a TAZmanian look at the World Wierd Web

Imageshack stuffing up again

2009-07-17T21:17:00.001+10:00

Graphic placed here instead

ImageShack is Down

2009-05-13T12:20:00.000+10:00

So I'm putting this graphic here.

Temp2

2008-08-25T17:56:00.003+10:00

Or this one

2008-08-22T13:13:00.005+10:00

Create your own Motivational Posters at this website.

Placeholder for Graphic

2008-08-22T10:54:00.003+10:00

Just a placeholder entry for IAB picture...

Test Your Drug Knowledge

2007-09-27T16:31:00.000+10:00

I'm not sure whether I should be proud or ashamed of this result - at least I know drugs well enough to have an informed, intelligent view of them, but by the look of this test perhaps I know them a bit too well...

NameThatDrug.com - Test your drug knowledge

Things I've Learned

2007-08-10T09:25:00.000+10:00

Thanks to Nicky for this list, which contains some gems we should all take to heart.

I've learned… that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.
I've learned… that we should be glad God doesn't give us everything we ask for.
I've learned… that money doesn't buy class.
I've learned… that it's those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.
I've learned… that under everyone's hard shell is someone who wants to be appreciated and loved.
I've learned… that the Lord didn't do it all in one day so what makes me think I can?
I've learned… that to ignore the facts does not change the facts.
I've learned… that the less time I have to work, the more I get done.

God's Inbox

2007-08-04T13:56:00.000+10:00

And you thought YOUR email inbox was full of the same old garbage all the time…

Harry McGurk

2007-08-01T12:04:00.000+10:00

You've come across a zillion optical illusions on the web, but how many audible illusions have you found? OK, you could argue that the Harry McGurk Effect is also an optical one, since it requires you to watch at least half the time, but the real tricking is through the ears, and whichever way you look at it, it's a fascinating illusion.

Whenever you watch the movie linked here, you'll quite clearly hear him saying "Dada dada dada", but if you close your eyes, you'll quite clearly hear him saying "Baba baba baba" instead. Play the clip several times, alternating between looking while listening, and listening with your eyes shut. Try looking off to the side of the screen and then quickly looking straight at him in mid-sentence, and what you hear will change!

Most adults (98%) think they are hearing "Dada". In reality you are hearing the sound "Baba", while you are seeing the lip movements for "Gaga". The McGurk Effect was first described by Harry McGurk and John MacDonald in "Hearing lips and seeing voices", Nature 264, 746-748 (1976).

Surviving a Disaster

2007-07-31T15:14:00.000+10:00

Today I came across "100 top item to disappear first during a national emergency". What's interesting about this list isn't what items go first, but what it says about humans and the way they think, feel and act when the chips are down. It wasn't the list which interested me, so much as the psychology behind it. Here it is, in the same order as the original list, but broken down into "reaction stages". You can see the original, full list here.

Generators, Water Filters/Purifiers, Portable Toilets, Firewood, Lamp Oil, Wicks, Lamps, Coleman Fuel
I want to make sure I'm warm, am drinking safe water and can go to the toilet.

Guns, Ammunition, Pepper Spray, Knives, Clubs, Bats & Slingshots
Having secured a few treasures, I will now fight or kill anyone who tries to take them.

Hand Can Openers, Egg Beaters, Whisks, Honey/Syrups/Sugar, Rice, Beans, Wheat, Cooking Oil, Charcoal, Lighter Fluid
I'm getting hungry. I need food, and I need to cook with my fire, not just use it for warmth.

Water Containers, Propane Cylinder, Survival Guide Book, Mantle Lighting
I've suddenly realised water won't be coming out of the pipes much longer, I'll need to go looking for it. The lamps I got first day don't last long, and I know nothing about how to fend for myself when the water stops. I'd better learn.

