darisha

My sister and I have recently decided to try a semi-vegetarian lifestyle - we'd only eat meat on weekends. This has nothing to do with us being squeamish about eating dead things (I used to finger paint with blood samples in biology class after all), but more an attempt to save money and improve our health. I don't know if you've noticed but, depending on what and where you buy it, meat can be quite expensive. We started talking about why different types of meat were priced differently in different states. For example, my sister mentioned that our mum bought some kangaroo meat in country Victoria for almost double what it would cost here in Adelaide. I told her that feral kangaroos were a big problem in northern South Australia, and the fact that hunters could (legally) go on a killing spree at certain times of the year probably accounted for the abundance and lower price of kangaroo meat here.

But this got me to thinking about feral animals in general. Feral animals are a big problem here in Australia, especially introduced species such as rabbits and foxes - they threaten the balance of our ecosystem and the environment's ability to regenerate properly. Every year scientists and governments try to come up with new ways to limit feral populations. Their most recent idea is fertility control, either through viruses, chemicals, or surgical removal of reproductive organs.

When choosing to implement ANY wildlife management strategy, however, we have to take into consideration all the underlying factors – target species, risks, effectiveness, locality etc.

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What are your thoughts on wildlife management and control? I'd love to hear them :)


Dimi's Random Thought For The Day: Sometimes I think humans should be considered a feral species. I've met a number of people who should DEFINITELY be prohibited from breeding.

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Here's a bit of a question for you: what gender are you?

Not too hard to answer at first glace - you're either male or female, right? But why? What makes us male or female? If we were to never reveal (or never even know) the specific form of our reproductive organs, would we still be male or female? Would this change how we think or act, or how we are perceived? Damn right it would.

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Dimi's Random Thought For The Day: I feel a little less dumb today :P

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I should probably make a post on my experiences at Manifest (it's been two weeks already), but to be honest, I really can't be arsed. Although I enjoyed my trip to Melbourne to visit friends, the convention itself was kind of a let down. Sure, I met some cool people and learned some things, but for such a large, three day event, the results were rather pitiful.

Total Sales: 4 x bookmarks, 2 x bag tags, 4 x A5 prints, 10 x A4 prints, 3 x A3 prints, 4 x posters. That's even less than we we took at Avcon, let alone SMASH! where we sold twice as much. Very poor results indeed. Too much competition I think, considering we were in the traders hall with all the big company traders. And so many artists too... No one wants prints, they want the comic.

So rather than wallow in my failure at Manifest, I'm going to talk about something else. We spoke about Witchcraft in Anthropology recently, so I think I'll write something about that...


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Dimi's Random Thought For The Day: Did you know that, in Azande society (in Africa), witchcraft is called "mangu" and is often inherited? It is concentrated in a small black, oval shaped bag in the small intestines and will emanate witchcraft when the witch in question has strong feelings of malice, envy, or hate (making witchcraft a mostly unconscious action).

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Alrighty, who's in the mood to procrasinate? Oh, me, me! Pick ME! *waves arms enthusiastically*

While the life and death of Socrates are highly amusing (the man had more issues than a day-time soapie), there comes a day in everyone's life where they just go: "I don't wanna". For me, today is that day (heh, ten guesses who has an assignment due next week, lol).

So instead, I'm going to do what I should have done a long time ago - I'm going to talk about SMASH!. It's been over a week since the convention ended, and I still haven't plugged your ears (or eyes for the smart-arses out there) with my wonderful stories and opinions. You know you all want to know :P

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