The Wonderful World of Oz
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fxh
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Its just a white fur wallaby
fxh
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Like any animals anywhere - Koalas often get in some funny spots, as do roos and wombats etc
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Yes, I understand that. I've obviously heard about them. I'm saying I've never actually seen a picture of one of the damn things before.
fxh
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dont be grumpy - a white fluffy wallaby should make you happy.
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Have you ever punted an animal down there?
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Grand Potentate
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fxh
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Drop Bear Attacks Neighbour
The Drop Bears - Drop Bear Attacks Neighbour. I thought It... | Facebook
The Drop Bears - Drop Bear Attacks Neighbour. I thought It... | Facebook
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New York man sues Foster's for not being brewed in Australia
Date: December 16 2015
When was the last time you saw an Australian drinking Foster's?
A New York man is suing the United States brewers of the famous export drop because he was given the false impression it was made in Australia.
Leif Nelson, from New York City, filed the class action last week against brewing giant Miller claiming he had been conned into thinking the lager was imported due to marketing slogans such as "Foster's, Australian for beer".
Foster's is owned by South African brewing group SABMiller and is brewed in the US in Fort Worth, Texas.
The beer is produced at the "Oil Can Breweries", taken from the nickname Americans gave to the oversized Aussie beer can.
But Mr Nelson claims the iconic blue Foster's label still gives the impression it comes from Australia:
"In fact, the packaging for Foster's contains multiple references to Australian culture and symbols including an image of a Red Kangaroo, the national symbol of Australia, and the Southern Cross constellation," the court documents say.
Mr Nelson also believes Foster's was being sold at an inflated price, "despite the fact that the beer is now brewed in the United States with domestic ingredients".
He alleges the brewer has made "millions of dollars" from the sale of Foster's that it otherwise wouldn't have if drinkers knew the truth.
The Foster's "How to speak Australian" marketing campaign continues the deception, Mr Nelson says, as it "depicts Foster's as being a product from Australia by using Australian accents and scenery."
While Foster's was once tied strongly to Australia through expats Paul Hogan and the beer-swilling Barry McKenzie, it has experienced falling popularity in recent years and is more synonymous with overseas markets.
A spokesman for MillerCoors told the New York Daily News that the company, "even employs an Australian brewmaster so that the beer tastes as true to its origin as possible".
A similar class action was successful early this year, when another US brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev was alleged to have tricked drinkers into thinking the locally made Beck's beer was brewed in Germany.
On that occasion, the court approved a settlement of $20 million and people with proof they had bought Beck's at retail outlets could claim up to $50.
Date: December 16 2015
When was the last time you saw an Australian drinking Foster's?
A New York man is suing the United States brewers of the famous export drop because he was given the false impression it was made in Australia.
Leif Nelson, from New York City, filed the class action last week against brewing giant Miller claiming he had been conned into thinking the lager was imported due to marketing slogans such as "Foster's, Australian for beer".
Foster's is owned by South African brewing group SABMiller and is brewed in the US in Fort Worth, Texas.
The beer is produced at the "Oil Can Breweries", taken from the nickname Americans gave to the oversized Aussie beer can.
But Mr Nelson claims the iconic blue Foster's label still gives the impression it comes from Australia:
"In fact, the packaging for Foster's contains multiple references to Australian culture and symbols including an image of a Red Kangaroo, the national symbol of Australia, and the Southern Cross constellation," the court documents say.
Mr Nelson also believes Foster's was being sold at an inflated price, "despite the fact that the beer is now brewed in the United States with domestic ingredients".
He alleges the brewer has made "millions of dollars" from the sale of Foster's that it otherwise wouldn't have if drinkers knew the truth.
The Foster's "How to speak Australian" marketing campaign continues the deception, Mr Nelson says, as it "depicts Foster's as being a product from Australia by using Australian accents and scenery."
While Foster's was once tied strongly to Australia through expats Paul Hogan and the beer-swilling Barry McKenzie, it has experienced falling popularity in recent years and is more synonymous with overseas markets.
A spokesman for MillerCoors told the New York Daily News that the company, "even employs an Australian brewmaster so that the beer tastes as true to its origin as possible".
A similar class action was successful early this year, when another US brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev was alleged to have tricked drinkers into thinking the locally made Beck's beer was brewed in Germany.
On that occasion, the court approved a settlement of $20 million and people with proof they had bought Beck's at retail outlets could claim up to $50.
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Any of you ozzies drive a ute?
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Nah, mate.
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Why not? You'll be the coolest suburban dad.
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Some would say that I already am! ;-)
Anyway, I really find it hard to imagine myself in one of these, although I do know some people who would think that it is "Fully sick, maaate!".
