BaldwinP

72 posts
In a world full of people, only some want to fly. Isn't that crazy? Baldwin Periphetes wants to fly, and also to juggle, tell jokes, and rule the world. He is at least halfway to his goal.

What is Google+?


Google+ is a new social networking site. Yes, new social networking sites come out every other week. Yes, no-one cares.  Yes, Google has tried to get into the social networking field before, and failed. This might be different. Most social networking sites are intended to be additional to whatever social networks you already use. Hell, many even have buttons to share stuff from them to Facebook or Twitter.

Google+ is different. The message of Google+ is that it does everything Facebook does, and more, but also lets you control your privacy and sharing better than Facebook. The goal of Google+ is nothing short of consigning Facebook to the dustbin of history, alongside MySpace.  Continue reading →

War For Profit In Bougainville

“It is my opinion that absent Rio Tinto’s mining activity on Bougainville or its insistence that the Panguna mine be re-opened, the government would not have engaged in hostilities or taken military action on the island.”

”Because of Rio Tinto’s financial influence in PNG, the company controlled the government.”

”The government of PNG followed Rio Tinto’s instructions and carried out its requests … BCL was directly involved in the military operations on Bougainville, and it played an active role. BCL supplied helicopters, which were used as gunships, the pilots, troop transportation, fuel and troop barracks.”

– Sir Michael Somare Continue reading →

Riverplate Soccer Relegation Sparks Riots in Argentina


One of the most storied soccer clubs in South America, River Plate of Argentina, a club which has won the Argentinian league 33 times in its 110 year history, was yesterday relegated to the 2nd division for the first time ever.

River Plate fans did not take this well. Their final match was stopped a minute before the appropriately-named injury time as irate fans, obviously not believing in their team mounting a comeback from 2 goals down, began to charge the ground and throw objects at the players and referees.  Opposition fans were forced to stay for hours in a closed off section of the stadium surrounded by police, while River Plate fans set things on fire, smashed shops, threw rocks at the police, and generally behaved like soccer hooligans. Continue reading →

QOTD: What’s Your Favorite Nickname?

With apologies to Sir Winston “The British Bulldog” Churchill, we have seen them on the beaches, we have seen them on the landing grounds, we have seen them in the fields and in the streets, we have seen them in The Hills.

I refer to nicknames.

Bestowed by family, school friends, coworkers, or enemies; sometimes they stick. Some are obvious. “Flash” for anyone quick. “Tiny” for tall people. “Bluey” for gingers in Australia. As Kara “Starbuck” Thrace might put it, there are many copies. Continue reading →

A Crass Social Experiment – The Results!

Hello again Crasstalkers, lets look at results of our little quiz from yesterday.

Credit where it’s due: the quiz was taken from a book called Snoop by Professor Sam Gosling, an entertaining and informative study on what we can learn of people’s personalities through their offices, bedrooms, trash cans, cars, music collections, job interview behaviors, etc.; in many cases, what we think we can learn but actually can’t.

The quiz, seemingly about our knowledge of various celebrities, was not really about our knowledge of celebrities. You are not about to be shamed for knowing all about Apple Martin while knowing nothing of Hermann von Helmholtz.

Continue reading →

A Crass Social Experiment – How Well Do You Know These Celebs?

I’ve come across an interesting psychological study involving your knowledge of various celebrities that I’d like to try out on the Crass Commentariat. The quiz is simple and will take you only a minute to answer. At the end of the post is a list of names. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you know about each individual on the list, where 1 is “never heard of them” and 10 is “know their life story”?

Continue reading →

Total Novice’s Guide to Australian Rules Football

I will start with the cheap grab for the attention of my straight female and gay male audience:

I will continue with the cheap grab for the attention of the straight males and lesbians:

(She’s married to a footballer, so the picture is relevant)

Finally, I will start with a short video encapsulating modern Australian Rules Football (or “AFL” as it is usually called now after the main league, imaginatively titled the Australian Football League).

AFL is a game played by two teams with an oval ball (like rugby and American football) on a field with a goal at either end (like rugby and American football). It is generally believed to have arisen out of Gaelic Football (like an Irish cross between rugby and soccer) and the Aboriginal game Marn Grook. The earliest games were played on fields a mile long and teams of hundreds, as a way to keep fit in winter, but these days the field is normal stadium-sized and the teams are 18 a side (plus 3 on the interchange bench, who can substitute on and off for other players as often as they like).

Teams score by kicking the ball through the two central posts of the goal (6 points), or by kicking the ball between a central post and a side post (1 point) or putting the ball through the goals by a means other than kicking (1 point).

Unlike most modern sports, AFL has no rules limiting where people can run or move the ball within the field of play. No offside, no rule against forward passes or backpasses, no icing, no time limit on standing in the paint, nothing. This can lead to extremely free-flowing high-scoring games or to highly defensive games where teams emphasise retaining possession over advancing the ball.