Baby Supplies, Diapers, Ointments, Aspirin, Washboards, Mop Bucket, Cookstoves, Vitamins, Feminine Hygiene, Haircare
First indication that I need to care about someone other than myself. Living rough isn't as healthy as I thought it was going to be, I feel sick and need to keep everything cleaner to stop disease.

Saws, Axes, Hatchets, Wedges, Aluminum Foil, Gasoline Container, Garbage Bags, Toilet Paper, Kleenex, Paper Towels, Powdered Milk, Garden Seeds, Clothes Pins, Pump Repair Kit, Tuna Fish, Fire Extinguishers, First Aid Kits, Batteries, Garlic, Spices & Vinegar, Baking Supplies
Notice how we've gone from "essentials to keep me alive today" to "start getting things for the long-term"? Also, some things have already broken down, and we almost had a fire in the shelter last night when one of the lamps tipped over.

Big Dogs
We got attacked and I found its a lot harder to kill someone than I thought, so I need an animal to do it.

That's about a third of the list, but you get the general idea. Have a look at the complete list, and think about the timing, and why that item is important at this stage in the disaster. It's an interesting view.

Viagra Vermin

2007-07-26T13:05:00.000+10:00

No society can exist without laws to control and limit individual rights and actions. Rights campaigners would find that a bitter pill to swallow, but its the plain truth. The only way I, for example, can have the right to own a particular shiny gemstone is if everyone else agrees that they can't own it, because I do. So laws, and the legal system, are there for a good reason. We each give up rights so that society as a whole can enjoy an "average" standard of rights.

The legal system sometimes has to decide whether the damage an individual did, or could have done if allowed to get away with it, was sufficiently bad to warrant sending the person to jail. So, in the case of the poor maid who served a cup of urine to her employer (story here), she got jailed, even though he didn't drink the stuff.

Chinese Police today siezed 18,000 fake Viagra tablets (Story here), and one would have to argue that even though no-one took these pills because they were seized, the potential for damage to society is quite horrific. Just imagine for a moment that you are one of those unfortunates who need to take Viagra to… er… rise to the occasion. Imagine then, that after taking one, you still can't get any joy happening. Perhaps in desperation you'd pop 4 or 5, and get absolutely no effect whatsoever… its not as if, like a woman, you can groan a couple of times and fake it. In my humble opinion, the potential for serious damage to relationship, personal psyche, health and emotional wellbeing is so bad that these fake Viagra-peddlers should get life without possibility of parole - and with an unending supply of the real thing given to their fellow inmates. The punishment, after all, should always fit the crime…

Test Yourself

2007-07-24T15:36:00.001+10:00

Test yourself out at am-i-dumb.com. Of course, if you take the test and find you're just too dumb for society to be expected to put up with you, you should consider doing the responsible thing, but first check how much you're worth; it might be that you're less of a drain on society alive than dead...

See how much you're worth at humanforsale.com

Gung-Ho Mr Howard

2007-07-23T20:21:00.000+10:00

Prime Minister John Howard's move to stamp out abuse and alcoholism in indigenous communities has, over the past few weeks, attracted all the expected criticism that we are "invading" aboriginal communities, that every land right won over decades is being stolen back, and that they are being victimized for being aboriginal. So what? Evil prevails when good men do nothing, the saying goes. No matter how respectful of a person's rights you are, there is a point where you can take no more, where action becomes absolutely necessary. In the words of Star Trek's Captain Picard, "the line must be drawn here, this far and no further."

When I read that an 11-year old boy has given STD's to two preschool-age girls of 5 and 6, whom he forced to have sex with him (article here); that 19 aboriginal men have been charged with 39 child sex offences in just two weeks since Mr Howard's campaign began; that last February, 15 men from the Kalumburu community were charged with 103 offences… it is definitely past time to draw the line and say "no further". Go for it, Mr Howard - no sane person could possibly object.