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Some would say that I already am! ;-)
Anyway, I really find it hard to imagine myself in one of these, although I do know some people who would think that it is "Fully sick, maaate!".
Big V8, heaps of fun.
They're so cheap too compared to European cars.
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"Fully sick, maaate!".
I really enjoy smoking these off the line in the Tesla. I like watching their little pea brains explode in my rear-view mirror.
fxh
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Two Ls where there should be one By Jennifer Down 18.Dec.15
My own English language is a kind of potluck. I say ‘film’, ‘doona’ and ‘bloke’, but I also say ‘chill’ an awful lot. As far as spelling goes, there are only a handful of Australian English spelling variants I really care about (‘doughnut’ and ‘aeroplane’ being among them). My use of ‘ass’ versus ‘arse’ is entirely context-dependent.
There’s no rhyme or reason to any of this. I use Australian English spelling – alwayscolour and enrolment, never color and enrollment – because it’s what I was taught in school, and because it’s the preference of everyone I’ve written or edited for in Australia. Frankly, I don’t give it much thought. I don’t particularly care what others are using unless I’m editing their work. I don’t even think I really notice.
In the same way as we can understand native English speakers from Boston, Minneapolis and Sacramento with little difficulty, we’re also accustomed to consuming written media that adhere to the conventions of American English. If an article’s penchant for double quotation marks and favorite over favourite alerts us to the fact we’re likely reading an American piece, it does so in a dim and rather inconsequential way. No meaning is lost. We don’t fall to paroxysms of rage every time they omit an e or an l or a u.
When it comes to American English spelling in our own backyard, however, it turns out we feel pretty strongly about it. In a 2013 study, almost 75 per cent of Australians surveyed said they don’t like Americanised spelling.
There are several explanations for this. The first is a desire to differentiate ourselves from the United States. Australians never miss an opportunity to congratulate ourselves on our strict gun laws and superior social welfare. We’re flooded with American cultural product, and often we’re enchanted by it. But when it comes to certain other things – language included – Australia still seeks to distinguish itself from the US, and we cling doggedly to certain orthographic variations.
As the comments on this Februry Fairfax article show, the adoption of US spelling is an issue that gets us hot under the collar. It’s seen as a by-product of a wider trend toward Americanisation. ‘Australia is trying so desperately to be just like the USA (i.e. the Cool Kids) it’s lame,’ writes one commenter. ‘The Americanisation of everything is vulgar and without merit,’ laments another. It’s a slippery slope: one day you swap -ise for -ize and call something ‘awesome’; the next you’re draped in stars and stripes and riding a mechanical bull into the golden arches of hell, where you swear before Donald Trump with one hand on Webster’s dictionary.
In fact, there’s not much evidence to suggest Australian spelling is moving toward American English. Earlier this year, researcher Minna Korhonen found a preference for ‘preservation of e before suffixes as in likeable and judgement’ typically associated with British and Australian English (as contrasted with the ‘shorter’ American English versions) amongst her survey respondents. Interestingly, the use of these ‘e-forms’ has, in fact, increased among the youngest participants from 2005 to 2013. In a separate study, Fritz Clemens found that the trend toward American English spelling variants is ‘restricted to online use’, and concluded that on the whole, Australian English ‘neither […] obediently follow British models, nor […] succumb to modern AmE influences.’
Another possible reason for our rejection of American English spelling is the perception of British English as being somehow superior. This is something I noticed when reading comments on other Australian articles on the topic. ‘Correct English is British English – it is our language, after all,’ opines one commenter on this Australian-English-versus-American-English cheat sheet. This mentality irks me on a couple of levels. Chiefly, the linguistic imperialism it implies, but also the self-righteous sense of possession. No oneowns language. None of us can be credited with creating it. The idea that a native speaker born in Manchester has claim to greater linguistic capital than a native speaker born in Perth, Singapore, Baltimore or Bridgetown is absurd.
A third explanation for our defence of Australian English is simple jingoism. Naturally, our swampy sense of identity extends to our language. We couldn’t possibly take up American English, because it wouldn’t be our own. (Never mind the hundreds of languages spoken in Australia before British colonisation: –ise is the Australian way.) This language-as-identity logic is closely linked to both our desire to distance ourselves from the United States and our apparent residual reverence for British English. Yet as Fritz Clemens notes, ‘Australian English indeed has its own spelling traditions and […] they are not the result of haphazard choices from British and American English.’ Australian English spelling distinguishes us from the rest of the English-speaking world, and we’ll defend it with flag-waving choler against those Seppos.
