Smart Phone Fever

After months of silence, I pop my head up to talk about smart phones.

Don't get me wrong here.

For starters, I'm a smartphone kind of guy, swayed by the seductiveness of the Apple iPhone 4, seducted by Nokia with their sweet promises of N900 power yet impressed by HTC with their smart phones and the other Androids out there.

Which one to choose?

Damned if I know.

Apple are the king of spin. They have the money now they're bigger than Microsoft.

Using Apple CEO Jobs, Apple has released the latest iPhone 4G beauty and the Apple faithful queued for kilometers in the rain to be first to buy the new toy. However, it seems there are a few problems with said new toy.

Unfortunately for Apple and great God CEO Jobs credibility, the iPhone 4 is riddled with bugs that include reception issues, yellow stains and white spots on the screen and poor picture quality from their new 5 megapixel camera.

Jobs twittered just hours ago, they may need to recall their fantastic iPhone 4.

What an event that will be!

I have nothing against Apple but hate the Apple PR spin and cunningly managed leaks they do to tittilate us and our expectations.

It's same us being promised a wonderful lolly but ending up with sour medicine.

The purpose of this post is to rubbish politicians and their nonsense

Is the hairstyle of NSW Premier Kristina Keneally a political force of its own that could help others struggling with their public appeal?

I'm nobody's puppet, I'm nobody's protege, I'm nobody's girl.

It is an unquestionable hit with the public and today the #KKHairAvatarDay hashtag started trending on Twitter. Earlier this week it was reported her breezy coiffure is being specifically requested by salon patrons, with celebrity hairdresser Joh Bailey saying it was “extremely popular” with customers. “It’s fresh, it’s appropriate to her position, it’s very well-groomed - she’s obviously having it done a lot,” Bailey told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Someone said to me that [her hair] has a lot of movement in it, and that sort of says that she’s doing something.”

Kristina Keneally’s hairstyle is very much part of the NSW Premier’s personal brand which has made her the most popular political leader in the country despite the government she leads being openly loathed by voters. She’s building her leadership credentials - playing a starring role in the negotiations this week’s COAG health summit - but there can be little doubt that her telegenic qualities have given her an edge when it comes to cutting through with the electorate.

The most surprising thing about what happens when you put Keneally’s do to male politicians is that rather than making them look like cards out of a game of Guess Who some of them actually look, well, plausible. For example, it makes Kevin Rudd (above) and Tony Abbott (below) look like troubled French film directors.

Peter Garrett’s political career has been struggling lately. Perhaps he could do with some Keneally cut-through?

Deputy PM Julia Gillard looks after her hair but would something more radical suit her?

Or Barack Obama, whose approval ratings have plummeted following the divisive healthcare debate in the US.

There’s an election underway in the UK and Labour’s Gordon Brown appears to be on the nose. He’s never been the best-presented man in British politics, but…

Of course in the interests of balance we should also see if it works for Nick Clegg and David Cameron.

Tasmanian premier David Bartlett will be struggling to rebuild his credibility after going back on his promise not to do a deal with the Greens.

And Queensland Premier Anna Bligh - known for appearing regularly in a hard hat but maybe it could be replaced with the Keneally look?

My kind of woman! (pinched from thepunch.com.au)

Oooh la la. French women might not get fat, but they’re happy to hold up a very curvy woman as the apogee of style.

Pick up a copy of the current issue of French Elle and you’ll find American plus-size model Tara Lynn seductively pouting in a white jumpsuit on the front. Inside, 20 pages are prominently devoted to Lynn, who is a size 16, modelling things like blue chunky knitted capes while causally pretending to ride a bike - your standard fashion fare.

For some, this is just another example of what the New York Times has dubbed “the triumph of the size 12s “, that is, a backlash against the prevailing dictate of exclusively employing the skeletally thin girls previously favoured by designers and editors.

In the last few months, curvier models have started appearing in high-end and mainstream fashion magazines and on catwalks in both the US and Europe, prompting the suggestion that we are witnessing a subtle, but substantive shift in attitudes towards weight and dress-size.

