary:
"to·ken·ism (tk-nzm)
n.
1. The policy of making only a perfunctory effort or symbolic gesture toward the accomplishment of a goal, such as racial integration.
2. The practice of hiring or appointing a token number of people from underrepresented groups in order to deflect criticism or comply with affirmative action rules"
The monkeys have added the web site for the Australian Paralympians to the Sports portion of the links page.
They must be the poor cousins, as alluded to in the previous monkey missive, given the state of their web site. The “title” element (where the monkeys get the information to post links) simply says “APC Corporate” and one of the “meta” tags still says “Australian Paralympic Committee, Vancouver Paralympic Games 2010”.
Again, without the millions of dollars spent by advertisers on their able bodied sporting compatriots, they are always going to rate second.
We have politicians who are disabled, perhaps we need some disabled godzillionaire willing to cough up money to fund Australian athletes of all abilities.
The monkeys have also added The Free Dictionary to the reference section of the links page, too, given they helped write this post.
30th of August 2012: Well, the able bodied Olympics have finished, as discussed below, but the 2012 Paralympic Games have just started.
Who woke up early, as they did some weeks ago, on a Saturday, and caught this morning's Opening Ceremony?
Are there eight channels of Disabled Olympics coverage on Foxtel in this part of 2012?
Sadly, no.
We have ABC2, though, and their modestly public funded support of those athletes who do not have sports sponsorships dribbling out of their disabled bums.
The monkeys wonder if the Foxtel folk, feeling a little lachrymose about their poor cousins in the ABC, gave them a spare microphone, parts from a commentary set, text from Eddie's script, and perhaps a useless spent and inarticulate able bodied athlete, or two, when they were packing up to fly home?
Interesting that we have lots of first world disabled athletes who have acquired their disabilities from war, but whose governments and politicians are oddly publicity shy about their potential achievements.
We must squirm too much in embarrassment, especially, if you are like the monkeys, with working limbs, working digits, all five senses and no medically classified mental impairmment.
The monkeys turned up to one of the parades for the abled bodied athletes last week. Will there be similar parades, special Qantas flights and adulation for the athletes who come home in a couple of weeks?
War veterans, people with so called “birth defects”, car and industrial accident victims, who the hell is going to cheer them when they get home, when they are dangling medals around their necks?
20th of August 2012: The monkeys could have predicted it but they were beaten to the punch by events: An abuse of power and a disregard of the seperation of powers and all that is apparently not first worldly.
Pick the country. Pick the meddlers. Pick the so called “judges” “in charge” of the fate of people's lives. Spot the poor souls who are struggling to comprehend the logic surrounding their cases driven by the zealots and their ideals.
Who cares? We civilised monkeys are not subject to arbitrary justice like those poor bastards. Are we?
Remember the monkeys are bushfire victims (no idiot, it is not called a “wildfire”) and we are still seeing stupid random decisions made by our mindless politicians and our mindless bureaucrats and our mindless church leaders in 2012. Still bitter and twisted after nine and a half years. Still very, very cynical.
Aside from the cretins whose job it is to govern and lead and not to influence court proceedings, the monkeys had a lovely Olympics. Watching the flashes of Green and Gold (don't confuse the Aussies with the Brazillians, by the way) across the screen as we done all right, given our medals won versuses our GDP and our population.
The monkeys were thrust back to those times when the little monkeys played Saturday morning sport and enjoyed the fresh air, the sunshine (most of the time) and the company of peers in the third grade teams. Those were the halcyon days of ants chasing a soccer ball and tiny victories and even smaller defeats.
Then we have the wankers critising the Australian Olympic Team.
Fair dinkum.
These women and men have excelled in their sports, qualified to match their skills and stamina with the Best In The World. End of story. Medals or no medals, they have represented their country. People who bag our athletes need to have a dose of vitamin B and a spoon full of concrete.
Fair bloody dinkum.
The critics should swim or run or jump their hardest for four years, get on a plane to Rio and see how they do against the Best In The World in twenty bloody sixteen.
10th of August 2012 #1: The monkeys have been caught up with the current Mars fever, generated by the landing of the NASA Curiosity probe. If you've not heard, NASA has dropped the latest of generation interplanetary probe on our red celestial neighbour.
Very exciting.
The landing was one of the coolest elements of the whole programme, where NASA has gone beyond the bouncing swiss ball and they have employed some very funky mechanisms to get the Curiosity rover onto Mars. Check out the new link on the space list of pages or just hit the NASA web site.
The monkeys encourage people to go to the visitors centre at Tidbinbilla and look at all of the information about the new probe, plus the CDSCC involvement with all of the other current and past deep space missions.
For all of those people who have yet to see the vast interior of continental Australia, it must be said that we have a little of Mars in our own backyard. The deserts of Australia have their own unique redness, akin to that on Mars.
10th of August 2012 #2: The monkeys think that Triple J is getting suckier and suckier. The station has been on a downward slope of suckiness since the change of format in 1989. Right now, the format is very bland and vanilla and approaches the popular drivel played by the commercial stations.
The monkeys wanted to raise this for two reasons. The first is the comments reportedly from band member of Wolfmother, Andrew Stockdale. Stockdale's comments were about the station not playing Wolfmother any more. From the comments, it says volumes about the station playing pop tunes which have currency and not a broader church of music, like in the past. This may sound contradictory where Wolfmother music is popular and was top of the charts some years ago.
The second is the scandal that Triple J has actually banned some alternative unsigned bands from their playlist. The hyperbole generated by Triple J through their self promotion says “Triple J loves music.” It seems that they only love the music that is approved to be played. Notions of musical democracy are meaningless when they start ruling bands in and out.
10th of August 2012 #3: The monkeys are loving watching the Olympics. So many fit, sweaty and buff young people pushing themselves to become Olympic champions. Absolutely blissfully fabulous.
Confession time: The monkeys must admit to being hetero. Nay, the monkeys have to apologise for being hetero. The monkeys are so very sorry for being hetero. The monkeys are so very very frikkin sorry for being hetero.
So, watching the fittest women on the planet do their thing...
But, something that worries the monkeys, as alluded to previously, is that the model of female beauty is incessantly trotted out to be the emaciated waif creatures paraded and draped in the latest fashions. Whereas those women who are simultaneously the fastest and strongest look like the athletes currently competing in London. Who is the exemplar for girls and young women? The catwalk model or the Olympic athlete?
Perhaps some scientist could do a study to look at the oral health of the two groups.
26th of July 2012: The monkeys are a bit porky. The monkeys carry a little too much lard, especially around their guts. Call the monkeys "fat" call them "chubby" call them "portly" but please don't say that they are part of some, so called "obsesity epidemic".
The monkeys are concerned that this is yet another media beat up. Yes, the first world eats lots of the wrong food. Yes we consume large quantities of alcohol. Indeed, many companies in many countries make extra ordinary amounts of money from grain based foods with lots of carbohydrates and very little nutritional value. This sets up the internal chaos in a persons body that upsets insulin production and promotes disease like diabetes, cardiovascular problems, cancer and the like.
So what? If human beings can not move from the old styles of eating that fuelled the industrial revolution and realise that we are living in 21st century, then Darwin (again) will sort that mess out.
We have yet another industry generated, too, where people in the "health" services will be employed for life trying to fix the issues around fat people while the fat people continue to shovel rubbish into their mouths.
By the way, while the monkeys are on their soap box, can we please desist with the popular notion that fat makes you fat? Google the New York Times newspaper article written by a journalist and science writer by the name of Gary Taubes.
The monkeys have discovered that some Linux distributions are using a different web search site other than the popular sites. The new site is called Duck Duck Go. They say
"We are a search engine with:
• Way more instant answers.
• Way less spam and clutter.
• Lots and lots of goodies."
Slotted on the links page under the Search Engines heading.
18th of July 2012: The monkeys have noticed that the news is in the news. Who owns the Australian news services and what gets reported and who controls what gets reported is currency.
The monkeys scan the news services all of the time and see stories like “Jewish man shoots dead a black teenager” and “Young adult is king hit and dies” and “Famous person divorces other famous religious person” and “Dozens of people murdered in Central American drug violence”. And so it goes on.
The monkeys can not grasp why the mundane and not very extraordinary passes as news.
Yes there are the cataclysms like earthquakes, tsunamis and the like, however, there is also all of the human drama which makes the monkeys glad that they are not the same species, otherwise they would be severely embarrassed.