But in my recent journeys as an Internet Explorer, I learned something about Noah Webster, the father of the American dictionary. Given he was a staunch proponent of American independence, Webster’s desire to Americanise and standardise spelling makes sense. But his orthographic variations also came from a place of phonetic simplicity and pragmatism – hence the purging of the u in words like favourite, and the double l as inlevelling.
He also ditched dipthongs (so paediatrician becomes pediatrician) and some phonetically extraneous word endings (programme becomes program; catalogue becomes catalogand so on), and made a raft of other changes which, on the whole, make English spelling less complicated and elitist. He believed phonetic spelling would make the language more accessible to both children and non-native speakers.
Did everyone already know this? I’ve never studied linguistics. Maybe it’s general knowledge I somehow missed. In any case, flavor and center have stopped looking so heinous, and started making a lot more sense.
When I interrogate my own vague preferences for Australian English, there’s no substantial reasoning behind it. I’m not about to abandon my aeroplane and my doughnut, but I understand if others do.
Jennifer Down is a writer and editor. Her writing has appeared in The Age, Australian Book Review, The Saturday Paper, Overland and Kill Your Darlings. Her debut novel, Our Magic Hour, will be published by Text in 2016.
My own English language is a kind of potluck. I say ‘film’, ‘doona’ and ‘bloke’, but I also say ‘chill’ an awful lot. As far as spelling goes, there are only a handful of Australian English spelling variants I really care about (‘doughnut’ and ‘aeroplane’ being among them). My use of ‘ass’ versus ‘arse’ is entirely context-dependent.
There’s no rhyme or reason to any of this. I use Australian English spelling – alwayscolour and enrolment, never color and enrollment – because it’s what I was taught in school, and because it’s the preference of everyone I’ve written or edited for in Australia. Frankly, I don’t give it much thought. I don’t particularly care what others are using unless I’m editing their work. I don’t even think I really notice.
In the same way as we can understand native English speakers from Boston, Minneapolis and Sacramento with little difficulty, we’re also accustomed to consuming written media that adhere to the conventions of American English. If an article’s penchant for double quotation marks and favorite over favourite alerts us to the fact we’re likely reading an American piece, it does so in a dim and rather inconsequential way. No meaning is lost. We don’t fall to paroxysms of rage every time they omit an e or an l or a u.
When it comes to American English spelling in our own backyard, however, it turns out we feel pretty strongly about it. In a 2013 study, almost 75 per cent of Australians surveyed said they don’t like Americanised spelling.
There are several explanations for this. The first is a desire to differentiate ourselves from the United States. Australians never miss an opportunity to congratulate ourselves on our strict gun laws and superior social welfare. We’re flooded with American cultural product, and often we’re enchanted by it. But when it comes to certain other things – language included – Australia still seeks to distinguish itself from the US, and we cling doggedly to certain orthographic variations.
As the comments on this Februry Fairfax article show, the adoption of US spelling is an issue that gets us hot under the collar. It’s seen as a by-product of a wider trend toward Americanisation. ‘Australia is trying so desperately to be just like the USA (i.e. the Cool Kids) it’s lame,’ writes one commenter. ‘The Americanisation of everything is vulgar and without merit,’ laments another. It’s a slippery slope: one day you swap -ise for -ize and call something ‘awesome’; the next you’re draped in stars and stripes and riding a mechanical bull into the golden arches of hell, where you swear before Donald Trump with one hand on Webster’s dictionary.
In fact, there’s not much evidence to suggest Australian spelling is moving toward American English. Earlier this year, researcher Minna Korhonen found a preference for ‘preservation of e before suffixes as in likeable and judgement’ typically associated with British and Australian English (as contrasted with the ‘shorter’ American English versions) amongst her survey respondents. Interestingly, the use of these ‘e-forms’ has, in fact, increased among the youngest participants from 2005 to 2013. In a separate study, Fritz Clemens found that the trend toward American English spelling variants is ‘restricted to online use’, and concluded that on the whole, Australian English ‘neither […] obediently follow British models, nor […] succumb to modern AmE influences.’
Another possible reason for our rejection of American English spelling is the perception of British English as being somehow superior. This is something I noticed when reading comments on other Australian articles on the topic. ‘Correct English is British English – it is our language, after all,’ opines one commenter on this Australian-English-versus-American-English cheat sheet. This mentality irks me on a couple of levels. Chiefly, the linguistic imperialism it implies, but also the self-righteous sense of possession. No oneowns language. None of us can be credited with creating it. The idea that a native speaker born in Manchester has claim to greater linguistic capital than a native speaker born in Perth, Singapore, Baltimore or Bridgetown is absurd.
