SBS Blogs

Heat and silence in Baghdad

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:46:32 +1000

En-route to my first visit to Baghdad, the TV news disclosed information I didn't want to hear. A dozen or so bombs had just gone off there, killing about 50 people.

En-route to my first visit to Baghdad, I stopped over in Amman, where the TV news disclosed information I didn't want to hear.

A dozen or so bombs had just gone off in Iraq, killing about 50 people - most of them in the capital.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep too much that night. I just lay there thinking; “That's where I'm going to be tomorrow.”

When we landed I had to ‘help’ a customs official to the tune of 'a sum of US dollars' so he could ‘help’ get my camera equipment into Iraq. An early lesson on how things are done here.

The main road out of the airport was almost empty.

"This used to be the most dangerous road in the world, at least three or four IEDs a day,” said Paul McGeough, the journalist I’m accompanying.

The street was lined with tanks and heavily-armed check points, but hardly any people – a picture to which one becomes accustomed in Baghdad.

Soldiers, tanks and high-calibre mounted machine guns are on nearly every corner, choppers flying above you, day and night.

People are nervous here. You don't use your phone in front of the police.

I was filming in a street that had been bombed a couple of weeks ago, under strict instructions that I had 15 minutes – any longer and I would be somewhat a target.

Much of this time was consumed negotiating with police on the ground. There's no ducking out to get a few pictures as you would in Australia.

We travel with two cars, and have a couple of people watching us, which makes it hard to do your work. It also makes you wonder what things must have been like here three or four years ago.

As well as that, it's just so ferociously hot – 50-plus degrees, day after day.

Electricity is a seriously scarce commodity. People have to beg, borrow and steal just to have it for a couple of hours a day.

The power station here is so old that the company that built it doesn't even make the spare parts anymore.

We went there to take some shots and from the inside it looked like it was about to explode.

Wherever you go, you see a spaghetti-like mangled mess of power cables running from the windows in every street.

The ice factory is the busiest business in Baghdad; that is how people keep cool during the daily power black outs.

I really feel for the locals.

We filmed a family who were squatting on the 10th floor of a run-down old concrete office building. The lift doesn't have power, so they have to walk up and down those stairs every day, with no lights. And all this on an empty Ramadan stomach in a stinking hot summer.

Baghdad is one of the most interesting places I've ever visited, but I don't think my nerves will abate until I'm home.

Australia's White Knight

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +1000

It's Fly V owner Chris White’s love affair with bikes that has taken him where he is today – and hopefully in the near future, a place in the ProTour, writes Anthony Tan.

Despite racking up 50 percent more victories than it achieved last season – which already bettered the strike rate of HTC-Columbia, the most successful ProTour team in 2009 – there’s probably been more talk about Fly V Australia and its managing director, Chris White, in the past month than the past three years.

White, an accountant and businessman by trade but a cyclist at heart, finds himself in the tantalising position of being the first man to achieve what the Australian cycling public has long believed possible but so far has failed to see materialise: an Aussie-registered ProTour team, and one that competes at the grand-daddy of all cycling races, the Tour de France.

So far, 10 teams (out of a possible 18) already have licenses to compete at ProTour level in 2011: Ag2r-La Mondiale, Garmin-Transitions (to be renamed Garmin-Cervélo), Lampre-Farnese Vini, Omega Pharma-Lotto, Quick Step, Rabobank, Team Sky, Katusha, RadioShack and Saxo Bank (to be called Saxo Bank-Sungard).

On August 17, cycling’s governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), released a statement to say a further 14 teams had applied for the remaining eight ProTour places – one of which is Fly V’s holding company, Pegasus Racing, owned and managed by White.

“We’ve got a better chance than the rest, subject to meeting the minimum requirements,” White told me. “What that means I’m not really sure, but I think it means four teams going for the last two spots.

“If you look at the UCI ProTour criteria, should we achieve the required sporting objectives – so let’s cut that back to UCI points – [and] be ranked in the top 15 teams, we get the [ProTour] licence. If we’re ranked between 16 and 21, then it goes to the other criteria.”

In short, what White was trying to tell me (I think) is that it’s unlikely Pegasus Racing will be ranked in the top 15 teams in the world (based on his envisaged 2011 roster and the UCI points they bring), and that, according to his calculations, six of the 14 teams going for the final eight places will be in the first 15.

However, Pegasus’ MD feels he will have a line-up that will rank [as-yet-unnamed-title sponsor from America]-Fly V Australia somewhere between the top 16-21 teams – consequently leaving four teams vying for the final two ProTour placemats.

“So it’s critical that we achieve the best roster we possibly can right now. The roster will drive the outcome,” said White.

Hearing last week’s news that the Cervélo TestTeam will no longer be around, White was prompted into action in an attempt to court some of its star riders that included Thor Hushovd, Heinrich Haussler and Brett Lancaster. But on Monday this week, Garmin released a statement that ended any chance of one of those names coming across, headlined: “Thor Hushovd joins Slipstream Sports for 2011.”

Two days later, mid-Wednesday evening, another statement came from Garmin: apart from Hushovd, six more ex-Cervélo riders would join the team in 2011, including Haussler and Lancaster.

By close of business Tuesday, White, as part of the ProTour submission process, had to transfer a non-refundable €15,000 ($21,000) application fee with the UCI.

By October 1, in a lodgement of contracts to the UCI, Pegasus Racing must name at least 10 of the minimum 22 riders required to field a ProTour outfit. Garmin-Transitions’ Trent Lowe is the first ‘big’ name from the ProTour to come across. White told me he has another nine in the bag: “I’m just waiting on a couple of signatures to come back.”

Four likely signatures would come from its current crop of riders – Jonathan Cantwell, David Tanner, Bernie Sulzberger, Aaron Kemps and Ben Day – who have shown their worth on the US racing scene this season and whom White put forth as candidates for the upcoming world road championships, though none making the original 15-man long list.

On whether it is a case of ProTour or bust – that is, whether White has planned for a scenario where Pegasus Racing does not receive a ProTour licence – he said: “If we’re ranked 19 and we miss out on one of the 18 licences, we’re automatically a Pro Continental team. And committed to a European campaign. And committed to being in the ProTour for 2012.”

Despite one the title sponsors coming from the US to reach that €14 million ($19.7 million) figure required to fund a ProTour squad, White reassuringly told me, “we’ll be registered in Australia, we’ll be an Australian team”.

Asked if any Australian riders already in ProTour squads had contacted him, White said no, but added, “I’m actively pursuing [those riders]. Mind you, I get 30 to 40 emails a day from riders wanting a place. There’s more riders than teams.”

At the time of writing, the whereabouts of Robbie McEwen’s place in 2011 was unknown, the last big name from Australia without a contract. McEwen told Cyclingnews he and White go back 20 years but qualified the remark by saying “my name has been linked to the new Aussie team whenever it is mentioned.” I’ll take a punt and say he’ll stay with Katusha.

To be registered as an Australian team is one thing, but exactly how many Australians does White want or can handle?

“I think in a best-case scenario, I can achieve 15 Australians – in the best case,” he said.

“How we end up at the end of the day, I’ve got to live that part of my life yet. Really, I don’t want any more than 15. For a whole number of really strong commercial reasons, it’s important to have an international roster.”

On November 1, White expects to see a statement from the UCI detailing the first 15 teams that have a ProTour licence awarded for 2011; the remaining three should be announced by mid-November.

Is Pegasus Racing hoping to be in that first announcement, then?

White answers in atypically laconic fashion. “[I would] like to be... Waiting long enough. Waiting long enough,” he repeats.

“Right now, assuming we get our ProTour licence, we’ll be the first. They’ll never be another first. And that legacy has significance.”

White says in this process characterised by much repetition (would we expect anything less from a bureaucracy like the UCI?), there’s no killer blow to win over the governing body – “though in saying that, a really strong sporting roster might be that killer blow that we’re looking for”.

This week, White is at the Vuelta a España, looking for riders searching for a home in 2011 and most importantly, with UCI points to offer.

Here’s hoping he secures a few big names to land that knockout punch.

Howzat!

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:46:27 +1000

As the Pakistan match-fixing scandal continues to rock world cricket to its core, World News Australia Sports Presenter, Robert Grasso looks at the real reasons behind the allegations.

Perhaps ICC Chief, Haroon Lorgat’s response overnight to the Pakistan betting fiasco summed it up best.

"Very, very disappointed. I guess... I'm at a loss for words to describe how not just myself but every loving cricketer and fan will be feeling right now…it's not good for the reputation and the image of the game”.

So what if the allegations are proven correct that Pakistan's bowlers were paid to deliberately bowl no-balls on the opening day of the fourth test against England at Lord's?

What if evidence emerges that January's Sydney Test between Australia and Pakistan was also rigged?

Whilst the sport’s governing body, the ICC, is keen to drive home its anti-corruption message, it remains extremely unlikely. Some, including its former Chief Malcolm Speed, have pushed for Pakistan to be suspended from all competition.

As former Pakistan national coach, Geoff Lawson says, “that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater…. and would put the game back many, many years”.

What does seem likely though is that those implicated may be looking at a lifetime ban, including captain Salman Butt, opening bowlers Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif and wicket-keeper Kamran Akmal.

They’ll know soon enough when Pakistani and ICC officials meet to decide if the implicated players should be suspended from the two Twenty20 games and five one-day internationals against England starting next week.

The easiest way of rationalizing the incident would be by labeling the players opportunistic cheats.

However, that would be too simplistic and indeed naïve an explanation - and certainly a view Australia’s former paceman refuses to subscribe to having lived and breathed Pakistan cricket as head coach from 2007 to 2008.

To understand the real motives, Lawson suggests a more sinister element may be at play, namely that players were forced into spot-fixing due to threats against their families - Mafia stand-over style.

Furthermore, the huge disparity in player wages may have contributed to the fiasco, a factor Lawson, while stopping short of condoning match-fixing, believes the Australian media has continually overlooked.

"Some of our players, Australian players, are getting paid $2 million a year (including endorsements) to play cricket, and these guys (Pakistan players) are getting paid $30,000 or $40,000….And I don't see anywhere where this stuff's mentioned; it's just critical, there's no balance to it”.

Add to that the fact that no players were selected in the lucrative 2010 Indian Premier League despite Pakistan being crowned World Twenty20 champions, corruption remains endemic in Pakistani politics, and it becomes clearer why these allegations still surface.

"There is a different culture. Certainly (Pakistan's) politicians set a very poor example for the rest of their nation with the way they run the country, there's no doubt about that”, says Lawson.

It’s certainly not the first time Pakistan’s cricket players have come under the spotlight after Salim Malik received a life ban for offering players money to swing a match in 1994.

Given the financial, political, cultural and criminal pressures facing its players, one senses it won’t be the last, regardless of the ICC’s impending decision.

Credit where credit is due

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:14:44 +1000

This week, President Obama will deliver a speech to mark the withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq.

The address comes over seven years after President George W. Bush gave his infamous “Mission accomplished” speech onboard USS Abraham Lincoln, declaring that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

But never mind pesky details.

Sarah Palin, the losing 2008 Vice-Presidential candidate and a former Governor of Alaska, is champing at the bit to hear Obama’s speech.

Now a celebrity author and public speaker after resigning her post as Governor, Palin posted on her Twitter account on Sunday:

“Tues:Obama Iraq speech;poor leadership if this fierce opponent of the surge can't give credit where credit’s due.Credit due GW,McCain,troops”

(Palin is as much a fan of Obama as she is of spaces between words).

Attempting to set an agenda and highlight Obama’s opposition to a 2007 troop surge in Iraq, Palin and her preemptive criticism is not surprising.

Obama, targeted by Republicans during the 2008 election campaign for having little military experience, has been in the intriguing position of leading the country at a time when it is embroiled in two complicated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which he opposed when a senator.

According to a report in the New York Times, Obama told a meeting with military commanders on his first day in office: “Guys, before you start, there’s one thing I want to say to you and that is I do not want to screw this up.”

Unlike his predecessor, who reveled in wearing a fighter pilot leather jacket and an image as a warrior President, Obama was slow to embrace military ways.

Meeting a room full of generals as Commander-in-Chief, he reportedly told the officers as they stood to greet him: “Come on, guys, you don’t have to do that.”

Obama learned how to salute and, apparently, surfed the Internet at night to personally research how the wars were affecting his troops.

As well as updating her Twitter account last weekend, Sarah Palin spoke at a rally organised by celebrity conservative radio and TV host Glen Beck held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

Beck is extremely popular in some quarters and depending on who you asked, the rally drew between 80,000 and 500,000 people.

This event, billed as “Restoring Honor” was originally promoted as a civil rights rally to honor Martin Luther King Jr, then a salute to the troops, and finally as a quasi-religious reclamation of America from a supposed Godless government big on high taxation and imminent Communisation.

Oh, and a chance to sell some advertising.

Palin used her moment to speak about her noble son, emphasising she had raised a combat veteran, but forgot the other part about raising a daughter to be a teenage single mum living the dream as a tabloid magazine cover star.

Meanwhile, on his first trip to Afghanistan as President, Obama met a teenaged American soldier who had lost three limbs in combat.

It was a personal encounter that, rightly, hit home on his role as Commander-in-Chief: This was not a game.

When office politics and infighting seeped into the higher ranks of the military earlier this year, Obama offered them a reprimand that could play to a wider audience.

“We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids,” he said.

Subtle but cutting, on many levels, that was offering credit where it really was due.

Taste of Melbourne 2010

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:35:32 +1000

I ate a donut from the van in front of Footscray station on the way to Taste of Melbourne, the food-focused show that visits Melbourne towards the end of each winter. The van, named Olympic Donuts, may possibly have been parked to the side of the Footscray Station since the last time that the Olympics visited Melbourne but judging by the sheer funkiness of font used in the sign, the last time that the van received a fresh coat of paint was the late 1970s.

Food from a van was probably a suitable entree to the Melbourne food event, because it shared uncannily similar principles. The restaurants exhibiting at Taste of Melbourne serve up fancy van food. The setup of your average donut van is a good parallel – the restaurants sit at the show for a few days, have an extremely limited menu and bear little to no resemblance to restaurants. Some food is perfect for it - anything that you can cook by the drum and pour into a Bain Marie or deep-fry and eat with one hand. Yes it has pretensions otherwise, but the best of Taste of Melbourne is about carnival food.

Does the food do the restaurants justice?

You can't judge it using the same time-honoured standards: there is no service and few tables; your cutlery is plastic and plateware is paper. The menu is distilled in the extreme – three to four dishes per restaurant and it is unlikely that you’d be keen to eat all three. There is nary a salad to be seen - a vegetarian might want to pack their own lunch if they're not in possession of an extreme sweet tooth or serious drinking habit.

Given the carnie vibe, I started with The Palace’s Wagyu Burger – not so much a burger as an Australian version of the slider - with a thin slice of beetroot and cheese. Wagyu burger is the perfect way to repackage all of those ends, offcuts and fat from a restaurant’s other wagyu dishes. Given the diminutive size, this is probably the most expensive burger that I’ve ever eaten by weight and ended up tasting beefy but a bit on the dry side.

The European’s Wild rabbit sausage roll with tomato kassundi (an oily, Indian fresh pickle). Flaky pastry with soft, juicy rabbit and fennel mix inside.

Mezzo’s pork cheek topped with, relish, ground dried peas(?) and pistachios was the highlight of the show for me. It’s a cut of meat that I love and this one was cooked until it broke apart at the lightest touch. Others had reported getting a tougher serve; mine was perfect.

Yellow curry from Longgrain wasn’t memorable or bad; plenty of coconut and chilli, but nothing much else.

Stokehouse’s Wagyu beef cigars, artichoke tapenade and horseradish reminded me of American 7-11 taquitos – much, much classier of course, but the same concept of putting meat in a tube and deep-frying. It’s hard to go wrong with deep fried meat.

At this point, I fell into a meat stupor. I wandered aimlessly amongst the small producers. I picked at some golden syrup icecream from Gundowring Fine Foods and had a glass of Dal Zotto Prosecco (not exactly the best match, but from loosely the same region in Victoria). I was spent.

Once again I was joined by a crew of Melbourne bloggers to attempt to eat everything that was on offer. Between the five of us, we managed to tick off every restaurant on show but maybe fell short of eating every single dish. Their coverage is at:

Penny from Jeroxie Claire from Melbourne Gastronome Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe Shellie from Iron Chef Shellie I Eat Therefore I Am

Docos embrace the third dimension

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:32:53 +1000

Mirroring the 3D movie boom is an upsurge in docus in the enhanced format.

Werner Herzog invented a new type of 3D camera to film his latest documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which focuses on 30,000-year-old artwork in a cave in Southern France.

Herzog is in the vanguard of a boom in the production of 3D docos, which mirrors the rampant growth of 3D movies. Among the non-fiction projects being filmed in the third dimension are an expose about the mass extinction of wildlife from the producers of the Oscar winning The Cove; Wim Wenders’ profile of legendary choreographer Pina Bausch; and a re-enactment of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition.

One of the first 3D productions shot in Australia, Mark Lewis’ Cane Toads: The Conquest (pictured), screened at the Melbourne and Sydney film festivals after its world premiere last January at the Sundance fest.

And last week veteran Hollywood producer Mike Medavoy formed a co-venture with The Wildest Dream director Anthony Geffen to originate high-end docus exploring ancient empires, the Holy Land, Africa and other topics, most in 3D. Their first effort will focus on explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, who led an expedition to the South Pole which left him and his crew of 27 stranded after ice crushed their ship in 1915.

The Wildest Dream, which opens in Australia on September 9 in an exclusive season at IMAX Darling Harbour, tracks climber Conrad Anker as he discovers the body of a British climber, George Mallory, who disappeared in 1924 as he attempted to become the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest.

