Borat
I went to see Borat at the local cinema on Sunday. I thought it was gross at times but generally hilarious.
I can understand why the Kazakhs are offended. It has a bigger go at Americans and western society though, especially our self-righteous thinking that we're the best.
I loved the rodeo scene where Borat prepared to sing the anthem.
The Victorian election
There was no major surprise in the Victorian election result where Labor has been comfortably returned. Interesting aspects include:
- The Nats defied doomsday predictions and retained party status.
- The Liberals and Greens failed to increase their primary votes.
- The media darlings (Greens) won't win a lower house seat.
- Labor no longer holds any seats in Gippsland.
- The Labor primary vote in Mildura was just 6.53%. Has the ALP ever polled that badly in any seat anywhere?
- The winners: Steve Bracks and Peter Ryan.
- The losers: Ted Baillieu (despite his bluster) and the Greens.
Kalgoorlie Miner web site
People often ask me when will the Kalgoorlie Miner have a web site? Well it won’t be long.
The site is currently under development and should be launched by the end of the year.
The core site will publish news, general information and classifieds. We have some exciting plans to add community content on a linked site.
Update (February 20, 2007): The web site obviously hasn’t been launched yet. I currently don’t have a timeframe, except to say that development is a priority.
Update (July 14, 2007): Goldfields news should be online “soon” through www.thewest.com.au.
Update (August 28, 2007): The site is still under development, but it’s now live at http//www.kalminer.com.au.
Bad news
Some people seem to think that newspapers delight in publishing bad news. As an editor I admit that bad news, tragedy and conflict often help to sell papers. That says something about human beings, I think, rather than newspapers.
From a personal perspective I prefer to focus on the positive but unless you're colorblind or wearing rose-colored glasses the world necessarily appears in different hues. The "negative" stories need to be told as part of a balanced overview.
The stories that disturb me most involve assaults on children.
The Kalgoorlie Miner has this month reported a terrible case in which an immigrant father admitted to sexually assaulting his 13-year-old daughter 40 times.
I won't reprint the appalling details here.
I will say however that I received email contact this week from the victim's family overseas requesting copies of the reports. They thanked me with courtesy for providing the information in reply.
It was reassuring for me to know that people suffering indescribable pain appreciated the role of a newspaper in communicating such shocking information.
If society preferred to ignore that such things happen they would happen more often.
Juliet and doctor
Here’s a picture related to the post on Coincidence of Juliet and Dr Pieter Mourik. He is the first placement under a Federal Government locum program to provide relief for obstetricians in regional areas.
The local obstetrician has a solo practice and Pieter is filling in for him while he takes leave. The program is a great idea.
Snap search
I've added some code to this site that creates image views of links. This is a relatively new nifty service from Snap.
Coincidence
Fate has delivered a couple of interesting coincidences in the past week.
Firstly, a friend I hadn't seen for more than 15 years contacted me at work. I met Carol, from Zimbabwe, at Alice Springs in 1988 and visited her in Harare and Kwe Kwe in 1990.
It turns out she has been living in Kalgoorlie for 14 months and saw my name in the paper. She's visiting with her family tonight for a barbecue.
The other coincidence was the arrival in Kalgoorlie of Juliet's former obstetrician, Dr Pieter Mourik, on a locum visit for two weeks.
Juliet and I went to dinner last night at the Eastern Goldfields Medical Division of General Practice annual meeting and enjoyed a chat with Pieter and his wife. It was good to catch up with some news from North East Victoria.
The Gorey name
I'm finding it difficult to establish the true origin of the Gorey name. Some sources say it is Scottish, from Skye, others that it's an anglicised version of the Irish name O'Guire. From this site:
Tadhg O'Guaire who was slain in 1032 is described by the Four Masters as Lord of Uí Cuilinn: In 1406 Richard Gowery acquired English liberty at Maynooth; in 1618 "white lights" were specially provided at the wake in Dublin of Walter Gorry of the Merchant Tailors Guild; four of the name appear in the Co. Meath Inquisitions between 1619 and 1638; Henry Gory of Trim, Co. Meath, was among the first Jacobites outlawed in 1669; Seaghan Ó Guaire was the author of the Jacobite song "Ar maidin inde". There are few to be found in the eighteenth century but in the nineteenth they are met them again, mainly in Co. Offaly e.g., in Griffith's Valuation. In the 1865 birth registrations there are ten Gorrys, all in the Tullamore area — the two Goreys in the same year were born respectively in Waterford and Dublin. The surname Gorey is never a toponymic derived from the town in Co. Wexford.
Victorian election
Political junkies will be interested in this article from The Age and will recognise the significance it holds for the seat of Morwell, which includes Traralgon where I grew up.
Several high-profile members of the Traralgon ALP branch have quit the party and one, Lisa Proctor, will stand as an independent and direct preferences to the Nationals.
Another who resigned, Derek Amos, formerly held the seat for Labor. Apparently the current Member doesn’t live in the electorate.
I met Proctor when I was consulting for Pauls and she struck me as an impressive lady. As a Latrobe councillor she was a fierce advocate for Traralgon. I had no idea she was a member of the ALP until reading The Age article. Read more
Online page creators
There are some options appearing now for people who want to create web pages online and have them hosted for free.
The first I came across was Google Page Creator. It adds another feature to the Google suite.
A more recent entry to this market is Weebly, which I think has the edge over Google’s offering.
The control panel has easy-to-use drag and drop features to add text or pictures and edit them.
I’ve tinkered around with this and can’t think of a reason to use this service myself, but it would suit people who want to have a basic hosted web site.
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