Strange Maps

I stumbled across this blog, Strange Maps, by accident. It's fascinating, especially if you're a map geek like I am.

The anonymous blogger has some interesting maps showing, for example, a paranoid French depiction of what Germany and Austria-Hungary would claim if they won World War 1, a map of a little island shared by Finland and Sweden that ended up with a very odd boundary after the Finns inadvertently built a lighthouse on the Swedish part of the isle, and this map from the 1970s by an American geography professor that proposed splitting the US into 38 more cohesive states.

Vegemite Ban -- "Never Mind"

About that ban on Vegemite? Never happened, says the Food and Drug Administration. Some Aussie journalist got the facts wrong.

So Aussie expats in the US may continue to enjoy that yeasty salty brown goop!

Griping about Swimming

Australia seems to be taking the news hard that the Olympics will hold the swimming competitions in the morning in Beijing 2008 to accommodate American TV schedules. I'm sympathetic to an argument that TV plays too big a role in the Olympics, although when NBC is the single biggest source of revenue for the games you do cede some control.

But hey -- American and German and Russian and Chinese and Jamaican swimmers ALL will have to swim in the morning, along with the Australians. I don't quite see the big deal...

Phar Lap Was Doped Up, Not Poisoned

Phar Lap was a doper! Recently Australian scientists found arsenic in fur taken from Phar Lap's preserved body in Melbourne, and speculated that he had been poisoned a couple of days before the thoroughbred racing horse and Australian icon died in California, back in 1935.

In response to this story, the son of one of Phar Lap's trainers has come forward to say that he wasn't poisoned, but that arsenic was one item found in a "potion" that was being fed to Phar Lap.

In Phar Lap's defense, giving such potions to horses was pretty common in the 1930s. But this should put to rest conspiracy theories about the Yanks killing Phar Lap!

No Vegemite Here, Mate!

Australians in the US are outraged -- the US has banned the import of Vegemite because it contains folates, which for some reason can only be used in the US if it is in bread or cereal.

No, I don't know why folate (a vitamin) is only allowed in cereals and breads in the US. Don't really care, either. But this story is funny on a couple of levels.

First is the outrage and angst of Aussies in the US who can't get this vile salty brown paste (made from yeast extract, yum yum) to smear on their toast for breakfast.

Second, as one commenter on the Courier Mail article noted, this doesn't hurt Australian profits. Vegemite is now owned by American megacorporation Kraft! But Kraft has been krafty enough not to try to convince American consumers to try that yeasty glop on their bagels.

Finally, complaints about the US keeping food out for health or sanitary reasons are rich coming from a country with by far the world's strictest quarantine and sanitary/phytosanitary standards.

How strict are they? Here's an example. Australia has a complete ban on banana imports, probably because they are afraid that foreign poisonous killer banana spiders will come in and try to kill Australia's native poisonous killer spiders. Well, a few months ago Cyclone Larry blew through Queensland and flattened a huge chunk of Australia's banana crops. And since then, with no imports to take up the slack even in these circumstances, banana prices have skyrocketed. At my grocery store, they are AU$11.98 a kilo, that works out to US$4.05 a pound, something like 7 times the price I was paying for bananas in Northern Virginia. I've only eaten one bunch of bananas since getting here -- I didn't look closely at the till I got home and found that I'd paid US$6 for a half-dozen bananas!

Anyway, free-trading Australia also restricts or completely bans imports of things like chicken and wheat, on health reasons. Not to mention the strict quarantine on cats and dogs and other live animals.

So buck up mates about not being able to get Vegemite in the States; at least your pooch could come in easily! My recommendation -- try peanut butter.

Orders at a Dinner Party?

This week the ever-lame Sunday Source section of the Washington Post has an article on having a dinner party. It includes a few easy recipes. It also includes a short (all of the Source's articles are short, because the twenty-somethings this section is aimed at can't read a sentence longer than this parenthetical) bit about etiquette for a dinner party by Anne McDonough.

McDonough's pointers include ordering guests what to bring, and ordering guests to stop by the store for some fresh ingredient, and ordering guests to grate cheese and chop onions.

You don't issue orders to "guests", period. If they volunteer to help, fine. If somebody volunteers to bring wine, fine. But you don't ORDER them.