“The idea is to tell true stories with a large scope. We’re betting that people will want to see big-scale 3D renderings of places they’ll never go but want to experience,” said Medavoy, who is venturing into the non-fiction realm for the first time after producing or executive producing several hundred movies including Shutter Island, Zodiac, Miss Potter, Stealth, Holes and Vertical Limit.

Separately, Geffen is working with David Attenborough on the 3D docu Flying Monsters, which investigates giant aerial dinosaurs that ruled the skies 150 million years ago.

Herzog shot his docu in the Chauvet cave which was discovered in 1994 but is closed to the public. It contains paintings which depict lions, panthers, bears, owls, rhinos and hyenas, very different fauna to that of modern France.

“It's still tough to bring equipment down,” Herzog said in his blog, describing the logistical difficulties. “You are not allowed to touch the wall or the floor or anything. I can have only three people with me, and I can use only lights which must not create temperature. For each shot, because the technology is not really advanced, we had to build own camera from zero using a specific configuration of lenses and mirrors. We are doing something nobody has done with 3D.”

The Singing Planet, the latest work from The Cove’s director Louie Psihoyos, will examine endangered species, filmed in many regions including the Pacific, Europe and the Gulf. “We're shooting a 3D film about the mass extinction of wildlife caused by humanity – I think it's the biggest story out there right now,” he told Momentum.

Cane Toads: The Conquest, a follow-up to Lewis’ 1988 short film Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, mixes deadpan interviews, re-enactments and vivid nature footage in its attempt to give the creatures some respect. Lewis even employed the services of a “toad whisperer,” according to the Los Angeles Times. I loved his description of the docu: “Just like Avatar, except with toads."

The chosen ones

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

Having mulled over the chosen nine for the Worlds road race, Anthony Tan, while for the most part satisfied, spotted one or two inconsistencies.

Time will tell if the chosen nine selected by Australia’s three-man panel is the right combination. We don’t have to wait too much longer to find out; whatever the outcome, it’s just over four weeks till we witness a historic first: a World Road Championship in our own backyard.

Via teleconference last Tuesday, when Cycling Australia’s national high performance manager and chief selector, Shayne Bannan, addressed a group of journalists including yours truly, he made one point abundantly clear: with the team they’re sending, a large bunch-sprint finish is not a scenario they have in mind.

“Some of comments [Paolo] Bettini has recently made, the Italians aren’t certainly going to Geelong to let the sprinters be there at the finish,” Bannan said of the two-time world champion, considered one of the finest – if not the finest – Classics riders of his generation, who retired at the end of the 2008 season.

Bettini’s comments are not relevant simply because he is the new Italian national coach, taking over after the premature death of Franco Ballerini this year, or because of his wide-ranging palmarès – or even that one of his riders, Filippo Pozzato, is one of four clear pre-race favourites that include Oscar Freire, Philippe Gilbert and Fabian Cancellara.

No, in the context of the team Australia is sending to the elite men’s race, it’s because Bettini has twice won on a course that bears strong similarities to the 15.9km finishing circuit in Geelong: first in Salzburg, Austria in 2006, and backing up the following year in Stuttgart, Germany, becoming one of five riders to have completed the double since the Worlds were first held in Nürburgring in 1927.

However, as Bannan pointed out, the outstanding difference between Geelong and Salzburg/Stuttgart is that the elevation gain of 3,076 metres all comes in the final 180 kilometres of the 260 kilometre event – which makes those final four hours’ racing as hard (possibly harder) than last year’s Worlds in Mendrisio, so famously won by our own Cadel Evans.

And it’s for this reason that the ignominious decision was made to leave Robbie McEwen out of the squad.

Said Bannan: “We felt, at this stage, on this course, [Matthew] Goss and [Allan] Davis provided better options than Robbie. It was certainly a difficult decision but [it] was based on the course – we felt it is too difficult for him, and we had better options in Goss and Davis.”

Regarding Renshaw’s omission, it was much the same story, who Bannan, to his credit, also notified in person: “Mark was also on the understanding that the course was a difficult one, and perhaps at this stage of Mark’s career, a little bit too difficult – and we do have some good options. In saying that, Mark will be a main player in years to come,” he said, alluding to potential leadership roles for Renshaw at the 2011 Worlds in Copenhagen and the Olympic road race in London a year later.

Much has also been made of the exclusion of Heinrich Haussler. In fact, it was the born-again Aussie’s decision, much to his chagrin, to rule himself out: “If I were to go to the start line at the World Championships, I would want to be 100 percent in shape and able to ride for the victory. This will unfortunately not be possible for me,” said Haussler. “It would have been a dream to start on home soil but I am not ready yet.”

Added Bannan: “[The decision was] based on [the fact that] he’s not recovering from injury as would be expected – he’s had limited racing this year. It would have been a fairly significant gamble if we selected him. In saying that, we were quite comfortable in selecting him in the final fifteen a couple of weeks ago, because at that stage, his rehabilitation was going extremely well and at that stage, he may have been quite a good option.”

One rider who didn’t even make that long team but I thought well-suited to the Geelong circuit was Matthew Lloyd, this year’s mountains classification winner at the Giro and clearly riding at an improved level to when he and Evans were team-mates at Lotto; a team Lloyd has chosen to reside with for at least two more seasons.

When I questioned Bannan about this, he said Lloyd, even if included, would only have qualified for domestique duties in the Australian Worlds squad. “A couple of years ago, Matt Lloyd had some very good results in the Ardennes Classics. And then, his training was heavily focused around GC and being a mountain rider in Grand Tours. So it was a case of this course being not as suited to Matt Lloyd, that it was more suited to other workers within the team.”

I don’t agree with this. Aside from his green jersey at the Giro, there was Lloyd’s impressive Stage 6 victory at that race, which came from a day-long breakaway on a difficult parcours – 2,380 metres climbing over 172km.

Also, I don’t think this rake-thin climber has ever focused on being a GC-rider in Grand Tours. Mountains, yes, but GC, no.

Confirmation came at this year’s Tour de France, when I asked Omega Pharma-Lotto team manager Marc Sergeant if Lloyd was a budding Grand Tour contender-in-waiting. “You know, to win a Grand Tour, you have to be a complete rider. And we have to be honest: if we are on the flats riding 50, 55 k an hour, that’s not his thing. Doing long time trials, that’s not his thing,” Sergeant said.

As leaders, Evans, Davis, Gerrans and Goss I have no problem with, as workers Hayman, O’Grady, Rogers and Sulzberger I can also understand – but the inclusion of Baden Cooke baffled me a bit, and judging by the forum comments, a few others also.

During the teleconference, Bannan told reporters not to compare the exclusion of McEwen against the inclusion of Cooke, as in the selection process, the former was a prospective leader and the latter a potential domestique. And from the list of potential worker bees the Australian selectors mulled over, Bannan said the emphasis was on experience – “particularly in the Ardennes Classiscs, and based on the workloads they’ve done for their particular teams this year so far”.

However, it was in the cobbled Classics such as Paris-Roubaix, Flanders and Gent-Wevelgem where Cooke performed – not the Ardennes races of Amstel Gold, Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege. In fact, Cooke didn’t even get a ride in the Ardennes Classics.

Granted, given Bannan is concerned about the role the first 83 kilometres from Melbourne’s Federation Square may play in the race, if any, and the impending crosswinds that can whip up a veritable storm at this time of year, the inclusion of Cooke makes some sense.

“He’s more than likely not going to finish the race – we’re going to have to sacrifice him early, but his abilities to protect the leaders, to keep them out of the wind, to make sure they’re in good position, to assist in some of the decision-making during the race, is going to be quite valuable to this team.”

That said, Cooke’s younger team-mate at Saxo Bank, Richie Porte (down for the time trial but a possible reserve for the road race), whilst a neo-pro, has already shown preternatural ability to position himself when the going gets rough, and may have provided a real joker in the pack for the Aussies, marking any dangerous moves.

Moves that in some world championships, being as unpredictable and unwieldy as they are, have stayed away right till the end.

The mainstream dream

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

It might be the environment I work and live in, but am I right in saying that many more sports followers are talking the cycling language these days?

It might be the environment I work and live in, but am I right in saying that many more sports followers are talking the cycling language these days?

I mean, the chatter and discussion over the selection of Australia's men's road race team for Geelong has been akin to the lead-up of the announcement for our national cricket team prior to an Ashes tour or (in my case here at SBS), the release for the Socceroos squad before a huge World Cup showdown.

There was a time when I could only dream of discussing the intricacies of the ProTour and the world names involved in cycling's Grand Tours and European Spring Classics.

When I first started covering professional cycling as a journalist, few of Australia's mainstream public understood this, let alone became familiar with the names associated with it.

It's been several days since the final selection for Geelong was announced, but still the arguments rage.

While some observers scratch their heads over the omissions of Mark Renshaw and Robbie McEwen, others are prepared to express their passionate opinions on the reasons why the "final nine" are either the right or wrong choices.

And there's the argument on whether the course is suitable for climbers, sprinters or both.

They might ask why Germany can bank on a rider like Andrei Greipel for the rainbow jersey, while Australia chooses Matt Goss as its lone specialist sprinter.

In the eyes of the Australian selection panel, the best riders have been picked what for will be a very difficult job.

The depth of Australian cycling is such at the moment that one of three different combinations could have been named and I'm sure all would have been capable of doing the job at hand.

All that is irrelevant in terms of the point of this blog.

The question I ask is: has cycling finally broken a mould and become a mainstream sport in a country obsessed by the various football codes and cricket?

Judging by the pub talk of recent days and general discussions among my circle of colleagues and friends - I'd like to think so.

My wish now is for the two-wheeled sport to be etched into our sporting culture for 12 months of the year and not just when international events such as the world titles or the Tour de France are held.

Is that a vivid possibility or am I still dreaming?

T&A registers at the B.O.

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:27:38 +1000

Roadshow is resorting to old-school showmanship to promote its vicious fishes epic, Piranha 3D.

In Hollywood lore, the name William Castle is not up there with the ‘Irving Thalberg’s or ‘Daryl F. Zanuck’s of the film world. But for some, including directors Joe Dante, Edgar Wright and John Waters, William Castle remains to this day, the greatest movie-marketer of all-time. As the producer of such classic B-movies as Macabre (1958), House on Haunted Hill (1959) and 13 Ghosts (1960), Castle would go to the outer limits of inspired showmanship to draw audiences into his schlock-busters. When he released The Tingler in 1959, random cinema seats were outfitted with an electric-shock device that would zap the audience at irregular intervals.

The spirit of William Castle is alive and well within the corporate walls of homegrown mega-distributor Village Roadshow, who have embraced the brazen cheesiness of their new release, Alexandre Aja’s Pirahna 3D, with a brilliant piece of tongue-in-cheek POS persuasion.

At a multiplex near you this weekend, you may encounter a bevy of bikini-clad hotties with what would appear to be large chunks of their torso torn away. Prosthetically-altered to resemble the by-product of a piranha attack, the game gals are spruiking the new blood-&-boobs epic in megaplex foyers in the Eastern states, no doubt to the puerile glee of the film’s mostly-male target demographic (and the eye-rolling chagrin of their good-natured girlfriends).

Erin Coogan, the Roadshow Film NSW promotions manager whose disturbed mind first conjured up the images of shredded models walking amongst unsuspecting cinemagoers, claims the devil-may-care nature of the promotion sprang from the film itself. “We wanted to go outside the normal grassroots advertising campaign for a film like Pirahna,” she says. “We gave images from the film to our in-house ad agency team and they created the make-up effects that we use on the girls. And we secured a Pirahna 3.0 boat to give away as part of the promotion, so the girls are handing out flyers in the foyers. It was important that there was lots of interaction.” Images of the blood-smeared models laughing it up with patrons have been posted to Roadshow Films’ Facebook page, where feedback and photos are being monitored.

If nothing else, the campaign certainly prepares you for the film experience you are about to see, in which a seaside township full of said hotties suffer more of the same. And don’t worry, ladies, there’s plenty of man-meat on display too – especially during an unforgettable scene, where a particularly sensitive male protuberance is dealt with in a very unforgiving, typically piranha-esque manner.

Coogan and her colleagues took their lead from the all-or-nothing marketing mindset that ensured solid opening figures in the US. In one memorable instance, the cast of the film recorded segments for a mock Oscar nomination campaign that has had over 203,000 hits on the Will Ferrell/Adam McKay-run comedy site Funny or Die.

Rest assured, the late William Castle (who dabbled in serious films briefly, as producer of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, 1968) would be giggling in his grave, knowing that his shameless showmanship has inspired young distribution execs to such low-brow mastery as that conjured by Village Roadshow this week. Like those that felt the jolt of The Tingler, he’d get a buzz out of it.

Read the review of Piranha 3D here

Watch an interview with genre supremo Joe Dante here

Ewan, son of McEwen

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

Responsibility weighed heavily on the Broom Wagon's chicken-like shoulders as it went to vote in the Federal Election on Saturday.

Responsibility weighed heavily on the Broom Wagon's chicken-like shoulders as it went to vote on Saturday.

Who would do the best job for the country? The Greens? That nice chap Tim who works in the bookshop, standing for the Socialist Alliance? The man from the Australian Sex Party, promising to rid the country of its inhibitions about large middle-aged men wearing comfortable sweaters? Just for a laugh, the Australian Democrats?

In the end the Broom Wagon bottled it and drew a picture of Bob Katter on the ballot paper - only later realising that Tim from the bookshop might have been the sounder choice.

A man whose shoulders are both broad and un-chicken-like is Shayne Bannan. On Tuesday the Australian selector announced the final squad for October's world championships.

While the in-form Allan Davis and Baden Cooke made the squad for the road race, Bannan cut Heinrich Haussler, Robbie McEwen and Mark Renshaw.

Haussler reportedly ruled himself out after setbacks in his rehab from a knee injury, but McEwen and Renshaw are fit and weren't best pleased about their omissions.

Renshaw declared himself very disappointed and "a little surprised at their selection".

McEwen pre-empted the announcement by revealing his axing on Twitter, and didn't let up afterwards.

"I don't think there are nine Aussies better suited to [the] Geelong course than myself," he twittered. "Proving to be a bitter pill, this one."

McEwen at least, is still in the race to be named Aussie Sports Dad of the Year - an achievement made all the more spectacular when you consider that he named his son Ewan McEwen.

The least Bannan can do to smooth things over is cast a vote.

Mørked øff

The surprise packet in the Australian worlds squad is veteran sprinter Cooke who, as Mike Tomalaris put it, appears to be trading on past glories rather than current form.

In news which may provide Bannan with a few restless nights, Cooke is a late exclusion from the year's third grand tour, the Vuelta a Espana, which kicks off this weekend.

The field is missing the biggest Spanish stars along with a number of the top overall contenders, with Denis Menchov, Frank Schleck and Giro star Vincenzo Nibali among the early favourites.

Some, like Philippe Gilbert, are unashamedly making up the numbers. The Belgian is gearing towards the world championships, and will use the Vuelta as a traditional heart-starter.

"It's an excellent race for training because there are many young riders doing their first Grand Tour," Gilbert said this week.

"They hurt our legs less than the experienced riders of the Tour de France."

Others, like Michael Mørkøv, will not be there at all.

Mørkøv was to have been Saxo Bank's late replacement for the injured Cooke, but his Vuelta entry was refused - not, as you might assume, because the UCI demands at least one conventional vowel, but because the team neglected to include him on their full roster submitted 20 days before the race.

"It sounds like a bad joke," Mørkøv told the Broom Wagon's first-choice Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet, which is no way a bad joke, or even a bad jøke.

"I'm on my way home from the Vuelta now ... because of some stupid paperwork.

"It's really, really bitter."

Dispatches from the Twitterverse

Thanks to Europe's tooth fairy and a strong Australian dollar, at least one member of the McEwen household is having a good week.

Marmalade on toast is not what it used to be @rorysutherland's household

What would professional cycling be like if ridden by easily amused six-year-olds? @BenKing89 investigates

@manuelquinziato presses 'random' and a great adventure begins

The de jonghs are going to the zoo, @stevendejongh reports. They will go by train.

Classic YouTube

Kandinsky sweeps into an early lead over Picasso as Monty Python stage a bike race.

A sweet alternative

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:53:29 +1000

Standing just 60 centimeters high with small green leaves the Paraguayan native, stevia (stevia rebaudiana) is an unremarkable looking plant, but it’s leaves may help alleviate sugar fueled health disorders.

Elisabeth Bastian of Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute grows stevia with her students, “It is very easy to grow from seed,” she says, “and powerful, some people say it has 300 times the sweetness of sugar.” Elisabeth describes the taste as liquorice, “and a little bit too antiseptic for my palate.”

However Anne Elliot of Slow Food Blue Mountains reckons it tastes ok when used in cooking, in place of sugar, “you can dry the leaves and grind them up to use in cooking, or make a ‘tea’ from them, steeping the leaves and using the liquid.”

Stevia was first cultivated in Japan. It has been used as an alternative to sugar since the 1970s and it now accounts for 40% of the sweetener sold in Japanese supermarkets. It is also common in China (where most of the world’s supply is grown), Russia, Korea, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina (where it is added to yerbe mate tea), Indonesia and Israel.

Stevia is available in Australian supermarkets as well, in a dehydrated powder and in tablet form like artificial sweeteners, or you can grow the leaves yourself and use it as Anne suggests. Seeds are available through The Diggers Club or check with Seed Savers in your area.

The University of Central Queensland’s Plant Sciences Group has been researching stevia since the 1990s, and made several submissions to Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) to have it approved as an, “Intense Sweetener.” Approval was finally granted in 2008. Because the leaves are so intensely sweet and contain no calories, soft drink manufacturers are particularly interested in the plant, hoping it can reform people’s attitude to ‘sugary’ soft drinks.

