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	Monday, 5 December 2005

Kangaroos fear sound of own feet Farmers may one day blast out a recording of kangaroos thumping their feet to scare them off, new research suggests. How weird is this? [ABC News: Offbeat (with Mpeg1)] 10:47:54 PM

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Death of a friend It began with a phone call last Tuesday night from a singer I had helped mentor when she was 15/16 to tell me her sister, who married a piano player I've played with off and on since 1979, is expected to die in the next few hours. For years I've enjoyed her hospitality and friendship, becoming fast wine drinking, cheese eating, philosophy arguing combatants/chums. She's run a race against secondary cancers following a thought-to-be-successful breast cancer treatment years ago. With doctors in her family she had access to the best specialists and care. One flare-up would be successfully treated only to have another more aggressive attack somewhere else a few months later. She just wanted to see her two children into their teen years. She's a few years short. Her husband, the most generous in spirit man I've ever known will be devastated. They adore each other. The next night came the phone call I'd been dreading. Being Jewish, she was to be buried Thursday. Such a sad time. I had never been to a Jewish funeral, and was touch by many of the slightly unfamiliar traditions. The first thing I noticed was that something was missing. At any gathering of this family with their friends, you would normally constantly hear "Shalom", "Shalom" as people arrived. Their were no greetings of "Shalom". I looked this up later, and sure enough, it is not appropriate to greet people with "Peace" at a funeral. I was very touched by the tradition of the mourners filling the grave, three shovels full each. This is a very nice tradition. It's seen as the highest mitzvah (good work), because it is a kindness that the recipient can never repay. Som of the musicians who had worked with the deceased's husband, and indeed the deceased, and who had always enjoyed the hospitality of the home were there, and unusually, were all lost for words. I mourned Wednesday with wine. I mourned Thursday morning with loud music. Toots & the Maytals; lyrics kept jumping out with new significance, Love is gonna let me down, love is gonna walk out on me, I got dreams to remember, etc. I mourned at the funeral. I mourned afterwards with cooking. I'm pretty well done. There was a sticky point though. After the ceremony, when I went to embrace the deceased woman's husband, he said that she had given him a message. He was to tell Chris Finnen and me how much she loved both of us. I pretty much lost it then. The whole experience reminds me again, that if we don't make the loving gesture now, we may never get the chance to. 10:39:22 PM

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Signs of Intelligence: Firefox 1.5 Released The most noticable difference is the improved performance... The Mozilla Foundation has released Firefox 1.5, the first release since 1.0.7 and the first major update since 1.0. Firefox is still the recommended browser for visiting morons.org, as it is arguably the fastest and most standards-compliant browser... I have four browsers on my main computer, none of them Internet Explorer. On my old computer I use the long-deceased Cyberdog still. But Firefox has become my main browser. [morons.org headlines] 10:02:20 PM

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