Just when we think the bushfires must have burnt themselves out they just keep on going. Every morning we are waking up to thick smoke. This was the view out our window yesterday morning and it is the …
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The Let's Think About... booklet was published by Scarfolk Council Schools & Child Welfare Services department in 1971. It was designed for use in the classroom and encouraged children between the ages of five and nine to focus on a series of highly traumatic images and events.
Parents and teachers assumed that the booklet was based on psychological research but it had no scientific basis whatsoever. The booklet's medically untrained author was one of the dinner ladies from the council canteen before she was fired for attempting to slip strychnine into bowls of blancmange.
Despite the scandal, the booklet remained on the school curriculum for many years and the author was invited by the council to pen an updated edition from her prison cell in 1979.
Parents and teachers assumed that the booklet was based on psychological research but it had no scientific basis whatsoever. The booklet's medically untrained author was one of the dinner ladies from the council canteen before she was fired for attempting to slip strychnine into bowls of blancmange.
Despite the scandal, the booklet remained on the school curriculum for many years and the author was invited by the council to pen an updated edition from her prison cell in 1979.
Last year I was wondering which way to go in my work life. I started an oncology post-grad but quickly lost motivation. My cynicism around the higher education sausage machine got the better of me. I ended up doing Plan 2:
a year goofing off. I could work less; spend …
For decades fans have dreamt of stepping into the Whoniverse and experiencing all of its wonders and terrors first hand. Now finally that dream can come true, through the wonders of Virtual Reality in the fully immersive environment of Doctor Who: The Edge of Time. This VR game allows players the opportunity to pilot a Dalek casing from the inside, wield the sonic screwdriver and face off against the Weeping Angels. Full of action, puzzles and cinematic effects, the VR game also features Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor and Nicholas Briggs as the voice of the Daleks. While the feature… Continue reading
I was interviewed about the history of unemployment in Australia and, more specifically, the history of how Australia has treated unemployed workers. We haven’t always been so punitive. For about 25 years after WW2 unemployment was seen as a collective … Continue reading
Many readers will remember the two packs of Horror Top Trumps, which were first issued in 1978. What is not commonly known is that the first pack was recalled after 3 days only to be rereleased a month later minus one card: The Scarfolk card.
The card had proved so effective that, not only could it effortlessly beat every other card, it also killed the losing player within moments of the game ending.
Fury From The Deep is the latest missing Patrick Troughton story to receive the animated treatment and will be released next year. BBC Studios made the announcement on the Animations Panel at the London Comic Con at the weekend and a teaser has since gone up on the Doctor Who YouTube Channel. All six missing episodes of Fury from the Deep, the penultimate adventure from season five, will be animated in high definition in both colour and black and white. The release will also include the surviving clips from the serial, a new Making-Of, and other features still to be… Continue reading
Coffee Lawsuit Download
I made a PDF of the Coffee Lawsuit story I did (back in 2001). Check it out.
And don’t forget my kickstarter.
The Scarfolk Annual 197x.
I’m doing a kickstarter… check it out.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/whistleblowerpapes/the-whistleblower-papers
After Chalkahlom mentioned Syncthing on the microblog the other day I think I have found a possible workflow for this blog. So here I am with a keyboard plugged into my phone…
R and I just spent a night in an Airbnb here in Byron Bay. The decor is straight …
Update in 2024: You may have linked to this page because it's heavily quoted by a semi-anonymously published website called the “Stallman Report”. While the author of that document tried to contact me shortly before launching their site, I missed that email for a week or two. (I get a lot of email and as those of you who have emailed me know, my autoresponder indicates it's not the best way to contact me …). I got back to the author only after they'd published, asking for a phone or video call with them (in large part to discuss the inaccuracies in their “Stallman Report”). The author never followed up with me on that. While I would welcome rigorous journalistic coverage of these issues discussed herein, I sadly have not seen much of such, and the “Stallman Report” definitely is not written by a journalist nor is it researched with sufficient rigor, in my opinion.
I was to meet my son for breakfast at the stipulated time. It was part of yesterdays ultimatum or perhaps pen-ultimatum. He was still in bed when I arrived to pick hm up. He had seemingly forgotten the acid words he had thrown my way the day before. We went …
This year’s Adelaide and Brisbane Supanova Pop culture conventions are set to have a little flavor of Who to them with the announcement that Mark Strickson is coming for both events. Strickson, who played Fifth Doctor companion Vislor Turlough in the 80s, is set to join Eleventh Doctor companion Canton Delaware (Mark Sheppard- who told the DWCA this week that two episodes and travelling in the TARDIS makes him a companion). The duo joins the likes of pop culture icons John Travolta and Jason Isaacs for the conventions to be held at the Adelaide Showground November 2-3 and the Brisbane… Continue reading
November 24 marks a very special occasion – exactly 40 years since the first-ever DWCA event in 1979. To mark to occasion the DWCA have an upcoming Day Event on the weekend just after the 40-year milestone on December 1. The event will be held at Club Burwood in Sydney. http://dwca.org.au/events/sydney-day-event-december-2019/ In preparation for the celebration, we’re sharing here Ashley Tuchin’s article Unconventional: A History of The ADWFC’s Doctor Who Parties which first appeared in Zerinza Volume 1. Zerinza Volumes 1 and 2 are both still available through the DWCA store. http://dwca.org.au/products-page/dwca-publications/ Unconventional: A History of The ADWFC’s Doctor Who… Continue reading
Unique in so many ways, this episode of Doctor Who has been missing from the BBC archives for years, with fans trying very hard to plug the gap. The DWCA tried to reconstruct it as text in their Zerinza special back in 1980, when Rosemary Howe novelised it as part of her adaptation of The Daleks’ Masterplan. In 1989 John Peel crafted an official Target novelisation, incorporating it into his two novel adaptation of The Daleks’ Masterplan. In 2000 the amateur video production company Loose Cannon created their own reconstruction of the episode using the audio soundtrack along with available… Continue reading
It’s official – Doctor Who DVDs and Blu-rays have a new distributor and the dates for the upcoming full season Collection boxed sets have finally been announced for Australia! The tale of bringing Doctor Who episodes to Australian collectors is a long and tangled one. Back in December 1984 Data Extract was first on the scene to break the news of Doctor Who videos arriving on Australian shores. “The rights to distribute the BBC video catalogue have recently been obtained by Polygram Music Video after stiff competition from Roadshow,” the story read. “The BBC video Revenge of the Cybermen will… Continue reading
The Whistleblower Papers - a graphic summary
Testing my ability to make website posts from my phone… hope to update this thing more frequently