However Nutritionist, Dr Rosemary Stanton, warned against the use of sugar substitutes, even naturally occurring ones, in an interview with ABC Radio’s The World Today at the time of FSANZ’s approval. She is concerned about the false sense of security they can give to consumers, “I have a reservation in that many of the foods and drinks which contain artificial sweeteners or intense sweeteners are basically junk foods and a junk food with stevia is just as much junk food as a junk food with any other sweetener... So I think if it could be used in products like yoghurts, fruit products, some of those products that also contain some nutrients then it's probably a good thing, but if it's going to encourage you to really maintain the love of sweet drinks and sweet junk food then probably you're better off loosing that love.”

Do you grow stevia? How do you use it?

'Indonesia prefers Labor'

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:44:44 +1000

Australia's knife's-edge election made headlines around the world, including in our nearest neighbour, Indonesia.

It's not everyday that Australian issues make the front pages of Indonesia's newspapers and magazines. But one major Indonesian paper correctly predicted the outcome, splashing this headline on the front page of its Saturday edition: "Australia confronts prospect of minority government."

Successive Indonesian governments have worked with both Labor and Coalition governments over the years, strengthening our bilateral relationship. And Indonesian officials would never officially come out and say which party they'd prefer.

But various analysts, experts and commentators in Indonesia haven't been so shy about sharing their views.

Mutiara Pertiwi, an expert on regional issues at the Islamic State University, claims that the Indonesian government would rather continue to work with the incumbent Labor Party rather than the conservative Coalition. With Tony Abbott publicly declaring his stance as a climate change sceptic, Pertiwi has told the Jakarta Post: "The outlook of many observers in the region of Australia will definitely become far more pessimistic in regard to how the country may improve its record on climate change if Abbott is elected."

As the world's largest archipelago, Indonesia has been keen on climate change action.

The expert also says that the difference between Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard was the political legacies they inherited from their predecessors, John Howard and Kevin Rudd, with each having a noticeably different style in dealing with Australia's neighbours. He states that Howard was more confrontational; Rudd was friendlier.

The other big issue: asylum seekers.

A hot-button issue in Australia, it really hasn't registered on the minds of most Indonesians. Indonesia has been forced into the debate following two major incidents involving hundreds of Tamils in a stand-off with authorities at Java's Merak port last year. And with both Australian leaders pledging to 'stop the boats', many of which have been using Indonesia as a stepping stone, it seems that the country will be a part of the debate for some time to come.

And as a result, Hariyadi Wirawan, another regional expert from the University of Indonesia, says tensions over the issue will remain, whoever rises to power in Australia. But he adds: “At the end of the day, what matters to our government is the design of positive policies -- not who designed them.”

Spring lamb

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:08:27 +1000

Lambs. Doddery, wobbly legged, wonderful, playful lambs.

A neighbour reckons sheep always give birth in bad weather. Mine were born in the last week; when the rain fell heavily and the creek rose and the ewes, crazily, crossed over and their offspring, less than a day out of the womb, followed. I held my breath. Later I found one of the twins through the fence and up the road.

Two lambs met the outside world first on a cold night followed by a frosty morning. Mothers giving birth within hours of each other. The twins were later, and skinnier and more likely to wander off. They follow me as much as their mother. The risk of searching for them each morning is that they’ll see me and wander back to the house (over the creek) with me and not their mother. The risk of not searching each morning is that they may, yet again, have wandered off, out of the paddock, or into the creek.

The dry autumn has meant less feed for them than I’d hoped. They like a bit of lucerne chaff, I’ve discovered, though I’d rather they just ate grass. There’s grass aplenty in parts of the vegie garden that have been left over winter, but I can’t put the sheep in there.

Did a few chores this week. Spread a few hundred kilos of blood and bone over a paddock that the animals aren’t currently grazing, hoping to get some thicker, better growth come spring. Spread some gypsum and dolomite in the pig paddocks – they’ve turned it to mud and the gypsum will help break up the clay (they work it into the ground with their feet) while the dolomite helps cut the acid in the soil. I’ll re-sow that paddock in a few weeks, when the pigs come off it, though that means a year of no grazing, to let the pasture put down strong roots.

We’re starting to see signs of change as the days get longer. Already the wattle is in full bloom, a blaze of gold on the far hill. It’s that wonderful moment in the year, when the season hasn’t ticked over, but the plants are getting ready in anticipation.

This winter has been warm and dry, though it’s all relative. Warm in Tassie in winter is above 10°C. They tell me at the rural store that farmers have been busy this year, shunning the usual hibernation that sets in when it’s a bit cold and wet. Locals, me included, love the colder months, with their incredible light, moody hilltops, naked trees and steaming bowls of hearty food. Thankfully, none of that has changed. It’s still been cold enough to light a fire and stoke the Rayburn and eat slow cooked beef shin in red wine. In the depths of winter, the days still were cut markedly short, limiting the time I could spend outside doing chores, but not ruining the hours I did spend outside. Thanks to a milder, sunnier season, there was just a little more light and sunshine along the way.

Venga, Venga Le Vuelta

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

For some the Vuelta is a chance to put a little icing on the cake, for others it's an opportunity to save their season and for the one-day specialist it’s ideal preparation for the UCI Road World Championships.

It’s the third Grand Tour of the year and for some it's a chance to put a little icing on the cake, for others it's an opportunity to save their season and for the one-day specialist it’s ideal preparation for the UCI Road World Championships.

The Vuelta a Espana is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year and the peloton taking to the start line is as strong as the organisers could have hoped for.

In the 'icing on the cake' category is second and third from the Tour de France – Andy Schleck and Dennis Menchov – along with second and third from the Giro d’Italia – David Arroyo and Vincenzo Nibali.

Andy’s older brother Frank is among those trying to save his season after the disappointment of a broken collarbone at Le Tour. The accident prone Christian Vande Velde and Carlos Sastre, who has delivered limited results this year, will also be in the 'save the season' category.

Among those preparing for the world championships are big pre-race favourites Philippe Gilbert, Fabian Cancellara, Oscar Freire and Mark Cavendish. Plus a strong Australian contingent led by Stuart O’Grady, Simon Gerrans and Matt Goss.

The course is an odd one that makes it hard to predict the pattern of the race. There isn’t the traditional first week, normally suited to the sprinters, before hitting the classic high mountain stages.

The race starts with plenty of climbing and limited opportunities for the fast men. This could prove beneficial to those only intending to race the opening two weeks before making the long trip to Australia in pursuit of the rainbow jersey.

There are 44 categorised climbs throughout the race, with six mountain-top finishes among eight days classified as high mountain stages.

It’s also a race peppered with ample medium mountain stages, which will make controlling the race difficult. Hopefully this will provide plenty of entertainment.

In music to the ears of Frank Schleck there is only 59km against the clock, 13km of which are in the opening team time trial.

Here’s what we might be able to expect from some of the bigger names on the start line.

Andy Schleck (SaxoBank) – expect him to ride for brother Frank, but if the opportunity is there, why not. He rode the Vuelta last year as preparation for the world championships but looked fairly disinterested and didn’t finish. Frank’s motivation should rub off on Andy.

Frank Schleck (SaxoBank) – Frank will be aiming to become the first Schleck to win a Grand Tour. With the lack of kilometres against the clock, he is a contender.

Denis Menchov (Rabobank) – he’s won the race twice, plus a Giro, so knows what’s required. The Russian is either boiling hot or freezing cold. We’ll know at the end of the first week which one is in Spain. If he’s on, he can make it number three.

Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas-Doimo) – his season was tuned upside-down by the late call up to the Giro to replace Franco Pellizotti. After finishing third, Liquigas rested him from the Tour to prepare for the Vuelta. This will be his first test as absolute team leader in a Grand Tour. With a strong team by his side, including Roman Kreuziger, he’s one of the favourites.

David Arroyo (Caisse d’Epargne) – a brave second place at the Giro was made possible thanks to the big breakaway that gained him more than 10 minutes on all the favourites. He won’t get that much latitude here. A top five would be a great result. He’ll also have Luis Leon Sanchez by his side.

Carlos Sastre (Cervelo) – the sparkle of his 2008 Tour de France win has faded and with this being his third Grand Tour of the year, the general classification is surely out of reach. The hunt for stage victories should be high on his agenda.

Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Transitions) – he crashed out of the Giro on stage three with a broken collarbone, then exited the Tour on stage two with broken ribs. Fingers crossed he stays upright.

Ezequiel Mosquera (Xacobeo-Galicia) – having ridden the race three times, finishing fifth in 2007, fourth in 2008 and fifth in 2009, you can’t argue against his consistency. A genuine homeboy, he has done three days of racing outside of Spain this year. And given he makes Frank Schleck look like a time trial specialist, somewhere just off the podium seems to be his destiny.

The Australians

Stuart O’Grady (SaxoBank) – when looking for O’Grady in any race it’s the camera on Moto 1 you need. SaxoBank is likely to take the opening team time trial and will then have the leader’s jersey to defend, which is O’Grady’s bread and butter. But the lure of the rainbow jersey in Australia, and the prospect of getting his own opportunity, should see him abandoned late in the second week or early in the third week.

Simon Gerrans (Sky) – a stage winner at the Vuelta last year, it’s been a difficult season mainly due to the broken arm at the Tour destroying the team’s main objective for the year. Gerrans will be given a free hand to chase stage wins. He will find a breakaway as a point that puts him in the hunt for a stage. Also among Australia’s protected men for the world championships so making it to Madrid is unlikely to be high on the agenda.

Matt Goss (HTC-Columbia) – what a season; a stage win at the Giro, followed by the
Philadelphia International and recently taking out the GP Ouest France –Plouay. He’ll be the man leading Mark Cavendish out in the sprints. But as we saw at the Giro, when doing the job for Andre Greipel, if the opportunity is there he’ll take it. Also on the team for the world championships, he’ll be taking an early flight home, where a rainbow jersey isn’t beyond him.

Matt Wilson (Garmin-Transitions) – after a few seasons in the American wilderness,
Wilson returns to the Grand Tours. Working for Tyler Farrar in the sprints and Christian Vande Velde in the general classification, he’ll have a heavy but selfless workload.

And a special mention for Arthur Vichot (Francaise Des Jeux), the Tour Down Under cult figure, as he makes his Grand Tour debut.

A tough call, but the right one

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:00:00 +1000

After some initial reservations, Anthony Tan believes the riders selected for this year’s Worlds is the right nine.

“I’d say, across the board, it’s a stronger team this year. And it’s a stronger team based on the course, it suits this group more this year than last year.”

At 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, Cycling Australia’s chief selector, Shayne Bannan, outlined his reasons for choosing the deserving nine slated to compete in this year’s men's elite world championships road race.

With defending champion Cadel Evans, of course, they are Baden Cooke, Allan Davis, Simon Gerrans, Matt Goss, Mathew Hayman, Stuart O'Grady, Michael Rogers and Wesley Sulzberger.

That Bannan – along with the two other selectors, Brian Stephens and Rik Fulcher – believe the squad chosen to contest the 260-kilometre elite men’s road race is, on paper, superior to the nine he selected the previous year, should give Aussie cycling fans a lot of hope.

Let’s face it: with a slew of contenders – enough to field three top-notch Worlds teams, when you think about it – it was always going to be a tough decision.

And after listening to Bannan’s logic, despite having some initial reservations, I completely understand and agree with the choice he has made – a selection that I hope will deliver Australia back-to-back world road champions.

“No question, it was a lot of hours [and] a lot of discussion to finalise this team, over an extended period of time,” Bannan conceded.

“The course does determine the type of riders selected, the composition, and the balance in the team that we’re after.”

In fact, Bannan was less concerned with his choice of riders, which he divided into leaders (Evans, Gerrans), “second-tier leaders” (Goss, Davis) and workers (Hayman, Rogers, O’Grady, Cooke, Sulzberger) than the actual course.

Some parts are exposed to potentially wild winds – that being the 80-odd kilometres from Melbourne’s Federation Square – and other parts are yet to be built, namely the bridge leading to the second climb on the final circuit in Geelong.

“If we look at the course, the unknown is really the weather conditions. So the first 83 kilometres may or may not play a role in the race," Bannan explained.

“The only part of the course that I haven’t actually seen is the bridge that’s been constructed at the moment.

"What I understand is that it will play a significant role; the speed will really be nullified before they hit the second climb [of the Geelong circuit]. And that will play a major role, particularly in the last two or three laps.”

Asked to compare this year’s parcours with other Worlds courses, Bannan replied: “This course is probably a little bit more difficult than Madrid, so it’s around a Stuttgart [or] Salzburg type of course.

"The big difference being – and this is where it could play a significant difference in how the course is raced – is that the [elevation gain] is in the last 180 kilometres, as opposed to 3,076 metres being spread over the 260-kilometre distance.”

True enough, when one takes this into account, the final eleven circuits make this Worlds course on par with Mendrisio, which boasted an elevation gain of 4,655 metres – but over the total 262.2km distance.

“So therefore the type of rider we were looking for is somebody you would consider successful and play a significant roles in races like the Ardennes Classics, being the Amstel Gold Race, Liège, and to a lesser extent, Gent-Wevelgem. So they’re the type of characteristics we’re after," Bannan reasoned.

But really, Shayne, what we all want to know is this: is Australia a bona-fide contender to win again, and create another defining page in cycling’s greatest annals?

“I believe we are. I believe we’ve selected a really well-balanced team. I believe we’re a definite medal chance,” he said.

In my next blog, I’ll outline the reasons why some riders were selected, and others didn’t make the cut.

Why is 'Islamophobia' becoming acceptable?

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:57:47 +1000

It’s possible that I now hold actual proof the entire world, or at least the United States, is insane.

This past Saturday night I was a guest at a friend’s birthday barbecue in deepest New Jersey.

As cocktails mixed, the sun set and midnight approached, conversation cut to the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” that is neither at Ground Zero nor is a mosque.

Watch DATELINE report on the NY centre

How I love grown-up parties.

Discussion soon turned to rage about 9/11, Muslims, and terrorism before someone (it was, maybe thankfully, dark) claimed the proposed Cordoba Institute in lower Manhattan is part of a global takeover by Islamic extremists.

This claim came from someone who appeared to be an otherwise functioning human being and, smoking a cigar, relatively successful in life if you excused his confessed admiration for right wing cable television superstar Glenn Beck, an influential guy who claims President Obama is racist.

So I confess.

I was surprised a seemingly intelligent person really believed in a planned Islamic takeover of the United States but, then, perhaps I live in a bubble.

Or maybe it’s me who is dumb (this is possible).

As it turns out, according to a report last week, one in four Americans wrongly believe that President Obama, a Christian, is Muslim.

One in four.

That figure rises to one in three when Republicans are apparently surveyed, a result that is either way off target or many Americans are very stupid.

There is, however, another point of view more frightening than stupidity.

“The all-too-familiar scent of plain, old-fashioned racism hovers over the affair,” wrote Ramzi Kassem, of the City University of New York School of Law, in Sunday’s Daily News.

“That some are dissatisfied by Obama's policies cannot alone account for what the polls reflect,” he added. “Many past Presidents, perhaps all, sank in popularity during their tenure, but the result was not a widely held belief that the chief executive lied about his core identity.”

According to Kassem, race is being replaced by religion – specifically Islam – as a hate target.

“The Muslim male, as he exists in America's collective psyche, is today's ultimate ‘other,’ a menacing adversary with whom we are locked in existential struggle.

“What could be decried as hateful if directed at other communities is common currency today for politicians and pundits commenting on Islam. Islamophobia remains socially acceptable where other forms of bigotry have been suppressed.”

Protests on Sunday outside the proposed cultural centre certainly hinted at an agenda beyond honouring the memory of those who died during 9/11, as many claim the main issue to be.

This video, shot at the protests, reveals a very ugly side to supposed “patriotism” where a black man is harassed for apparently walking past the building.

“All y’all dumb motherfuckers don’t even know my opinion on shit’,” he tells protestors.

A shout of “He musta voted for Obama,” can be heard from the crowd.

Dumb? Racist? Stupid?

Nuts.

Frighteningly so.

Battle of the alien invasion movies

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

Sony accuses an independent producer of ripping off ideas and equipment.

Bad blood between the Hollywood studios over similarly-themed movies is nothing new but there’s an unusual twist to a dispute between Sony and an independent production house over two upcoming alien invasion sagas.

It’s a David and Goliath battle between Sony’s $100 million epic Battle: Los Angeles and indie movie Skyline (pictured) from Hydraulx Filmz. The studio claims Hydraulx executives ripped off equipment and ideas for their movie.

Sony evidently fears that Skyline, which Universal is due to launch in the US on November 12, will steal the thunder from its movie, which is scheduled for next March.

The row stems from the fact that Sony contracted Hydraulx to provide visual effects for Battle: Los Angeles, the saga of a Marine platoon confronting an alien invasion, starring Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Pena and Bridget Moynahan.

The team at Hydraulx allegedly omitted to mention they were making their own alien invasion movie that focuses on an extraterrestrial force which threatens to destroy the entire human population.

The matter may be headed to court as Sony has accused the indie company of breaching its visual effects agreement and demanded it cease using equipment which the studio claims it owns.

Hydraulx co-founder Greg Strause, who directed Skyline with his brother Colin, denies using Battle: Los Angeles equipment or stealing ideas from Sony’s movie. “We’ve been in the alien invasion business for many years before Battle LA,"

Greg Strause told The Wrap. "The first movie I directed was an alien invasion, called Alien Vs Predator: Requiem. That’s one of the reasons they came to us, we do computer generated aliens well." He insists that Battle producer Neal Moritz was informed about their movie last autumn.
According to The Wrap, Sony was shown footage from Skyline and offered the chance to distribute it earlier this year, and declined. Universal and Ryan Kavanaugh’s Relativity Media subsequently acquired the US rights. The trailer got a positive reaction from the audience at the Comic-Con International convention in San Diego last month.