Ergo, monkeys are having trouble understanding why humans can contemplate the very core of the universe's existence via the CERN scientific research but at the same time Hondurans are killing each other all of the time.
Oh, and by the way, none of the Ronald Weinland stuff happened at the end of May, much to monkeys' chagrin. The monkeys were all ready to have their own simian wingding. Bastards. But the good news is that we still have the end of the Mayan calendar in December to look forward to.
20th of May 2012: The monkeys are excited because the end of the world is about to happen. If Ronald Weinland is wrong and it doesn't happen after the 27th of May when JC rocks up, then the Mayans apparently have it slated for December 21st.
Why are the monkeys excited? The monkeys reason that we will end up with a Shute-Elton-Adams post “meltdown” world which will rid us of some of the trappings of modern life like fake boobs, political correctness and Darwinian rejects. (Among other things, like the current celluloid tripe generated by Hollywood.)
2012 is a big year. (Your bingo numbers include twenty, eighty and fifty in a numerical “co-inky-dink”)
It will be like when you have another one of those first world issues and find your sock drawer full of lots of single socks. Then comes the decision that it's time to turn them into cleaning gloves or bin them.
Who will be kept? Who will be recycled? Who will be fodder for the dirt man?
The end of the world aside, the monkeys have added some more fitness links on the Links page.
The monkeys, as probably previously mentioned, are always looking for sites that offer proven and free fitness advice that can be done by anyone, anywhere. That means people who espouse resistance training that does not include endless and pointless cardio exercise.
The first link is from the co-founder of Body Rock, Zuzana Light. The second is from a more acerbic and very abrasive man who goes by the moniker “The Fit Jerk”. Both are ripped and follow the formula described above.
8th of May 2012: The monkeys have a new take on the Cheech and Chong view of the world as it relates to dog turds per the brilliant 1973 recording entitled “Cheborneck” on the Los Cochinos album. (YouTube has copies for you to listen and enjoy.)
The 2012 observations that the monkeys would like to make relate to the way “doggie doo-doo” is dressed up to seem more palatable:
- When dog crap is sprayed with perfume, it is still dog crap.
- When a pile of dog droppings is surrounded by pretty flowers, it is still dog droppings.
- When dog poo is mixed with truffles and saffron, it is still fundementally dog poo.
3rd of May 2012: The monkeys spend a lot of time on the World Wide InterWeb.
Moreso recently.
One of the gems that has popped up recently is that of a German artist's “clock”.
To quote the translated text from the site (per Google):
“The artist, Mark Formanek, with the support of Datenstrudel created watches that are constructed in real time. 24 hours, 70 workers, 30 boards, 1611 changes. Construction of 4 meters(sic) in height and 12 in length, was constructed continuously throughout the day in Berlin Sculpture Park.”
If you had little else to do, you could sit there all day and watch the little workers do their thing.
Duly slotted under Media/Entertainment on the Links page.
18th of April 2012: If the readers of these particular monkey musings are easily offended, do the television thing and simply turn away, go somewhere else on the web or just switch the computer off.
Why? It's is because the monkeys have been mulling over something controversial for some time now and want to air their thoughts.
Darwin's theory of evolution said that species lived and died based on natural selection. However, what humans have in the 21st century is a perturbation of this model. No longer do people live and die based on the strength of their genes and the environment. They are propped up by scientific discoveries, especially those made since the start of the last century. This means that the saying "only the fittest survive" no longer applies.
By the way, the rise of human beings seems to be at the expense of every other creature on the planet.
Yes, human beings are generally no longer being wiped out in their millions by treatable and curable malaises, but those at the periphery of existence are being kept alive.
This is why religion and science are at odds. Whereas the church desperately needs "bums on seats" to survive and selfishly promote the notion that every human life is sacred (with apologies to the Monty Python Team), on the other hand the Science of Darwin says that there are no logical reasons for promoting human life when that person would otherwise die.
Which are the syllogistic premises for the question from the monkeys: Why do more and more people in the media (read: TV and movies) have funny eyes?
Before some people get upset, no, the monkeys do not mean those who have had an eye injury.
The monkeys are referring to the faces that pervade the TV that perpetually look at you cross eyed.
In the old days, Darwin would have gotten rid of that lot. These days, these people and their funny eyes are everywhere.
It's OK. You can turn your computer back on now.
14th of April 2012: The monkeys have been tooling around with the front page of themarshalls.tv and have added a widget.
Given the counter died a number of years ago, there has been a hole on the right hand side of the page. This has now been filled with a clock, displaying the current time for the A.C.T, per timeanddate.com.
Providing there is a current network connection between your browser and the timeanddate servers, then a very accurate clock will tell you the current time in Canberra.
By the way, the monkeys were instantly attracted to the Chinese characters for the clock numerals. The other options of standard numbers or Roman numerals did not excite the monkeys.
The monkeys have also been busy with the Marshall Family recipe collection.
A "new" recipe has been added. What is Marshall Family culinary nostalgia, the recipe for Chilli Beans has been added.
Nostalgic in that the children were brought up on vegetarian staples, like Chilli Beans.
Be careful, though, there are hundreds of farts in every recipe.
15th of March 2012: Lots of people have asked the monkeys recently: “WTF?”
The answer will probably never be known.
Sufficed to say, there is a great relief as the monkey has, indeed, been taken off our collective backs. This sounds ridiculous and illogical, given monkeys write this tripe, but these apes are very, very relieved now.
Much like the potter’s wheel described on the Bastardry page, it isn’t until you have to experience something like carrying an 50 year old man with a mental illness for many years, you have no idea what it is like when you have to work with him or carry him.
Anyway, on a brighter note, salmon blob has gone off like a frog in sock.
Since the recipe was posted on the Links page, lots of people (especially in Melbourne) have hit the page. Which is good, because it remains a Marshall Family staple and is relatively cheap and easy to make.
4th of March 2012: The monkeys have added the link to the ABC web site’s “Emergency” page.
The monkeys are aware that the rain in the ACT region has stopped and that the forecast for the next week is, more or less standard autumn fare, weather wise. However, for those currently affected by the floods and for the next crop of natural disasters, or otherwise, the ABC site is reference for all of us.
Yes it all sounds glib, but keep in mind that the monkeys are bitter and twisted after our Labor Government razed lots of Canberra to the ground and killed dozens of people in 2003.
On a separate and perhaps more cheerful note, another recipe has been added to the collection of Marshall Family recipes on the Links page. The recipe is for salmon mousse, or as colloquially known by The Marshalls, “Salmon Blob”.
1st of March 2012: Well the monkeys have had another revelation into the world of media and the arts and insist on sharing it via their monkey missive muck.
While it is widely understood that the two letter acronym “SF” ordinarily means Science Fiction, a much wiser and older person once emphasised that “SF” can also mean Science Fantasy. This sage being an avid reader of this genre of novels of SF.
The monkeys have another acronym to add to the list: Science Farce.
This is based on some popular television series from the 1960s. In these shows, science and notions of what might occur in the future are tossed out of the window and are replaced with nonsense.
This child minding of the ‘60s may have held the attention of kiddies watching a tiny and flickering black and white screen, way back then, but probably beggars belief of the child of the 21st century. And yet, film makers still trot this pap out and make it last for 90 minutes for cinema viewers world wide, today.
16th of February 2012: Today’s load of rubbish from the monkeys is about poo and pee.
Yes, the monkeys know that these are puerile euphemisms for bodily functions, but the monkeys are monkeys.
The regulars reading this tripe will already know what the monkeys do with their poo. However, today, the subject of monkey pee arose.
Again, the people who bother to read these monkey missives will know that the monkeys love their greenery: Trees, flowers, grass, etcetera, all get monkeys excited. What the monkeys have been doing for a long long time is greening their garden with pee.
Most people get the impression that pee in the garden is only good for citrus trees. This is not true. Monkey pee has been greening the monkeys’ grass for some time now. Indeed, the peed on grass has taken on a deep green hue, contrasting the rest of the lawn.
Words of caution from the monkeys: Boy monkeys are born with hoses. These are great for putting out small fires. Girl monkeys generally have to sit down to pee and are not enthusiastic about the post pee mess, without doing the paperwork. Also, monkeys work out. They expend lots of energy and sweat heaps. Consequently, they have to drink ship loads of water to stay properly hydrated. This makes monkey pee relatively frequent and clear. Ergo, no brown patches or pee smell on the grass as a result.
