I haven't seen Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth so I'm in no position to judge the film. I can, however, judge a review I read today which, as far as I could tell, was reviewing Gore's politics rather than the film itself. It's a bit like giving Star Wars a bad review because you don't believe there was ever life in a galaxy far, far away. Having said that, it'd be just as bad as someone gave An Inconvenient Truth a good review simply because they believed in the message.

A memorial to Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin will be held on Tuesday or Wednesday next week, probably at Suncorp Stadium (a.k.a. Lang Park) in Brisbane. I don't think I'll be attending, but it's probably a good idea for those deeply affected by his death to go alone so they can move on. The ABC has some details here.

I drove past the old Queensland Museum in Gregory Terrace this morning and was pleased to see that there's been plenty of progress on its restoration. I felt a rush of nostalgia as I remembered what a wonderful place the museum had seemed to me as a child, and how the new museum doesn't fill me with the same sense of awe. As a child, I imagined the old museum to be some sort of musty, haunted mansion where scary, yet interesting, things were to be found. The new museum may contain some interesting things but, for me at least, it's a just a big concrete bunker that lacks character and soul.

What's in a name? At least £110,000, as Sean Combs discovered when he lost the right to call himself Diddy in the UK. As the BBC reports here, the US record producer formerly known as Puff Daddy has settled a court with Briton Richard Dearlove, who has been calling hismelf Diddy since 1992. Combs will now have to "re-brand" himself in the UK. I wonder if he has thought of calling himself "Sean Combs"?

The King of television, Graham Kennedy, is dead, and it's taken a while for them to promote his sidekick. In case, like me, you missed it, Bert Newton was crowned Australia’s No.1 star last night by the Nine Network. (I wonder if he would have stil been No.1 if he was on Channel Ten?) The rest of the 50 stars for 50 years of TV, in alphabetical order, are here. (The names are in capital letters because I got them in an email that way and I couldn't be bothered changing them.)

Despite being close to predicting the state election outcome in the office sweep, I'm no political pundit. However, I will say that one interesting outcome was, according to my reading of the preliminary figures, Premier Peter Beattie suffered a significant slump in support in his own electorate of Brisbane Central. Is that due to the changing demographics of inner Brisbane or is it the protest vote that didn't eventuate elsewhere?

As I mentioned on the ie blog a few weeks ago, 2001: A Space Odyssey stars Gary Lockwood and Keir Dullea are coming to Brisbane. They'll attend a screenign of the film, sign autographs and answer questions at the Globe Theatre in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley on Thursday September 28 at 7pm and Sunday October 1 at 6pm.Tickets are $20 per person, but I'm not sure if autographs cost extra - as they often do at fan events, because film veterans have to earn a living somehow. Details here.

David Jason, who is a huge star in Britain for Only Fools and Horses but is best known here for A Touch of Frost has been named the UK's greatest star of the past 50 years. Double act Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise came in second in the televised survey, followed by Inspector Frost's John Thaw, Julie Walters, game show host Bruce Forsyth and The Two Ronnies.

Saturday night: Peter Beattie gets re-elected by promising, among other things, to fix Queensland's water crisis.
Sunday afternoon: It's been raining all day.
Coincidence?

Life really is unfair. A New York woman who won a $1 million lottery prize four years ago has just won another $1 million on a scratch card. The odds of this happening are, apparently, 1 in 3,669,120,000,000. Valerie Wilson, a 56-year-old deli worker, told a newspaper: "The first time I couldn't believe it. This time I said, 'God's on my side'. I lost my husband in 1993, so I went to the cemetery and thanked him. I figured he had something to do with it."
New York state lottery officials said two other people have also won $1m prizes on two separate occasions. And I just want to win once ...

The election may have resulted in another landslide for Peter Beattie, but one three-way contest is still too close to call. The Sunday Mail office sweep, where we all attempted to predict the final number of seats held by the major partieis, still hangs in the balance. I'm one of the final contenders and if Labor ends up with 60 seats, I'll be the winner.

On 612ABC and ABC News Radio's election coverage, host Richard Fidler has referred to guest Kevin Rudd as "the ABC's federal spokesman for foreign affairs". Rudd is, of course, the ALP's spokesman on foreign affairs.

As I face a night at work subbing Queensland election stories, one of my colleagues reminds me of something she once heard: "Politics is just showbiz for ugly people."

I'm not a huge motorsport fan and never have been. But what Australian didn't know of Peter Brock as one of our nation's great champions? Sadly, in the same week that claimed the life of Steve Irwin, he has now joined my Celebrity Deaths Archive. There's more on the man they called the King of the Mountain and Peter Perfect at the ABC, smh.com.au and news.com.au.

If you had a million dollars worth of jewellery, would you carry it around in your luggage? Lindsay Lohan did, and now somebody has stolen it - along with her asthma medication - at Heathrow Airport. Earlier, Lohan's mum denied reports the starlet was engaged to boyfriend Harry Morton and a few weeks ago, Lohan was being dissed for being unprofessional. Oh, the perils of being a celebrity.
PS: If Superman was real, would he be dating Lindsay Lohan? After all, he went out with Lois Lane, Lana Lang and Lori Lemaris. Or maybe she'd be his arch enemy, like Lex Luthor.

This morning on 612 ABC, Spencer Howson and I spoke about arts policy and the election, and especially film funding, trains and Star Trek's 40th anniversary (read some of my Brent Spiner interview on the ie blog here). To my surprise and delight, Spencer played Star Trekkin' b y The Firm. You can watch the video here.

Temperatures certainly were rising at a symposium on climate change in Canberra this week - when the entertainment at the taxpayer-funded event turned out to be from Miss Kitka's House of Burlesque. Details from The Courier-Mail here.

Paris Hilton has been arrested on drink-driving charges. It amazes me that Hilton would do something as pedestrian as drive. Doesn't she have people to do that for her?

I don't know what's more disturbing: the fact that a statue of Sylvester Stallone as fictional fighter Rocky Balboa is to be placed outside Philadelphia's famed Museum of Art, or the fact that Stalllone is making another Rocky film.

Who do celebrities love more than anybody else? Themselves, of course. A study of 2200 celebrities by Drew Pinsky and S. Mark Young of the University of Southern California found most of them were narcissists. Hollywood psychologist Jeremy Ritzlin explains: "Narcissism is really being in love with yourself. So it would be natural for narcissists to gravitate toward the spotlight, where other people will also think highly of them."