Players may run with the ball, kick the ball or “handball” the ball. A handball is holding the ball in one hand and punching it away with the other. You’ll have seen a few of them in the video at the top of the article.

AFL is a contact sport and tackling is the main way to stop someone. A player who is tackled and can’t get rid of the ball, having had “prior opportunity” to get rid of the ball (you can just put the ball in someone’s hands and pin it to them!) gives away a free kick. It is this free kick, imaginatively titled “holding the ball”, which leads to AFL crowds yelling “BAAAAAAALLLLLLLL” for every tackle, no matter how good.

The signature skill of AFL is the “mark”. A “mark” is a clean catch of the ball from a kick travelling over 10 meters, and the player who does it gets a free kick. A mark within range of goal is one of the few moments an AFL game will stop, as everyone waits for the guy who took the mark to catch his breath and line up the free shot. A pack attempting to mark the ball will inevitably form under any high ball, leading to amazing acrobatics and also moments of indomitable courage.

Don’t hit people and don’t tackle players who don’t have the ball. Any other rule, your guess is probably as good as the umpire’s anyway.

AFL is currently on ESPN3 three times a week in the USA, and I understand on TSN in Canada once a week. Check your local guides etc etc. If one of the games involves the Gold Coast Suns, be warned—they are a new team this year, full of rookie players, and they are being mercilessly flogged by everyone who plays them. Not the best example of the game, sadly.

Nuclear Power – Can’t live with it, or can’t live without it?

First things first: Nuclear Power is a tricky issue. I don’t expect to solve it in a short article and some snarky comments. Nonetheless, it’s one of the key issues confronting countries around the world as their existing power stations age and (in many cases) as their demands for energy grow, especially in developing countries like China and India.

Second things second: It’s important to look at this issue (like any issue) logically and not with emotional knee-jerk reactions.

What I mean is this. If I show you this picture:

and ask whether cats are cuddly and cute or vicious killers who must be controlled, you’ll at least be conflicted.

If I show you THIS picture:

and ask whether cats are cuddly and cute or vicious killers who must be controlled, I know your answer.

If I ask you what you think of nuclear power after you’ve just seen this:

well…..

But what if I showed you

and asked you whether you want a few hundred more of these going up around the world in the next decade, or whether you would prefer some power stations which don’t use coal or oil or gas and which don’t emit greenhouse gases?

For further amusing and scary information on the way this kind of emotional manipulation can be used in surveys, I highly recommend this classic Yes Minister clip:

Moving on:

What are the advantages of nuclear power? Well, that’s easy, we’ve cited some of them above:

1. No greenhouse gas emissions, or other noxious substances which contribute to acid rain, smog and other air pollutant.

2. Doesn’t use traditional fossil fuels and we don’t seem to be in danger of running out of uranium any time soon.

3. Already commercially viable and practical, and indeed very efficient, for use on the scale of providing power to millions of homes and businesses.

1 & 2 are the advantages over traditional fossil fuel power stations. 3 is the advantage over renewable energy sources apart from hydro power. Naturally, if we could just rely on solar power and wind power for all our energy needs, we would do it. It can’t be done yet. For now, it’s a 2 horse race. Perhaps we’re talking a stop-gap measure for only 5-10 years, maybe we won’t have renewal energy on a practical scale until vicious war halves the population. But every year, more power stations must go up around the world to meet demand, and we’ve got to decide what we want them to be NOW, not in 10 years (or after Thunderdome).

What then are the disadvantages?

1. If a nuclear plant goes bad, it will contaminate the surrounding land beyond habitability forever (until cleaned up, if it can be cleaned up, which will take decades).

2. If a nuclear plant goes bad, it may release radioactive particles into the wind and water which spread far beyond the immediate area, making the health damage more than just a localized issue.

3. Nuclear energy may not produce air pollutants, but it does create noxious waste of another kind which must be stuck somewhere. The more nuclear energy used, the more waste produced and the more secure faraway places we must find to stash the radioactive waste.

4. Risk of uranium fuel sales being diverted into weapons manufacture, or at “best” a “dirty bomb”.

To counter this, one could say: these are all manageable risks. If you don’t mess up running your nuclear plant (and hundreds of such plants around the world, for decades, have run without melting down), 1 & 2 don’t matter. if you can successfully store and partially recycle your radioactive waste (which, so far, has been managed by all nuclear countries), 3 doesn’t matter. If you keep proper security, 4 doesn’t matter. The problems with fossil fuels, on the other hand, cannot be stopped. Fossil fuels will run out, and when you burn them they release tons of air pollutants.