Case in point is the rise and rise of Crystal Renn, reputedly the world’s most successful “plus-size” model. Renn, who battled anorexia while muddling her way through an average at best modelling career, recovered and gained much needed weight only to find herself in hot international demand. Renn, now a size 12, has since strutted down the runways of Paris and London and has been photographed by world-renowned photographer Steven Meisel for Italian Vogue.

Similarly, the meteoric ascension to fashion’s highest reaches of British model Lara Stone, a girl who possess, shock-horror, cleavage, has been taken as another blow to the size zero trend. Stone recently graced the cover of British Vogue, and in the associated profile Stone opined, “It would be nice if I wasn’t the only person with tits and arse”.

Last year, Glamour Magazine in the US sparked a hyperbolic media frenzy when it published a photo of plus-size model Lizzi Miller, tucked away on page 196. In the image, Miller is wearing nothing but a pair of underpants and a wide grin, with a roll of stomach fat on proud display. The reaction to the photo was ecstatic, and overnight Miller was transformed from being an unknown model to being treated like a blonde version of the second coming.

Comments posted on the Glamour website included “the most amazing photograph I’ve ever seen in any women’s magazine,” and “For the first time ever, I looked in a magazine and saw a picture of a woman and actually thought, “She looks exactly like me!”

The magazine’s editor, Cindi Leive said in the wake of the of publishing the shot, “I hope it’s the beginning of a revolution.”

Meanwhile, UK Vogue Editor Alexandra Shulman has put pen to paper, pleading with haute couture designers to make larger sample sizes so the magazine would not be forced to employ the skeletal, practically pre-pubescent girls that were the only models able to fit into them.

Addressing an audience at Harvard, US designer Michael Kors recently lambasted the “army of children” who are the usual runway fodder. “The fashion industry is starting to address real women again,” Kors said, “The emphasis in fashion is shifting toward an emphasis on real women who are women, not girls.’‘

Then, in recent weeks, Italian Vogue has launched a “Vogue Curvy” special section online, devoted to fashion and beauty for larger women. (Why bigger women need different specialised beauty products is a curious question.)

So, has flab become fab?

Are we witnessing a genuine reaction to the terrifyingly thin girls with jutting ribcages and razors of spine who have haunted the catwalks and pages of Vogue et. al. as we forge a way towards a more inclusive vision of womanly beauty?

Or have designers and editors simply cottoned on to the fact that using “big” girls attracts much media hoopla?

After all, the occasional glamorous exception does not a revolution make.

If we were witnessing widespread cultural change, why are larger models relegated to appearing nearly exclusively in “Special editions” or “Body Love” issues. Lynn’s French Elle cover coup was for the “Curvy” issue, while Miller’s now famed image appeared in Glamour’s Body special.

There has most certainly been an increase in the visibility of “plus-size” models (who, it should be noted at size 12-16, are on the smaller side of the national average). But has this necessarily impelled positive change or does it genuinely reflect the beginning of a more inclusive bodily aesthetic?

Employing curvier models serves as a means for the fashion world to fob off criticisms that their continued use of malnourished Eastern European teenagers promotes a terribly skewed vision of “beauty”.

The UK Observer newspaper quoted a Parisian fashion insider as saying of the Elle cover, “It’s a gimmick. Having one edition that you fill with big girls is like world women’s day: one day a year is reserved for them and the rest of the time you go back to normal.”

It’s hard to escape the whiff of self-promotion and publicity grubbing when it comes to designers and magazine editors employing larger models.

Renn makes this point in her autobiography, “Hungry”, discussing what she sees as the “fetishisation of fat”. “When designers and editors choose one fat girl to salivate over, and revel in her avoirdupois, I’m not sure how much it advances the cause of using girls of all sizes in a magazine” Renn writes.

Charlotte Dawson was criticized for stating the obvious when she commented on “bigger” girls auditioning for Australia’s Next Top Model. “There is no market for plus-size models in Australia….” Dawson told ninemsn. “I would like someone to name a plus-size model in Australia because I can’t,” she said. “We could have a plus-size model win the competition and she would end up doing catalogues for Target.”

There remains significant resistance from those at the heart of the fashion world, with Karl Lagerfeld taking aim at the issue, declaring “No one wants to see curvy women” in magazines. Largerfeld agued that Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Elle and their ilk are the stuff of “dreams and illusions”, and thus there is no place for a size 10 reality.

