It’s called LaunchPod, and will be presenting ideas, careers, and possible futures for Australian students passionate about the space industry.

The podcasts feature interviews with professionals involved with space science research, development, exploration and discovery in Australia. We’ll be finding out what they do, how they got started, and for any advice they can give to aspiring young people.

The first episode of LaunchPod was released last Friday, and can be found on Soundcloud: LaunchPod Episode One.

LaunchPod also has a website at LaunchPod.net, and you can follow updates on Twitter at @launchp0d (that’s a zero, not an oh.)

The idea is that the cornflour is a non-Newtonian fluid; that is, it does not behave like a classical fluid, ie, water. It instead changes its consistency depending on the forces acting on it. At times it can flow and ooze. Other times it can feel and act like a solid.

Pour the mixture into a sound speaker, and find the right percussive action, and you get all kinds of spectacular behaviour.

Cornflour Slime in a Speaker!

My son’s brain is a sponge. From the time he was a bunch of multiplying cells somewhere deep inside his mother, there was a feedback circuit developing. Stimuli coming from taps, prods, even singing from his mother and I through developing nerve endings into his crysalis. Nothing develops in a vaccuum. Every prod is turned into information somewhere in his growing nervous system, and tucked away in the fanning matrix of neurons which would be later wrapped in flesh and bone that we kiss and gaze adoringly at.

As such, I am careful what I feed into that matrix.

For instance: Sam doesn’t need to see the postman.

I cuddle him and give him back the lollypop. He sucks at it while coming down off his energetic bawl, now and then gasping for air.

“Home time,” I whisper.

My dad taught me how to shoot while I was growing up. It’s in a little subset of skills that I never thought I’d ever use again.
The postman has not moved from across the street, still twitching and muttering in the bright sun.
I bring the rifle to my shoulder and align the sight’s crosshairs on the helmet. I debat for a moment if the bullet’s caliber is enough to travel through all those layers, and move the aim for its chest.
“Don’t hold your breath,” whispers my dad into my mind’s ear. “Aim just above the target. And squeeze squeeze squeeze-”
The rifle kicks into my shoulder. The postman yelps, and sinks to the ground.
Sam starts to cry.

The federal government was all set in rolling out this Internet clean feed upon us, though I have little knowledge as to where the issue now sits.

Eighteen months ago, I made my own video on the clean feed issue, and submitted it to Hungry Beast (and they gave me $1000!)

It’s available on the ABC website hungrybeast.abc.net.au/media/clean-feed-clash-perceptions

I thought time I put it on my own YouTube channel.

Here it is in glorious technicolour:

Actually, we made fake wounds. We made fake flesh by mixing flour and water into a dough, and mixing it with coffee for skin tone. I attached it to his arm using Vaseline, smearing the edges down with more Vaseline so that it was a swollen lump on his arm.

I then ran a bread knife through the middle, gashing it open like a large wound.

We made blood using chocolate sauce (the Paris Hilton of chocolate sauces: thick and rich) mixed with red food dye.

I dribbled it down through his fake wound, letting gravity drag droplets naturally down his arm.

All the while we talked about types of blood (venous and arterial) and other things that lie beneath the skin.

And the results:

Oh! The agony!

It really hurts, dada!

Actually, it tastes like chocolate…

I give this after-school activity two thumbs up!

​I wonder how it got so close without us hearing. But then, Sam does have a powerful set of lungs when he’s upset.
The postman was once an averaged sized person, but since Zero Hour the limbs have struggled to change their shape beneigh the work clothes. The motorcycle helmet is still bright red, and sits crooked as the head has began to morph and deform. The fluro saftey jacket is caked with dust and mud, and sometime over the last few weeks it has lost a shoe.
Maybe it sees us, or detects us, or something. Right now it sways in the bright morning sun, dazzled and confused, legs wobbling.
My trigger finger begins to twitch.
Sam knows the drill. For the first time this morning he is still, and lets me pick him off the slide and put him into the seat of the pram. I turn him away from the postman, and reach into the carryall for the earmuffs. They make his head look like two giant pimples have replaced his ears, and they must feel heavy. But Sam doesn’t touch them. He knows the drill.

     I wrap the lollypop in a clean hanky, my sticky trophy for standing my ground and weathering the tantrum. Sam has already scuttled to the metal pipe ladder, and I stand to one side with a guiding hand at the ready. It’s been a few months since he got the hang of climbing this thing by himself, but my guardian angel routine still kicks in ready for the odd misplace foot.
     He scrambles through the second tier of the play equipment to the top of the slide. He went through a phase of throwing himself down the chute with complete abandon and little injury until one day he caught the landing mat awkwardly and hollered for a full twenty minutes. Since then a self-preserving caution has begun to show in his behaviour.
     He sits at the top of the slide, tiny legs and shoes out like rams. He wriggles to escape the friction between his bum and the plastic, and I see his fine blonde hair start to stand as static builds.
     Then Sam sees the Monster.
     Distracted as I am, it’s only through the change in Sam’s demeanour that I follow his line of sight. A hundred metres away, confused by the sun, stands what was once a postman.

     Sam has different levels of “losing it”.
     As I leave the supermarket he is gearing up for a spectacular tantrum. His face is red, his lungs are swelling, and his dummy hangs on his bottom lip ready to escape.
     In a practised move, I lower my bags, hang the rifle in the crook of my arm, and strip the wrapping from a lollypop. With one hand I whip the dummy away, and plug the lollypop in its place.
     “Mfft,” says Sam happily.
     “Make it last,” I say, rolling the supermarket door shut.