The trouble with that argument is of course, that ignoring Chernobyl, partial meltdowns and major leaks have occurred in the United States, the United Kingdom and now Japan. Few countries are not subject to major earthquakes or floods or other disasters which can affect the safe operation of plants despite all the safety precautions. And now we’re talking about rolling more of the things out in an era of lowest-price-wins construction tendering, in developing countries who haven’t had 30 years of experience to iron out the teething problems, in countries where a $10,000 bribe to divert some uranium isn’t chickenfeed but instead enough money to set a family up for life.

My personal belief is that most if not all nuclear power accidents have occurred with old technology (even the Fukushima reactor at the center of the present crisis is a very old one built to lower safety precautions than are now in use, and which was already overdue to be decommissioned). Countries can safely use nuclear power as a stopgap for renewable energy, and must do so to buy time to get greenhouse gas emissions down, but they should heed the lessons of Fukushima about doing anything on the cheap or taking anything for granted, and if wealthier countries need to chip in a bit to ensure others do it properly and don’t leave nuclear power plants to be built by the President’s brother-in-law and staffed by men paid $1 a day, then they should realise it’s in their own collective self-interest, less a fallout cloud sweep across their borders.

But on the other side, I can see how this will only create a permanent and huge hoard of nuclear waste, to be stored effectively forever, a long-term problem to be managed long after greenhouse gases have been brought under control, and that my idealistic dream of countries acting responsibly in this day and age is overly optimistic, and that fossil fuel power plants are a necessary way of playing it safe, the lesser evil to avoid the catastrophe of nuclear meltdowns.

Or maybe we should just accept global warming is inevitable and plan for how to survive that, not how to shuffle deckchairs on the beach while the tide is rising?

Your thoughts, upon reaching the end of this lengthy post, would be appreciated.

Melbourne International Comedy Festival Review Part 1

Reviews in Week One:

Poet Laureate Telia Nevile, “Headliners” – Tom Segura, Moshe Kasher, Garfunkel & Oates and Hannibal Buress, Xavier Michaelides, “Political Asylum”- Matt Kenneally and many more,  Sammy J & Randy, Rich Hall

You may scroll down to the reviews if that’s all you’re here for.  But first, an introduction for our readers unfamiliar with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF).

The MICF is the third-largest  comedy festival in the world.  The largest two are in Montreal, Canada and Edinburgh, Scotland.   And the 4th largest one is in Ireland.   It’s probably not a coincidence that the two most powerful English-speaking countries in the world are not on that list.  There’s probably an article to be written about comedy being the equalizer being the powerful and the underdog.  It could even note that within the underdog countries, the festival is in Montreal and not Ottawa, Melbourne and not Sydney, Edinburgh and not Glasgow.  This is not that article.  This is just the bit to make your reviewer look smrt.

The MICF has been going since 1987, lasts 4 weeks,  and these days includes almost 400 different acts.  And that doesn’t include “unofficial” acts who don’t pay the entry fee and aren’t in the official program but are still slumming around somewhere in the vicinity putting on shows.   You could get lost without a good reviewer, and that’s where I come in.  I’ve been going to the MICF since I was a young man deemed old enough by his parents to hear a man with funny hair say the F word very loudly.  In recent years, I tend to see around 15-20 shows per festival.  So trust me.  At least once.

In future issues I will skim over the various issues which plague the festival and any scurrilous gossip I pick up while getting comedians drunk at the Bella Union.  But for now, the reviews!

 

Poet Laureate Telia Nevile

Let’s get the important bit out of the way now.   5 stars, on a scale where 3 is your money’s worth, 4 is unusually good and 5 is sodding brilliant.  Anything under 3 is not recommended.

As crasstalk regulars have seen me complain, I gave not a single show last year 5 stars.  Not even Sammy J, who was not only my personal favourite performer of the festival but who won the f’n Barry Award as the official best act.  And I’m giving the first show of this year’s MICF  5 stars.  It’s all downhill from here.  Ah well.

Ms Nevile’s character is an awkward poet and dreamer, but where so many would get one-note laughs from some bad poems, the tight script transcends that.  The poetry is sometimes rather good, sometimes intentionally tortured, frequently filled with clever references.  So that the entire show is not just Telia reciting poems and making funny faces at the audience, the “straight” poetry readings are broken up by more overtly funny moments and one of the best surprise endings I’ve seen in years.  The pacing is perfect, and the entire audience (myself included) did not stop laughing from start to finish.

The show is “only” 40 minutes long, in a festival where 1 hour shows are the norm, but tickets are priced accordingly.  It’s brilliant value.

Ms Nevile was a nominee for best newcomer at the Festival last year.  It wouldn’t shock me if she’s a nominee for best show of the Festival this year.

“Headliners”

“Headliners” is a concept which began at the Festival last year.  Many American comedians aren’t able to carry a 1 hour show by themselves.  They’re not used to it, the poor dears.   So the promoters bring in a rotating cast of American comedians who each do 20-25 minutes of material, with 3 or 4 performing each night.  I went last year and it bombed.  I could have made a killing selling rotten fruit.  There’s no nice way to say it.

