The Australian Index - Culture Blogs

A wave of attacks on mostly Zimbabwean immigrants has left at least 22 dead in the last three days in Johannesburg, South Africa. Another 6,000 have fled to the safety of churches, police stations and community halls. Townships have become no-go areas as mobs go on a xenophobic rampage targeting foreigners without provocation. The refugees have become scapegoats for South Africa s growing econom

How much evidence do we need to prove something? The answer is not this much or that much but who is interpreting the data. If someone has a mental block that won t allow facts to influence the foundations of their argument, then no amount of evidence will suffice. They will just change their argument.

A recent report reinforced the fact that some heroin use is started by our phy

I reckon Roni Levi, the mentally-disturbed Frenchman who was shot dead on Bondi Beach in 1997, would be chuckling to himself in the after-life about the current furore over the introduction of Tasers by the NSW police force.On a cold Saturday morning in June, Levi, who was armed with a kitchen knife and surrounded by six armed police officers, was shot three times in the chest and once between his

I'm looking at the news updates regarding the aftermath of Mahathir's resignation from UMNO, and I have to say: UMNO is made up of a bunch of whining, overreacting crybabies. You'd think Mahathir was still the PM or something. (Which probably says a lot about Badawi.) I wonder how they'd react to a real loss, like, say, losing an actual election.

Mahathir's resignation shouldn't be that big a dea

Briefly in the scurrilous gossip magazine rumours department, we bring you news that will surely be devastating for all of you out there: Bec Hewitt is not, I repeat, not pregnant. How do we know? The Hewitts' manager David Drysdale wants us all to go stand in the naughty corner."I'd be one of the first to hear about (a pregnancy)," he said."(The rumours) are pretty disappointing."David would be r

Zatzai Asturius from Second Convention held a discussion panel last week about the future of the Second Life grids (both the Linden Lab and OpenSim grids).The panel consisted of Australian Adam Zaius and Teravus Ousley from the OpenSim project and it's now available as a podcast.Zatzai describes the podcast: "The discussion is about an [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "OpenSim discussion pan

After all the expressions of distaste for watching Bogans on the last BB thread (and yes, I know, it was more complex than that), I just wanted to point out what happens when non-Bogans go on BB. They really try to play the game. You can see it with Ben "the law student" right at the moment in Big Brother 2008, you could see it with "Lefty" Tim Brunero (who's now happy to a

Flickr is an awesome photo-sharing website, with a group for almost anything you can think of! Here's a selection of images from two interesting flickr groups that give an insight into the inspirations, styles and spaces of creative people.

Inspiration boards group:by danske by Jenni Simmons

by le train fantome

by lovely days

by Sneddonia

Workspaces group: by Aunty Cookie

by Box-head*

Burnie Burns, one of the lead people behind the Halo machinima Red vs Blue, and co-founder of Rooster Teeth Productions, will be coming out next month for this year's Sydney Film Festival.If you'd like to talk to Burns about his work, or machinima in general, he's scheduled to host a Q&A session on June 18 at 7:30PM at the Telstra Experience Lab. The lab can be found at Level 2, 400 George St, Syd

Remember a while back we told you how the death of McLeod's Daughters seemed to have left star Simmone Jade McKinnon's mortgage repayments in a wretched state? Well, a little bird in the form of the Hun's Melbourne Confidential has, while rootling around on the auction site for, er, cargo pants, found some McKinnon/McLeod's related items on eBay, so naturally I decided to get amongst the eBay bidd

Last night Craft Victoria members enjoyed a free advance screening of the epic film from Russian director Sergei Bodrov, Mongol. Shot in Mongolia, the film covers the perilous early years of Genghis Khan, and is the first in a planned trilogy about the ruler's life. We loved the costume design and the stunning landscape footage. Apparently the maple walnut choc tops from the Kino Dendy Cinema were

Sooo....the admin section of this blog died on me again for close to a month this time and the error that kept popping up was the following: "Got an error: Error opening file '/mt-config.cgi': No such file or directory" A quick search (which i should have done the day i first got the error) led me to the following solution which worked :) It looks like something was modified at the server hosting

After an evening listening to Vince Jones and Katie Noonan, jazz naysayer Jim Schembri is now a jazz yaysayer. Sort of.
The real revelation of the evening, though, was how relaxing and soothing it all was. This was quite contrary to my view that jazz was like listening to fingernails down a blackboard.He says that like fingernails down a blackboard are a bad thing.