The filmmakers suspect Sony is trying to force Universal to delay the launch of Skyline until after its movie opens. However the dispute pans out, it seems unlikely to affect the rival films’ Australian release dates. Hopscotch plans to debut Skyline on November 11 while Sony has dated its movie for March 24.

Fly me to the moon

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

There's good and bad news if you plan to redesign Australia's cities in the shape of rhinoceroses and pineapples, writes the Broom Wagon.

If the federal election campaign has motivated you to civic action, you may well be about to launch a plan to redesign Australia's cities in the shape of rhinoceroses and pineapples.

If so, there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that you won't have to worry about Melbourne, which is already shaped like a squid. The bad news is that according to the Sudanese Government's best estimates the project will cost you $11 billion.

For that sort of money you could buy hundreds of rhinoceroses and get rid of the cities altogether.

Chris White's scheme to launch an Australian team on the ProTour is almost as bold but, thankfully for White, a good deal less expensive.

A ProTour team can be run for around $14 million per year. That is tea and biscuits to the free-spending Sudanese, who will probably launch their own team or two as soon as they collect the change from behind the couch.

But here it is serious money – enough, for example, to cover the combined salary caps of the Sydney Roosters and Collingwood and still leave you with over $2 million in beer money.

White, a 42-year-old accountant, is so confident of raising the required sponsorship for Fly V Australia he has already applied for a ProTour license 12 months ahead of earlier forecasts.

"The world of cycling has been talking about establishing an Australian ProTour team for a number of years and now it's just about to happen," White said this week.

"Fly V will be well funded and resourced and we will want to compete at the highest level and that includes the Tour de France next July."

With 14 teams in the hunt for only eight available ProTour licenses for 2011, the odds appear to be against Fly V. But White has the early support of UCI chief junket taker Pat McQuaid, who is perhaps anticipating an expenses-paid tour of Healesville Sanctuary.

''I have been saying for two years that we need an Australian ProTour team, that cycling is strong enough in Australia - and that Australian cyclists are strong enough … if they came together with Australian sponsors - to have an Australian ProTour team, '' McQuaid told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Heady times indeed.

Helen of Joy

ProTour heavyweights Andre Greipel, Michael Rogers and Mark Renshaw are among the provisional starters for September's Tour of Britain.

Mat Hayman and Greg Henderson fill out a Team Sky roster that also includes local hopes Bradley Wiggins, Geraint Thomas, Steve Cummings and Russell Downing.

The potential start list is all very exciting – unless you are the Guardian's Helen Pidd, in which case it is crushingly depressing.

Pidd's bubble was pricked by the Tour's call for local lasses to audition for the role of "presentation hostess", for which they would receive £50 per day plus accommodation and expenses.

"The bad news is that the chosen lady will not be giving the gents what-for on her bicycle," wrote Pidd in what the Broom Wagon will assume was a single entendre, "but looking pretty on the podium, kissing the sweaty cheek of whichever man wins the day's stage."

So far, so cheerless, but Pidd has a long bow and - lo! - she will draw it.

"What is crushingly depressing is that the hostesses ... tend to be top cyclists themselves," she said.

"Isn't it sad that despite the UK boasting some of the world's finest female cyclists in Nicole Cooke, Victoria Pendleton and Lizzie Armitstead, the only visible way for women to get involved in the UK's biggest professional bike race is to give out the prizes?"

The Broom Wagon is a simple sort, but it has always understood that podium girls tend to be models, while, in a surprising twist, the world's finest female cyclists tend to spend their time cycling.

Dispatches from the Twitterverse

@wegelius has time on his hands. Can Twitter help? Yes, yes, yes and yes

The fingers are crossed and the life jackets inflated as the Schleck brothers go fishing

Steven Seagal: bad car, worse driver, reports @Bridie_OD

@stephenfarrand denies rumours his biological passport came under WADA scrutiny

Mysteriously deserted by all of his followers, @stevendejongh soldiers on, a lone, heroic tree tweeting in a forest

Classic YouTube

After breaking his spine during the 1978 Commonwealth Games, British track rider Dave Legrys turned his attention to breaking records. Here he has a crack at the world speed record on rollers and one enormous chainring.

Fincher finds his femme fatale

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:21:08 +1000

Rooney Mara has landed the role of Lisbeth Salander in the US remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

In the end it appears that proximity was the key. When filmmaker David Fincher finally put an end to his search for the actress to portray crime fiction’s newly celebrated anti-heroine, Lisbeth Salander, in the Hollywood version of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, he turned to 25-year-old Rooney Mara (pictured), who had recently worked for him on this December’s The Social Network.

In the story of the rise and rise of Facebook, Mara plays the college student who breaks up with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), inspiring him to start coding; in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first part of the Millennium Trilogy, Mara will play the brilliant, diminutive young punk who hacks computers, blackmails and brutalises the Swedish lawyer who sexually assaults her, sleeps with men and women without emotional explanation, tracks a killer and physically confronts anyone who tries to stand over her, no matter what the odds. That’s something of a step up.

Mara, whose comparatively small CV includes the lead in the recent A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot and the straight to DVD in Australia Youth in Revolt, not only has to bear up to the burden of the readers who’ve purchased 27 million copies of the late author’s door-stop thick crime thrillers, but also 30-year-old Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, who has proven a formidable Salander in the three Swedish language adaptations that have already enjoyed blockbuster status in Europe. The second installment of that series, Daniel Alfredson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire, opens locally on September 23.

Mara doesn’t have long to prepare. She’s due in Sweden next month, for location shooting in a Hollywood remake not only directed by the legendarily demanding Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac), but also starring Daniel Craig as investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist with a script by the esteemed Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List). The cast will speak English, with Swedish accents, but there will be no wholesale transplant to the United States.

While Craig was confirmed comparatively easy, the search for an American Salander was an involved, increasingly public process. Based on box-office sales, an early favourite was Twilight star Kristen Stewart, but Fincher reportedly preferred an up and comer, with those tested including ethereal Australian actress Sophia Lowe (Beautiful Kate). When Harry Potter star Emma Watson recently cut her hair down to a pixie-style crop reports soon circulated that it was in a bid to convince Fincher to give her the underground-styled part, although her representatives denied it. But the role, and the responsibility to be fierce, inscrutable and tragically damaged by the Swedish state’s corruption, went to Mara. In December of 2011 we’ll find out how she fared.

Why BHP’s Potash bid breathes life into the market.

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:48:14 +1000

BHP Billiton has pulled the trigger, now expect a rush of other majors to battle for value on the share market.

Make no doubt about it… BHP wants Canada’s Potash Corp. So much so, the company’s going straight to shareholders in a hostile takeover worth $43 billion, or $US130 per share. That’s because the Potash board rejected a proposal put to its board.

Success would see BHP become the largest fertiliser supplier in the world, at a time when fertiliser prices have recovered following a slump during the global financial crisis.

Right now, analysts are mulling the fine print to work out whether this is a good deal for BHP shareholders, and if it’s an indication the BHP/Rio Tinto Pilbara iron ore joint venture will now not go ahead.

The immediate consensus is that BHP would have to raise its offer price, given shares in Potash jumped to $143 per share, 10 per cent above the bid.

This deal though, may be a major turning point for the share market. As Ben Potter from IG Markets points out, many market watchers were looking for a catalyst to drive the market, and this deal could provoke other mergers and acquisitions. Why? Because many corporations are sitting on large amounts of cash, earning very little return.

The global financial crisis has reduced investor and corporate confidence, and thus risk, so many have been leaving their cash in banks earning very little. But as share prices eroded, certainly some value must be kicking in.

Charlie Aitken at Southern Cross Equities believes we’ll see a raft of M&A activity as a result, so he’s continuing to set portfolios for rises in commodity prices and positioning for growth. Aitken thinks the best value on the share market, remains in growth stocks. He notes obvious takeover targets like Macarthur Coal, Alumina, Fortescue Metals, Riversdale, Equinox Minerals, Whitehaven Coal, ERA and Western Areas, and that they’d be the ones he would be adding to a portfolio first, not just for takeover potential, but because he believes this is where the cheap growth in the market is.

There’s been a number of takeover approaches already this year, the most recent being Intoll Group, Centennial Coal and AWB… how many more will we see this year?

Watch this space!

Of course before making any financial or investment decisions, speak with your financial planner to find out what is suitable, for you.

A Delhi-cate selection

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

I can't help but think selectors may have already named the "final nine" men's elite riders for the UCI World Championships in Geelong.

As we wait in anticipation for Tuesday's final selection of the Australian men's elite team to compete at the UCI Road World Championships in Geelong, I can't help but think selectors may have already picked the "final nine".

After looking at the five names to represent the green and gold of Australia at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, I keep asking myself if this is this a sign from the powers-that-be?

Allan Davis, Matthew Hayman, Mark Renshaw, Richie Porte and Chris Sutton are going to Delhi - it's official.

Does their selection indicate they will not be in the road team for Geelong and by travelling to India they have been handed a "consolation prize?"

If that's the case, then what's the point of naming a 15-man Long Team in the first place?

The question of whether selectors choose an Australian worlds team based on form or reputation has been raised more than once in recent days.

Despite the long distances from Geelong to Delhi and the fact that the two gold medal events are separated by just seven days, I'd like to think Aussie riders would always be prepared to represent the national team, whatever the sacrifices and the gruelling travel times involved.

This being the case why isn't Robbie McEwen, Stuart O'Grady or Cadel Evans going to India?

Have they already notified Australia's coaching staff of their non-interest of appearing in the heat of Delhi after a long season on the pro-circuit?

Surely, if they can be earmarked for selection at the World Championships, then you'd think they'd be the first names on the sheet for anything less.

Is it simply a case of the Commonwealth Games losing its edge or, God forbid - prestige?

I mean when you've conquered the podiums of the Tour de France and/or other big races of Europe there's not much else for Australia's elite for which to aspire.

For mine, Mark Renshaw should be one of the first riders selected given his form this season.

How devastated will he be if he receives notification from the high performance coaches Shayne Bannan or Neil Stephens, his services in Victoria are not required?

I hope I'm wrong but by finalising the Commonwealth Games squad before the final selection of the worlds men's road race is released, I trust selectors won't be left with red faces.

Not cool to be Kewell

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:20:46 +1000

The much-publicised stoush between former Socceroo Robbie Slater and current star Harry Kewell says as much about both men as it does the argument, writes SBS Sports presenter Rob Grasso.

What was Harry thinking?

That was my immediate reaction upon witnessing the carnage unfold live on national television last night.

Just why did one of the most celebrated strikers in Socceroos history feel a need to get embroiled in a slanging match with media commentator, Robbie Slater over an article he wrote recently in the Sunday Telegraph.

So a former Socceroo thinks, at 31 you’re past it as a player and that a fellow senior squad member told you to f… off.

So what? Ignore the criticism; just as countless other high profile professional footballers have done over the decades.

Surely after playing in two failed World Cup campaigns and taking the field at the Finals in two more, the Galatasaray forward would realize he doesn’t have to justify himself to anyone. Let alone someone taking a cheap shot at him in the nation’s press.

Rule number one of public relations. Never fuel a fire.

Kewell and his advisors should have known better than to take the bait and agree to a live interview. But no, instead of a fire extinguisher, we received a Molotov cocktail or two from Camp Kewell. Make that 1,000.

I’ve spoken to both men over the past decade on numerous occasions and found both amiable and level headed. But Tuesday night’s debacle was just plain embarrassing. For the men involved and for the game itself.

It was saddening to see and it was obvious Kewell was hurt by the criticism.

"When he writes something like a player told me to `F off' and saying that I was no value to the Socceroos any more, I find that a little bit harsh,” said the Socceroos striker.

If anything, a prepared media statement would have been far more beneficial and appropriate than for Harry to be dragged down to his attacker’s level in a live situation.

If Slater hoped to improve his credibility, he failed. If Kewell wanted to show he’s above the fray and unaffected by criticism, he also fell down.

As Harry may have correctly surmised, "The only circus created is one by him (Slater) and his mates and I'm ashamed by it.”

Unfortunately after last night’s tirade, the Barnum and Bailey parade looks set to continue over the coming days.

Welcome to the sideshow Holger Osieck.

The second winter garden

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:41:20 +1000

As I mentioned a little earlier, my backyard patch has been aseasonal this winter. Rather than the bleak harvest of cabbage from the previous year, this season promises a voluminous crop.

My tactic has to plant whatever worked last year alongside heirloom vegetables that are nigh on impossible to buy at a reasonable price. This somehow breaks a golden rule of backyard vegetable gardening: if you’re not doing this for survival, only plant what you like to eat.

To be sure, I have planted a full court press of brassicas but in a wider range of varieties than last year: frilly leaves of red Russian kale, purple cabbage, Chinese cabbage (wong bok), Calabrese broccoli, a commercial looking variety of cauliflower that was on sale at my local supermarket and ruby brussel sprouts.

I planted twice as much beetroot as the previous year and am being repaid handsomely. I’ve planted 'chioggia' that grows with alternating white and pink concentric rings, 'golden' that promises yellow flesh that does not bleed, and 'blankoma' that grows roots that are a shade of bright white. A few messy rows of the higher yielding 'globe' beetroot take up the rest of the patch, destined for more bottling.

Filled with an uncharacteristic bout of wintertime hubris, I’ve also decided to renovate the whole patch and build the sort of garden beds that grace the screens of many a garden show: four beds constructed from the old redgum stumps from beneath my house and thick slabs of redgum to replace the CCA-treated pine slabs that currently holds the dirt in place.

While there is much talk on the dangers of treated pine use in garden beds, my decision was based on price: each redgum sleeper was $2 a piece more than the equivalent pine, so I thought why not?

“CCA” stands for “copper chrome arsenate” and is shorthand to say that the pine planks were treated with the chemicals to retard fungal growth and deter termites. An untreated pine sleeper might last a few years in the ground; a treated one a few decades.

The research into the effects of CCA treated pine on garden beds shows that it is safe. In a review of the research, the CSIRO states:

A number of studies have shown that CCA is not absorbed into above-ground food crops such as grapes, tomatoes and cucumbers. There are, however, some reports of a slight increase in arsenic content in root crops such as carrots and beets grown against treated timber, although the arsenic is in a safe organic form and most of it is removed with peeling.

Any concern can be eliminated by growing these vegetables more than 100 mm from treated timber garden edgings or by lining the edgings with plastic. This has the additional useful effect of reducing soil contact with the wood, which could further extend the wood's life.

Further, if the arsenic is released from the timber, it is in a relatively safe form. At least for beagles and sheep:

Ingestion studies with animals have shown that this greatly reduces its mammalian toxicity. For example, no evidence of toxicity was found after beagle dogs were fed 10 grams of CCA-treated sawdust per day for five days in food. Seventy percent of the arsenic passed with wood through the faeces. The rest was expelled in urine, having been extracted from wood in the stomach. The bulk (85 per cent) of the urinary arsenic was detoxified to dimethylarsinic acid.

In another experiment, researchers in New Zealand found no abnormalities after sheep and calves were fed 454 grams of CCA-treated pine on one occasion, or 113 grams per day for 25 days.

The missing links

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

Out of those who missed the long-team cut for the Worlds, Anthony Tan believes there to be one or two oversights from the selectors.

What were originally 22 are now 15. By Tuesday next week, 24 August, that number will be down to nine.

Yes, I’m referring to the Australian men’s team for the 2010 world championship road race, to be staged in Geelong on 3 October. If there was such a thing as a good headache surely this it – but what about those who have missed the cut, when the long team was announced last Wednesday?

Matt Lloyd, Brett Lancaster, Luke Roberts and the brothers Meyer, Cameron and Travis, will not get a guernsey.

Let’s start with Lloyd. I would describe his 2010 season as something of a breakthrough, winning a stage at the Giro d’Italia and with his back to the wall, battling all the way to Verona to secure the mountains competition.

At the Tour de France, he did nothing special on an individual level, even though his want was to go for the polka-dot jersey, but still, the 27-year-old Victorian worked his proverbial butt off for Belgian team-mate Jurgen Van Den Broeck, who finished fifth overall.

Clearly, he doesn’t shirk domestique duties and would have been a great asset to the squad on this deceptively difficult finishing circuit; for these reasons, I felt ‘Lloydy’ deserved a place over Baden Cooke or Chris Sutton in the long team.

To date Lancaster, affectionately known as ‘Burt’ or ‘Big Bird’, has also had a solid year, his most notable achievement coming after a rain-soaked day in May’s Tour of California, where, isolated without team-mates, he outsmarted and out-sprinted a select 27-man group to claim the second stage.

He also has a Tour de France in his legs where he rode at the service of Thor Hushovd, who finished third in the race for Green, and if the Worlds does come down to a semblance of a sprint finish, Burt’s a good guy to have.

But Mark Renshaw and Matthew Goss, who did make the 15-man cut, are equally good lead-out men and have experienced first-class seasons, so his omission is understandable.

Roberts, who after a two-year hiatus returned to the ProTour in moo-moo Milram colours, has had a year not to be sneezed at – he rode a great Tour Down Under to finish fifth overall and won a stage in Murcia shortly thereafter.

But going to the Tour de France without a real GC man (Linus Gerdemann has yet to fulfil his promise and most likely never will) and a second-rate sprinter in Gerald Ciolek does not send the right signals, and the squad’s final position in the teams classification – dead last – was an inglorious end to Milram’s swansong year. In such circumstances, it’s hard to stand out.

The omission of Travis Meyer, although our national champion, is a reasonable one. The Worlds road race, an unpredictable and unwieldy affair at the best of times simply due to some fifty nations rocking up and anything from one to nine-man squads, calls for bundles of experience, and this neo-pro does not yet have that.