I  decided to give Headliners another go this year only to see Garfunkel & Oates, whom had been recommended to me by a dozen people.  But before they came out, I had to sit through Tom Segura and Moshe Kasher.  Both were… mediocre, at best, from the school of comedians who try for laughs through shock without actually being funny or original.  When the greedy Jew joke, Muslim terrorist joke and Catholic pedophile joke all walk into a bar together, you know you’re in trouble.  2 stars at best for each.

I now have a crush on Garfunkel & Oates (both of them), and so my review cannot be objective.  But insofar as a 25 minute set can get 5 stars, 5 stars.  Most of the material they did is on Youtube, well, the songs, not the in-between bits, but this stuff is always better live.  You can’t beat the roar of a crowd hearing two cute and funny women singing about sex with ducks, especially when it was a crowd on the verge of turning ugly after the first two sets.

Hannibal Buress closed out the show, Hannibal is/has been a writer for SNL and 30 Rock.and was a far better stand-up than Segura or Kasher; 4 stars on the “20 minute” scale.   While covering much of the same ground (racism, drugs, celebrity culture)  he had class and subtlety in his delivery, and so when he rolled out a shocking line or swerve, it had impact.   He also didn’t seem like he was scraping the bottom of the barrel to make it to 20 minutes and had strong material right to the end with a strong ending anecdote with a sting in the tail to finish.   I would happily see him perform again sometime.

Xavier Michaelides

Xavier has been doing the MICF for a few years now, and is probably best known as a sketch comedian.  This year he’s doing a 1-man play in a tiny hot room, based on the premise of a future where there is now a shortage of people in the workforce, and rather turn to potential killer robots they’re using time travel to recruit both working stiffs  like our hero and his friend Brad, and the great minds and leaders of history (letting Xavier use his talent for voices and impressions).

The play is often silly, occasionally breaks the 4th wall and even sometimes resorts to toilet humor and sex puns – it is however, almost non-stop laughs.  If you don’t mind the 1-act play conceit and a man turning his head back and forth using different voices and facial expressions to establish different characters, if that’s not too silly for you, you’ll love it.  4 stars.

“Political Asylum”

It’s a one-off show which is now over, which makes it hard to review.  The humor also largely depends on how much you agree with the comedians.  If you’re a progressive lefty, Matt Kenneally (who MC’d) was in the best form of any of the performers when it came to sharp political satire and his solo show might well be worth seeing.  Ditto Wil Anderson, although I’m told he holds back his angry ranting for his “main” show:  his impassioned diatribes against politicians and celebrities who confuse real mental  illnesses with feeling sad or acting out, who blame “depression” for bashing their girlfriend or “being a little bit bipolar” for doing something selfish, was a highlight.  As was his lengthy anecdote about his time frequenting a Starbucks in West Hollywood and flirting with the barista (which had little to do with politics, but funny’s funny).

Sammy J & Randy

The kings of last year’s MICF are back with an all-new 1 hour musical /play thing.  Skinny and vaguely nerdy keyboard playing Sammy J and his purple puppet friend Randy (puppeteered and voiced by the underrated Heath McIvor, who actually manages to get out in front of the scenery a few times in this one) have a mystery to solve- who’s putting their garbage in Sammy J & Randy’s bins?  Of course, this is only an excuse for all the sketches, non-sequiturs, funny songs and one-liners Sammy and Heath could come up with.  There were a couple of botched lines and entrances, but covered in such smooth and hilarious fashion that I suspect the errors were not errors if you know what I mean.  A couple of short bits fell a bit flat to me, but if one joke fails there’s another one along in a few seconds anyway and I rarely stopped laughing or grinning so widely my cheeks hurt.  4.5 stars, and if not for the rule that you can only win a Barry once, I’d suggest short odds indeed on Sammy J & Randy winning it again.

Rich Hall

A long time favourite of mine (and a rare past 5-star recipient), Rich is as grumpy as ever and in fine enough form but well below his brilliant best.  I’m giving him 3 and a half stars, but if you haven’t seen him before (not all his material was new; same Sarah Palin jokes as 2 years ago, with minor updates, I mean, come on) then you could bumpt that by a star: my companion at this show, who had never seen Rich before, was aghast at my low rating and laughed all the way through.  If you’ve never seen Rich before, then know that you won’t go wrong by seeing him.  He does do a couple of musical numbers, in case you hate that, but by and large it’s straight stand-up.  Be warned (or be thrilled):  he went 90 minutes when I saw him, and that’s common with Rich, so don’t make a dinner booking on the assumption you’ll get out of his show after 60 minutes.  And NEVER be late to see Rich Hall, unless you enjoy mortification.

 

Until next week!