With all of the navel gazing done by the monkeys, they reckon that it is a waste (pardon the pun) to flush pee down the loo. (Yes: Yet another euphemism from monkeys whose country has so many and rich euphemisms for the “water closet”.) While peeing on the garden will not break a drought or rescue you from a bushfire, it will provide near instant results.
6th of February 2012: The monkeys are always mystified: The size and breadth and complexity of the universe will always enthrall them.
There is another thing mystifying the monkeys at the moment: Why the French went after the Church of Scientology recently, labelling them as fradulent. The accusation is that the Church used what Australian law labels "misleading and deceptive conduct" in the Church's dealings with French people via the sale of services and books.
That the Church of Scientology is motivated by money is not news, That the Church of Scientology has been targeted and not all of the other religions who screw ignorant people for money has stumped the monkeys.
13th of January 2012: Claire is always busy writing music and recording her work, slaving over a hot copy of GarageBand.
Her latest efforts have been posted on Bandcamp Hunter and the EP can be downloaded from here.
3rd of January 2012: What is it that the monkeys do, in between flinging poo, screeching, writing Shakeperean sonnets and penning this drivel?
Perhaps if someone draws a picture of monkeys and monkey hands and too much time on their....
Suffice to say, monkeys have found pictures of hot nerd chicks on the web. The cover story for this find is that monkeys were looking for a solution for a Ubuntu problem and one of these nerd chicks is Linux whiz.
Whatever.
Anyway, said geek Linux female posts technical information on You Tube, too.
22nd of November 2011: We have established that the monkeys are nerds. The monkeys are always trawling the web for nerd titbits and have found a gem.
To digress slightly, someone told the monkeys that the French word for the English "window" is "fentêtre". Ergo, the common root for the English word "defenestrate".
Defenestrate, according to the online version of the Oxford dictionary, is "the action of throwing someone out of a window". The extra definition at the Wiktionary site is "To stop (a computer) from using the Windows operating system".
Completely lost on most but funny to nerdy monkeys with far too much time on their pooey hands.
Nerdy monkey computer humour aside, the monkeys were going to unload some bile, but, before they could get their simian digits on the keyboard and rip someone a new one, a very loud "SQUIRREL!" was heard and the train of thought was lost.
Perhaps next month...
6th of October 2011: These are the co-ordinates for the Marshall's camp site for this year's Scott:
HMS: 35°19'0.82"S 149° 1'30.44"E
Decimal: -35.3168945 149.0251223
These should work in Google Maps, Google Earth, Smart phone mapping tools, etc.
We are keen to have people drop in to say hello at any time over the weekend. Saturday's Le Mans start at midday is spectacular to watch, as are the lights on the mountain when it gets dark.
If you are planning to come out to Mount Stromlo for the start, give yourself plenty of time because the traffic on Uriarra Road will be heavy and there will be thousands of people en route or at the venue.
The weather forecast is not rosey, however, so it will suck a bit for participant and spectator alike.
27th of September 2011: The monkeys have been negligent in the upkeep of these pages.
So, what's new? The monkeys have a problem caring if others care...
Content will happen with a happenstance of keyboard bashing and monkeys really giving a rat's, sadly.
Monkey bile aside, the monkey output registers with the Oxford Dictionary web site and their measure of what The Bard would understand. Not that the monkeys fully appreciate what this exactly means, but if you take an extract of the monkey verbiage and stick it in the Shakespearian analyser, oddly, the registration is to the far right of the VU meter. (One for the electronic nerds of a bygone era: Who has ever heard of a moving meter to gauge the output of... anything?)
Regardless, another cur, or set of curs have done bad things to The Marshalls, rating a mention on the Bastardry Page. If the monkeys only had capes and super powers. No super powers, however, just bile and an internet connection.
The other news is the The Biggest Mountain Bike Event In The Known Universe is almost upon us. Mount Stromlo is being lit up at night by all those busy training for the event on the 8th and 9th of October. The standard offer will be posted on these pages to our readers: Plug the co-ordinates supplied next week and you will find the location of the Team Marshall camp site.
16th of July 2011: The monkeys have put together a new page for the site. It is called the Running page and will eventually contain lots of running advice. It is very embryonic right now, but will have plenty of tips for people who are about to start running for the first time or for those who are just breaking into the sport.
Just to clarify some potential misunderstanding about the entry for the 7th of June. Some suggested that some monkey faeces has been flung in the direction of an individual. The entry related to those people in dictatorships and autocracies around the world whose positions at the top have been challenged or are being challenged by the masses. What started in Tunisia and has spread elsewhere is a life lesson for all of us and should be heeded.
Well. That's what the monkeys think. For what it's worth.
The monkeys have also updated the Bastardry page with the running story from the 7th of April.
7th of July 2011: The bludging monkeys have produced an output again.
Meagre as it is, Jan's web page has been updated with some "new" images. Actually, they are not new and describe stuff that happened a while ago.
Such is the monkeys' lot and their appalling lack of industry in the recent past.
Bad, lazy monkeys!
7th of June 2011: Well, after some considerable time off the air, the monkeys are back penning more rubbish.
This, despite the recent news of indolent, corpulant types who thought they were perpetually ascendant who eventually get their comeuppance. (Or will have it coming to them shortly.) These men, whose postions are borne of nepotism and bluff have seen the people rise up and bring about change. Which is probably a message for those fat oafs indifferent to others and who have personalities that just don't fit in with the rest of us.
Which leads the monkeys to some navel gazing armchair philosophising. The monkeys have made an observation about some of the behaviour of their pithecoid cousins and how they relate to others. This appears to be especially the case in supermarkets and shopping centres. Some people will act if they are the only people in the building and do not give a damn about anyone else. The monkeys favourite example is the supermarket aisle blockers. These specimens will park themselves and their trolleys in the middle of the aisle, completely indifferent to other shoppers. Much like the other specimens who will block access to either the top or the bottom of an escalator.
Monkeys are still trying to work out what is going through the minds of these people.
Monkeys are debating what to call these people and have decided (thus far) on "Shop Blockers".
Which leads the monkeys (well, sort of...) to answer the perennial question: Who are the monkeys?
The monkeys are a bunch of caged apes who have been given the job of keeping themarshalls.tv up to date. This includes writing this stream of verbiage.
The monkeys have access to computers and are able to bash out gibberish, for the most part, but have moments of lucidity (like right now) which get posted to the web site. This output is between the times that they are not flinging their own "poop" and screeching and rattling the cage.
Occaisionally, you will see a Shakespearean sonnet being typed, but they never make it to this glowing screen.
Beware, however, as Jase pointed out, we have the monkeys. This implies they are paid peanuts for their hard work.
7th of April 2011: The monkeys have been very very lax in keeping the What's New pages up to date.
So much has happened since the news of Jan's PSM award.
The monkeys have been doing lots of running. Lots and lots. Much of this running is done on the local roads, with the co-operation of the other road users.
Most of the time this works well with the occaisional need to hop off the road and let big vehicles pass. The rest of the time, the monkeys keep out of the way of the oncoming traffic and the other road users keep their distance from the running monkeys.
Very little has happened over the hundreds of kilometres run around Weston Creek, until this week when a wanker in a small tip truck tried to run us over.
Obviously a candidate for the Bastardry Page.
The other (virtual) news is the number of hits received by themarshalls.tv web site. Not only are there plenty of hits, but there are many people from many different countries checking out the site. One hypothesis of the new interest is the coming Northern Hemisphere summer and people planning to build wood fired pizza ovens. A search of wood fired ovens will eventually produce themarshalls.tv.
Potentially, visitors to the Art Page may be Pastafarians, or looking to become a follower of His Noodliness, the FSM.
6th of February 2011: Jan is now (officially) super duper famous. Jan (and Jan's programme) have, yet again, been given an award. This time it's an Australia Day award.
The postnominals now look like this: Jan Marshall PSM.
Apparently, teachers don't get gongs for teaching.
So they reckon.
9th of January 2011: The monkeys' first post for this year is about the new Flying Spaghetti Monster Lights. This is probably old news now, given the 2010 Silly Season is well and truly over. Nevertheless, check out the new FSM lights photograph that the monkeys have posted on the Art page.
It is notable, in that the monkeys went for solar coloured flashing lights this year, instead of the 240VAC variety. This not to imply that the Monkeys are frikkin tree hugging pithecoids.
But then again, if monkeys were not tree huggers, they would all fall out of their trees...
What the monkeys forgot to mention in their last post was that we (the inhabitants of this small blue planet) have traipsed around the solar system on our 1 billion kilometre racecourse in the last 12 months. Again.