But his older sibling, national TT champ Cameron, although only a second-year pro, probably deserved inclusion in the long-team time trial squad. Richie Porte, Cadel Evans and Michael Rogers were the chosen names, but if Evans and Rogers are going to concentrate on delivering an Aussie victory in the road race, why not send a pair of precocious young guns to the time trial?

I felt Meyer’s third-place result in the Tour of Oman TT (over 19 kilometres) behind Edvald Boassen Hagen and Fabian Cancellara was on par with Porte’s TT win at the Tour de Romandie (23.4km).

However at the same time, I can understand why ‘Dodger’, as a triple world TT champ, got the nod, notwithstanding Mick’s TT results to date – third to David Millar and Alberto Contador at the Critérium Internationale TT (over 7.7km), fourth to Porte, Alejandro Valverde and Vladimir Karpets in Romandie (23.4km), and second to team-mate Tony Martin at the Tour of California (32km). I just felt Cam Meyer had the potential to create an upset.

Of course, one can debate hard and long into the night about who should be in and who should be out, and I acknowledge the unenviable task of our chief national selector, Shayne Bannan, AIS Cycling Head Coach and National Performance Director.

I’m just glad I’m not him.

Exhibitors search for gold amongst the guff

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:42:32 +1000

This week, Queensland’s Gold Coast is the epicentre of Australia’s film industry, as the country’s film distributors spruik their upcoming releases to the exhibitors on whose screens their films will play. 

In a knowing nod to the unpredictable nature of the business of entertainment, the Australian International Movie Convention takes place at Jupiter’s Resort and Casino Complex. Forget the black jack tables and incessant pokies, the real gamble lies in knowing which of the films coming down the pipe will connect with audiences, from the avalanche of trailers, features and ‘sizzle reels’ that form the bulk of distributor presentations. (And speaking of sizzle, Twentieth Century Fox took it to the nth degree this morning with a live samba rendition of ‘I Go to Rio’ replete with carnivale dancers, steel drummers and some embarrassed looking saxophonists, to promote the release of its next drawcard animated 3D film, Rio, pictured.)

Distributors are the first to admit that they don’t know which films will break through the magic $10 million barrier that is used as a benchmark of success at events like this (where the victors receive spoils in the form of oversized plaques), so they do their darnedest to pitch each film with a touch of ‘If you liked this then you’ll love this…’ showmanship in a bid to entice exhibitors to book them and back them to the hilt.

But with a Federal election merely days away, the distributors aren’t the only ones with a sales pitch to the film industry; Shadow arts minister Steven Ciobo stopped by Jupiters this morning for a stump speech to seize on the enthusiasm for all things film, and spruik the Coalition’s Arts Policy. The centrepiece of the policy is a $60 million fund aimed at boosting investment in new films and to “refocus Australian film production on commercial outcomes”. If elected, an Abbott government would implement the fund to match a distributor’s outlay (of between $2 million and $10 million) on eligible Australian films with production budgets between $7 million and $30 million (it’s no coincidence that these budget ranges are well in excess of those of your ‘average’ Australian kitchen sink drama).

While the announcement was made as most of the delegates sat watching Fox’s presentation of a work-in-progress print of Oliver Stone’s ‘tweaked version’ of Wall Street sequel, Money Never Sleeps, it nonetheless earned in-principle support from industry groups such as the Screen Producers Association of Australia, and the Motion Picture Distributors’ Association of Australia.

Veg with heart

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:28:09 +1000

Now this is a cabbage. Ox heart, it’s called, and looking at its glorious shape, that’s the perfect name for it. It could even be compared to the flame from a torch. (It’s organic, you can tell from the slug holes.) Inside it’s sweet and fat and juicy, but not very tight-headed. That, most likely, is a fault in the growing. Or, as is usually the case, a fault with the grower. I didn’t really water the vegie garden all winter, thinking that with low light and after last year’s deluge, the garden wouldn’t need it. No matter, what there is of the cabbage is as crisp and juicy as an iceberg lettuce and I make a winter risotto using it and some corned beef and the beef’s cooking water.

Winter ends suddenly, here, I remember from last year; a warning of what is about to leap upon us. The quince has buds on. The ornamental cherries in Hobart are in blossom. Longer days means grass is growing and bulbs are shooting and the bees are becoming more active. That, and we still have a couple of weeks before spring.

I’ve written, again, a list of chores. Make bee boxes. Add dolomite to paddocks to make the soil less acidic. Buy some blood and bone. Look at gypsum as a way to break up clay in the soak. Move pigs. Again. Consider getting a silo.

Bella has moved in. My gorgeous tall new Wessex sow has arrived and is settling in well. She’s in pig, due in a couple of months, and Tinkerbell is due next month. There’ll be a lot of little ones digging up the property in no time. I still have eight porkers fattening in the paddock, and big plans to have a new home for all the pigs by the middle of spring. Well, the new home for the porkers isn’t as exciting for them as it is for the business. They’ll be ready to take off any day now, and part of me is dreading the thought of dropping them off at the abattoir. Pure bred, old breed and magnificent, these are the first I’ve seen from the day they were born to now: Puggle Farm’s first litter, and all the more special – and heartbreaking to say goodbye to – because of it.

In the garden, things are moving slowly. The weeds are tall, as is the “green manure” a crop of nitrogen fixing plants that I sowed in autumn and that will be mulched into the soil. Just a few no-dig potato beds going in – a couple of plants every two weeks, staggering the crop (to avoid frost as well as for practical reasons when going to eat them).

Lambs are due soon. Asparagus should be out of the ground in days. Maggie is still two months off coming home and before she comes there is hay to think about buying and storing, new fences for a borrowed paddock and the promise of a new calf to deal with. The list of chores is only going to get longer.

Trek along the tea trail

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:23:23 +1000

Melbourne-based Nathan Wakeford’s first trip to a tea estate in Sri Lanka was eye opening. “From the moment I arrived I realised I was seeing something very special, a quality of tea we have never seen in Australia. At that moment I also realised how much more I had to learn,” he says.

On that first trip Nathan visited 13 farms, and has since travelled to ‘speciality tea’ plantations across the region, by the end of the year he will have visited every farm he buys tea from making trips to Sri Lanka, India, China, Taiwan and Japan. “Travelling to meet the farmers means I get to see first hand how the tea is farmed and how workers are treated. Transparency is important, and I want to be able to pass that on to customers, so that they know exactly where their tea comes from and that is ethically produced.”

Getting customers to grasp the notion of ‘speciality tea’ has been another challenge: “People have this myopic view of tea, mostly in tea bags,” he says. “But there is so much nuance in tea, the leaves of one particular bush will taste different day to day, like coffee and wine, the specific terrior including the elevation, the tea’s position on the hill and the micro climate all make a difference to what you taste.”

Tea quality comes from a combination of factors:
Terrior – the unique characteristics of the growing area Harvest and handling – ensuring tea pickers pluck the right "generation" of leaves under the expert instruction an experienced tea farm manager Withering – starting flavour development and preparing the tea for rolling by reducing the moisture in the leaf Rolling – in the case of black tea, rolling starts the enzyme reaction known as oxidisation which develops the character of the tea Fermentation/oxidisation – the duration varies according to the flush, the inherent character in the leaf, the climatic conditions, and the variety (oolong is partially fermented, black tea fully oxidised).
Then there’s the brewing. Nathan says the usual ‘teaspoon’ measurement per cup varies wildly. For a rolled leaf tea like Chinese ‘gunpowder tea’ a teaspoon may only equate to 2g, while a teaspoon of Japanese ‘gokou’ (matcha powder) could be 5g, best to work on the ratio of tea needed to make a 100ml he says.

“There are lots of variables that affect flavour, it is a matter of trial and error. Experimenting with different degrees in water temperature and longer and shorter periods of steeping is the only way to find the best window for a tea’s flavour profile,” he says.

Tea first landed on our shores with the First Fleet, the English were well and truly addicted to it. From the early 17th Century they began drinking Chinese tea and once they had the taste for it, they wouldn’t let it go. By 1776 they were so obsessed, and so broke having spent a fortune in tea and cargo to get it to London, they decided the only way to pay for their favourite tipple was to raise revenue through the sale of opium – to the Chinese.

The Chinese became addicted, with more than 12 million of their people estimated to have been using the drug. The country’s economy and army were in ruin. Emperor Daoguang demanded Britain stop sending opium and in 1839 war broke out, the Chinese suffered a humiliating defeat after two years of fighting, which resulted in the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. The Treaty gave Britain ownership of Hong Kong and trading rights in all Chinese ports.

The Brits continued to take the tea trade very seriously, and by the 18th Century had exerted their control over plantations in India. By the 1880s Sir Thomas Lipton had arrived, taking over ailing coffee plantations in Ceylon and planting tea, the British now had a tea supply of very their own.

All tea comes from the ‘Camellia sinensis’ plant native to Southern China and parts of Southeast Asia. There are three main varietals: China bush, Assam bush and Java bush. Hybrids have been developed across tea growing regions by individual growers to ensure better yields and quality, for example ‘gokou’ developed specifically for the Kyoto region of Japan and for producing matcha tea.

More Information Video - on the tea trail Somage
Recipes Marbled eggs Moroccan mint tea Fennel and tea smoked salmon

What to do with Ground Zero?

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:56:50 +1000

Friends live in Battery Park City, a part of Manhattan built on rubble from the construction of the World Trade Center in the late 1960s.

In the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center, their building was shut down, smothered in debris and dust.

Today, from their 17th floor lounge-room window, you can look straight down into the heart of Ground Zero, the desolate hole in the ground barren for many years but more recently a construction zone as new buildings rise up to replace those that fell.

For New Yorkers, 9-11 has never really gone away and remains an emotional touch paper for many. It’s also an easy button to press for politicians looking to establish apparent patriotic credentials.

So it comes as no surprise that a plan to build “a mosque at Ground Zero” has become a flashpoint and one of the hottest national topics in the middle of this American summer.

Critics claim such a building on such a site (“on hallowed ground”, according to several descriptions) is an insult to those who died in 2001.

“I don’t want to be lectured by them about religious liberty at a time when there is not a single church or single synagogue in Saudi Arabia,” claimed Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, maybe forgetting one of the key differences between the United States and Saudi Arabia is religious freedom.

“Where does the funding come from for a $100-million mosque?” asked inquisitive Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York State Governor (probably the same place as most other new constructions).
Crackpots have populated Internet posts (some suggesting this is part of an Obama plan to introduce Sharia law to the US) but most have missed some key points.

Importantly, visions of minarets, golden domes and stars and crescents overlooking the World Trade Center Site are not part of the plan.

In fact, this “Ground Zero Mosque” is not actually a mosque but a cultural centre based on the YMCA (this prompted one witty critic to suggest outrage should be directed at the construction of a swimming poll on the site, which was possibly more inappropriate).

The original building, actually located several blocks north of Ground Zero, and nearby another existing mosque, is the former site of a discount clothing retailer damaged by landing gear from one of the planes that hit the Twin Towers nine years ago.

Ironically, the group planning the centre claims to want to foster “inter faith understanding”.

That idea is not working out too well at first look but the issue has brought to the forefront just where Islam in a post-9/11 world fit.

It also shows how New York, especially Manhattan, is a complex city of many, many, layers.

There are many critics from outside New York (including former Alaska governor Sarah Palin) but NY Governor David Patterson offered to find an alternative location for the proposed centre as compromise.

Manhattan borough President Scott Stringer supports the construction of the centre while New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg made an impassioned speech on religious freedoms.

“We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else,” Bloomberg said.

Last weekend, President Obama too claimed the issue was not about 9/11 but the US Constitution.

“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,” Obama said at a dinner celebrating Ramadan (triggering more radical Christian outrage).

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

It was, however, a Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat, who made a somewhat overlooked but important point.

“I recently got back from Afghanistan and, you know, we’re sending young majors in Army, Marines, Special Forces people, into villages to try to find common ground with Muslims to try to put aside the obvious differences that might superficially appear,” he said.

“And if we can't do that here in the United States, then we’re going to have a very difficult time over there.”

2010 cinema’s worst ever year?

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:55:11 +1000

One pundit has already written off this year as a disaster for cinema.

The movie line-up this year hasn’t been terrific but is 2010 the worst ever for cinema?

I think that’s a premature and highly questionable call but one prominent US critic has already written off the year. “In a millennium that has thus far produced precious few motion pictures in the same class as The Godfather, Jurassic Park, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, My Fair Lady and The Matrix, there is a knee-jerk tendency to throw up one's hands and moan that the current year is the worst in the history of motion pictures. But 2010 very possibly is the worst year in the history of motion pictures,” declares the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Queenan.

As evidence, Queenan derides Iron Man 2 as insipid, mocks Robin Hood as ‘prince of duds’ (no argument there), and takes a whack at Grown Ups, Sex and the City 2, Prince of Persia, “anything that positions Jennifer Aniston or John C. Reilly at the top of the marquee,” Legion, Edge of Darkness, The Back-up Plan and Hot Tub Time Machine.

To be sure, there are some dreadful, cringe-worthy movies in that list, to which I’d add howlers such as Centurion, Dear John, The Rebound, From Paris With Love and Valentine’s Day.

Queenan does mention a few movies he liked including The Kids Are All Right (“arguably the most heart warming lesbian romantic comedy ever”), The Hurt Locker, Crazy Heart and Inception.

But he ignores or maybe didn’t care for a sizable number of other movies that I’ve enjoyed and would put forward as proof that 2010 isn’t as lousy as Joe thinks. Among the stand-outs: Ben Stiller’s wonderful turn as a layabout with mental issues in Greenberg; the gripping Israeli drama Lebanon; the ultra-stylish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; Michael Caine as a vengeful pensioner in Harry Brown; George Clooney and Vera Farmiga’s doomed romance in Up in the Air; and a superb French movie, The First Day of the Rest of Your Life.

It’s been a reasonable year for Oz cinema so far with Jeremy Sims’ Beneath Hill 60 brilliantly evoking an Australian campaign in World War I, and David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom now getting rave reviews in the US, hailed by Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers as a “pulverizing Aussie crime drama that cuts to the dark heart of the killing machine known as family.”

And making a judgement about 2010 when we’re yet to see a bunch of movies with promising pedigrees, such as Doug Liman’s Fair Game, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, seems exceedingly rash.

Still, it’s hard to disagree with Queenan’s assertion that “the age of the bankable, sure-fire matinee idol seems to be over, as the industry has discovered with Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts' most recent films. Freshly minted stars like Clive Owen and Daniel Craig sometimes open big, and sometimes do not open at all.”

Queenan laments the dearth of contemporary action stars and slams the recent efforts of Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia (pictured), Adrien Brody in Predators and Liam Neeson in The A-Team.

Indeed, what does it say about the current crop of wannabe he-men when the No. 1 movie in the US this weekend is The Expendables, directed by and starring Sylvester Stallone alongside other wrinklies in Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li?

Death for Abu Bakar Bashir?

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:32:15 +1000

Abu Bakar Bashir, regarded as the spiritual leader and co-founder of the militant network Jemaah Islamiyah, is once again behind bars. And he is now facing a possible death sentence.

Many Australians hold him responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. Indeed he served just over two years in prison for conspiracy over the bombings before he was released after Indonesia's Supreme Court overturned his conviction late in 2006.

Victims and their families were outraged when he walked free, disputing the new evidence: testiomony from convicted bomber Amrozi, saying that he hadn't asked or received a blessing from the cleric ahead of the bombings.

Now, fours years later, Indonesia's elite counter-terrorism unit, Detachment 88, have arrested the 71-year-old, saying they have evidence that Bashir is funding and training extremists who were planning a wave of attacks in Jakarta. It's part of a wave of arrests across the country that started in February, when police discovered a new militant cell dubbed "Al-Qaeda in Aceh" and killed its leader Dulmatin, a JI militant, in March.

With this latest arrest, Indonesian police may well have foiled another attack on Australians: officials say militants had the Australian embassy in their sights, as well as other high profile targets. But the question now is, will these charges against Bashir stick?

At least one expert thinks they will. Sidney Jones from the International Crisis Group's office in Jakarta believes the case against Bashir is much stronger this time around. But while he could technically face the death penalty, Ms Jones says that because no one was killed as a result of his latest actions, it's unlikely that he will. She thinks a seven to 10 year prison sentence is more likely if Bashir is found guilty.

While there's been a positive reaction to Bashir's latest arrest, there's some doubt as to whether it will effect the day-to-day operations of militant activity across Indonesia. Bashir is seen to have given a moral and spiritual cause for militants across the country but he isn't seen as an someone who's physically involved on the field.

Either way, police seem confident they have a solid case against Bashir. But we won't know the reality until it's tested in court and as we've seen in the past, anything could happen then.

There's a bear in there

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:20:22 +1000

The bears have roared through the markets recently after both the US Federal Reserve and Bank of England downgraded their growth forecasts.

There are also further concerns about the European debt crisis and a softening in Chinese economic growth.

As a result, investors moved away from risky assets, and that included sharemarkets globally. Shares on Wall Street are now in negative territory for the year, and the Japan's Nikkei has entered what many experts call a bear market, when shares are down 20 per cent since their peak.

There is a siliver lining though, especially for Australian investors, as Elio D'Amato from Lincoln Indicators explains.

The devil went down to Corio

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

There are 46 days to go until the world championships. Or 46 days until a nice weekend off, if your name is Cameron or Travis Meyer, writes The Broom Wagon.

There are 46 days to go until the world championships. Or 46 days until a nice weekend off, if your name is Cameron or Travis Meyer, both of whom were omitted from Australia's 15-man long list announced this week.

This is about the time ahead of a major event when organisers are revealed to be scrambling chaotically to deliver the thing on time. Grandstands are behind schedule, workers poorly paid, athletes stumbling over open drains.

