Stare defeat in the face

FORMER Test cricket opener Justin Langer is well known for his uncompromising batting.

FORMER Test cricket opener Justin Langer is well known for his uncompromising batting.

But what Strewth did not realise about this exceptionally tough West Australian is that he has a withering ability to assess the character of England's players. Langer wrote a dossier for Ricky Ponting's men, which was handed out before the first Test. It describes English cricketers as "lazy" and "shallow". Fast bowler James Anderson can be "a bit of a pussy" and captain Andrew Strauss too conservative. "English players rarely believe in themselves," says Langer. "Many of them stare a lot and chat a lot but this is very shallow. They will retreat very quickly. Aggressive batting, running and body language will soon have them staring at their bootlaces rather than in the eyes of their opponent." Langer says "they will taper off very quickly if you wear them down", and, "as soon as it gets a bit hard you just have to watch their body language and see how flat and lazy they get. This is also a time when most of them make all sorts of excuses and start looking around to point the finger at everyone else." Writing in London's Daily Telegraph, former England captain Michael Vaughan says: "I would have come up with many of the same points."

Days of peace and mud

GENERATIONS X and Y (1961-77 and 1978-94) will have to get accustomed to baby boomers (1946-64) celebrating historic moments in rock music. We've just had the 40-year anniversary of the Beatles' Abbey Road album when hundreds of fans blocked the street. But the big one - Woodstock - is just around the corner. August 15 will see a veritable king tide of memories. There was the pot, the flower power, the nudity, the mud and Jimi Hendrix. The hippies had their day of musical frivolity and then got haircuts and mortgages. Instead of smoking drugs, the men of that era and now more likly to be bald and taking Viagra. The next 40th anniversary, in December, will be the concert at Altamont Speedway in California ended in bloody, drug-fueled mayhem. Peace went out of fashion with a bang, man.

Magpies flying high

SYDNEY-BASED Collingwood supporter Tim Blair is trying to keep his enthusiasm under control now that the Magpies are third on the AFL ladder and destined to play a leading part in the finals. In his Daily Telegraph blog, Blair is touting the possibility of a 1966 grand final replay. On the last Saturday of that memorable year, St Kilda defeated Collingwood by one point to win their solitary flag.

Sexual politics

EXCITING news from the Australian Electoral Commission: the Australian Sex Party has won approval for registration as a political party. The party's founder and possible future candidate, the admirable and irrepressible Fiona Patten, says the AEC's approval shows it cares about free speech and democratic rights. "One of the reasons for establishing the party was to provide a positive platform for sexual issues among the negative notions of sex that most politicians and political parties have," Patten says. "The fact that the AEC spent so much time considering the word sex further exhibits our need for honest and open discussion about sexual matters, be they censorship, education, health or discrimination ones." Strewth hears steamy rumours that discussions about an exchange of preferences with the Australian Cocktail Party have been taking place in private salons.

Bird brain

STOCKMARKET gurus such as Warren Buffett and George Soros will need to be on their toes now that a brilliant new tipster is making money. A parrot from Papua New Guinea but resident in Seoul, South Korea, has demonstrated that random choices in stock transactions are as good, or better, than careful deliberation by humans. The female parrot named Ddalgi finished third in a six-week experiment in which she competed with 10 human investors. The humans picked any stocks they wanted but the bird, using its beak, made random choices. Ddalgi came third with a return of 13.7 per cent. The humans averaged a 4.6 per cent loss, with only two outperforming the parrot. It's time to give a chimp a shot at this game.

Is that a gun in your flab?

TAKING advantage of his physique, Texas man George Vera hid a 9mm pistol between rolls of skin and fat. Vera weighs 225kg, or about 36 stone in the old measure (500 pounds in the US) and had been arrested for theft. He was searched three times but the Houston cops missed the gun tucked snugly in a warm spot. He was charged with illegal possession of a firearm after it was spotted as he took a shower.