They were smart, attractive, friendly, popular, and liked talking to boys. Unfortunately, that made their father want to kill them.
How did the German drive that Hyundai like it was a rally car on speed?
Check it out! A diver's video of a lake filled with jelly fish. Surreal and creepy hey?
True story. Man gets himself fed to shark.
God knows what happened to Melbourne. The Labor Govt here seems intent on turning its streets into a haven for crime and thugs.
February 18, 2008 02:58pm
A TEENAGER who robbed then bashed a 75-year-old great-grandmother in her bed so she would not recognise him has avoided jail.
Judge David Parsons today sentenced Ashley Wayne Brooks, 19, to a two-year youth justice centre order and said his young age and slight stature were factors in the sentencing.
Brooks had pleaded guilty in the County Court to five charges including aggravated burglary and intentionally causing serious injury after breaking into Barbara Durea's housing commission flat in Traralgon on March 17.
She eventually managed to telephone her daughter for help and was flown to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. She was placed in an induced coma for 12 days. The attack left her with a dislocated jaw, broken nose, cut above her brow, bruising to her face and body and unable to open her right eye.
The court heard Brooks had sought to render his victim unconscious so she would no't recognise him.
Judge Parsons said Brooks, whose girlfriend is expecting their first child, was a disadvantaged young Aboriginal man who was illiterate and effectively homeless.
If you love classical musical or hate it for that matter - you'll really like this guy's witty take on Pachabel."They think of indigenous people living in central Australia or in Arnhem Land or anywhere in the top end as somehow living a lifestyle of a noble savage, living off the land ... the reality is these people are dying of diabetes because of an inadequate diet, they are dying of malnutrition because their parents don't feed them adequately, they have diseases which have been eradicated everywhere else."
One of the causes of today's blight, Brough argued, could be sheeted back to Gough Whitlam. An old stockman had said to him: "It was Gough, you know ... sit down money, it destroyed our people." The man explained that "no one respected me as an elder any more because some white fella handed the money over and there was nothing in return. It had no value, so no one had to work."
Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine had argued against welfare dependency, Brough said. "If you keep handing money over which is used for all the wrong things: $15,000 in the pot for a game of cards where children don't get fed for 24 hours."
A day after Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned of "open war" against Israel, and Iran's ambassador threatened an "earthquake" against the "Zionist regime," Lebanese and Palestinians were terrified by a real tremor. The eastern Mediterranean trembled with a moderate quake just after noon, shaking buildings in Beirut and sending terrified Lebanese and Palestinians into the streets. The second tremor in a week, it was slightly stronger than Monday night's, which measured 4.0 on the Richter scale. 
I never used to drink wine. Didn't have a taste for the stuff.Over the ensuing century Coonawarra earned the reputation of being ‘the most preferred region in Australia for red wine’, but it was not until 2003 that its boundary was legally defined by the Geographic Indications Committee.
Located largely in the Hundreds of Penola and Comaum, this 400 square kilometre region extends some sixteen kilometres into South Australia from the Victorian border. However, its heart is a narrow terra rossa ridge, 27 kilometres long and averaging only 1.8 kilometres wide. Comprising 4820 hectares and accounting for just 12% of the Coonawarra region, it is on this unique soil that the best vineyards are located.
The Riddoch Highway follows the crest of the ridge and visitors remark with pleasure, as they drive its length, that reading the winery signboards is just like reading the wine list of any first class restaurant.
With its terra rossa soil and passionate winemakers, the Coonawarra region can't help but make fine wine. With Cabernet Sauvignon the undoubted star, the region is renowned for the production of some of Australia's greatest red wines.
Coonawarra lies within South Australia's Limestone Coast Zone. The region nudges the Victorian border 380km south east of Adelaide.
The climate is Mediterranean with cooling maritime influences off the Southern Ocean. Rainfall is low especially during the growing season, necessitating irrigation.
The region lies on a ridge 59m above sea level. The surrounding country is flat, frosty and poorly drained.
Coonawarra was entered onto the Register of Protected Names after an eight year battle over boundaries. The fight was protracted because the name Coonawarra is world famous and because that fame comes from the earth. The famous Terra Rossa is red-brown topsoil laid over a thin layer of calcrete (calcium carbonate) sitting on a white limestone base. This soil gives the wine its terrior or flavour of the soil. Black soil areas are interspersed amongst the Terra Rossa and these soils produce quite different wines. And there lay the difficulty, how to impose bureaucratic neatness on nature.
Coonawarra has become synonymous with Cabernet Sauvignon. It's the star performer on the Terra Rossa. Overall the region produces quality reds from Shiraz, Petit Verdot, Pinot Noir, Malbec and Merlot grapes. White grape varieties include Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling and Semillon.
The first vineyard was planted in the 1880s at Yallum, a property established by John Riddoch primarily for sheep grazing. The region did not establish its reputation as a viticultural area until the 1950s when Wynns and Penfolds purchased acreage on the back of a resurgence in the table wine market. Investment by large and small companies led to expansion, securing Coonawarrra's status as a great wine region which was founded on the pioneering work of vignerons like John and Owen Redman of Rouge Homme.