But in Geelong, things appear different. The official world championships real estate agent is confirmed, ending months of speculation. The Ferris wheel is booked, with Melbourne's Giant Sky Wheel to be hauled down the Princes Highway, promising a view over the Corio waterfront from a height easily exceeding your average household stepladder.

One of organisers' few remaining concerns is that the event does not yet have its own devil.

Usually, the devil is the combination of a novelty trident and portly German Didi Senff. Senff is a fixture at the Tour de France, where his two purposes are 1) providing something for phoning-it-in TV producers to put in their highlight reels, and 2) having things thrown at him by riders.

But in full credit to the hardworking men and women on Border Security, Senff will not be making an appearance in Geelong. Instead, organisers are advertising for a local stand-in.

The winner will be granted official devil status, which organisers make clear is only for the duration of the championships and does not, for example, allow the winner to travel to the top of the You Yangs and tempt the Christ.

The devil will also be given the run of an official devil zone, all the better for the lucky participant to be pelted with projectiles while wearing bright red tights.

Having a devil is well and good – after all, without one, the only thing to remind people that the worlds is a top-quality bike race would be the presence of bikes and top-quality racing.

However, it does seem perhaps a touch derivative and European.

A better and more typically Australian pursuit was showcased at the 1997 Tour de France. Xavier Clement, a 30-year-old actor, enlivened the finish by sprinting along the Champs Elysees clad, as the locals put it, sans pantalon (watch him from 3.02 here).

Rather sweetly, the French had no experience with streaking and no word for the concept. Clement managed only a few metres before being bustled into the crowd, fined a token amount for 'sexual exhibition' and sent on his way.

Australians are much more familiar with the activity. And if organisers do come up blank in the devil department, 46 minutes would be more than enough time to source a local equivalent.

Gorilla, gone

Unless you tipped Mel Gibson and Oksana Grigorieva to last forever, Andre Greipel's departure from HTC-Columbia will not have come as a surprise.

The German sprinter has played an increasingly sour second fiddle to Mark Cavendish in recent years.

The low point came after this year's Milan Sanremo, when the team selected a horribly out of form Cavendish over Greipel, whose season opening had seen him win his second Tour Down Under, following on from four stage wins in the 2009 Vuelta a Espana.

Greipel, who at 28 is still yet to ride the Tour de France, signed with Omega Pharma-Lotto this week.

“The sponsors and management do not have Mark Cavendish have a clear vision for the further development of the team, which is consistent with my own personal goals,” he hurrahed.

Dispatches from the Twitterverse

Is the tap water in Girona undrinkable, or has @Greghenderson1 been had by a smooth-talking water filter salesperson?

@CadelOfficial serves wine for Italy's vision-impaired

Years of being blocked in the road by large stuffed animals boils over for @leighhoward1

Does @dzabriskie look like he has a voice decoder in his head? If you are calling him, leave a name !

@DannySummerhill has a man crisis

Classic YouTube

The last (this is a promise) in a short-running series 'Bicycle parts used as musical instruments'. Part two: the pump.

Post-script to the story of Pooran Singh’s ashes

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:27:22 +1000

 In a befitting post-script to the story of Pooran Singh’s ashes, a high profile Indian official presented gifts on behalf of all Indian Punjabis to Victorian Sikhs yesterday, adding to the repository of goodwill that the Pooran phenomenon has already generated. The Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, Her Excellency Preneet Kaur made a doorstop visit to Australia on her way to a conference at Vanuatu. Stopping at Sydney overnight on August 7, she landed in Melbourne on the morning of August 8, driving to the Blackburn Sikh temple directly from the airport.

In her address to the assembled congregation (easily numbering over 2500 people), she commented briefly on various issues including Australian government’s visa capping proposal and encouraged people to tell her of their grievances directly. But importantly for SBS Radio, she singled out the story of Pooran Singh’s ashes as a significant achievement, commending Punjabi program’s Executive Producer Manpreet K Singh for providing a positive story to reflect upon. In a subsequent address to the congregation, Manpreet briefly described the way the ashes were received in India, especially at Pooran ji’s ancestral village Uppal Bhupa, drawing a clear parallel between the inscription at the Warrnambool cemetery that read “Pooran Singh, Indian hawker, Western Victoria”, and the inscription on the house built in Uppal Bhupa with the money Pooran Singh bequeathed his nephews in 1947, that still reads “Pooran Singh, Sultani Ram, Australian”. Yet another reminder, that positive stories about bonds between Indians and Australians definitely exist, only if we care to look for them. Thereafter, Her Excellency, Mrs. Preneet Kaur was invited to present the tokens of appreciation that the family of Pooran Singh (and indeed the entire village of Uppal Bhupa) had sent to the Sikhs of Victoria – a ceremonial saffron ‘siropa’, a framed portrait of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, a trophy with a special message of thanks for ‘looking after the ashes for 63 years’ and a ceremonial copper vessel. You can hear Mrs. Preneet Kaur’s address on this week’s Punjabi program on Thursday, August 12. Please check www.sbs.com.au/punjabi for time of broadcast in your city. Similar gifts have been sent for the Guyett family of Warrnambool and a ceremony will be arranged soon in Melbourne to hand these tokens of appreciation to the Guyetts as well.

A good egg

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:34:34 +1000

The chickens have started to lay consistently. Chocolate brown, gloriously speckled eggs from the Barnevelders. White eggs from the Plymouth Rock. Tan coloured orbs from the Rhode Island Reds: big eggs considering this is the Rhodies’ first season on the lay.

Consumers, apparently, prefer brown eggs, despite the fact that I can tell no difference between my eggs once shelled. They also complain, pretty much constantly, that eggs are hard to poach. Old eggs are very hard to poach, when the white becomes more runny. Mine, when you crack them onto a plate, have a firm white and a pert yolk that sits up high. Commercial eggs, even free-range eggs, tend not to have that same thick albumen or the same vibrant coloured yolk.

Currently, the self imposed conditions for free range eggs allow a farmer to have a maximum of 1500 birds on a hectare. (There are no legally enforceable rules to define what is and isn’t called “free-range”. Organic and members of the Free Range Egg Farmers Association have lower densities than the general commercial industry free-range standard.) The Australian Egg Corporation want that lifted from 1500 to 20,000 birds per hectare, according to news reports. That’s a big change.

I don’t know how to raise a commercial flock for eggs or meat. I only do what I do, and that means my chickens are killed when they start to crow (which means, you may have noticed, that they’re not chickens, but roosters) – usually about 16 weeks.

This is about seven weeks longer than organic chicken requirements, and more than double (closer to triple) the age of a factory farmed bird. I allow my birds to scratch for grass (green-pick it’s called in the industry), which adds flavour not only to the meat, but, in some ways more importantly for day to day eating, to the eggs. It’s not commercially viable to run chickens like I do. That’s why my eggs have so much flavour they astonish me every time. That’s why my coq au vin is richer in colour and taste than that made with any bird you can buy.

A woman at the market stall the other day was telling me she used to test eggs in New Zealand for the equivalent of the Egg Board. Runny whites, the reason so many people find it hard to poach commercial eggs, were an occasional problem. Because the eggs being tested were extremely fresh, she reckons a runny white reflected on the health of the birds, and the producers were notified straight away and expected to fix the problem. Often, she says, a runny white is a sign of anaemia, but in all cases, it pointed to birds that weren’t as healthy as they could be.

The authorities have recently brought in more stringent rules and an expensive audit procedure for egg producers in NSW, a move that will send small and especially organic producers out of the industry. It seems that real food, produced by real people, is more of a threat to the population than intensive farming and routine use of antibiotics (a CHOICE study of commercial birds from the 2002 found that more than 10 per cent of chicken meat contained antibiotic resistant bacteria).

If you want great eggs, you won’t be able to afford the ethically produced ones, or be sure how those in supermarkets are actually reared. If you’re interested in where your food is coming from, and want food with flavour, the time may be right to get your own chooks.

I don’t really understand the thin egg white phenomenon. It’s bugged me for years. The problem with runny whites could well be to do with the lack of refrigeration for eggs in supermarkets and stores. Degradation of the white happens from the time the egg is laid. To me it seems as if regulators are happier with cage laid eggs from stressed chickens than they would be with real eggs from free roaming hens. Eggs that are then left sitting for a long time out of the fridge.

Photograph by Janine Bailey

Proposition 8 overturned

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:07:59 +1000

Last week, some Californians celebrated a decision by a Federal judge to overturn what’s become known as Proposition 8 – a ban on gay marriage in the state.

During the 2008 election that swept Barack Obama to power, Californians were also asked in a state referendum to vote to ban gay marriage.

A quirk of American politics, if enough public support for proposed legislation can be raised, a “proposition” can be put to voters at the ballot box.

Proposals can range from legalising marijuana to immigration issues to Proposition 8.

Last Wednesday Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker overturned the 1998 vote, which was challenged on the basis that it violated civil rights under the US Constitution.

Turning convention on its head, the case supporting gay marriage was led by Ted Olson, a former Solicitor General of the United States who argued for George W. Bush against Al Gore during the 2000 Election that was decided in court.

There’s no more fiery debating point in the US than interpretation of its Constitution and what the country’s founding fathers intended back in 1787.

The right of gay couples to marry also produces polarised opinion with well-organised church groups and usually conservative political bodies mobilising to counter supporters.

Judge Walker was not ambiguous in his ruling on the high-profile California case.

“Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license,” he wrote. “Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.”

“Race restrictions on marital partners were once common in most states but are now seen as archaic, shameful or even bizarre," he added. “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals.”

Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa, New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia. Civil unions are permitted in New Jersey.

The ruling has some relevance to the current election in Australia – if only for limited options available to Australian gay couples who want to marry.

Australia often boasts of its egalitarian qualities but Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s government is opposed to the gay marriage.

Here’s a video that suggests Gillard is pandering to religious groups with her opinion. (Warning – explicit language!)

With a hint of surrealism, Senator Penny Wong, the country’s first openly gay Cabinet Minister, strongly supports Gillard’s view claiming a “cultural, religious, historical view around that which we have to respect.”

There’s little to split with Tony Abbot, Leader of the Opposition, who claimed, “I guess I’m old fashioned, in that a marriage is between a man and a woman,”

But back in California, last week’s victory is not yet seen as a complete victory but an important legal step that will see the issue eventually before the US Supreme Court.

Not everyone is happy, of course.

“It's as if we have absolutely no say in what is going on all around us,” said conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, no doubt with no irony intended. “Decisions are being made for us, in lieu of us and imposed on us.”

MIFF 2010: The wash-up

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:59:00 +1000

Lynden Barber takes a snapshot of the closing week of the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival.

Whatever you say about Melbourne International Film Festival’s marketing this year, the continued growth of the festival’s audience continues to impress. As this year’s event hit its final weekend and retiring executive director Richard Moore came to the end of his four year tenure he told SBS Film that ticketing revenue had grown this year by 6 percent of which only 2.5 percent could be explained by increased prices.

Moore effectively confirmed rumours that he was less than happy about the festival's management changes when he added that it was "ironic to have an improvement in all fronts, including an increase in box office averaging seven per cent per year, and the structure that has achieved that is being changed." MIFF's board had announced his job as executive director was to be split in two – a general manager and an artistic director – and then invited him to apply for one of the positions (meaning he would have been competing with other candidates for a job that carried less responsibility than he had previously had). Moore responded by revealing in February that he was moving onto a job in August as head of screen culture at Screen Queensland, where he would be in charge of the Brisbane International Film Festival. MIFF has yet to appoint a new artistic director, a position that will be initially be contracted for 12 months only.

If last year’s record attendances were partly a result of the festival becoming a front page major news item thanks to Chinese hackers, this year’s results show that local audiences remain remarkably loyal. I doubt if any of this can be explained by a trailer featuring battling popcorn tub and ice cream that – horrors – mispronounces the names of Fassbinder, Godard and Coppola, falsely suggests that famous directors or their fans see each other as bitter enemies, and is enacted without cleverness or wit. It projects not so much a populist as an extravagantly dumbed down image that thankfully fails to reflect the event’s reality. (Why was it screened before every session, as if we might otherwise mistake this for the Alice Springs or Woop Woop filmfest?) Moore has brought to the festival a greater attention to cult and genre cinema without – to his credit – genuflecting towards crass commercialism.

Regarding the 2010 festival as whole, the best I can hope to offer is a personal snapshot. Trying to give a sense of an event with 477 individual sessions from only 10 screenings during its final weekend is obviously impossible, and that would only be marginally less true for someone who’s sat through 40 or 50 features spread over this 17-day marathon. Take a group of audience members at random and their experiences will prove completely different.

Moore has previously suggested the festival is too big and sprawling, but while attendances remain so healthy – partly a reflection of the strength of the city’s film and arts culture in general as well as the strength and diversity of the festival for several years – there would appear to be no financial incentive for his successor to cut back. Think “ticket revenue”. Perhaps calling the event “too big“ – navigating a program guide this packed inevitably takes huge effort – is ultimately meaningless if the audience is voting otherwise with its wallets.

Now to the films. Haunting Iranian drama The Hunter (pictured), the follow-up to It’s Winter for Rafi Pitts, has something in common with Jafar Panahi’s Crimson Gold in offering a powerful portrait of an alienated male (in this case played by the director) turning to a disastrous act of violence – here a random shooting of a cop car on the freeway in a sequence with strong echoes of Peter Bogdanovich’s debut feature, Targets. Set against the backdrop of last year’s post-election protests and crackdown, the film refers to the repression of the Iranian regime in a way that is both carefully calibrated and hard to miss. How could I forget to add that this is the first Iranian film I’ve ever seen to feature a car chase – an exciting one at that, though Pitts is ultimately less interested in the pursuit than what happens afterwards. This means a wonderfully tense, dramatic and cuttingly ironic final act when the hunted becomes the captive and his hunters fall out over what to do with him. This film is going to live a long while in the memory.

A regular in a queue on Friday suggested this had been the strongest MIFF in the last three years, with documentaries especially outstanding. None of the handful I saw blew me away though most were worth seeing. Chile’s Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman) and Italy’s The Mouth of the Wolf (Pietro Marcello) were meditative, experimental documentaries that created their own calm space for contemplation, with the former making wild leaps from a consideration of the cosmos (seen from an observatory in the Atacama desert) to human memory and forgetting as it pertains to recent Chilean history, ie. the bitterly repressive Pinochet years. The film is built around a slender metaphorical conceit – space-time as it differs in the heavens and on earth, and for this viewer there was too much of the latter and not enough of the cosmic. Still, overall the film’s blend off sadness and wonder created a memorable sense of enchantment.

The Italian film centred on the strangely touching relationship between a hardened ex-con of senior years and the transvestite prostitute whose protector he became in gaol, pivoting between this and low-grade archive footage of the industrial renewal of their home city of Genoa. The booking guide’s comparison with Terence Davies’s film on post-war Liverpool, Of Time and the City, was slightly misleading – there was nothing here to compare with that film’s stunning archive footage and inspired musical juxtapositions and the whole appeared under-developed.

Nearly 400 people turned out on a Friday afternoon to see an Australian documentary on Indonesian repression in West Papua (known officially by its colonizing power as Irian Jaya), an impressive turnout by any measure. Strange Birds in Paradise – a West Papuan Story (Charlie Hill-Smith) is not without flaws but the fact of its existence at all is significant. After watching the stories of massacres and rapes by the alleged 50,000 troops in West Papua and learning of the economic importance of the Freeport gold mine and the environmental and economic degradation it has brought the local population, it becomes hard to understand why the Australian media has turned such a blind eye to this issue. A valuable eye-opener.

Waking Sleeping Beauty: the inside story of Disney animation’s corporate revival perfunctorily went over well-dug turf -– the ego clashes between Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg. But it suffered from a frustrating lack of insight into what made films like The Lion King so successful while pre-Katzenberg films like The Black Cauldron had failed.

Of the fiction films I greatly admired Flickan (Frederik Edfeldt), a lyrical, sensitive Swedish tale of a nine-year old girl spending the summer alone after being abandoned by her parents and irresponsible young aunt. Beautifully observed, it was filled with the gorgeous melancholy of a golden European summer that must soon end (see Bergman’s Summer With Monika, Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love). It’s odd to see how few children attend the sessions in MIFF’s Next Gen section aimed at family audiences though – I didn’t see one at this screening.

Kosmos, the follow-up to the stunning Times and Winds from Turkey’s Reha Erdem, began in visually breathtaking fashion. The director seems to owe much to his compatriate Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Climates) when it comes to framing a startling shot, especially in wintery landscapes. In the first few minutes a stranger runs into a snow-encased mountain town and saves a child from drowning. He appears to have magic restorative powers and quickly emerges as a Holy Fool who bamboozles the crudely worldly and small-minded townfolk who take him in.

All is set up for a powerful fable loosely in the tradition of Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser but the film quickly becomes exasperatingly rambling. Erdem seems more interested in setting up characters as symbols (eg. woman = animal, her husband = butcher) than interesting or believable characterisation, and there’s a limit to how many gorgeous shots of a man walking through the snow a film can take when nothing of note happens at his destination.

Also underwhelming: The Blacks: an oblique Croatian war crimes drama, set up as a mystery that the film then flashes back to try to explain in a fashion that isn’t so much subtle as irksomely elusive. My Dog Tulip, a UK animation about a man and his dog, I left early, irritated by its overload of whimsy, over-dependence on narration, and lack of narrative structure.

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, a bio-pic of Cockney novelty rocker Ian Dury, initially looked a weak choice for gala Closing Night feature (actually screened on the penultimate night, Saturday). Director Mat Whitecross deploys fast cutting and shaky-cam for the wrong reasons – that is, out of an apparent neurotic desire to inject “energy” and “chaos” while achieving disengagement.