The official E3 Media & Business Summit has laid out its plans for this year's show, which returns to the Los Angeles Convention Centre and is now confirmed to be completely devoid of off-topic spectacle. E3's past used to fill South, West, Petree, Concourse and Kentia Halls, but E3 2008 will occupy just the Concourse Hall, a massive scaling back of space. E3 exhibitors will still occupy meeting r

Nintendo has today announced the launch of WiiWare in Australia. It follows closely behind the US debut last week.The release itself is scarce on details, such as pricing and dates. Scratch that - there's no information on pricing and dates. I'm trying to get in touch with Nintendo now and will let you know as soon as there's more info.For now, Nintendo has "scheduled" the release of following gam

On Friday night I was lucky enough to attend the opening night of Opera Australia's lavish new production of Lerner & Loewe's wonderful My Fair Lady. Roger Kirk's costumes are breathtaking (the Ascot sequence's costumes and millinery, and Eliza's ballgown both receiving as much if not more applause than the castmembers themselves) and it is a treat to have the musical really sung for a change (tho

It's a turbulent time in Australian magazine publishing currently, between New Woman folding and New Idea's continued idiocy, now Famous' founding editor Shane Sutton has been shown the door. He's been replaced in the role by a former NW staffer, which is perhaps not surprising given that the two mags are more or less identical and when reading one, you wonder why the other still exists.After a sl

Yes, yes, I know there's nothing particularly big nor clever about laughing when online newspapers cock up in the photo department, but today's effort by the clowns at the "New Look!" Daily Mail are clearly so bewildered by said "New Look!" with all its Flash bells and whistles that they've let their job get the better of them. To wit, some of the highlights from the "Femail Today" sidebar on this

Remember when Room 101 griefers issued a flying penis attack on Second Life "real estate" "mogul" "Anshe Chung" during a virtual interview? How could you not? It's just about the only interesting thing to ever happen in Second Life. Now, it has happened in the real world, only on a much smaller, much briefer scale.

During May Madeit is running a t-shirt competition for all the designers on the site. To enter you need to donate a prize and the winner will receive the hamper with all the donated designer goods. The competition is the brainchild of Madeit seller EmmaRose and closes on May 30th. To enter, visit the Madeit Forum for all the details.

In the meantime, to get you inspired here are some fabulous

Apparently, $US 1.23 billion in U.S. sales is a disappointment, from a Wall Street perspective, as Reuters reports that April's reported take sent video game stocks downward. Software sales only seeing 68% growth from the previous year? Unacceptable! Merely $US 654.7 million in software? Sell, sell, sell! May, however, could bring much bigger numbers with the release of Wii Fit—and maybe som

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Maybe it's just me, but Mad TV has never quite captured the magical wit of Mad magazine, at least as I fondly remember it. Perhaps it's the lack of Sergio Aragon s or the inability to tri-fold a television, but there's been a surprisingly lack of LOLs during my viewership. Still, no one else seems to be doing Grand Theft Auto: The Board Game skits

At the US PlayStation Blog, director of development Matt Wilson of Sony Online Entertainment's Seattle studio, currently at work on development of The Agency, introduced himself with some quick updates from a recent open house alongside the recent ION Game Conference, which included an Agency-themed event. At the event, apparently, everyone got to gawk at this giant gun made out of ice. Said Wils

My First Steps Into The Age Of ConanAn introduction to Funcom's Robert E. Howard-inspired MMO. Oiled chest and half-naked ladies ahoy!Uwe Boll A Bit Upset About PostalLook at it this way Uwe - if Postal had been released on more than four screens, you wouldn't be the only one crying.Age Of Conan DX10 Version DelayedI still see no reason to be concerned about DirectX 10 (or Direct3D 10 for that mat

If you somehow missed the news that the Penny Arcade/Hothead Studios joint Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode One was hitting this week, here's your handy reminder. The debut episode of the adventures of Gabe and Tycho will set you back 1600 Microsoft Points should you buy from Xbox Live Arcade, with the Windows, Mac and Linux download a mere $US 19.95 via PA'

Hmmm. There's really not much I can say to introduce the following clip except to say... ooh! Clever!UPDATE: Erm... I need you guys to be honest with me. Who here watches Channel Nine's Today show? I just saw it for the first time this morning, and they have a segment called YouTube Clip Of The Day!? How long has this been going on? Did I inadvertently steal the idea from them over a year ago des

During this exciting and hectic Cannes season, some lesser-budgeted and hyped projects are at risk, like sand through a topless sunbather's cleavage, of tumbling between the cracks. We therefore take a moment to draw your attention to Killing Fields director Roland Joffe's latest film: You And I, starring Mischa Barton and Anton Yeltsin. From it's IMDb plot synopsis: "Two teenage girls, Janie who

From the looks of this new teaser for CW's upcoming Beverly Hills: 90210 remake, it looks as though any fans of the original hoping for a fresh take on their beloved West Beverly High alum will have to sheepishly return to watching classics from their prized VHS collection. Though they've obediently updated the infamous opening credits sequence in which each beautiful face candidly hops around a s