Harvest time: late March to early May
How to play the pyro in TFC - plenty of good fun here. No need for drugs. lolIN the eight short years since I started living and working in Cape York communities, I have witnessed a rapid and tragic decline in the environment that children live in.
The older generation, the last few threads holding the social fabric together, is disappearing. The few who survive have become powerless, bewildered and despairing, living at the mercy of their dysfunctional families who harass them for money and steal their food.
Members of a generation who were raised by people under the control of substance abuse and welfare dependence are now becoming parents themselves. Many of these young parents have known nothing other than violence, mostly towards women, neglect of children, and an almost complete lack of understanding of the wider world.
The older generation with the strong morals, parenting skills and courage remember Christmas as a time when functional, self-sufficient families gathered after church to share good food, laughter and traditional dances. All today's kids can remember from last Christmas is fighting and drunkenness and the interviews they had to give police when their little friends were raped.
Worst of all, we are increasingly being left with a population that does not even understand the gravity of its situation. As Noel Pearson says, the dysfunction has become "normalised".
I have been frustrated to the point of pain at times over the unwillingness in these communities to face the problems and a tendency to smack down those who try. I could not fathom the possibility that so many people in a community would "not care" about their children. The dysfunction has become so deep that many people do not even realise the damage that is being done to their young people.
They hardly bat an eyelid at events that would make your stomach churn. A young mother in a drunken state beats her young child with a stick and screams that she is going to kill him. The next day, that same mother, sober, hugs her child and does not even think about the lasting emotional scars. Why would she when her mother did the same to her, and her neighbours do the same, and no one has ever told her that it is wrong?
I can see now what I couldn't understand before - why a person could feed their child hardly at all, sporadically send them to school, yell at them, criticise them, beat them and then still genuinely be heartbroken, despairing and confused when their child is removed from them. Some people, in their heart, really didn't realise that what they were doing was so bad. In fact, you'll often hear someone say, "But why did I lose my kid for that when I know many other families who are doing the same or worse?"
Read the rest here| Start: | Apr 11, '08 07:00a |
| End: | Apr 15, '08 |
| Location: | Kapalai, Sipadan |
Looks pretty good eh? The roses survived the drought of 2007 very well- despite getting very little care (I was in Singapore and there was no one seriously taking care of the roses).
This picture is apparently not a hoax. Its a photo of one of the craters on Mars' surface.February 10, 2008 12:00am
FORMULA One chief Bernie Ecclestone has slammed the door on Melbourne's chances of retaining the Grand Prix.
Days after telling the Sunday Herald Sun the race was in doubt, Mr Ecclestone said there was no chance it would be in Melbourne after 2010.
The Brumby Government confirmed it would not run the Albert Park event at night, something Mr Ecclestone says is non-negotiable.
He said the Government's stance would effectively end 25 years of the event in Australia. But Australian F1 star Mark Webber urged the Brumby Government to embrace a night Grand Prix to save the Melbourne event.
Webber said the Grand Prix was crucial to Melbourne's international reputation, but "you can't constantly keep having the same toys in the sand pit".
"If it is an ultimatum of being
"We should try to make night work . . . it could be exactly what the event needs -- who knows?" Webber said.If Melbourne loses the Grand Prix, Australia will be without F1 exposure for the first time since 1985.
Mr Ecclestone said if the event was to continue in Melbourne beyond 2010 it had to be at night
"I think it would be good for the public, good for the restaurants, good for everything. There is no downside to it," he said.
Government spokesman George Svigos reiterated yesterday that a night race would not happen.
"The Government's position is that there will not be a night race," he said.
Mr Svigos said Premier John Brumby had made it clear negotiations for the Grand Prix would be staged this year.
"The Government believes it is a good event for Melbourne. We fully support the Grand Prix," he said.
But Mr Ecclestone said a daylight Melbourne race was not up for discussion.
"I'm sure Melbourne will survive without a Grand Prix," he said. "It seems it would be better without it."
He again poured cold water on efforts by NSW to steal Melbourne's thunder.
"There is nothing in Sydney -- they haven't even got a circuit," he said.
The Grand Prix lost Victorians almost $35 million last year. Melbourne Grand Prix chairman Ron Walker has predicted this year's race will lose about $40 million.
Grand Prix sources said the licensing fee for the Australian event was about $40 million -- more than enough to make the Melbourne Grand Prix profitable if it were waived.
Mr Ecclestone said if it were not "good value, they shouldn't continue with it".
This video is quite disrespectful - but still very funny.
I hate doing my taxes. I really hate it. Now it seems a large chunk of the funds was not a trading loss and can't be accounted for. I've got to crossreference each and every bloody trade - with the brokers and the bank and fix it up. WTF.
An amusing skit on one of the more entertaining characters of Team Fortress 2 : the pyro.
22 Then Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in front of the whole assembly of Israel, spread out his hands toward heaven 23 and said: "LORD, the God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below—you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way.
27 "But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built! 28 Yet give attention to your servant's prayer and his plea for mercy, LORD my God. Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence this day. 29 May your eyes be open toward this temple night and day, this place of which you said, 'My Name shall be there,' so that you will hear the prayer your servant prays toward this place. 30 Hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.