I'm getting cranky.

Duck!

An elderly German man was injured and his cottage destroyed by a fire. The cause? A meteor!

Try explaining that one to your insurance company.

Alien Life

This is pretty interesting -- scientists finding microbes "living nearly two miles below ground, dining on sulfur in a world of steaming water and radioactive rock." In other words, living in conditions that not so long ago, scientists would have said could not possibly support life. These little guys are way far away from any photosynthesis or any other sun-based energy or food supply.

Similarly, life has been found in other hostile spots, for example living thousands of feet below the surface of the sea, in water brought above boiling by underwater volcanic vents.

So why not life on Mars or Titan? Not that it will be SUV-driving TV-watching sushi-eating life.

In Australia, It Is Mandatory to Vote and to Take Photos of Kangaroos

Seriously, it IS mandatory to vote in Australia -- there's a small fine if you don't. I had a note in my mailbox, the voter registration people had stopped by to see if I (a new resident) were registered.

It isn't actually mandatory to take photos of kangaroos, but it's fun. Here're some from Namadji National Park, just outside Canberra. Taken with a crappy point-and-shoot digital camera.

More Sporting Stupidity

At least the college football kicker did his own dirty work when he stabbed his rival for the top job. This Pennsylvania baseball coach was sentenced to prison yesterday for trying to pay a kid on his team $25 to injure another player because he wasn't very good. The age of the would-be hit man? Eight. The would-be victim? Nine.

The coach is undergoing DNA testing to see whether he is related to Tonya Harding.

Australia vs. New Zealand

Australia and New Zealand have strong sporting rivalries -- cricket, rugby, soccer (but now though, Australia has left the weak Oceania association and joined the Asia grouping), and yes, sheepdog trialling. That's where a team of dogs compete (as individuals) rounding up sheep in a time trial. I came across this watching an Australian news show this evening. Unsurprisingly, given that sheep outnumber people in New Zealand by six-to-one, the Kiwis tend to do well on the sheepdog trialling. But the Aussie underdogs have won the competition a couple of times in a row...

Let's Honor Genghis Khan

Mongolians in the Washington DC area want a statue honoring Genghis Khan. Chinggis, as Mongols call him, wasn't exactly Phil Donahue when it came to dealing with adversaries -- those dumb enough to fight when given the chance to submit, or even worse, dumb enough to kill emissaries sent by the Mongols. But he did found a great empire, and that's why the Mongols revere Chinggis. He was the first guy to unite the Mongol tribes into a nation-state. And he promulgated a set of laws and established an administration that, the story went, would allow a woman to travel alone from Europe to Mongolia without being bothered.

The fact that he and his generals kicked major ass from Hungary to Russia to Persia to Central Asia to Korea to China just adds to his legend. (That Japan thing didn't work so well, though.)

Plus, it would just be plain cool to have a statue to the big fella in Washington. I think it would become a tourist attraction. I want the concession to run THAT souvenir booth.

The Dead Amish Girls

Australian media has covered the killing of the five (so far) Amish girls pretty heavily. Not surprising -- the US generally gets a lot of time on the news and in the papers here, school shootings are always news, and the quaint, exotic nature of the Amish just adds to the newsworthiness of the story. Oh, and it also brings again that international stereotype about America to the fore -- the ready availability of guns and the violence of American society.

It was an odd juxtoposition, watching the evening news, to see some of the poor girls buried, the grieving Amish wearing their old-fashioned clothes, the bodies of the girls riding in horse-drawn carts -- and the whole scene being filmed from a helicopter.

Major League Soccer Grows More Like European Leagues

The US's Major League Soccer is becoming ever more like the English Premier League, Series A, Bundesliga, etc. No, it doesn't have a bazillion dollar TV contract nor teams that can challenge the Real Madrids, Man Uniteds, and AC Milans of the world yet -- but at least now MLS teams can sell the front of their jerseys to advertisers...

Football Madness, Aussie Style

The holiday weekend just finished was the climax of the Australian football seasons, with two "Grand Finals" contested. On Saturday, the Australian Football League (that's Aussie Rules, round field, funny guys with lab coats stick their hands out at their waist to show a goal scored) had its Grand Final in Melbourne (the birthplace of Aussie rules), and Sunday was the Grand Final for National Rugby League in Sydney (the home of rugby league in Australia).

