Today is ANZAC Day.

While I don't have a particularly strong national identity, or perhaps because of that, ANZAC Day always leaves me feeling extremely annoyed.  My respect and admiration for troops in general is overshadowed by frustration at the sheer stupidity of a military leadership which would send those troops into a bloodbath by carelessly miscalculating their landing point.

History tends to gloss over the events at Gallipoli by focusing on the bravery of soldiers against insurmountable odds, but I have trouble getting past how senseless it all was.

Australia has a fondness for tales of spectacular failure which I simply do not share.  Instead of honouring the memory of young soldiers, the day makes me angry and disgusted at the wanton waste of their lives by incompetent high-ranking fools.

What makes it worse is that the ANZAC Day march has become a multinational medal-flaunting mardi gras.  Organizers allow the marching of soldiers who fought for other countries in conflicts which didn't involve Australian troops.

Australia has a very thin culture of its own at the best of times, but now for reasons I cannot understand, we're expected to dilute the poignance of our most significant national day by honouring soldiers who fought in conflicts which have nothing to do with our country.  I'm all for inclusion and integration but these countries have their own events to memorialise their conflicts.  There's absolutely no need to include them in ours and confuse an already barely present Australian national identity.

2006 Miss Australia Erin McNaughtrecently attracted some undue attention from conservative grandmothers and other like-minded wowsers.

Erin -- whose nickname is 'McNaughty' -- has been featured in an advertising campaign by wine-maker Cockatoo Ridge. The campaign has caused controversy due to a billboard featuring innuendo playing upon the name of the company.

Apparently it's the first time an Australian wine label has employed suggestive means to target the younger market. That makes me wonder how stupid wine-makers have to be, to ignore the massive upturn in sales generated by unabashedly sleazy adverts for beer, spirits and pre-mixed beverages.

Interestingly and inexplicably the kerfuffle has centered around verbage rather than cleavage. Here's the billboard in question:

Yep, that's all. No tits, no arse, not even a naked shoulder -- just an animal-lover expressing her affection for talking birds, or wine, or pirates... Yarrrr.

She loves a cockatoo.

This kind of thing always makes me wonder. With such innocent imagery and a tagline that's really not overtly sexual in nature, doesn't it require a relatively dirty mind to draw the requisite links? If you're enough of a perv to make the connection, how can you possibly be offended by the billboard?

I find it fascinating that people can find the energy to complain about this and chastise Erin for loving cockatoo while our newly-appointed first ever female Governor-General, Quentin Bryce has taken every opportunity in the thousands of interviews she's given in the last week or so to endear herself to Australia by telling us of her strong connection to outback Queensland.

Over and over, she said:

I have a genuine affection for the bush.

That's got to be worse than loving a cockatoo, surely. Perhaps nobody is jumping down her throat about it because it's unacceptable to persecute lesbians? I'd say it's more likely because she doesn't inspire quite so much female jealousy.

I wonder how long it'll be until this generation of old women who have nothing better to do than scan magazines and television looking for something to moan about, just plain drop dead. They're a blight on humanity not because they complain about ads like this, but because they don't complain about billboards featuring men with parkas shoved down their jocks.

Erin also deserves a good spanking, but not because of the billboard. She is a nice enough chick, but I wasn't particularly impressed with her response when asked about the controversy. Here's an excerpt from an article which quotes her:

"I wasn't thrilled with what that line was implying," Erin says. She says the company emailed the slogans to her for approval but it was at the time she was moving to Melbourne [snip] meaning Erin didn't see them in her inbox until later.

"When I saw the slogans, I tried to stop them using that one but they said it was too late and they were already being printed," she says. "It was pretty disappointing."

Oh fuck off Erin. I was totally on your side until you tried on this hypocritical bullshit.

Remember, this is a girl whose nickname is 'McNaughty' and who constantly poses for sexy photoshoots for magazines like FHM and the syphilis-ridden crack whore of men's magazines, ZOO Weekly, which asks such fine interview questions as "What do you prefer, a vibrator or the real thing?"

If she was hoping to portray herself as wholesome and virginal, she should probably not have gone out of her way to forge a sexed-up public image.

I ask you, is this a picture of someone who loves the cock? Don't decide right now, instead click through and see the rest of the pictures first.

I absolutely embrace her right to flaunt her bee-stings, and I applaud her contribution to male reproductive health, but to feign shock and claim innocence just makes her look like a bloody idiot.   (continued...)

I posted the following appeal to the wordpress support forums, but I've decided to post it here too, to allow discussion in case casual passers-by or potential plugin authors wanted to have a place to throw down their comments.

I'm assuming the fine moderators at the wordpress forums will not allow the topic to stay open very long.   (continued...)

The first archaeological dig at Stonehenge in 40 years, may have revealed some information about the structure's purpose.

Funded by the BBC and documented for broadcast later this year, this two week dig has yielded perhaps more interesting results than anyone could have planned for.

Researchers investigated 'sockets' at the site containing blue-stones which were transported great distances to be placed at Stonehenge. An article by the BBC [archive] reports:

They believe that the blue-stones, which were transported 250km (150 miles) from the Preseli Hills in Wales to the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, were brought to the site because the ancient people believed they had healing properties.

This new information doesn't necessarily contradict previous assertions that Stonehenge was an elaborate solar/lunar calendar or something. Indeed astrology has strong ties to spiritual healing, so it's entirely plausible that Stonehenge was built as a one-stop-feel-good-shop.

In addition to the blue-stones, archaeologists also discovered fragments of ornate pottery used for burial, as well as Roman artifacts which suggests that the site's appeal wasn't limited solely to its creators.

Whilst more testing needs to be performed to confirm the chronology, researchers believe that the blue-stones were brought to the site long before the iconic structure was built above them. Thus far, research has focused on the significance of the stone pillars, but this new information suggests that all the effort to build Stonehenge was expended due to the importance of what lay beneath them.

In any case, I'm gratified that some of the money spent on producing TV shows is being injected into a project with real scientific and historical merit. It may not be curing cancer but at least the BBC invests in programming which looks a little deeper than the next reality show starlets. I look forward to watching the documentary.

If you run a small website, but haven't heard of Google Analytics then you're missing out. Google offers a hosted stats system for website owners who want to take an interest in where their traffic is coming from and how long visitors spend on their site, but that offering has just become a lot more interesting.

Analytics used to offer the same stats as any other package, with the notable additional ability to tell you how well your Google Adwords (paid adverts) were doing. Now, you can take advantage of this hosted solution in a way not available to people running stats packages on their own servers.

Benchmarking allows you to compare your site's performance and popularity amongst other sites of similar content and size. This lets you keep track of how you measure up against your competition, which in turn should provide you with valuable hints as to untapped areas of interest for you to take advantage of.

For people running online businesses, access to statistical information about your competition could easily mean more money, but Google in it's constant push to remain on top of the Internet information food-chain is making it available without charge to those who contribute to the pool of information by making their de-identified website statistics available to the service.

Give a little... potentially gain a lot.

It's definitely a worthwhile deal for website owners, but it does beg the question: Is there something about us Google doesn't know?