Harry Potter and the Disclosed Secrets

2007-07-22T21:42:00.000+10:00

Its becoming a more regular and more promoted annual event than Christmas! Yes, Harry Potter is back and the whole world except Me, apparently, is once again in a frenzy of fanaticism over the latest book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. To save you angst (and purely as a a public service of course) here's everything you need to know:

Burbage dies p12
Hedwig dies p56
Mad-Eye dies p76
Scrimgeour dies p15
Wormtail dies p471
Dobby dies p476
Snape dies p658
Fred Weasley p637
Harry gets effed up by Voldemort on p704
Comes back to life on p724
Nagini gets beheaded by Neville Longbottom on p733
Tonks, Lupin, and Colin Creevy have their deaths confirmed on p734
Voldemort killed Snape
Ron and Hermione get married, 2 kids
Harry and Ginny get married, 3 kids
Malfoy has a son
Final line of the book:
"The scar had not pained harry for nineteen years. All was well."

Let's face it, only a tiny fraction of the fans out there have ever read more than 10 pages of any of the books, anyway. 700 plus pages? Get real!

BigPond Brother

2007-07-21T18:16:00.000+10:00

Apple has a handy list on their website of all the latest software releases. Over the last couple of weeks, I've noticed that every time I tried to access macgamefiles.com, the server couldn't be found. I didn't worry about it too much, but my sister emailed me saying she was having the same problem, so I decided to investigate a bit further. What I found was almost unbelievable.

Telstra BigPond have blocked the macgamesfiles and insidemacgames websites! And goodness only knows what others. I couldn't really credit that they would, so I redirected my network through our old ISDN server, which uses NT Services Tas not BigPond, and sure enough, the sites can be accessed through that. That puts the blame squarely on BigPond. Others have found the same thing, as evidenced by the Australian MacTalk Forum.

I can still scarcely believe that an ISP which doesn't block porn, illegal software, serial number trading or music piracy, has decided to ban websites based solely on the user's platform. Is it even legal to do so? This constitutes a gross instance of discrimination, and I'll be contacting the Australian Internet Ombudsman about it. I'll keep you posted.

Lost in Translation

2007-07-20T14:50:00.000+10:00

They say English is one of the hardest languages to learn, which is probably why so many foreigners armed only with a Local Language-English dictionary manage to produce some amazing signs and menus. Sometimes you can see how the wrong word was used, how a word similar in meaning to the one they actually used could also have a second meaning close to was intended. But then there are the example which make you wonder if they actually tried to translate at all, or if they just picked random words from the dictionary. I came across a Chinese website today which seems to be trying to sell some sort of health product, based on the picture. But don't let a picture sway you, read all about it before you buy:

Ad the Romans! Intelligence to the defense of Islam because they tribe he might exercise therapy them fresh things to improve a lie against Allah do what? Tell them not earth? Intelligence improve his supplication away the earth they? And drew toward and living habits disease. The health of family life build him and take care of him! Sad. Is visceral fat, sugar metabolism from the Secretary things. Lo! Heel. Sentence deviated away from the blunt from the sky for thee, we increased blood compression strokes nor could they have problems depending on what they thee. Fertilizer fill as he disbelieved and when the health of the victims been dispute to perish when, the body of felicity is the visceral fat. Such are the ways of reasons for you not take yours, caravan.

Lui muscle is not you normal hepatic detoxification them role for him and most of all save a convincing proof that ye desire. The verses, muscle him, in fine, muscular shortage is NADO is detoxification when they handcuffed away, most of them are ungrateful and that ye reasons they not have a will. Hepatic you handle them away down to him mad when no toxins and ye praises occasions. Nay, hepatic you tired of Moses but they rebelled detoxification cooperation between them, when our children have them in vivo accumulation is what thee Resurrection. Endotoxin is the body fat stored them reward you, you fat Moses fuel burn them to him so that they may prejudice them.

Well, I'm convinced, where's my chequebook?

iApologize

2007-07-19T13:36:00.000+10:00

Ok, I apologize for everything I said about Apple's new iPhone a couple of weeks ago, and suggesting that people who got all enthusiastic about it should get a life. How was I to know that this little device has so many applications? See the video below and decide for yourself.

