This NASA multimedia is so cool.
Hear the TWITTER between the Earth and the Moon in historic audio grabs.
Ok, here's the theory.
Rosario Dawson, this hot chick who played Mimi in the musical Rent
directed by Chris Columbus in 2005, she'll play a character called
Climate Change in a movie called Two Degrees 2 Dooms Day.
She needs a hero, of course. Who's the hero?
(Columbus directed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
and Harry Potter and the Sourcer's Stone.
He's also produced the Night in the Museum flicks.)
So Harry Potter? The museum attendant?
Obama will do, I suppose.
But he doesn't have much time to save the girl.
But here's why he'll try....
If only there was a way. Wait!
Gamer. Mind control. Never send a man to do a boy's job.
Gamer comes out in September.
But here's the link for the trailer:
A boy controls an avatar in a first-person shooter, called Slayer,
where the avatars are real people.
Now, if children and young people were controlling the
players at Copenhagen who were deciding their future ...
they'd save the girl - wouldn't they?
But to win they'd have to beat the system ruled by the
Castles of the world (Castle is a character in Gamer
played by Dexter's Michael C Hall - interesting casting, isn't it?)
Dexter is a TV show about a serial killer who's a cop.
Game over.
I stopped at a top little food nook that serves the freshest sushi in Brisbane, not in the mood to cook after gym.
I strolled out the shop door to wait for my food outside, away from the TV news, and walked right off the time spectrum - just for a few moments.
Trees have this effect - on me, not all trees, there's some kind of perfection that can be found in the shape of some trees.
Can't remember when this started - it's not an obsession. I don't go around hunting trees.
They just appear before my eyes like Gods.
Perhaps I was set off when I got my first oil paints and tried painting trees, studying their shapes in painting manuals.
Could've been years before when I was climbing 40ft pine trees - well, racing my brother and friends to the top.
The memory is vivid, rough bark, stinging needles, dizzying heights.
But this tree now ... this tree is small, shaped like a delicate bonzai - a leopard tree just starting to make its presence felt in this car park on the corner of a busy intersection.
The curves of its branches reaching into the dark night sky.
I'm not thinking about sushi or traffic or anything except: "Superb!"
The street light falls on the trunk and yet the leaves are just shadows.
I don't want to draw it. I don't want to hug it. I think I just love it.
And then I catch myself.
"Is this what people will think and feel when a tree like this stands alone, the last of its kind on earth?" - there's a thought.
Suddenly I'm conscious and I'm thinking and the moment is gone.
And the finale of Wall-E springs to mind.
I strolled out the shop door to wait for my food outside, away from the TV news, and walked right off the time spectrum - just for a few moments.
Trees have this effect - on me, not all trees, there's some kind of perfection that can be found in the shape of some trees.
Can't remember when this started - it's not an obsession. I don't go around hunting trees.
They just appear before my eyes like Gods.
Perhaps I was set off when I got my first oil paints and tried painting trees, studying their shapes in painting manuals.
Could've been years before when I was climbing 40ft pine trees - well, racing my brother and friends to the top.
The memory is vivid, rough bark, stinging needles, dizzying heights.
But this tree now ... this tree is small, shaped like a delicate bonzai - a leopard tree just starting to make its presence felt in this car park on the corner of a busy intersection.
The curves of its branches reaching into the dark night sky.
I'm not thinking about sushi or traffic or anything except: "Superb!"
The street light falls on the trunk and yet the leaves are just shadows.
I don't want to draw it. I don't want to hug it. I think I just love it.
And then I catch myself.
"Is this what people will think and feel when a tree like this stands alone, the last of its kind on earth?" - there's a thought.
Suddenly I'm conscious and I'm thinking and the moment is gone.
And the finale of Wall-E springs to mind.
That tiny little fragile hope of life on Earth - a seedling preserved by a funny little robot who sees the beauty of life.
I bookmarked Wall-E from the first moment I saw the awe in his eyes as he looked at the stars.
I look at a screen for most of my waking life these days - I love it and sometimes I get lost out there in a wilds of everything at once...now...now...now...right now! YES!
Intellectual life - it's just like sport these days. People sprouting the words of long-dead philosophers in 140-character tweets.
People spruiking themselves and their companies in cleverly disguised pitches. People searching for meaning.