A third explanation for our defence of Australian English is simple jingoism. Naturally, our swampy sense of identity extends to our language. We couldn’t possibly take up American English, because it wouldn’t be our own. (Never mind the hundreds of languages spoken in Australia before British colonisation: –ise is the Australian way.) This language-as-identity logic is closely linked to both our desire to distance ourselves from the United States and our apparent residual reverence for British English. Yet as Fritz Clemens notes, ‘Australian English indeed has its own spelling traditions and […] they are not the result of haphazard choices from British and American English.’ Australian English spelling distinguishes us from the rest of the English-speaking world, and we’ll defend it with flag-waving choler against those Seppos.
But in my recent journeys as an Internet Explorer, I learned something about Noah Webster, the father of the American dictionary. Given he was a staunch proponent of American independence, Webster’s desire to Americanise and standardise spelling makes sense. But his orthographic variations also came from a place of phonetic simplicity and pragmatism – hence the purging of the u in words like favourite, and the double l as inlevelling.
He also ditched dipthongs (so paediatrician becomes pediatrician) and some phonetically extraneous word endings (programme becomes program; catalogue becomes catalogand so on), and made a raft of other changes which, on the whole, make English spelling less complicated and elitist. He believed phonetic spelling would make the language more accessible to both children and non-native speakers.
Did everyone already know this? I’ve never studied linguistics. Maybe it’s general knowledge I somehow missed. In any case, flavor and center have stopped looking so heinous, and started making a lot more sense.
When I interrogate my own vague preferences for Australian English, there’s no substantial reasoning behind it. I’m not about to abandon my aeroplane and my doughnut, but I understand if others do.
Jennifer Down is a writer and editor. Her writing has appeared in The Age, Australian Book Review, The Saturday Paper, Overland and Kill Your Darlings. Her debut novel, Our Magic Hour, will be published by Text in 2016.
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fxh
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Bushfires: 10 homes lost in Victoria before cool change sweeps through
A resident gives a drink to a wild heat-stressed koala in her backyard on Saturday in Adelaide,
A resident gives a drink to a wild heat-stressed koala in her backyard on Saturday in Adelaide,
fxh
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.jpg)
Grand Potentate
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What's this weird thing?
fxh
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What's up, you bunch of stoner sloths?
Thruth
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Sloths are chill enough not to need weed
Grand Potentate
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What are you fucking lunatics doing over there???
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/201...A3FD4BC3777F9789B39548F5E52E41DF&gwt=pay&_r=1
Australia OKs Expansion of Coal Port Near Great Barrier Reef
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/201...A3FD4BC3777F9789B39548F5E52E41DF&gwt=pay&_r=1
Australia OKs Expansion of Coal Port Near Great Barrier Reef
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Thruth
Big Winter Daddy
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Well that has to be one of the dumbest things I've seen in a while
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Authorities have revised the number of homes destroyed in Wye River and Separation Creek upward to 116 following the bushfire that ravaged the Great Ocean Road on Christmas Day. That is twice the number of homes lost than was originally feared.
The total is now 98 homes in Wye River and a further 18 in Separation Creek, bringing the total to 116.
Grand Potentate
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damn
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Yeah, drop bears are the worst. So annoying, you're just minding your own business, drinking your goon, and all of a sudden there's a dropbear on your table. They're like raccoons, but more unexpected.
fxh
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One lucky koala has escaped the bushfire raging at Wye River along the Great Ocean Road, as wildlife rescuers remain on standby for an influx of animals from the Victorian bushfires.
The unresponsive koala was found by CFA firefighters on the side of a road, and brought back to their station.
Victoria Police officers who were in attendance at the time hand-fed the koala water and gum leaves.
The unresponsive koala was found by CFA firefighters on the side of a road, and brought back to their station.
Victoria Police officers who were in attendance at the time hand-fed the koala water and gum leaves.
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Cute little fella.
Of course, what the photos don't show is that once the koala regained its strength, it leaped up and ripped out the throats of the people that had helped it, before it ambled away into the bush again.
Never let that cute, fluffy exterior lull you into a false sense of security.
fxh
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I'm worried about shooey - haven't heard from him
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Get in.
Grand Potentate
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Does he live in the fire zone?
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I bet he's just busy raiding the sunspel store with all these Boxing Day sales.
Thruth
Big Winter Daddy
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Australian on vacation in Canada drives snowmobile into tree killing himself.
Pro Tip: take thumb off throttle, machine stops rather quickly
Australian man killed in B.C. when snowmobile hits tree
Pro Tip: take thumb off throttle, machine stops rather quickly
Australian man killed in B.C. when snowmobile hits tree
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