Thankfully the film overcomes this problem to deliver an entertaining ride. On one level it’s (deliberately) cartoon-like, yet is still filled with a real pain and pathos as it flips through Dury’s troubled childhood as a polio kid at a school for the handicapped, his haphazard parenting, belligerent egotism and cruelty to the women who love him. Screenwriter Paul Viragh’s dialogue is consistently witty and inspired, though in the lead role Andy Serkis, while generally a force of nature, never quite captures the man’s sheer amiability as a performer. Something else crucial is missing. We gain no inkling of how such an apparently poorly schooled kid developed such an obvious love of words and art. But yes, it has undeniable energy – no quotation marks this time.

The special spice

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:20:05 +1000

“It is back breaking work,” says Cliff Penniceard of Ash-Elle Park Saffron, “the flowers grow half an inch off the ground so the picker is doubled over for most of the day.” Cliff and wife Barb planted saffron on their sheep and cattle farm in the Strathbogie Ranges in Victoria four years ago - each April they harvest the flowers. “These little purple flowers release the most incredible perfume when you pick them,” says Barb, “despite the backache they are a joy to process.”

Each flower contains just three ‘stigma’ (saffron fronds), once picked the stigmas are dried. In Iran and Spain they are heated over a low burning fire, in Australia a dehydrator does the work to preserve the precious colour and flavour. ‘Crocin’ saffron’s colour is powerful, and only a few fronds are needed to impart colour.

The name saffron comes from the Arabic for ‘thread’. Most of the world’s saffron grows in Iran, some in Pakistan, Spain and Italy. Over the past 20 years farmers have established crops here.

Terry and Nicky Noonan first planted saffron at Cygnet, in the Huon Valley in Tasmania in 1991. They’d never farmed anything, but after having committed to the sea change from Sydney decided they needed something to do. After much research they imported saffron ‘corms’ (blubs) and waited for them to clear quarantine, it took three years for the first flowers to bloom, “when we spotted that first flower we were jumping around like mad,” laughs Nicky. The couple now have 50 growers, scattered across Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales and New Zealand, contracted to produce saffron for their Tas-Saff label.

The company is currently working in conjunction with the University of Tasmania to develop an oven drying method, which will help maintain aroma, and also provides saffron to the University of Sydney’s Vision Centre for use in macular degeneration trials. “Saffron is rich in anti carcinogens,” says Nicky, “so a cancer treatment using saffron might be possible down the track,” she says. Research has been conducted into the effect of saffron on tumors through the National Institute of Pediatrics in Mexico City.

In Spain, saffron is used in paella, in India in biryani and in Italy for risotto Milanese. But Barb Penniceard insists saffron’s colour and flavour should not be limited to, “merely colouring rice, it is such a versatile ingredient.”

Barb uses it make washed rind cheese and a saffron ricotta. Chef Justin North of Bécasse, Sydney has used the Penniceard’s saffron in brioche with citrus peel, and in desserts including an orange and saffron cake with quince and cardamom caramel.

Recipes
Growers recommend soaking stigmas in water or milk for at least 24 hours release their full colour and flavour before cooking with them.
Saffron halwa Lamb and quince tagine Harira soup with chicken

Breillat’s new twist on Sleeping Beauty

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 10:25:25 +1000

The controversial French director noted for raunchy fare returns to fairytale land. 

Strange as it may seem, Catherine Breillat seems to have given up her obsession with sex, at least for a while.

The French writer-director who rejoiced in the nickname “the auteur of porn” after making such raunchy fare as Romance, Anatomy of Hell and À ma soeur now finds inspiration in fairytales. Her latest film, Sleeping Beauty (La belle endormie), based on Charles Perrault’s classic fairytale La Belle au bois dormant, will open the Venice International Film Festival, which runs September 1-11.

It’s her second consecutive film from the same author following Bluebeard, which combines the story of a nobleman whose wives disappear as fast as he can marry them with the tale of two sisters in the 1950s who sneak up to an attic to read the fairytale and are terrified. There’s no sex or nudity and the most graphic scene shows a duck getting its head cut off.

Breillat, who suffered a stroke in 2004 from which she’s almost fully recovered, was attracted to Sleeping Beauty as a symbol of adolescence. “I am going to choose to make the young girl fall asleep at the age of six, and have troubling, disturbing, frightening dreams until she wakes up at the age of 16 as a young girl,” she told blogger Glenn Kenn y.

“I want to make it absolutely modern. I think there are resemblances with 36 fillette [Breillat's third feature in 1988]. I also like the idea of taking this girl who falls asleep as a young girl telling herself scary tales who dreams like young girls do of fairy princess and having her wake up in an absolutely modern age.”

All Perrault's tales are about 10 pages long so she says the challenge was to “extrapolate what touches you and what their real inner meaning is.”

Breillat’s romantic interlude with fairytales may be temporary because she is determined to make a film based on her novel Bad Love, which focuses on a woman trapped in a destructive relationship. She’s wanted to make the film on that subject for more than 10 years and plans to give the lead role to supermodel/actress Naomi Campbell.

It was wrongly reported that she abandoned the project after her male lead Christophe Rocancourt swindled her out of a large sum of money, an incident she chronicled in a 2009 book Abuse of Weakness.

“Christophe Rocancourt is totally replaceable,” she told Village Voice. “Doing a film in English is a major problem. Naomi's a wonderful actress, but because she doesn't speak French, we'd have to shoot the film in English. And it's impossible to find funding to shoot a film [in France] in English unless you're a very commercial director. That said, I'm a very stubborn filmmaker, and I haven't given up hope.”

MIFF 2010: Flawed Geniuses

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

The MIFF strand ‘Flawed Geniuses’ proved to be a revelation, showcasing the prolific “poor man’s Alfred Hitchcock” to the self-professed “greatest inventor in the world” and even the staggering recovery and artistry of a victim of violent crime. 

Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (Jeffrey Schwarz, 2007) is a heartfelt ode to showman extraordinaire, William Castle. Born 1914 as William Schloss in New York City, Castle was the genius behind The Tingler (1959), House on Haunted Hill (1959) and Macabre (1958), among many other B-Grade horror films that were released with sales gimmicks that garnered mass attention for their bravado and “ballyhoo”.

John Waters is among those who remembers receiving a life insurance policy on his ticket purchase for Macabre, valid should he die of fright during the screening. Castle’s gimmick was marketed as C.O.D (Collection on Death). He even hired nurses in full garb to guard the theatre and be ready for any emergency. With House on Haunted Hill, Castle launched “Emergo” with monsters emerging from the screen in the shape of a glowing skeleton that made its way across the audience. The Tingler (1959) brought with it “Perceptio” which involved your “butt being buzzed” with moments that coincided with the action on screen. 13 Ghosts (1960) was filmed in “Illusion-o” and required the audience to watch the film through a hand held, blue and red cellophane device and choose whether ghosts appear, and Homicidal (1961) had an embedded 45-second “fright-break” and the offer of a full refund if you were a “coward” and were too scared to stay until the end of the film. Those too afraid were made to stand in the “Coward’s Corner” for all to see.

The strength of the documentary is this wonderful archival material and the interviews that make you wish that you, like Waters, were there. There are no hidden secrets revealed in this portrait, only warm and funny recollections of the man and his movies which continue to attract devotees. Joe Dante is interviewed, as well as former colleagues and Castle’s daughter, Terry, who muses that her father was a doting family man who, having been orphaned at a young age, craved the security that family provided. Perhaps the most poignant professional moment revolves around Castle’s desire to be taken seriously as an A-Grade director. He believed his ticket to this form of respect would be Rosemary’s Baby—Castle had secured the rights to Ira Levin’s horror novel. While Paramount head Robert Evans initially promised him the job of director, it was ultimately assigned to Roman Polanski and the rest is history. When the reception to the film shifted from adulation to abhorrence on the back of extreme protests from religious groups, it left Castle heartbroken.

Marwencol is a fictional town, created by Mark Hogancamp in the backyard of his New Jersey home. The documentary, of the same name, shot over four years, is an entirely gripping and beautifully executed film by Jeff Malmberg that is both a portrait of a man recovering from a violent attack and a revelation of an artist that explores the process of identity and of finding a way to be yourself without fear.

The town is populated by alter egos of Mark’s friends and family members, as well as fictional characters, in the form of dolls. In this singular, miniature world, epically woven narratives of a Belgian town under siege from SS Officers during WWII are played out in immense and unfathomable detail, with the Nazis defeated and defied by Mark’s alter ego, Captain Hogancamp, the victorious hero.

The documentary, which has been scooping international independent film awards, from the Grand Jury Award at SXSW Film Festival to winning the Judge’s Award at Comic Con, uses Mark’s photography of the town as a central source of archival material. This is a unique documentary and subject—with Mark’s fictional world both helping him recall his forgotten past and enabling him to create a new world where he is protected, strong, in control, and loved. You can see Mark’s work here.

The Invention of Dr. Nakamats is a 57-minute Danish production directed by visual artist Kaspar Astrup Schröder, with music composed by frequent Wes Anderson collaborator and Devo co-founder, Mark Mothersbaugh. For those of us who had never heard of Tokyo resident Dr. Nakamats, he holds the world record number of patents, 3357 at the time of the documentary shoot. He believes that life can be extended and, at the age of 80, that he is at the mid point of his life (and career). The inventor of the floppy disc and Nobel Prize for nutrition is one “flawed genius” that must be seen to be believed.

39 seconds = 429 metres

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

In a belated Tour de France postscript, Anthony Tan – with some help – reveals a few tasty tidbits from this year’s Grande Boucle.

It’s only now, a fortnight after another Tour de France is done and dusted and I’m back home in Oz with the ‘flu feeling sorry for myself (yes, I know, I keep telling myself to harden up, as Stuart O’Grady loves to say) that I’ve had time to read the July 26 edition of L’Equipe, France’s leading sports daily, owned by the same parent company that runs the world’s biggest bike race, Amaury Sports Organisation.

In something of a ritual, I always make the effort to grab a copy of the ‘morning after’ edition following the final stage of the Tour, for the simple reason that it contains some interesting factoids I sometimes attempt to pass as my own, to come across as more intelligent and informed than I really am.

So, rather than reveal any more of my surfeit insecurities, I’d thought I’d share a few tidbits of theirs and mine with you.

If anyone needed reminding just how close Alberto Contador came to losing this year’s Tour de France, know this: after 3641.9 kilometres, 429 metres – the distance between the Spaniard and runner-up Andy Schleck – was all that separated the pair of prodigious mid-twenty-somethings.

In terms of time, 39 seconds puts the Contador-Schleck duel fifth on the all-time list of narrowest winning margins. Here’s the top 10:

1. LeMond-Fignon, in 1989 – 8sec

2. Contador-Evans, in 2007 – 23sec

3. Pereiro-Klöden, in 2006 – 32se

4. Janssen-Van Springel, in 1968 – 38se

5. Contador-A. Schleck, in 2010 – 39sec

6. Roche-Delgado, in 1987 – 40sec

7. Thévenet-Kuiper, in 1977 – 48se

8. Anquetil-Poulidor, in 1964 – 55sec

9. Sastre-Evans, in 2008 – 58sec

10. Armstrong-Ullrich, in 2003 – 1min, 1sec

While the French experienced something of a renaissance at this year’s Tour, being the nation with the most victories (six, compared to Great Britain’s five – all thanks to Mark Cavendish; Luxembourg, Switzerland and Italy took home a pair each), there’s one glaring omission: they still don’t have a bona-fide title contender, and don’t look like having one in waiting, either. Ag2r’s John Gadret was their best GC performer, finishing 19th overall, 24min 4sec behind Contador; the grand old man of French cycling, Christophe Moreau, was the second-best local, whose at 39-year-old legs were still good enough for 22nd overall – chapeau!

Speaking of veterans of the peloton, at 36 years young, was Alessandro Petacchi the oldest winner of the green jersey? Nope – it was another Italian, Franco Bitossi, who won the maillot vert classification at the 1968 Tour – aged 42!

And on the subject of sprinters, Cavendish now matches five-time Tour champion Bernard Hinault in terms of victories amassed within the space of three consecutive Tours. His bullet-speed sprint on the Champs-Élysées took his tally to 15. But Cav’ and Hinault aren’t in a league of their own – that honour goes to… that’s right, the Cannibal, of course – a.k.a. Eddy Merckx – who racked up 18 stages in the 1969, ’70 and ’71 Tours (and did the same again between 1970-72).

In terms of overall victories, Contador obviously isn’t the greatest of all time, although he is chugging along very nicely, thank you very much. His hat-trick of Tour triumphs puts him in the same league as Thys, Bobet and LeMond, but he’s still two wins away from the five-times club quartet (Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault and Induráin) and four away from the guy who stands above all others in victories amassed, which is of course none other than Lance Armstrong himself.

But if Contador does indeed pursue his dream of targeting all three Grand Tours in a season and pulls it off, as he may strive to do in 2012, I’d undeniably say that would be a feat never to be matched again.

Taking this story through to its logical conclusion

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:20:44 +1000

 Special thanks to the whole team at SBS (Radio and Television) for taking this story through to its logical conclusion and for providing me the opportunity of pursuing this story in India.  Heartfelt thanks to the Guyett family of Warrnambool, three generations of which have embodied the spirit that underlies the Pooran Singh phenomenon – friendship, dignity, honour and respect. Thanks to Len and Chris for alerting us to this story and sincere thanks to Harmel for letting me share and report on what must be an extremely personal and private story.  Sincere thanks are also due to the outstanding sports person and outstanding human being, Kapil Dev, who made a special effort to come to Australia for Pooran’s ashes. I joked with him that once he had committed to come here, I dared not ask him about his appearance fee, because I knew we couldn’t afford it! It must be said though, when he played cricket, we saw him bowl many spectacular deliveries and saw his bat push many boundaries; but now, with the Pooran connection, it is with his generosity that he’s smashing many a boundary, winning many a heart with a very special delivery that he took back home – an Australian Punjabi’s ashes.And for all those cricket lovers for whom ashes has had a very different meaning until recently, well, a small Victorian town called Warrnambool and a Punjabi migrant named Pooran Singh, have just changed all of that.

Awkward fumbling

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

The grand slam is one of cycling's holy grails, up there with convincing a podium girl to meet you after the race for an evening of red wine and awkward fumbling.

Sitting through an entire election story that features Tony Abbott in budgie smugglers or lycra is a task beyond the Broom Wagon. In fact, remove the bit after Abbott and the above sentence would still be true.

Another thing which is elusive is winning all three grand tours in the same year. Nobody has done it: not Eddy Merckx; not Jacques Anquetil; not even Gino Bartali, who rode on a cocktail of 28 espressos a day and eggs which he ate after smashing them on his handlebars.

The grand slam is one of cycling's holy grails – up there with convincing a podium girl to meet you after the race for an evening of red wine and awkward fumbling.

Last year Julian Dean was the only rider to even enter all three races, becoming one of a handful of men to do so since the early 1990s.

But Bjarne Riis is not a man to accept limits.

“Alberto’s ambition is to win all three major stage races in the same year, and I want to be part of it,” parped Riis on his brand new Saxo Bank-Sunguard trumpet, confirming that Contador would join the team for the next two years.

“It is not certain that it will be next year, but the ambition is to succeed in one of the next few years. I believe that it is feasible.”

Contador's brother Fran, who manages the three-time Tour winner, agreed with everything except the part about the ambition and it being feasible.

"I think this must have been a translation mistake," Fran told Spanish Eurosport on Wednesday. "To win the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta in one year is quite simply impossible. We have always been clear: the Tour de France is the main objective."

Clear enough, then. If only another Contador was along to muddy things further.

"Of course it's a dream, but I don’t know if impossible," Alberto said via the miracle of auto-translate on his official website.

"I think you can ride the big three at a good level, but from there to win them there is much difference. You have to go little by little. I realise that it is practically impossible, though perhaps in the future ... it's a dream. Everyone has dreams and this is mine."

The Broom Wagon's dream is to follow one story involving Alberto Contador and his management and have the faintest idea who is speaking for who.

Deanied

Was grand tour hard man Julian Dean spear-tackled by a gendarme during this year's Tour de France? Oz Cycling's Dan Jones says yes.

Melbourne welcomes its UN overlords

Melbourne's new bike hire network has been accused of being several things. Useful only if you want to get from one end of Swanston Street to the other is one. Garishly blue is another.

However, until now the scheme to get more people cycling has not being exposed for what it really is.

This is because Melbourne does not have Dan Maes, the leading Republican candidate to become governor of Colorado.

Colorado's state capital, Denver, has launched its own cycle scheme. To the untrained eye it consists of 400 bikes at docking stations around the city centre. But to the eye that, like Maes, is endorsed by the Tea Party, it is a plot.

"This is all very well disguised, but it will be exposed," Maes told supporters at a campaign rally.

"This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms."

Maes' theory is that Denver's B-cycle, and bike-friendly policies like it, are the work of the International Council for Local Environment Initiatives – a UN-linked organisation whose nefarious aim is to "support local government in the implementation of sustainable development at the local level".

"At first I thought: 'Gosh, public transportation, what's wrong with that, and what's wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes?'" Maes said.

"But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty."

A look at the ICLEI's website reveals that Adelaide, Sydney, Perth and Hobart are also among the organisation's global members, along with – yes – the City of Melbourne.

And if anything, Maes' Orwellian vision is even more chilling for Melburnians. At least in Denver, bike-loving citizens can surrender their personal freedom to the crushing jackboots of the state whenever they please.

In Melbourne, you have to bring your own helmet.

Dispatches from the Twitterverse

One day after keeping the lead at the Tour of Poland, @allandavis27 gets caught behind the dreaded Crash Witch.

At something called the Transplant Games, @ChristianVDV has a patriotic moment.

Poland and @Greghenderson1 are not getting on as well as their parents had hoped.

@albertocontador believes in 2011 – a great relief to those who think calendar years are like fairies and only exist if elite Spanish cyclists continue to believe in them.

