geekosystem

This amiable Lebowski-esque guy is going to show you how he catches a kangaroo with his good ol' shopping bag. So hit the break and watch his video, man. The Dude abides.

The folks of Broken Hill in New South Wales woke up this weekend to find their town's surrounding landscape dotted with life-size LEGO flora. The LEGO trees and flowers are part of the "Festival of Play," the LEGO Group's way of celebrating 50 years of LEGO in Australia. Pictures after the jump!

Scientists in Queensland, Australia hit a 'paleontologists' goldmine' when 50 diprotodon fossils were unearthed at the site. Get excited, people. This is a mass grave of giant wombats we're taking about. So many bones, so much history!

In what will surely leave all other countries green with envy, Melbourne, Australia is to have a one month engagement with a company called I.R.L. Shooter running a game titled Patient 0. But what, exactly, is Patient 0, you might ask? In their own words, it "is a fully immersive live action real life, multiplayer, first person shooter, role-playing game."  They fail to mention in the sentence that the entire experience revolves around you running around and shooting zombies.

The most interesting animals in Australia are the ones that have evolved to fill the very specific niches available on the once-isolated continent. The introduction of new species during European colonization brought animals that weren't so well adjusted, and have strained the local environment to keep up. Domestic cattle, for instance, have been fouling fields because the local dung beetle population simply can't cope with that much cow crap. This has forced scientists to look elsewhere for a solution.

Life ain't easy down under. In addition to particularly strict laws regarding violence in gaming, Australians can also expect to pay a pretty penny for their software. For reasons mostly unknown, software tends to be more expensive in Australia than it is in the U.S., sometimes reaching near twice the price of copies licensed to U.S. citizens. While inexplicable, it's something of a standard practice, as if downloading files in Australia is significantly more resource intensive than downloading them somewhere else. To the relief of Australians everywhere (but mostly those in Australia), the Australian government is now looking into this bizarre trend.

Last weekend, a group of black-clad people carrying pre-printed signs poured out of a black bus outside the Sydney Apple store. They chanted "wake up!" and shook their signs which bore the same slogan. Most assumed it was some kind of guerrilla marketing campaign, with Samsung being a likely candidate. However, the Korean electronics maker has denied any involvement.

Bus shelters ostensibly exist to keep you relatively dry while you wait for an inevitably late public transit vehicle and fantasize about how nice it would be to have a car. Bus shelters in Australia, other hand, also let you play some tunes. Oh, and taunt you about how you don't have a car. NRMA Insurance, which offers car insurance, is the organization behind the madness, and is using bus shelter adspace to install speakers that you can use to blare music at fellow bus-takers while you all wait.

Are you wondering where in Australia to continue your education? Are you worried about the potential dangers of magical finger-snapping teleportation? Then this video, which may or may not be endorsed by the institute for higher eduction which it features, is for you! Just more proof that Australians are making some fantastic advertisements. Watch out, things do get a bit gory in this video.

Researchers from the University of Queensland have found the first ever hybrid sharks hanging around off the coast of Australia and from what they can tell, the hybrids are robust and more apt to handle changing climates than either of their parent species. Researches found not one or two, but 57 of the hybrids, along a 2,000 km stretch of coastline that included areas too cold for some non-hybrid sharks to live. While there could be any number of reasons behind this hybridization, it's thought that it could be an adaption to climate change.

Germany is up there with Australia when it comes to countries that are hard on violent games. However, both have recently been making strides to become a little more accepting. Apparently starting with the backlog, yesterday Germany re-rated Doom and Doom 2, giving both a 16+ rating where before they had been indexed by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons, which put them in the same restrictive category as pornography.

It turns out that 10 years after something is indexed, an appeal can be entertained and Bethesda, who aquired id back in 2009, figured they might as well try. Well, it worked. It seems that this isn't just a lark either. The third Gears of War title has been granted a rating as well instead of being relegated to the index like the two previous games, and Microsoft is pushing Germany to reconsider the rest of the series. It seems that Germany might finally be lightening up on depictions of gratuitous violence, although when you put it that way, it seems a little bit weird to be celebrating it. Still, the Doom games are the historical foundation of the most popular video game genre today, so regardless of how much gibbing there is, there is certainly something to be appreciated there.

(via Joystiq)

A redditor claiming to be an employee of the hostel 790 On George in Australia says he or she was "told to make an ad with no money." With a budget like that, it is no surprise that the video's amazing special effects (the explosions, oh, the explosions) steal the show. Really though, for an advertisement with no budget, this hostel is certainly going to get a lot of free publicity, just for the fact that the ad is so delightfully horrible. Thumbs up for the brilliant marketing mastermind at 790 On George. (via Reddit)

The BBC News reports that winds in southern Australia have recently been so strong that the water from waterfalls have been turned around, spraying back up into the air. Wind speeds reached around 75 miles-per-hour, creating ocean waves about five meters high, and a month's worth of rain has fallen on Sydney in only 24 hours. Head on past the break to see a video of the waterfalls "flowing" upward that doesn't look too impressive at first, but then quickly becomes a sight.

Farting camels make global warming worse, death to the camels! It would be nice if there was something (anything?) that we could blame for climate change, other than human actions. But, farting camels? What seems like a ridiculous farting farce, is actually a real plan being considered by officials in Australia to kill camels for their alleged role in global warming.

The idea is that killing camels, who release methane gas when they fart, would solve global warming in Australia because their farting has a serious impact on the country's carbon emissions. The International Society of Camelid Research Development (ISOCARD), has called the proposed camel-cull "stupid," and an "abomination of science," in addition to declaring that it would make camels scape-goats for a man-made problem.

Palaeontologists in Australia have found a virtually complete skeleton that is the largest known example of a diprotodon, a giant wombat-like animal. This diprotodon is comparable in size to a four wheel drive vehicle and when alive looked similar to a rhinoceros. Researchers say the three-ton monster, known for having massive tusks and a small brain, may have lived approximately two million years ago. Diprotodons were plant eaters, and are believed to have gone extinct around 55,000 years ago as a result of either the arrival of the first indigenous people of Australia, or climate change, or a combination of the two. The skeleton was found on a remote cattle station near the Leichhardt River between Normanton and Burketown in Queensland. The area has become known for being saturated with the remains of prehistoric megafauna. Led by professor Sue Hand, a palaeontologist at the University of New South Wales, the researchers found the fossil after they spotted an arm bone sticking out of the ground. Further digging showed that the bone was connected to a shoulder blade, and ultimately the entire skeleton was unearthed. The bones were found next to the tooth of a giant goanna (a type of lizard) that the researchers suspect may have become dislodged while the creature was feasting on the carcass of the diprotodon. The fossil is virtually complete, which makes it one of Australia’s most significant prehistoric discoveries. (via The Telegraph Photo via Wikimedia Commons)