13th of December 2010: We have had a lot of rain this year. So much so, that the ACT water supply dams are all at one hundred percent full. Indeed, there has been so much water that the Queanbeyan river has flooded for the first time in many decades.
The area has gone from desperate drought to flood. However, this new situation with the seemingly incessant rain has given rise to moaning Canberrans who want it to stop. The monkeys delight in the greenery and all of the smells that come with this time of the year and the recent rain. The monkeys are incensed at these people and their inability to appreciate that these are the good times and the stark comparison to the years just past.
Troglodytes aside, the monkeys are looking forward to the passage of time and our path as it is tracked around the Sun per this year's Summer Solstice. The 2010 December event will be on the 22nd, Canberra time. (23:38 UTC)
11th of November 2010: Jan is famous. Jan has rubbed shoulders with lots of important people since her Programme won the School's First Inaugural National Prize last year. And again, we see that the monkeys have posted another famous person standing next to Jan.
Or perhaps that should read: Jan is standing next to the Governor General, Quentin Bryce.
4th of November 2010: The monkeys have been strangely reticent about mountain biking since the Scott 24 Hour race. Odd, given the amount of fun had by the monkeys, as happens every year in October.
The monkeys enjoyed this year's race moreso because it was different, with the two races run in parallel. Indeed, their theory is that the event or events were ratchetted up a notch due to the fact that CORC had to put on an exemplary show because the World Solo Championships were being held outside of North America for the very first time.
Monkeys get very tired and cheeky out on the track. The more tired the monkeys, the more lip being delivered to the others out in the bush. Aside from calls of "Guten Tag" and "Guten Abend" to the German photographers, there is a very good natured banter between riders on the track during the race. The word from those involved in the Solo event was that both male and female lead riders (and eventual winners) spent a lot of time talking to everyone else they passed and giving encouragement. Consider that these people would be in pain and they would be absolutely rooted, but still able to be positive and considerate to all other riders.
But monkeys are tired, cranky and much less tolerant, especially with riders who are dolts. These competitors got earfuls whenever they transgressed and upset the monkeys with their lack of civility and an absence of the protocols that are required for mountain bike riders to pass each other on single track.
Regardless, an enjoyable part of the weekend was for the monkeys to parade a unique set of cycling tops, recently given as a birthday gift. The option was to hit the track with a new jersey every lap. Which means that the monkeys have either lots of tops or ride very few laps in the race.
As always, thanks go to Jan for her tireless efforts as Team Mum.
16th of October 2010: Monkeys are atheists. It is as simple as that. Notions of imaginary friends in the sky that are able to "listen" to what people say in their heads and act on these wishes are considered by the monkeys to be pure farce and illogical.
However, for those people whose superstition has overtaken their lives, there is fierce competition for the holy dollar. Indeed, the more financially astute religions will keep bleeding their believers dry by promises of higher levels of "enlightenment". God knows where all of that money goes.
Other religions use other tools to keep their flocks faithful. Take the Catholics. Their current tool, especially for Australians, is to transform mere mortals into saints. Based on the rigours of secret science, your mortal (provided they have died of natural causes) can be a saint if there is evidence of post mortem involvement in the lives of the living by digging god in the ribs and suggesting that the earth bound people get a second chance and getting god to intercede.
Ergo, we have Saint Mary. Undeniably a notable Australian of her time, but as a Catholic who, after her death last century, has apparently had a hand in changing the cancer outcomes of two other Australians. (Presumably, atheists, Hindus, Anglicans, et al can not get the nod from the pope for their good work before and after they cark it.)
And the monkeys thought that the people of this country had finely tuned and acurate innate bullshit meters.
7th of October 2010: The Team Marshall's camp site is here:
HMS: 35° 19' 00.60S 149° 01' 30.44EBoth of these formats work in Google Maps or Google Earth.
Decimal: -35.316799 +149.025131
Drop in and say g'day to the Team if you are at Mount Stromlo this weekend.
5th of October 2010 (#2): There is something the monkeys are continually being asked: What's the story with the Wood Fired Oven?
The story is that the oven has been demolished. A photograph of the ruins of the WFO has been posted on the Art page.
No digital image manipulation: The oven is no more.
However, as soon as The Biggest Mountain Bike Extravaganza In The Milky Way Galaxy has been ridden, a new and larger pizza oven will be built (very literally) in the ashes of the old oven.
5th of October 2010 (#1): It may only be relevant for the next week, or so, but the web site for the Delhi Commonwealth Games has been posted in the Sport section of the Links page.
30th of September 2010 (#2): A new cycling link has been added to the links page. Check out "The Berm", which describes itself as "Canberra's Mountain Biking community network".
30th of September 2010 (#1): The monkeys are mad keen mountain bikers. So much so that the second weekend in October is always marked on the monkey calendar so they can ride the Biggest Mountain Bike Race In The Known Universe.
To keep the focus the monkeys have a bunch of two word mnemonics that are posted on the wall at home and get repeated in the old brain box while out on the track. Today, the monkeys feel the need to share some of these with you all:
- Look forward!
- Flat pedal!
- Shift weight!
- Loose arms!
- Get up!
- Less Brakes!
20th of September 2010: To atone for their biliousness in the last post, the monkeys want to change the subject, all of a sudden. (Not surprising, given the damage caused...)
The monkeys have got a hold of one of the latest Australian MTB magazines and have added the URLs for the first half dozen bike manufacturers to the bicycles links listing. Given that one of the biggest mountain biking events known to man and womankind is just about to hit Mount Stromlo, it seems fitting to have a MTB themed post.
16th of September 2010: Some people just don’t get it: The monkeys have had a rough time as a result of the 2003 Bushfires. We are probably not alone in suffering Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. However, the special treatment meted out to the monkeys after the Fires continues and dismays the monkeys.
The section of community that rolls their eyes and suggest the the monkeys have not done so bad out of it all with the insurance payouts and the Government grants and the Bushfire appeal funds think that money will and has smoothed it all over. These people do not have a proper grasp. They have neither empathy or sympathy and can not possibly perceive what things are really like, even though it is seven and a half years since January of 2003.
Burying or ignoring or poo-pooing the issue is not helpful and speaks of a great ignorance and/or an absence of compassion. The monkeys believe that this is magnified when those people at work who are supposed to manage and lead us are the principal perpetrators.
Most of this subject was covered a while ago on the Bastardry page, but still needs repeating.
15th of August 2010(#2): In an unashamed attempt to get FEEDJIT flags, the front page welcome has been changed to Portuguese. Given Brazil is the fifth most populated country on the Globe, and we have no South American flags on our FEDDJIT page, Portuguese and Spanish will feature in our End Of The Internet In Australia As We Know it welcome message until we do.
For the Aussies, who do you vote for in this year's feral election? Labor wants to roll out the NBN but wants to kill the Internet with The Filter. The Coalition want to roll back the NBN roll out and can The Internet Filter. The Greens want to kill The Filter but support Labor's NBN plan.
While voting in politicians is never based on two issues, nerds around the country must all be watching what the major political parties are saying about these two important technical directions for the country.
15th of August 2010(#1): The monkeys were let loose in Sydney last weekend to participate in the City To Surf foot race. A fabulous day was had, despite a number of transportation farces. The sun shone, the breeze cooled sweaty bodies and the surf soothed aching leg muscles. Which, in fact, is one of the monkeys’ highlights of every year’s race: Finishing the race then wandering down to The Ocean to immerse tired and sore appendages .
The transportation farces mentioned, included: 1. Being stuck on a bus with 40 or 50 other “C2S” punters unable to get to Edgecliff railway station and then onto Sydney City for the start of the race. With the bus stuck behind barricades erected by the Police and the RTA and within 1 kilometre of our destination, the bus driver could not proceed any other way but forward. The corpulent RTA official and the young police officer had their orders to stop and divert all traffic on the road, which was also the route for the race. The young police person conferred with his superiors and the bus driver conferred with his controllers via radio and the fat RTA woman did nothing. This continued for half an hour. Meanwhile, the bus full of runners was getting agitated and angry. With less than an hour to go until the start of the race, the possibility was that the runners were not going to make it. At the point when the bus load of C2S competitors were about to revolt, the police relented and gave the bus an escort to it’s destination.
2. Finally at Edgecliff station, the competitors raced for the train into Sydney. The next train from Bondi Juction rolled in and everyone piles in. In the last carriage, despite many of the cars being “standing room only”, the lower compartment had many vacant seats. Being grateful to be moving again, the monkeys took an empty seat and then were immediately overwhelmed by a putrid odour. Whether it was a dead body hidden under the seats, disembowelled rotting cat or a junkie evacuating bodily fluids at both ends, it was enough to make the monkeys cover their noses with their jumpers for the entire trip.
