Best Photos of the Fortnight - 13 February 2011

Ok, well, I had best photos of the week ready for last week, and I forgot to post them ok? I have a life you know. Ahhhhhhhh, forget it...


TANK GUY

Photo: Emillio Moranatti
A protester against the Mubarak Government in Tahrir Sqaure, Cario on February 6 demonstrates how everyone has lightened up a bit since the last 'Tank Guy,' that guy in Tiananmen Sqaure,' came and went. Then, Tank Guys had to sacrifice themselves, now they can bet a of a kip in while protesting. The 21st century is a much better place for the Tank Guys (also illustrated by the fact that the Chinese government is unchanged while Mubarak was gone from power a few days after this photo was taken).



SUPER

Photo: Mike Stone
Green Bay head coach Mike McCarthy hugs one of his players after the Packers successfully won Super Bowl XLV, defeating the Pittsburgh Stealers 31 - 26 in Arlington, Texas. The game was watched by a record TV audience of 200 billion, more than 30 times the population of the planet at this time, so proving that aliens and time travelers are avid NFL fans as well.



PERDY

Photo: Tom Dorsey
The continuing cold weather in America produces a never ending stream 'Awww, perdy' photos, as this one of a Sawtooth Oak in Kansas demonstrates.



CYCLONE YASI

Photo: NASA - Godard Space Agency
Sweeping down on the Queensland coast like the spirograph from hell, tropical cyclone Yasi reached Category 5 in terms of both wind speed and media coverage. Incredibly, it was all over in a few hours, as the cyclone made landfall around 1am on Wednesday and was far inland and much diminished about 12 hours later. Even more incredibly, the word 'spirograph' is not in my computers dictionary.



BANANA CARNAGE

Photo: Unknown
As is so often the case with natural disasters in Australia, bananas were among the worst affected by the cyclone, as this image of a flattened plantation in Queensland shows. Expect Banana Split prices to go through the roof, once again.



FIRE!

Photo: Paul Pichugin
And after the rain... and the flooding... and the cyclone... came the fires, sweeping through the bush on the outskirts of Perth, West Australia. If the global warming experts are right and changing temperatures will produce more of these disasters, then people in Australia are seriously fucked.



MILDURA TRAIN CRASH

Photo: Glenn Milne
Five foreign farm workers miraculously escaped injury after their car was crushed by a Mildura bound freight train. Police stated that how the car ended up in front of the train was still a mystery...



CAR CRASH

Photo: Tim Jean
... but not as much as a mystery as how this car ended up on it's... well, end, after a car crash in heavy snow outside of Salem, New Hampshire.


NEW YEARS

Photo: Tyrone Siu
This is either; a) Westerners celebrating the start of the Year of the Rabbit on Chinese New Year in Hong Kong or, b)A meeting of the 'Donnie Darko AQppreciation Society.'

Cyclone 'Terrorise'

Federal Member of Parliament Bob 'The Mad' Katter is someone who knows a bit about cyclones.

I mean, he's survived at least 30 of them by now, and maybe more than that. He's pretty much lost count, since they used to whistle through his part of far north Queensland every five minutes back in the seventies. And he was nearly killed by one when he was six, when 'Cyclone No Name' swept through Townsville - or somewhere - and upset the ferry he was riding back from Magnetic Island on. Not that this bothered Bob much. By age six he'd already survived 14 cyclones, 10 hurricanes, 87 flash floods and the election of the Bjelke-Peterson government, so nothing much phased him:

'I thought it was fun, but my mother was certain we were going to drown.'



So this is clearly a man we can rely on to give us some insight into the Level 5 Cyclone, Cylone 'Yasi,' that crossed Queensland's coast last night.

And Bob was happy to oblige, taking to ABC24 last night to provide some insights.

It was clear from the start that Bob was concerned. A lot of his mates, tough sort of blokes you'd imagine, were looking a bit 'glassy-eyed.' Everyone was worried, even people who had survived Cyclone Larry in 2006. Bob was worried for them too, but less concerned about himself. Having survived cyclones, hurricanes, monsoons, tornadoes, floods, fires, famine, plague, yo-yo's, low GI diets, happy pants, 'talk to the hand,' text speak and the Howard government's refusal to subsidise Queensland's sugar industry, he'd built himself a steel reinforced house and felt he could survive anything.

'We're not going anywhere,' he said.

But he was much less sanguine about what the media had been doing to his constituents. The glassy-eyed ones. Playing up to their fears. 'Terrorising' them, in his words, with this constant talk of a large storm bearing down on Queensland. He seemed to feel that the media were beating up the storm and the dangers it posed, to whip everyone into some kind of storm frenzy and so help their ratings (or something).

'The message that has gone through to people has been one of terror.'



Hmmm, looks pretty terrifying to me.

But Bob would have none of it. Didn't the people in the media understand that in Queensland people were built tough, and that they, and he, had survived earthquakes, tsunamis, the fall of the heavens, the explosion of the sun, the end of the... well, you get the idea. The earnest interviewer on ABC24 seemed puzzled by this argument. Did the member for Kennedy not want the media to highlight the plight of his constituents? And what about the people who had stayed in those areas and who might be relying on organisations like the ABC to keep them up to date with what was happening?

'You're missing my point,' said Katter, who then proceeded to pretty much go, 'Terrorise, terrorise, terrorise, terrorise, terrorise, terrorise, terrorise.'

Clearly he felt pretty strongly about it, whatever it was he was talking about.