I happened to be in Melbourne on business Wednesday-Friday and saw the town dolled up for its annual game -- unlike the Super Bowl, the AFL and NRL Grand Finals are always held in Melbourne and Sydney respectively (although my Melbournian taxi driver, when I told him how the Super Bowl rotates from year to year, thought that would be a good idea for the games). Fans lined Collins Street (the main drag) on Friday for the big parade, and all over town I saw people wearing their teams scarves (Melbourne is a good bit cooler in early spring than either Perth or Sydney, where the two AFL finalists hail from).

But the good people of Victoria were bummed that for the second straight year, no Melbourne team (they are something like 10 of the 16 AFL teams) was competing for the championship -- the West Coast Eagles (Perth) and the Sydney Swans played for the "Premiership" (that's championship to Americans). But the local businesses made the best of it, all the windows decked out in blue & gold (Eagles) and red & white (Swans), and the hotels appreciated the 45,000 interstate visitors that came for the game. The Eagles avenged last year's loss to the Swans, winning 85-84 in an exciting game that I saw little of as I struggled with my ISP and wireless modem/router support people on the phone to make this internet thing work.

On Sunday Sydney shared the fate of its rivals in Melbourne, hosting a Grand Final for NRL that for the first time ever had no team from New South Wales. In that game, the Brisbane Broncos beat the Melbourne Storm 15-8 to claim the title.

I watched the NRL game but listened to the radio play by play done for the 20th consecutive year by Roy & HG, two Aussie comedian/sports commentators who epitomize the stereotypes of Australian sport. Very irreverant, very funny, their comments frequently punctuated by very loud reminders, "I love Rugby League" said in gruff, manly Australian sports voices.

It was the funniest damn sports broadcast I've ever heard. They started off by heavily criticizing the pre-game music act, INXS with the reality-show selected new lead singer (since the original one is still quite dead), they said "this isn't quite right is it" about their performance and in one of their dozens of references to the Australian troops (nicknamed "diggers" since the First World War I think) in Iraq, said "Our diggers aren't fighting to defend this crap" (or something similar). Oh, and when the Australian national anthem came on, they replaced it with some Aussie country song.

During the actual game, one Brisbane player (Tate) had one ear halfway torn off during the game (lots of blood, in American sports he would have been forced to leave the game & have it bandaged lest hepatitis and the HIV virus be spewed all over the field, but not here) and Roy & HG called him Van Gogh (like the English, saying "Van Goff" not "Van Go") for the rest of the game, even when he scored a try (that's like a touchdown). When one player made a particularly good play, Roy & HG were ready to award him the Victoria Cross. A few times players would make a mistake or come in with an illegal dangerously high tackle and they'd yell "what a dickhead" -- which I've never heard on American TV or radio. A Brisbane player (Tony Carroll) went down with what looked to be a serious knee injury, and Roy & HG (I couldn't tell which was which sorry) were going on about how the coach had to take him out because "his kneecap is busted, he has a busted scrotum, his spleen is shot, his sternum is wrecked" etc. And once they said, referring to a particularly lucky play, "every now and then the Lady Luck of Rugby League will reach down into your trousers and give you a little tug". Oh, and many many references to the referee and sideline officials being blind.

No, you won't hear guys like Roy & HG on American TV or radio doing a Super Bowl (the closest equivelant I can think of is the Comedy Channel commentary for the State of the Union). The NFL is too damn serious about itself to allow anything like that, and American ears would no doubt be hurt by some of the profanity Roy & HG used, "bullshit" being a frequent expletive that wasn't deleted. But they made an already exciting game funny beyond words.

Again with the Accent!

Over the weekend I had to call my ISP -- and again, the automated voice thing couldn't understand my American accent! On a couple of menus, I tried imitating the accent of the Aussie phone robot giving me the instructions -- it worked once or twice, but ultimately the machine gave up and handed me over to a human Australian. It's kind of funny, and proof of how far voice recognition devices have to go... I wonder if Australians in the US run into the same problem?