Cervelo's Dominique Rollin wins a King of the Mountains prize only slightly smaller than Dominique Rollin.

Classic YouTube

Perhaps aiming for the demographic which hates music and bikes equally, the great Frank Zappa presents his symphony for bicycle* on the Steve Allen Show in 1963.

*or, as Zappa calls it, the BI-cycle

A story that a journalist can only hope to cover once in a lifetime

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

 For the five of us in India – Kapil, Len, Chris, Harmel and I, it feels like an experience of a lifetime, shared closely with Alice, who kept in touch from Warrnambool throughout our journey in India. The journey to fulfil Pooran’s last wish has grown each of us individually too -- Kapil Dev has said repeatedly that this may well be the most rewarding experience for him personally; Crystal has had a chance to visit Bareilly, the city in which her father was born; Len says his lifetime’s work has paid off and no amount of money can replace his experience at Uppal Bhopa, (Pooran Singh’s village); Harmel and his family have had a chance to connect with their ancestors, in a way that perhaps no one could ever dream of; and as for me, apart from being part and parcel of Pooran’s final journey, a sort of story that a journalist can only hope to cover once in a lifetime, as a bonus, I  got to visit the very place that I began this lifetime --my birthplace, Jalandhar.

The Pooran story may now be over, but I suspect that the Pooran phenomenon will continue. Against the backdrop of recent stories of violence against in Indians in Australia, the Pooran story has provided a unique insight into the history of Indians in this country and has become a catalyst for re-igniting old memories, bonds and community spirit. The story of this simple Punjabi Australian has helped us celebrate a humane face of the multicultural history of Australia. All of us at SBS are humbled by the response within the community and are in complete awe to see this story resonate so strongly throughout Australia and India, and indeed many other parts of the world.

Hanging out

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 17:06:45 +1000

I moved the prosciutto. It used to hang in the picker’s hut, but one day I noticed that the edge of the bacon looked nibbled. Something had been hanging upside down from the beam, down the two long meat hooks, and had enjoyed a little bit of pork skin. Mice or rats are my guess – there’s no shortage of either of them this year. So the bacon and prosciutto are now closer to home, under the eaves on the south side of the house.

This one in the photo is the hind leg of a 120kg porker. It’s been bashed and salted and is now hanging out in the open air, hopefully breeding a few moulds on its surface. The open meat side is smothered in fat and pepper; the fat to stop it drying out much and the pepper to help avoid wasps and flies, as well as for flavour.

Ross, my market stall partner and mate, cooked lunch on Sunday. We had about 40 people in the old shed at Ross’s place, sitting on hay bales. The day turned from a forecast of 11C and rain, to about 16C and gloriously sunny. The braziers sat unused, turned off when they turned the barn into a sauna.

Here's what was on the Lamb Winter Feast menu:

• Warm spiced apple juice with mace and cinnamon
• Toulouse style pure pork sausages from Ross’s Berkshire pig
• A pressed ham hock and white bean terrine
• Bruny Island Wiltshire Horn lamb shoulders cooked overnight with wild fennel
• Bruny lamb racks and legs, rubbed with garlic and anchovy and grilled
• Brussels sprouts and savoy cabbage tossed with garlic and butter
• Organic carrots with dill
• Dutch cream spuds with butter and a hint of thyme
• Wood-fired sourdough baguettes from Bruny Island Cheese Co.
• Kentish cherry pudding
• And for those who stayed until the end, raw milk, 15 month old, cooked curd mixed cow and goat cheese that Ross made

The apple juice was freshly pressed and came from the Griggs in nearby Lucaston, with no vitamin C added. (Vitamin C is often used as a preservative – our apple juice was brown, but delicious.) The bangers were simply coarse ground shoulder meat with a touch of nutmeg. The wild fennel I found dotted around the homestead on Ross’s property. The cherries are an old English variety, sour and with a hint of bitter almond. I found a wonderful old small fruits farm, Wolfe’s, up Wolfe Road, of course, and bought the cherries frozen at the end of last season, just waiting for a chance like this.

This week I also went and checked out a new sow. A lovely, leggy girl who’s already in pig (pregnant) to replace one of mine. Natalie showed me around her family’s organic farm in Middleton where the pig has been wallowing. It looked like everything I want in a farm and don’t have. Lush pasture. Lots of old buildings and some fencing that you can use to house pigs or shelter goats. There’s even an old copper over a wood fire that they use to cook food for the pigs. Apparently, though, my jersey cow is far less temperamental than theirs, and I can actually milk mine without worrying about a horn to the ribs or being trampled. A young calf, Heidi, is being hand reared as the next milker, though fresh raw milk is now at least a year and a half away.

The new sow, tentatively called Bella, will come over to Puggle Farm in a week or two. Another mouth to feed, another animal to care for. The farm would feel empty without them.

The rain held out just for the ceremony...

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 03:00:00 +1000

  I can’t get past the feeling that perhaps there was some divine intervention in making all of this happen too.  On the day the ashes were handed over to Kapil Dev and Harmel Uppal in Warrnambool, the rain held out just for the ceremony – we were hardly twenty minutes into our drive back to Melbourne when Alice Guyett Wood called to say that it began pouring in Warrnambool straight after we left! We were in Malaysia, when an unknown traveller met us and offered to look after all our arrangements in Haridwar – a town that none of us had connections in. 

Not only did this helpful stranger (Dr Himanshu) arrange for our accommodation, but he also arranged for a priest who would handle the ash immersion for us! On the day of the ash immersion (Juy 30), the downpour of the Indian monsoon threatened to sabotage everything at the eleventh hour, but suddenly, the heavens cleared, we made our way to the ghat, performed the final ceremony and came back….our tears of joy, the only ‘wetness’ we felt! To top it all, a day after we left Haridwar to reach Delhi, the highway connecting the two cities was shut down, because of the large number of Kanwadiyas (devotees of Shiva) walking on the road! Everything seemed to be timed with clock work precision – yet it didn’t feel like we had to micro-manage anything…it all just seem to fall into place…..perfectly!!

Back in Melbourne

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

I’m back in Melbourne now, and this is the first chance I’ve had to reflect on all that’s happened in the past few weeks.  Although the pace has been fast and furious, all of us involved in this extraordinary journey feel satisfied, proud and completely at peace. We’ve defied Murphys’ law, since everything that could possibly go wrong actually went right – absolutely, perfectly right!

A staggering number of things needed to happen for the Pooran story to pan out this way – the Guyett family in Warrnambool had to respect a dying man’s last wish for three generations; historians Len Kenna and Crystal Jordan had to chance upon the story and pass it on to me; an international celebrity like Kapil Dev had to set aside his personal and professional commitments and be moved enough to pay his way to come to Australia; the extended family of Pooran Singh had to be traced and be involved in the story; the media in Australia had to warm up to it, despite an election being called and the media in India had to take notice of an Australia-India story that was running ‘against the tide’; and finally, SBS Radio had to award an inaugural funding to the Punjabi program so I could use the resources to go to India and see this story through to its logical conclusion.

I think if this were a novel, we couldn’t have scripted it better. Normally, we start a story with a few clues, and try to piece together different bits of information that we’ve painstakingly collected. But the Pooran phenomenon is so unique, that even though we started with one small piece of information – that his ashes were preserved in Warrnambool cemetery – we are all wonderstruck to see the giant jigsaw that has suddenly fallen into place!

Right move, wrong goal

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +1000

Alberto Contador's move from Astana to Bjarne Riis' new and improved Saxo Bank-Sungard squad has all the hallmarks of the right move at the right time.

Alberto Contador's move from Astana to Bjarne Riis' new and improved Saxo Bank-Sungard squad has all the hallmarks of the right move at the right time.

In making the jump, Contador has not only strengthened Riis' hand in winning another Grand Tour but also improved his own prospects of adding to his personal Tour tally.

What we're seeing is a mating of arguably the strongest ProTour squad with the best Grand Tour rider of his generation.

And in all likelihood Contador will be supported by a younger, possibly stronger version of Saxo Bank if you believe all the transfer rumours.

Also likely to join Contador at the Danish team will be a contingent of Spaniards prepared to die in a ditch for him.

Expect to see guys like Benjamin Noval, Daniel Navarro, David De La Fuente join the likes of Jakob Fuglsang, Richie Porte Matti Breschel, Chris Anker Sorensen and Fabian Cancellara in helping Contador rack up a fourth Tour win.

Add that up and Saxo Bank-Sungard will again be a powerful, hard-to-beat squad - even more so with Contador at the helm.

And what of the mooted loss of veterans like Stuart O'Grady and Jens Voigt to the new Luxembourg based formation the now departed Schleck Brothers are rumored to be joining?

Well I see that as a win for Riis and Contador - there is only so much those two battered bodies have left to give.

Both O'Grady and Voigt are effectively at the very end of their respective careers and I'm betting both don't have much left in the tank, and I'm pretty damn sure the hardheaded Riis is thinking exactly the same thing.

Sure, both O'Grady and Voigt represent a significant loss of leadership, but with Riis in control, Cancellara the 'patron' of the peloton and Contador clearly able to win despite unsettled internal team dynamics, it will be hard to bet against them.

And what of Andy and Frank Schleck and their new team? Well at this stage of the game there are more unknowns than knowns. Officially, we still don't know who the Schlecks will be riding for.

We'll have to let the cycling rumour mill ruminate over the possibilities until we hit the official September 1st transfer market date.

Finally I have to address what I consider to be a bit of irrational exuberance by Contador and Riis - maybe the press conference was at altitude.

“Alberto’s ambition is to win all three major stage races in the same year, and I want to be part of it, it is not certain that it will be next year, but the ambition is to succeed in one of the next few years. I believe that it is feasible,” said Bjarne Riis at the presser announcing Contador's signing.

Say what? I'll have what they're having.

I think the 2010 Tour de France conclusively proved that goal (fantasy?) is utterly out of reach. The sport has changed too much for any rider to dominate the grand tours for an entire season.

Riders like Ivan Basso and Denis Menchov can attest to that fact.

Basso came into the Tour de France with high hopes but legless after winning the Giro, fading to finish almost an hour behind the winner. A similar situation to Menchov in 2009.

This time around, Menchov passed on defending his 2009 Giro title and was richly rewarded with a podium place in Paris.

Over the three weeks the Russian showed strength and consistency and was rarely out of sight of Contador or Schleck - he did not leave his legs in Italy as he did in 2009.

Riis not only risks burning out Contador but his entire team if he chooses to pursue that goal - best to focus on something achievable - eclipsing Lance Armstrong's seven Tour titles.

More than food at play

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:02:53 +1000

Wandering around Kappabashi-dori, an area of Tokyo filled with nothing but kitchenware and restaurant supply stores, it's often hard to make the distinction between what is a toy and what is a serious kitchen appliance.

Many of the baking stores seemed to focus on the utensils for forming cake into nothing but saccharine cuteness. Homewares stores had whole sections devoted to making lunch adorable to children from carving instruments that turn hot dogs into elephants to rice presses used to press cakes into the shape of Mickey Mouse.

When you remove scarcity from the equation, food can be a wonderful form of play for adults or children and it is a fad that has been picked up on at the Tokyo Toy Show.

Over the past three years, the International Tokyo Toy Show has showcased an interesting food trend: the massive growth in cooking toys at a time when an ageing population and financial crisis is sending the toy market into decline. Writing in the newspaper The Daily Yomiuri in 2009, writer Tom Baker noted that while overall toy sales declined by an estimated 1.2 per cent over 2008, the category for cooking toys grew 37.2 per cent. Many of these toys are collapsing the distinction between toy and real cooking, none more than konapun.

Originally released by Japanese toymaker Bandai in the 1980s, konapun is a miniature model kitchen in which you make minute versions of popular dishes using a powder and a little water. The sets slowly fell out of fashion until their rerelease in 2006. It has since had a resurgence in Japan, but has never taken off anywhere else. What sets the konapun apart from other play kitchen food is that the miniature food looks worryingly real and the processes simulate the real thing.

The video evidence is oddly compelling. Here’s a short clip making donuts, a slightly suspicious hamburger, French fries and hot dog, and an omelette. The fake foods that come out of the mini kitchen kits are non-toxic but not as delicious as they look.

The kits are made from sodium alginate, which is a food additive most commonly used to emulsify and thicken foods. It turns up in processed food as “Vegetable gum 401” where it is used as a magic ingredient to make chunks of anything: chunky cat food, glace “cherries”, turning fruit juice into fruit pieces. Sodium alginate has also made the transition from industrial food additive to haute cuisine. Chefs inspired by Ferran Adria have been using sodium alginate to form jellied spheres filled with liquid. Soups or broths can be made into gelatinous balls that burst in your mouth; faux olives filled with olive juice.

To give the appearance of frying in the konapun kits, a little citric acid is added to the mix which is then “fried” in an alkaline solution – no heat, but plenty of realistic bubbles and the faux-food’s exterior takes on a rough, uneven surface as if the fake food had been dipped in real, hot oil.

Rates not safe

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:21:03 +1000

The Reserve Bank's decision to leave its interest rate on hold at 4.5 per cent surprised no one. But there's speculation that retail banks may raise rates independently.

Last week, underlying inflation fell to a multi-year low, within the RBA’s target band of 2 to 3 per cent, virtually assuring that the board would have left rates on hold at today's meeting.

Also influencing the RBA would have been the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing a modest, but worse-than-expected, rise in retail sales and a fall in building approvals.

These are two of the most interest rate-sensitive sectors.

Let’s not forget, the official cash rate is 1.5 per cent higher than it was a year ago.

The effect of the recent rate increases are still being felt by the Australian economy.

Retailers have had to heavily discount their goods to get consumers spending.

In the housing sector, research from RP Data and Rismark show that house prices fell 0.7 per cent in June, while the Housing Industry Association says new home sales fell to a 17-month low.

Add these local pressures to the concerns about the global economic recovery, and you have the perfect recipe for the RBA to leave rates where they are.

Experts are now predicting there is only a one-in-four chance that we’ll see an official rate rise by the end of the year.

So with rates set to stay on hold at least until October -- the time when we will get the next inflation figures -- now it is the perfect time to try to pay off your home loan quicker, and speak to your financial institution for a better deal.

I guess the key is not to rest on your laurels.

Even if the RBA does not lift rates, there is a real possibility the banks may raise mortgage rates independently of the Reserve Bank because of increased funding costs.

It is a concern that Greg Evans from ACCI expressed in a recent interview with SBS World News Australia.

Lisa Montgomery from Resi told SBS that if banks do raise rates after the federal election, borrowers can expect a 15 to 20 basis point increase.

Abalone Under Threat

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:11:14 +1000

Chef Tony Nolan, of Latitude 36 on Kangaroo Island, fishes for abalone with his family and friends at d’Estress Bay on the edge of the Southern Ocean. “We don’t have a shark cage so we don’t do it that often,” he laughs. His 15-year-old son does most of the swimming, snorkelling to scope the shellfish which attach themselves to rocks around the bay. “The key to keeping abalone as tender as possible is to kill them underwater, a quick thud with the back of a knife, that way they don’t become stressed from being out of the water,” he says.

Fishing for abalone is also a popular past time in Tasmania, where licensed recreational fisherman can bag up to 10 a day. But on a commercial level it can be dangerous - deep diving, rough seas and overloaded boats are allegedly common practice, and have resulted in the death of at least one commercial diver. Tasmania’s commercial harvest is estimated to be worth around $875 million a year, a quarter of the world’s supply.

But populations of Australian abalone are under threat, especially up and down the east coast, from Abalone Viral Ganglioneuritis (AVG). The herpes-like virus affects the nervous system of the abalone, causing the mollusc’s ‘foot’ to curl and mouth to swell, resulting in weakness and ultimately, death. First detected in Victoria in 2005, the disease affects both blacklip and greenlip abalone, but has no known effects on humans.

Andrew Boyd of Martins’ Seafood in Sydney, believes farming could be the answer to stemming the spread of the disease. “This is a case where the health of a species could be restored through aquaculture,” he explains. “Abalone health can be monitored in a controlled environment, and a new generation of disease free abalone can be raised, keeping the species going.”

And it is a species in very high demand. A delicacy in China, abalone is especially popular in Cantonese cuisine, believed to have aphrodisiac qualities. In Japanese cuisine it served as sashimi, steamed, and sometimes simmered in sake.

In South Africa problems surrounding the abalone industry go well beyond overloaded boats and fast spreading viruses. Rare wild 'beige abalone' or Haliotis midae, are at the centre of an alleged black market shellfish trade. Wild abalone is reportedly plucked regularly from the waters around the Cape of Good Hope, by illegal fishing syndicates and smuggled to Asia.

South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, together with the police and the national defense force established Operation Neptune, a taskforce to apprehend poachers and smugglers. Scores of arrests, more than a few shoot-outs and tonnes of illegally acquired abalone have been seized as a result. Tim Butcher wrote in The Spectator that local police literally “smelled 'something fishy'”, and following their noses arrested the first illegal abalone syndicate.

As a result of the poaching, natural stocks have depleted to critical levels, the South African government listed the shellfish as an endangered species in 2007. As such, commercial and recreational capture of wild abalone has been outlawed.

The South African government believe that farmed abalone is the way forward, as it would create a consistent supply and put a hole in the black market.

Know your Abalone
Green lip Harvested mainly in summer, between 14.5cm -17 cm in size. Popular with Japanese chefs. Farmed in South Australia (incl. Kangaroo Island), NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.

Black lip Harvested year round, between 12.7cm-21cm in size. Farmed in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania where they are also found in the wild.

Beige Native South African abalone, highly sought after for the Asian market found in the seas surrounding Cape Town, South Africa.

Recipes
Tetsuya Wakuda’s slow pan roasted abalone

Stir-fried abalone with Ross’s sambal, ginger and purslane from Matthew Evans’ Gourmet Farmer