Someone at gym tonight said: "To hear you've got to listen, but most people are too busy talking."
Really. I'm guilty of it. How many times I've kicked myself after realising too late the significance of what someone was trying to say.
Or the significance of silence.
I turn from the tree and look through the door at the TV showing the nightly news and read the subtitles - the sound is turned down.
Funny how text has such a powerful effect.
Words like revenge and slaughter rile me to silent indignation - and this is the sports news!
Michael Phelps broke his own world record without the use of a floatation suit.
That's wonderful, not just for him, but for all those who seem to feel that, by virtue of their shared humanity with Phelps, his achievements are theirs by association.
And they don't have to lift a finger. Shifty, risk-averse folks who are quick to judge and condemn and hide. They usually travel in packs.
The same dullards go on about how bad "virtual reality" and "cyberspace" is for mental and physical health.
From my observations, it seems that all of us navigate a "virtual space" we construct in our heads - and we call it reality.
As you can see, my reality's quite different from yours.
Once I was at the physio, thanks entirely to a little computer mouse and deadlines, my eye focused on a tree in the middle distance beyond an oval.
This was a tree you could have a beautiful picnic under - and you could pretend to be Helena Bonham-Carter in Room With A View or Gwyneth Paltrow in Emma.
And then I catch myself.
Sydney's Museum of Modern Art has a show by Australian artist Fiona Foley on until January 31.
Her River of Corn is real neat. I don't normally use the word neat but its the first word that pops to mind and its wholesome enough to describe the installation. Children adore it. They browse the large photos feeling corn - yes, corn - between their toes. There's a foot of corn kernels covering the entire floor of the small gallery room. She created the installation for the University of South Florida's Contemporary Art Museum, exhibition Dreamtime, Our Time: The Eternal Circle.
She happened to be at the gallery when we visited so I asked her why. Corn is the staple diet of the native people she photographed in this particular region of the United States. The photos are of herself wearing native American dress.
The corn also gives viewers the experience of walking through the swamps of the area - and yes, she's aware that this extra dimension makes it a great favourite with children.
One you've missed unfortunately is the Primavera 2009: Exhibition by Young Australian Artists. I say unfortunately because this exhibition contained another wonderful installation piece by Michaela Gleave called The Raining Room.
It's a darkened room made of timber and plasterboard. And inside is what appears at first to be a projection of rain falling - like rain falling outside a window at night. Except it's not a projection of an image. It's a projection of light through a slit in the wall that catches upon water falling in dribbles from above. It's a statement about how precious such a simple thing like rain is - and how we're losing it. On the other side of the curtain of rain is an empty space. You can jump through the rain into this space.
This installation really is precious. In a darkened plasterboard box in the MCA you ponder the beauty of rain and delight in running through it.
All of my grandparents came from China. They were Russians.
They left a snowy country where people wore furs.
Snow melts faster than predicted
They crossed the deserts.
They worked in factories after losing their family businesses in revolutions.
They raised the money to come to Australia.
They sold everything they owned.
Came here with nothing.
They cleared land to farm in western Queensland.
They lived in tin shacks with dirt floors.
They ringbarked giant trees. That's what was done in those days.
Do you know what ringbarked means?
I remember one great grey tree that stood on the farm I grew up on until only a few years ago.
Everyone thinks Australians grow up in the sun.
But don't we actually grow up in the shade?
And for me trees are as much icons as the Sydney Opera House.
And it seems that there are still quite a few ringbarkers out there!
They're ringbarking Australia's future.
A little child unpacks a Russian Doll.
The smallest doll is just a speck.
But from the smallest kernel everything grows.
The smallest doll is just a speck.
But from the smallest kernel everything grows.
Galapagos turtle - this 49er's winning from Lisa Yallamas on Vimeo.
It's a tortoise, aged 49. It's feasting on life, despite all the distractions, annoyances and perceived shortcomings - it lives in a zoo, in Sydney.
This 49er's belongs on a different island - where kids can't pat its back. Where it can eat without being talked about.
Lettuce ponder... what's on the menu at your zoo this Christmas? Better not be tortoise! Some Tortoise Facts
Oops! It's aged 59.
Eucalypt.
I see you.
Grow.
I see you.
Grow.