Unrelated to the monkeys’ race experience was the balls up with the red bibbed runners’ bags at Bondi. The red bibbed runners were those who set off first, of the four race starts and, apparently, the last to get their bags at the end of the race. While it is naughty to heap scorn on a bunch of people who volunteer their services on a Sunday morning (as opposed to those paid officials mentioned above), it is odd that the bags for the red start group were the last to be sorted. The monkeys hear that some elite runners are so disgruntled with the delays that they will think twice about entering the 2011 race.
12th of July 2010: Well. Is the Federal Government's new position on the End Of The Internet As We Know It a recant or is it a dry look at their re-election prospects if the Australian Internet Users smack them around the ears, based on their flawed Filter proposal? While they may need that narrow right wing christian lobby to enable them to pass legislation through the Parliament, the same lobby and politicians will not elect them and make them sitting members.
Perhaps it is cynicism that says that are too weak to forge ahead on their own steam and they need to have a bet both ways. This means that, while the Internet Filter legislation is not dead in a Monty Python Parrot way, there is enough of the public internet user concerns taken aboard to massage the ideas to fashion The End Of The Internet As We Know In Australia: Mark 2.
The monkeys are always excited whenever there is a backward step by this Labor Government on the darkest and sinister plans of politicians with no frikkin' idea. Not that the Gillard Labor government has a monopoly on flawed and unpopular policies with no basis in common sense.
Indeed, the monkeys are relatively subdued in their cages while they mull over the possibilities about the future of the InterWeb in Australia.
23rd of June 2010: Contrast the darkness and gloom associated with losers who try to kill us and the noise and festival behind the 2010 World Cup that is on now.
The "noise" bit is topical because of the discussion (or cliched "controversy") about the use of vuvuzelas. On one hand we are defending the South Africans and the traditions of Football in the country, and on the other we are bemoaning the din drowning out the other crowd noises (read: chants and cheers) and the commentary from the SBS call.
The monkeys just think that the Gorgonzolas are noisy.
17th of June 2010: Lots of people have tried to kill us. Like the government who tried to raze Weston Creek and kill all of the people. And like the Emergency Department doctors who sent a kid away from the hospital who was doubled over in pain, saying it was nothing other than indigestion. This was immediately after being carried into the hospital by her mother because she could not walk. (A family doctor had to send a very sternly written letter to the same hospital doctors instructing them to operate on the kid's badly ulcerated appendix, just before it was due to burst.)
The latest episode is somewhat darker and involves a hit and run accident. Go to the Bastardry Page for the details.
13th of May 2010: The monkeys have more nerd news: They have just discovered Arduino.
Arduino, according to their web site is: "an open-source electronics prototyping platform".
Again, a bunch of creepy and nerdy monkeys are excited about mixing electronics with FOSS and innovation which, together, can create just about anything.
Note that it is able to be run via Windows, Linux and Mac OC X, so the ultra nerdy monkeys are not restricted to building stuff on their linux PCs.
The Arduino link has been slotted into the Science and Technology section on the Links page.
13th of May 2010: The monkeys get very excited about nerdy stuff. If you were a witness, you would have to duck the poo being flung, listen to the incessant screeching and the din of the racket of the cages being rattled.
Right now the monkeys are excited about lasers and the 50th anniversary of the first laser demonstration, due to happen this Sunday.
For a while the monkeys are distracted from the continued raping, pillaging and plundering of all of the trees in the ACT while they are strangely aroused (in a nerdy, creepy way) about the
Light
Amplification by
Stimulated
Emission of
Radiation birthday.
(Which is the other thing that riles the monkeys: Laser is an acronym and can not be spelt any other way. So don't even think of spelling it "Lazer".)
Our resident keyboard punching anthropoids recommend that you Google the subject matter, or simply go to LaserFest.
26th of April 2010: The monkeys are curious beasts. Indeed, their curiousity and innate inquisitiveness are always getting them into strife, especially when they ask why lots of their primate cousins believe in imaginary people in the sky.
A positive use of the monkeys' curiousity has led to a discovery that people in Brazil use recycled PET bottles to generate hot water. Links to this exciting and inexpensive innovation have duly been posted on the links page.
The instructions are all in Portuguese, however, given the monkeys barely have a proper grasp of English, this has not thrown their enthusiasm to build a DIY solar hot water heater.
7th of April 2010: The recipes links have been fixed on the links page.
2nd of April 2010: The monkeys have been slack. Indeed, the suggestion is that we have hot and cold running monkeys writing this rubbish.
Anyway, not much of note to add except that the reasons for the End Of The Internet As We Know It are up there with the Easter messages from Australia's clergy. Neither of which withstand any logical analysis.
We wait for Richard Dawkin's book to be quoted in rebuttal of the notion that the world's atheists were responsible for WWII, Communism in the USSR, most of crimes against humanity in the 20th Century, etcetera.
The suggestion that these religious people have colluded to produce similar messages is akin to suggest that the Australian oil companies engineer to lift the price of petrol before the weekends and holidays. How absurd!
Aside from all of these dolts who don't know who the Vulcans are, the monkeys have been busy adding a very useful link to the Links page. The Mycroft Project allows a user of Firefox to add his or her own search engines to the browser search engine tool. Otherwise known as the little box at the top right hand corner of the browser that lets you search for stuff on the web without having to opening a new tab and going to your favourite search engine's web site. The monkeys get excited when the little chevron glows.
(Creepy nerdy monkeys! Should be on an Intel television advertisement.)
13th of February 2010: Two posts in two days. The monkeys have been busy!
Today's additions are either bike related or surreptitious.
(As pointed out to some people recently, the site has a number of Easter Eggs. It's up to you to find them.)
The link for the Ride Canberra web site has been added to the Links page.
The monkeys are at once happy with Senator Conroy putting his foot in it, on the one hand and having to put more missives in the Bastardry page on the other. This last task makes monkeys mad and at the same time mystifies them how base and neanderthal their primate cousins can be.
12th of February 2010: Well, Senator Conroy has told us all what his intentions are: His future Internet in Australia is to be modelled on the Chinese example. Perhaps we can become "The People's Republic of Australia" with the Labor Party being renamed to the "National People's Congress".
The monkeys are having as much fun with this transition from Democracy and relative Freedom to Communism and State Rule as they did with the Gems from the Secretary of State's speech, last month.
Credit to the Hungry Beast Team and their interview.
The other changes in the recent past have included updates to the Bastardry Page.
By the way, if you are like Google, and have no idea what bastardry means, then just don't go there. It is as simple as any objection to what is on the Idiot Box: If you don't appreciate it, don't understand it or are offended by it, just turn it off. Go and read a frikkin book.
22nd of January 2010: The monkeys are delighted: In what was intended as a backhand at the Chinese Government's web hacking attacks on Corporate USA in the recent past, Secretary of State Clinton has decried state censorship of the InterWeb.
The stated targets were Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but the unintentional target is Australia.
Read or listen to the ABC Radio's "AM" story.
This is gold.
The monkeys can not wipe the stupid grins off their faces.
Maybe, in some alternate universe, the Rudd Labor Government will think, if Hillary Clinton thinks Internet censorship is bad and puts Australia in league with some totalitarian and democratically oppressive countries, perhaps we should desist in our efforts to kill the Internet As We Know It.
Dream on, monkeys!
7th of January 2010: Fit people are attractive. The fitter they are, the more good looking they become.
Mind you, some people measure their fitness by how much weight they can lift. The monkeys that write this drivel say that the only measure of your fitness is how you perform when the poo hits the fan.
A steroid munching condom full of walnuts will not be able to perform under duress for any length of time because, the chances are, their hearts are already rooted or on the way out when they need the aerobic capacity to perform, when the crap hits the fan.
These are the premises for adding BodyRock.tv to the Running and Fitness links. Zuzana is super fit, lithe and does not look her age. She also (at the time of the penning of this) has all of her videos on her web site (and You Tube) for gratis. And most of the exercises she performs are done via body weight or need a minimum of equipment.
28th of December 2009: The monkeys are always stumbling upon fabulous nuggets while traversing the World Wide Web. Today's gem is a Linux repository that promises to hold all sorts of information about "enterprise level open source technology". Linuxtopia has been duly added to the Linux Links.
