It’s #TuneOutTuesday! Today I want to introduce you to Dr Wally Wood. Jaimie and I had the pleasure of meeting Wally and his talented wife Bev last year.
He’s had a fascinating career in medicine and teaching as a Professor of Anatomy at UQ. He has particular skills in forensic osteology and has worked to help identify the remains of fallen WWII soldiers.
Wally holds the donors to the UQ Body Donor Program in very high regard as they have assisted him in teaching many, many students over the years so he initiated the Thanksgiving Service to acknowledge their great gift to science and education.
I hope you enjoy this episode of ABC Conversations with Dr Walter Wood and Richard Fidler.
Dr Walter Wood has seen first hand how body donors advance the cause of medical science. Walter has taught anatomy to medical students in Australia and Papua New Guinea since the 1960s. His knowledge was called on to identify the skeletal remains of Australian and Japanese WWII soldiers recovered from the jungles of New Guinea.
It’s #TuneOutTuesday! Around here a “Loose Unit” is usually a fairly unpleasant experience. If you’ve ever ordered a tongue-to-bum you’ll know what I mean.
In podcast land it’s a whole different story. This is one of Mr Vivi’s absolute favourites – Loose Units. He hangs out for it every week and I often hear him cackling away while he works and listens through his headphones.
Paul is a radio journalist and you’ll probably recognise his voice from various ABC radio shows and reports. John is his Dad and when Paul was a kid John was a cop. This was in Sydney in the 80’s and Paul worked the Northern Suburbs beat together with Paul’s mum – and that gives us Season 1. It’s Underbelly meets the Dukes of Hazzard most of the time but it’s definitely worth hearing from a decent bloke who joined the force to be of service to his community and left it almost completely disillusioned with the way corruption and graft had infiltrated all levels of the police force.
After John left the force he worked in forensics – which has kept us entertained through Season 2 – and after that he worked for the NSW Work Cover Authority investigating industrial accidents – here comes Season 3 in 2020!
The Loose Units live show is coming to Brisbane TONIGHT! and part of my Christmas present from Mr Vivi was tickets to the show. If you’ve ever worked for the public service or a large organisation with lots of weird rules and lots of weirder colleagues you’ll enjoy Loose Units.
It’s that time of year again when this beast rears it’s ugly head: compulsory practical comparing the digestive systems of a ruminant animal and a monogastric animal.
I know it’s been put into the curriculum, but in typical Biro Pilot fashion the writers of the curriculum didn’t consult with the industry stakeholders on whether this was actually reasonably possible. Spoiler alert: it’s not.
the 2019-2020 bushfires that wiped out 1/3 of the national sheep population
the utter devastation of farmland and infrastructure in the fire affected areas
So, what about monogastric gastros?
As yet we aren’t experiencing any trouble with sourcing the gastros from pigs for our GIT specimen, but we are closely watching the pork industry. In the last 12 – 18 months the industry has rapidly been reducing the number of pigs in production.
This is a backlash from about 5 years ago when pork prices were really high so every farmer and his son went into pig production. The oversupply then forced prices down and everyone changed their minds about growing pigs. Now there is a national shortage and even butchers were having trouble getting enough to keep up with Christmas orders last year.
Well, Mr Vivi is going to keep it sweet with the suppliers that we have on the team and we’re going to support the pork and lamb industry the best way we know how – by buying their stuff as often as we can. As they say, “don’t clap, throw money!”. You can support that too by working with us so the money flows into those towns that really, really need it right now. Don’t ever forget that every family needs a farmer.
Miss Vivi is going to keep supporting you by finding resources you can actually use in the classroom to keep your teachers sweet. So far I’ve found this little gem of a presentation by Bryan Simmons on Prezi. It’s pretty good for a virtual resource. Just click through to the website and use the arrows under the image to click through the slides.
Nothing beats the smell of the real thing, though, does it?