After all, this is a world that has never been interested in normal or average, and so much of which is anathema to the real world.

So long as “fat” is little more than a faddish curiosity or a handy politically correct, self-congratulatory manoeuvre, the wider fashion milieu will remain as regimented and segregated as ever.

If each time a larger model is employed there is such a volume of self-congratulatory fanfare, the prevailing stereotypes are not being substantively challenged or changed.

In this battle for hearts and minds and body-fat percentages perhaps whatever helps sell the most magazines or chunky knitted blue capes wins.

Illegals flooding our country

A major issue at the next Australian election!

Illegal immigrants.

Since our current Government (Labor) won election, they've gone out of their way to encourage illegal immigrants to jump the queue of legitimate others and enter our country and do as they please.

Apart from the boats crowded with illegals now hitting our shores daily, one cringes at the thought of those sneaking through on air arrivals.

Naturally, we taxpayers are expected to pay for them all providing them benefits.

That's why they come here.

The word has spread, we are a soft touch. Certain numbers of them are attempting to dominate our culture with their own. Does any of this make sense? It's time to kick back and send back these people where they came from.

An excellent thought is to send the illegals back to the camps where legals are waiting. Bring the legals in and let those illegals wait back in the queue. "Backfilling". An excellent idea!

There are few issues more fraught in this country than that of border protection. The combination of anxiety about our security, concerns about our employment and economic well-being and the often confrontational images that accompany this problem means that emotions run high.

Leaders on both sides of the political debate have an obligation to make sure that this passion is constrained to vigorous debate and does not spill over into ugly vilification or racism.

And likewise those who are legitimately concerned the current policy is too soft should not be labeled racists themselves.

Instead it is incumbent upon each side of politics to put the emotive language and rhetoric aside and clearly outline their position on this complex issue.

There is a sense in the community, as there has been in some sections of the Labor Party itself, that Kevin Rudd's difficulties with the asylum seeker problem have not been caused by his less hard line approach but rather his attempt to talk tough while implementing a more generous program.

If he had articulated an unequivocal position and stood fast he might not have found himself wedged in as he appears to be now. People might have disagreed but they at least would have known where he stood and respected him for that.

Likewise Tony Abbott has flagged the possibility of returning to John Howard's controversial Pacific Solution. He ought to place this squarely on the board or remove it altogether as a political chess piece.

If we're going to talk tough about this issue let's also talk straight.

Don't you hate someone that destroys a career?

We have in Australia, a weak couple, Michael Clarke and Lara Bingle our local media does it's best on a slow news day to relate to power couple, David Beckham and wag. Victoria. Victoria was a one time Spice girl decades ago.

However, Vice Captain of Australian Cricket, Michael Clarke hurried back to Australia in the middle of a strategic series in NZ to comfort girlfriend Lara Bingle, embroiled in a nude picture scandal involving one of her former lovers. It seems she needed consoling for her stupidity. "Immediately, if not sooner". Lara has done little the last few years of any note. In fact, she's done little anytime!

Cricket is a big deal in Australia same as baseball in USA.

She's been involved in various scandals in the past so this is nothing new to her. She's also known to associate with various sporting stars and involved in various scandals with them.

If this was just one scandal, I could accept this as we are only human. But there have been several with this train wreck. However this spoiled brat who's never worked a day in her life, demands immediate attention from her poor besotted boyfriend.

She has little claim to fame apart from the fact she fronted a commercial for Australian Tourism a few years ago and became famous for using the word "bloody" that the poms objected to the use.

Can you believe this? The poms... who have the most risque (and enjoyable) humor in the world. In the near future, I may bother to take the months necessary to list, the thousands of English shows, their sexual innuendos and use of dirty words far. far worse than the word, "bloody"!

However, I digress!

Bingle currently, has a street smart PR Agent out there flogging her as a package to TV networks and any other media that will listen, for a million dollars. Needless to say, weeks, later, no one wants to know her.

Other Agents gave up on her because she was a tad precious, not accepting work.

Not surprisingly, now, no one wants to know her, she's crying and want's consolation from her main income earner, Michael Clarke to come home and comfort her. Poor baby probably has another scratch on her expensive gift car.

