Happy Australia Day from Murray By Moonlight and ULblog!

Today, in Australia, is a day to spend with friends and family, to fire up the BBQ, to play backyard cricket, to swim in the pool and to visit the beach.

I hope all my Australian readers [1] have a wonderful day, and for any non-Australians, today’s a great day to practise how to say “G’day!”

Footnotes:

1.	Yes, both of you.
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Brisbane, the city in which I live, is about to experience its worst flooding since 1893.

Residents are living in fear that the Wivenhoe Dam, a major water catchment upstream on the Brisbane River, might fail. If it does, it will be the end of my city.

Currently, Wivenhoe is releasing approximately 645,000 megalitres of water per day into the Brisbane River, in an attempt to stop the dam from failing entirely.

To put that in perspective, all of Sydney Harbour, one of Australia’s most internationally recognisable bodies of water, contains approximately 562,000 megalitres of water.

Even if Wivenhoe holds, by tomorrow and Thursday flood waters are projected to reach levels that haven’t been seen in Brisbane in almost 120 years, exceeding the peak levels of the infamous 1974 flood.

Elsewhere in Queensland, it is estimated that the total area of the state that has been impacted by flooding is larger that the area of France and Germany combined.

And the rain is predicted to continue.

More: Brisbane prepares for worst flood in 118 years (brisbanetimes.com.au)

I’ve just finished watching the rather spooky movie, Shutter Island, an atmospheric thriller set on a remote island off the coast of Massachusetts.

Aside from making me very thankful that I have never had to spend a night on an island like Shutter Island, the movie got me thinking about why islands feature heavily in scary stories.

What is it about islands that makes scaring the pants off people such an easy task?

The question that seems to be on everyone’s lips — well, let’s be honest, the question I’ve been asked at least a couple of times by email, anyway — is what do I, Murray By Moonlight, amateur urban legend investigator, think of the MythBusters show?

Do I like the show? Do I respect the things Adam, Jamie and the rest of the crew are attempting to achieve with it? Do I secretly envy them for all the things they get to blow up? For that matter, do I secretly envy Jamie (that’s him on the right in the picture) for his silly moustache and his even more silly hat?

The answer to at least some of these questions is yes…

I’ve seriously lost count, over the years, of how many things I’ve been warned about or encouraged to do by chain email.

Remember the Microsoft Money Giveaway email? The one that promised bucketloads of cash for forwarding the email to as many people as you could, because Microsoft had invented an email tracker and apparently wanted to reward people for filling the Internet with spam? Hands up anyone who knows anyone who received any money from it?

Or the one that said that aspartame, used in artificial sweeteners, was making people rot from the inside out?

Or the one that came with the soundfile that when you played it, could tell you your name, star sign and was able to answer basic questions about geometry? [1]

Amidst receiving all of those emails, did you ever wish you could send one back that described what it would be like if you followed all of that urgent advice?

If you answered, ‘Hell, yes!’, then you’re not alone…

Read the rest of this entry »

Footnotes:

1.	It’s very possible that I made that one up.
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