The other addition to the Linux Links page is one of the distro flavours of the month, Linux Mint.
By the way, one caveat applies to all of the links provided on themarshalls.tv: We are like Legislators all over the world, who are happy to plaster the law with their perceptions of what is good and what wins votes, and add to it, and add to it, without any regard to cleaning up antiquated, dangerous or conflicting legislation by way of repealing these laws. As it is with this site, where we add links with little regard to the future, when links will be dead, moved or outdated. See the Contact Us Page for directions if stuff on the site does not work for you.
23rd of December 2009: We all helped and we finally did it: As our homage to his noodliness, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the FSM light set is now up.
It now graces the backyard so that all the people passing our back fence get to see our very own FSM light show. (By the way, don't ask why the lights are not out the front of the house.)
The photos of the FSM have been posted on the Art page.
The other news is that the Summer Solstice for the Southern Hemisphere has been and gone. Our days will now shorten while the days for the other half of the globe lengthen as we rocket through space and towards June 21st.
7th of December 2009: Someone has asked what FSM is all about. I think the message is, if you don't understand or it makes no sense at all, even after reading the Famous Letter, simply go along with it. This works for all of the rest of the people in the world who blindly follow religions and fail to ask any questions.
One hopes that everyone is putting up their FSM Lights for the Silly Season. Ours will go up, as soon as SWMBO is looking the other way.
On that subject, Jan won another award and had a Forrest Gump moment with Julia Gillard. (In a Forrest Gump voice, shout: "Again!") Hit the Schools First Web Site for the details.
16th of October 2009: Much has happened since the last monkey missive:
We have changed ISP, changed the version of Linux that this crap gets generated on, and, most importantly, we are running a new version of gedit. (2.26.1)
Anyway, the site will remain to work at 90% until such time as the web admins get their poo in one sock.
As noted below, the Stanhope government must still believe that there are far too many trees in the ACT and continue to get rid of them. However, one nice touch that the monkeys noticed was that they appear to be putting up tombstones on Dairy Farmers Hill for a portion of the trees that have been killed.
And we thought that they were all callous environmental vandals with no regard for anyone or anything and candidates for the Bastardry page. Who knows what they think and what vague socialist agenda they run by.
5th of October 2009: Well, it looks like we have made it to the other side, sans BigPond's free hosting.
Unfortunately, it means that all of the bookmarks that people have, all over the world, will be rendered useless if they start with "users.bigpond.net.au/themarshalls" because we don't live there anymore.
However, Google has cached elements of the old site, if you want to go back to the old days. The same old, same old has been happening since the last missive: The ACT Labor Government keeps on chopping down trees with gay abandon and the Federal Labor Government is oddly quiet about The End Of The Internet As We Know It.
15th of September 2009: The monkeys have been lax again in their given task of keeping the web site updated.
This is not to say they have been inactive. Much cage rattling and poo flinging has been happening since last month's entry. Most monkey chagrin has been due to the ACT's Labor Government burning, lopping and poisoning the Territory's trees. The monkeys want one question answered: What about our carbon credits?
If we start with no trees in the ACT at the start of a carbon audit (or just the barest minimum to stop the Stanhope team being booted out of government for wholesale vandalism), does that mean we can plant lots of trees and have lots of credit and kudos?
People in power should never forget that monkeys love their trees!
Getting away from all of that, and on an unrelated issue, the themarshalls.tv will be forced to find a new home soon, given Telstra has decided that they needed to "upgrade" the services delivered to it's BigPond clients and start charging them for web hosting. So if you can't find us on the web on the 1st of October, this means that the themarshalls.tv web administration team's plans A, B & C have all failed.
11th of August 2009: Someone we know has commented on the last entry and asked what exactly is a nerd. To assist those who may need to know and identify nerds, here are some references:
MSN Encarta
Wikipedia
ZDNet
There is, yet again, nothing to report about The End Of The Internet In Australia as we currently know it.
Regardless, the greeting on the front page has been changed to Croation.
28th of July 2009: As nerds, we love to burn live Linux distros, throw them into a PC and check out other people's perspective on what they think Linux should look like. For the nerds out there, check out The Live CD List (on the Linux Links page) and the array of live distros available. Note that your bootable Linux distribution can boot off a USB device, as well as a CD or DVD.
19th of July 2009: The monkeys that type this rubbish have been lax.
In between banging out Shakespearean sonnets and flinging poo, they occasionally get around to penning these missives.
With only two days until the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, there is much hyperbole, especially for those people lucky enough to have pay TV and access to Discovery Channel, the History Channel, et al.
We are not missing the opportunity to add our two cents worth, and accordingly, here is a related link:
Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle (If you have a slow link, be careful, as it big.)
The tiny dot on the image is the remnant of the Eagle Lunar Lander on the surface of the Moon, as photographed by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
For today's salutation to the rest of the World, the selected random language is Latvian.
4th of July 2009: It appears that the truth about Internet Explorer is out now.
IE can and probably will induce nausea and vomiting.
The message is clear: Get a proper browser.
By the way, unless you live in a cave, the news (sadly) is that Michael Jackson died and almost broke the Internet. (Sad that Michael died, not so sad that he broke the internet, posthumously.)
Amazingly, Google don't seem to own TVs and certainly don't read the news on their own web site, assumed it was an attack and started shutting systems down.
Much mirth to be had by the computer nerds.
Another historical note, which has already been mentioned on this site at least once, is that the first Neil Armstrong lunar walk was made on the 21st of July, 1969. That was the date in Australia, at the time. Elsewhere in the world (notably in the USA) it was on the 20th.
Why is this important? It's important because the Aussies involved will be celebrating on the 21st and not on the 20th.
8th of June 2009: There are some fantastic physics projects being built and run around the world. Like many instances in the realm of science, no one corporation or bureaucracy can construct many of these things by themselves and the co-operation of a nation or nations is needed. The best working example is the International Space Station.
Another two cases of giant and "groung breaking" science are the Large Hadron Collider and the US National Ignition Facility. Both project sites (2 for the LHC, because there appears to be two LHC "Homepages" on the Web) have been added to the Science and Technology links portion of the Links page.
The new greeting to the planet has been changed to Dutch.
31st of May 2009: As a tribute to all of the immigrants who have come to Australia, the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney has set up a wall with the names and some of the stories associated with the journeys. The link to the web site and the details of the thousands of inscriptions has been placed in the Government section of the Links page.
Still nothing to report on the Federal Government's Web Filtering Plan.
For today's salutation to the rest of the World, the selected random language is Norwegian.
4th of May 2009: Random languages are now the choice for our greeting to other 6 billion. Today's choice is Portuguese.
Oddly, there appears to nothing being said in the media about the mandatory online filters in the recent past.
I suppose the media has other news interests to pursue, as does the Australian Government. Notably, the swine flu pandemic and the global financial crisis are the headlines of most news services. (Apart from the Obama Family's new puppy...)
17th of April 2009: There's nothing new on the web site, apart from the message of greeting to the rest of the world. It has been changed to Thai.
22nd of March 2009: Reinforcement of the anarchy promised by the Rudd Labor Government has been revealed via Wikileaks.
Apparently, lots of sites have been listed as Black and not considered suitable for Australian consumption.
Somewhere, deep within the current Feral government is a person, or persons, whose charter is to patronise the other 22 million of us. Without the democratic processes which are otherwise supposed to look after all Australians, this/these person/people are deciding that they know better.
Again, this smells of the totalitarian regimes that filter and censor the Internet for their citizens.
Oddly, it smacks of the patronising nonsense meted out by the Stanhope Labor Government, here in the ACT. They know better and are consistently doing things for the people, without actually asking the people, using the Ratepayer's and Taxpayer's money.
Perhaps they should consider and take account of our opinions and feelings before launching into unpopular and questionable policies and actions.
The point of the diatribe is: We are next. Anyone who dissents will be added to The List. By making social and political comment, themarshalls.tv will be out on it's arse, too.
Accordingly, the salutaion to the other 6 billion is now in Swedish.
21st of February 2009: Well, after more than a month of neglect, we are back hacking the web site.
Notably, the last entry was to mark the passing of the sixth anniversary of the 2003 Canberra Bushfires. Since then, sadly, large swathes of Victoria have met the same firey fate and many people have died as a result.
It is not surprising that the events of the 2009 Firestorms have bought all of the emotion of 2003 back.
Empathy says that we know well what is happening in Victoria and we feel for the survivors and understand what is happening to them, right now.