We take our cricket seriously here in Australia as it's steeped in tradition and history. To be an Australian Cricket Captain is perhaps the highest honor in Australian sport. Bingle's whine for attention has done little for her business opportunities and virtually destroyed her boyfriend's chances of advancing to Australian Captain and making serious money in Australian cricket.

They are engaged. Current bets from within the industry are, she will leave him soon and move on down hill!

Spanx? Need to know stuff about Spanx

Excuse me, but I'm just a humble guy. Just discovered something called "Spanx" from this vitally important article in the London Daily Mail. "What the hell is that you say?" We learn so much every day. Read on and discover this gem recently published dear friends. Anyhow, thought I would share this post with you...

Whoops! Now we know what's Holden Amanda in... a pair of Spanx

After flashing her enviable bottom in her new TV show Amanda Holden's Fantasy Lives last week, you wouldn't think Amanda Holden would need any support.

But as she arrived at the Britain's Got Talent auditions in Birmingham today, the actress unwittingly flashed her control pants.

Looking svelte and toned in a fuchsia mini-dress, the 38-year-old didn't realise her hemline had caught on her Spanx pants, exposing them to photographers as she stepped out of her car at the city's Hippodrome.

Summery brights: Amanda Holden looked summery in a fuchsia dress as she arrived at the Britain's Got Talent auditions in Birmingham today

Flasher: Holden ends up flashing her Spanx control pants

Pert: Holden showed off her bottom when she played a Parisian showgirl in her TV show last week

Holden's use of the pants is surprising given her bottom-flashing in her TV show last week, when she stripped down to a revealing outfit to play a Parisian showgirl.

While Holden may be embarrassed to realise they were showing, she's made no secret of her love for control pants.

She said last year: 'On fat days, I wear Spanx. When I'm working I wear Spanx control knickers to smooth things out.'

The Spanx range of body forming stockings and control pants, which sell for between £20 and £50, hold in the bottom, thighs and stomach, are virtually undetectable.

Spanx, invented by American entrepreneur Sara Blakely, promise to 'flatter your figure from top to bottom'.

Other celebrity fans of Spanx include Beyonce Knowles, Tori Spelling, Girls Aloud, Tyra Banks, Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna, Katie Holmes and Jessica Alba.

And flashing her control pants weren't Holden's only wardrobe malfunction this week, yesterday her perfectly coiffed haircut was ruined by the strong winds as she posed for a photocall in London.

The Britain's Got Talent judge was helping friend Gina Hemmings open her new health and beauty salon in Kew, south west London, when she was got caught out by the weather.

Not such a secret: Holden has spoken openly about her love of Spanx

Enlarge

Sleek silhouette: Holden's pants help her achieve the right look in her dress

Dressed in a dark grey jersey dress, light grey cardigan and knee-high boots, Holden looked well-groomed as he posed alongside a tree outside Hemmings' new business.

Love a sea mystery

Goddamn! We all love sea mystery stuff don't we? Don't we?

Nature lover lost in North Sea saved by woman who spotted his camera flashing... 350 miles away

A German man owes his life to a woman who rescued him from 350 miles away – thanks to his camera.

The man lost on a frozen stretch of the North Sea was facing almost certain death when he flashed his camera in the hope that someone might be out watching the same beautiful sunset he had set out to witness.

Luckily the camera flash off the coast of St. Peter-Ording near the Danish border was witnessed by a female nature lover sitting in front of her computer in the Westerwald region near the Rhine hundreds of miles away in southern Germany.

Eagle-eyed: An observation base near the stretch of the North Sea the woman was viewing via a webcam when she spotted the lost man

She was monitoring a camera set up on the beach to record the vivid sunset.

Seeing the camera flashes she alerted local police who in turn sent through an emergency call that resulted in a patrol rescuing the man as temperatures plunged to -20c.

Police spokeswoman Kristin Stielow said: 'He was walking on the ice, got disoriented and would probably have either fallen through the ice or succumbed to the cold.

'He was very lucky that this lady was sharing the same natural phenomenon but from the warmth and safety of her own home.'

The man in his 40s was treated for mild exposure after his ordeal.

He is planning a visit to the woman he owes his life to when he has recovered.

The man was stranded near St Peter-Ording, while his 'rescuer' was 350 miles away in Westerwald