However, one can not be sure if the words and lessons of a survivor of the 1983 Ash Wednesday Bushfires would have been cold comfort to us on the 19th of January 2003 and thereafter.
We have learned to be silent and not to speak of those dark days. This is especially after some of the treatment meted out by the ACT Labor Government, employers, tradesmen and a certain insurance company whose practice is to take lots of peoples' money (premiums) but defer payment for a very long time once claims have been made.
The source of the bushfire problem is anarchistic Greenies. They have had the ear of our elected reprentatives, the media and the community for a long time. They want the planet devoid of the human population and for all (non-human) fauna and flora to live unimpeded.
The solution is simple: Rural Fire Fighters + Australian Indigenous folk + flame throwers + naplam.
The Australian bush had been tamed for millenia before white settlement by the indigenous people. They should take charge again, with the help of the Firies, using brute force methods, during the cooler months.
Sadly, this will not happen and many more people will die while we pander to the Greenies.
There is no news on the End Of The Internet In Australia As We Know It.
The salutation on the front page has been changed to Finnish.
Note also, the Bastardry Page vandalism images and acerbic comments are still MIA. (Maybe on a cache out there in the Ether, somewhere....)
18th of January 2009: On this day, the 6th anniversary of the 2003 Canberra Bushfires, we haven't added anything witty or dark to our website, we have simply translated the greeting to the rest of the world into German.(We are still waiting for The End Of The Internet As We Know It to happen.)
Anyhow, the news from the UK is that the atheists have been stirring the pot with bus ads. For those who don't know who Richard Dawkins is, or don't know what a "monotheistic religion" is, have a look at the Carl Sagan link in the Science section of the Links page to sort out the mess of dogma that has infected your brain.
8th of January 2009: The new countdown continues to the precipice that is the End Of The Internet For All Australians, happening some time this month.
Regardless, the message of greeting to the rest of the world has been changed to Polish.
25th of December 2008 - #2: It took a while, but it finally happened: We have been censored.
Google's Picasa content editors apparently feel that our Bastardry happy snaps page is so offensive that they have pulled all of the pictures and captions. Citing the breach:
"This content has been removed because it violates our Terms of Service."
The only explanation is that American English is so perverted from it's roots that those folk in sunny Mountain View, California can not perform a simple search to track the definition of the word "bastardry".
All Australians know it so well, given it was used by former Prime Minister Howard in Washington D.C. on the day of the September 11 attacks, when he described the acts of the perpetrators.
We also all know the Americans have a very different sensibility, and it seems that calling the acts of the cretins who cut and slashed our plants on our fence an act of bastardry, and using the pictures of the act is beyond the pale.
Suffice to say, pending us finding a provider who does not have their heads shoved in pooey orifices, the content and vitriol will be lost to the ether.
(Note to other web creators and admins: Make sure you back up all of your stuff, lest it is deleted for you!)
25th of December 2008 - #1: The Australian Feral Government has given all of us Australians a stay of execution from the End Of The Internet As We Know It.
The story from the news reports is that the start of The End will be in mid January. (2009?)
In the meantime, we will continue to post greetings in other lanuages, based on the hits received via the Feedjit Widget.
The current greeting is in French.
16th of December 2008: Slashdot is always fabulous for all sorts of nerdy stuff and we have no hesitation lifting sumptuous propeller head gear from their site.
Go to the Science and Technology links to check out the "Tesla_Downunder" web site from W.A. Years and years of nerdy paraphernalia on display. Awesome.
14th of December 2008: Given so many Australians and Australian ISPs are revolting, does this mean an end to the Internet Censorship plan hatched by the Federal Government and some marginal God Bodies?
You wish.
Off the subject, yet in an oddly similar vein, a link to the Church Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster has been listed. Another one of those links that was damn hard to slot.
Is it Media and Entertainment?
Is it a Reference?
Is it Home Brew And Other Social Alcoholic Pursuits?
Could it be Commercial Space Flight?
Obviously, it is none of these. It is all about Science and Technology and has been duly placed there.
Also, the link for timeanddate.com has been listed under the Reference links.
Finally, the salutation to the rest of the world (pending the Internet in Australia turning to Custard) has been changed to a Ukranian greeting.
6th of December 2008: Well, we are just a couple of weeks away from the End Of The Internet In Australia.
Bigger brains than us mortals have hatched a cunning plan to kill the web as we currently know it.
Christmas Day in Australia will be long remembered, in the same way as: The Berlin Wall falling; Man landing on the moon for the first time; The end of WW1 and WW2.
For years hereafter, people in Australia will be asking each other "Where were you when the poo hit the fan?"
Regardless, another change has been made to the main page. A greeting to all of the Hindi speaking people of the world has been posted.
24th of November 2008: If you run Frank Sinatra singing "My Way" (or perhaps "New York, New York"?) through the MP3 player in your brain, you'll get the idea of what is happening with themarshalls.tv.
The end is drawing near and we are getting that much closer to the end of the Internet, as we know it.
Santa will be coming down chimneys all over the world in late December and we're screwed.
In the meantime, the links for Wood Fired Ovens have been updated and the "Traditional Ovens" web site has been slotted in. Not because they build their ovens contrary to the Forno Bravo ovens (square and not circular), but because they have a recipe for refactory concrete.
Also, today's hacks include fixing up spelling mistakes and grammatical errors and getting the Welcome To The World right.
13th of November 2008: Well, this is it. It is getting closer to the end and it should be a time to sign off and wish everyone well for the new world.
By Christmas Day, 2008, we will probably be cut off when we are banned as part of this brave new internet borne of the Rudd Labor Government.
What chances has The Marshall Family web site got in this new era of the web in Australia? Check out the weird arsed URL. Dissent? Political and social commentary?
To use the Aussie vernacular, we're rooted.
For those who are not from Oz, please think of Australians as those loud mouthed but good natured people with a love of drink and a laugh. Don't slot us in the same basket as those poor pricks who live in "People's Republics" and other oppressive totalitarian regimes.
Before we are cut off, we are going to say G'Day to all of those others in the world who have hit the web site. (According to the Feedjit Widget.) Check out the Home Page and the Google translation.
2nd of November 2008: The Rudd Government is about to implement a whole of Australia internet censorship system which will filter all of the supposed net nasties to make the web kiddy safe.
While this is noble, it is fundamentally flawed and will reduce the internet to ridiculous speeds and as a consequence, ultimately increase the cost of service provision to all of us in Oz.
There are lots of people who are working to stop this happening including some very entertaining YouTube videos. However, the best way for individuals to effect a change is to lobby politicians and also use the advocacy organisations such as Electronic Frontiers Australia. The EFA website link has been added to the Links Page.
15th of October 2008: Cycling is now topically hot.
Forget stuff like the Global Financial Crisis and elections: Today was Ride To Work Day. Last weekend was the biggest MTB event in the Milky Way Galaxy. Very soon it will be the Triple Triathlon. (16th of November)
14th of October 2008: Now the event has finished and we all have lungs full of dust, sincere thanks go to the Support Crew for Team Marshall and their help for the Scott 24 Hour MTB Race.
Not only was there dust, but there was also a pedantic and grumpy 40+ solo rider, the rigours of almost continuous laps throughout the race (with little time to relax between laps) and their own sleep deprivation.
All credit and bouquets go to Jan and Gryff for their efforts over the past weekend.
Thanks to those who dropped into the camp site to say hello, too.
Links to Picassa with the photos from the weekend will be posted shortly. In the meanwhile, check out the results.
10th of October 2008: The camp site has been set up and the co-ordinates have been entered in the box below.
This is the Google Earth link.
This is a link to Google Maps Australia.
Enjoy The Race.
By the way, while you are at Mount Stromlo, keep an eye out for the three eared kangaroo. He is a big grey buck and has been seen at different parts of the eastern side of the mountain.
9th of October 2008: This is the box:
| 35°19'0.78"S | 149° 1'30.64"E |
|---|
that will house the location of the Marshall Team Camp for this year's 24 Hour MTB Race.
It will be the same as last year, where you can plug the co-ordinates into Google Maps or Google Earth.
A Google Earth link will be put on the web site tomorrow night, too.
The sentiments from last year have not changed. People can not be convinced that the race is a spectacle and just have to turn up to see and experience it for themselves.
Emphasis has also been placed on folks NOT TO TURN UP ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON! It's all over then and there is nothing to see.
See you at Mount Stromlo.
1st of October 2008: What happens when a chef marries a blacksmith?
What sounds like the lead up to the punch line for a joke is actually a new Wood Fired Oven link for the Links page. Check out the (Australian) "Slow Food & Handforged Tools" web site. Very nice.
30th of September 2008: The front page's topical link has been changed to the red hot topic at the moment: Mountain Bikes and Endurance Racing as it relates to the October 24 Hour Race. Accordingly, the Farkin.net web site has been listed. I would post the link for CORC or the official Scott web site, but for the reasons listed below, there is no currency and certainly no news.
If not for the newsgroups on web sites like Farkin, one would not be able to obtain this year's Stromlo Course Map. (!!!)
The news is that the course is very similar to last year's, with the following differences:
All gleaned from sources other than the sites where you expect these things to be...
26th of September 2008: Again, there is very little to report, especially on the 24 Hour MTB Race front.
I think we were spoilt in the past with course maps and the like. In those days there was dynamic web content and up to date information via the Event Internet Site.
And the other cool stuff, like course element names, such as "Heidi's Track" and "Col de Mont" and "Blinky Bill". And proper Event Bicycling Tops that were for sale.
Ahh, the old days...
This year's race, so the rumours have it, will be considerably smaller than last year's, with registration numbers much lower than the past few October 24 hour events.
Reflecting on the past again, registrations used to be a race to get in before they closed. In the old days, within a few weeks of registration opening, all team entries would close and only solo registrations were accepted after that time.
This year's registration closes on Sunday (28th of September).
One wonders what has scared hundreds of people away...
15th of September 2008: Due to apathy and other stuff, nothing much has happened on these pages recently.
Even the Topical Page is now the site which shows you how to build your own wood fired pizza oven. Simply for want of something else to insert. (Other than poorly organised community sporting events or the district's wild weather this afternoon.)
As with previous years, watch this space for the details of the Marshall camp site for this October's 24 hour MTB event.
22nd of August 2008: Today's news is not about a potato farmer's son getting the Silver Medal in the 50 km walk in Beijing, or Sally McLellan saying "shit" and wobbling her thighs on TV.
Today's news is about free stuff. It's about getting to the MTB World Cup from either the City or Woden bus Interchanges to the Stromlo venue at no cost.
This has been duly placed in the Topical Link slot on the front page.
Oh, by the way, there will be 750 of the world's elite cyclists in their respective MTB disciplines, too...
Nice.
31st of July 2008: There is so much sport in the news at the present. Not only do we have the Olympics in Mainland China about to start, but the Tour de France has just finished, the 2008 City 2 Surf is just over a week away.
However, the new featured link on the front page is the MTB World Cup, to be held in Canberra at the end of August. The event promises to be huge, listed as Australia's "biggest mountain biking event for 2008..."
22nd of July 2008: After much delay and hyperbole, the Scott 24 Hour Bike Race entries have opened. Accordingly, the site has been taken off the front page.
In it's place, another famous bike race has been posted: The (English version of the) Tour de France.
Also, the Top Gear web site has been slotted into the Motoring section of the Links page.
On top of all of this, the last of the sites to be converted are slowly being moved to the new format.
19th of July 2008: More links have been added under the "RC Flying" banner on the Links page.
Note that, while the CORC 2008 24 Hour MTB Web Site has been posted, registrations have not yet opened. Those keen to enter are... well we are keen to enter online and get that ***stuff*** squared away as soon as possible. That is why the link remains as the "Topical Link" on the front page.
Interesting to note that there is no major endorsement for the event.
16th of July 2008: Most, if not all of the links on these pages are a celebration of Nerdy Shit. Today's entries are no different.
Question: What happens when you combine remote control flying, electric motors and a wireless video camera?
Answer: You get First Person Remote Control Flying. Another Nerd Nirvana. Special mention to the French-Canadian man whose videos are awesome. Enjoy the new Links page section devoted to RC Flying.
30th of June 2008: Today is the Australian end of financial year. Note that not all countries follow this convention.
A few links have been added to both the Links page and the Linux Links page. Most notable is the addition to the Linux page of the "vi-vim Graphical Cheat Sheet" which is dedicated to the hackers (in the traditional sense) who work all day with a command prompt and make and edit ASCII text files on the fly with an xterm. If you don't have a print out of this pinned up at your workstation/work space, I can recommend it.
Another two notable additions are the (English version of the) Tour De France web site and a running DIY mapping tool called MapMyRun.
The second site allows you to map a run, keep it and publish it. If you are a running wall flower, you have the choice to keep it to yourself. You are also able to log your runs, for your records. Very cool. For redundancy protection, as it is with many things on the InterWeb, you can use someone else's run.
Note that the Tour De France web site is a topical and exciting endurance race. However, without poo-pooing Cadel Evans and his fellow competitors, they all pack up and eat pastries at night (and reconvene at some civilised hour, the next morning) and there is a dearth of dirt and rocks and tree roots and mud. But, without any news about the World's Biggest 24 Hour Mountain Bike Race, this suffices...
18th of June 2008: Thanks to Brad, the collection of Woodfired Oven Links has grown by one. Marvel at all the cool pictures on the Black Oven website and the many and varied oven types therein.
15th of June 2008: One of the last Partial Marshalls web sites has been converted to the new format. Patricia's page has been updated.
Happy Solstice for Saturday.
9th of June 2008: After a marathon effort, the Links page has been converted to the new format. Along the way, many of the links have been either been tinkered with or removed. Too many to mention here.
Good news: The CORC 24 Hour Mountain Bike web page is nearly online. It's almost time to take the link down from the Topical Links section of the front page, but not quite yet.
5th of June 2008: Given Jan's recent award for her work at her school, her page has been duly updated to the new format.
Top of the page is the photo from the award ceremony where Jan is being presented with her commendation by Julia Gillard
Good job Jan!
Note also, that the Scott 2008 web site is not due to be posted until next week. Reliable sources say that CORC have been busy with other stuff and they say that entries will open online soon.
2nd of June 2008: There has been a 50 percent success rate on the web sites listed on the front page of themarshalls.tv, under the Topical Links heading. The 2008 City To Surf web site is now online, and people are now able to register to run.
Nothing has happened to the 2008 Scott 24 Hour Mountain Bike web site, however. That is why the City To Surf web site has been dropped and the Scott 24 Hour web site link is still listed.
26th of May 2008 (#2): M. C. Escher was an artist. He is still very popular and his work is widely viewed and appreciated.
The official Escher web site has been included in the Science and Technology portion of the links page, mainly due to the fact that the way he melded different shapes to create new shapes. While not formally schooled in the sciences, Escher developed mathematical models into art.
26th of May 2008 (#1): Back to front is a description of what this page used to look like. The intent is, as it was with the old "What's New" page, to list this information in reverse date order. That is, list the newest first, like the accounting principle of FIFO.
This has been fixed. New stuff is now first.
24th of May 2008: The registration days for two huge Australian sporting events are only a week away, but the web sites aren't there.
Sadly, the Sydney City to Surf Fun Run and the Scott 24 Hour MTB Race sites do not currently exist.
Sucks if you want to either run or ride, (Or if you are mad enough to participate in both!) and you want some currency to the information provided by the organisers of the events.
Despite this, both links have been placed in the Topical Links portion of the front page of the Partial Marshalls site.
19th of May 2008 (#2): With apologies to Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, et al, the first images beamed from the Moon to Earth back in 1969 had bugger all to do with Parkes and sheep paddocks.
Old Salts will tell you "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good Warie."
The truth lies in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains, not far from Canberra in a NASA installation called Honeysuckle Creek. Their story is in the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station web site and the web site has been duly added to the Links page.
Note that the 40th anniversary of the 1st Moon landings are next year (2009).
19th of May 2008 (#1): Again, we have to thank someone for suggesting stuff for the web site.
Ned asked where the meta tags were for the new page format.
Where? Where? Missing is Where!
Thanks to Ned, this is being rectified as this is being typed.
Good job Browsers. Youse guys rock.
15th of May 2008: Thanks to Dave, I have fixed the new Contact Us page to include a mode of contact, by adding the email address.
Dave also pointed out that the e-smith link was dead and that the distro is now called "SME Server".
Who said that we didn't care about dead links, etc????
12th of May 2008: Still hacking away at these pages to make the new format uniform, throughout.
Procrastinating on the Links Page, because of it's size. Most others have been done. Not long now...
5th of May 2008: After the biggest of pregnant pauses, this page (What's New) has finally been updated to the new format.
For those who like the old design, or want to see the old What's New, follow this link (Careful, it's a monster @ 130KB).