A Tall Dark Stranger

2007-07-18T21:35:00.000+10:00

If humans are so intelligent, how come so many people still believe in astrology, witchcraft and all that crap? If psychics have any real powers, how come they don't ring you up when you want to ask them a question? And how about that phrase "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual". Every time I hear anyone call themselves "spiritual" it's just after they mention astrology and rebirthing their inner-child silver chord of reiki feng-shit, and just before I land a flying Clenched Fist Of Love on their mouth, or shove their tarot cards up their third eye and tell them to go self-heal themselves. Hey, the whole point of religion is that you do believe, even though logic tells you its impossible. That's why they call it Faith. Start trying to explain it in terms of creative auras and energy channels and you've got plain, ordinary physics, but without the provability.

Horoscopes? Ever notice how every time someone asks what sign you are, they always say "Thought so, you're so much a..." after you tell them. So how come they couldn't tell you and had to ask in the first place? Astrological signs are based on symbols drawn by people who believed that light from stars came from burning chariot wheels, the world was flat and had dragons in each corner. And yet people even make financial decisions based on them. Can you believe there are homo sapiens out there who literally believe clumps of rocks and dirt floating around pockets of gas have anything to do with their stocks and lottery winnings?

You've got to love the phone psychics especially, who address Mrs Average Housewife as a dear old friend, so that now she feels justified about spending $50 on that newly-acquired Brazilian power crystal she stares into to "improve reception" while the psychic at the other end of the line does a line of coke off a hooker's ass with the millions he's raked in from morons like her. And of course, every prediction contains lots of words like "could be", "might", "possibly" and "good chance", which covers the Hotline's butt in the unlikely event that everything they tell you turns out to be horseshit and has nothing to do with anyone or anything in the universe. That would constitute fraud, so thankfully we have the Doctrine of Uncertainty to protect psychics everywhere from malpractice lawsuits. Otherwise an entire industry of aging hippies, middle-class 16 year old girls and bored housewives, trudging aimlessly from one rebellious new-age religion to the next, would have to find a new hobby - and who knows, maybe grow a brain.

iPhone Phanatics

2007-07-01T17:05:00.000+10:00

I started out on PC's, went to Macs fairly early on, and now I have both in one with my Intel MacMini. Even during all my Mac years I owned a PC, it just didn't get turned on much. I've been as enthusiastic a Mac convert as most Mac users, but in regard to all the hype surrounding Apple's new iPhone, i just have to say... get a life people! My 60 gig iPod has 8,000+ songs on it, a few games, 1500 pictures of Tasmania, the entire New Testament, and 3 or 4 entire series of TV from 'Blakes 7' to 'Chasers War on Everything', as well as about 80 episodes of the comedy podcast 'Channel Frederator'. It gets used every day, and that means its also very scratched.

Now we've got the iPhone. Enthusiastists camped out at Apple's stores for days before they came out to ensure they got one, but what exactly did they actually get for their money? As I see it, there are going to be quite a few problems with the iPhone.

1. Battery Life - Apple have been touting some pretty amazing times, and I frankly don't believe them. Anything with a screen is going to chew through power.
2. Size - this thing is just too BIG to be a phone. Sure it looks great, but its too heavy to comfortably sit in your pocket, and your keys are going to scratch it to a terrible state in no time at all.
3. Storage - its hard to understand why anyone would buy one given there are 60 gig iPods out there versus the iPhone's 8 gig. The batteries can give you 7 hours of video, but can you fit 7 hours of video on the iPhone?
4. Cost - the iPhone is about 10 times the iPods cost per gig of storage. 'OK', you say, 'but its a phone not a media player'.
5. Support - all the rest of us in other countries may, or may not, be able to find a service provider who supports it. Even if we do, it'll cost us an arm and a leg to subscribe to one.

The problem is that Apple aren't really pushing it as a phone, they're trying to sell you on the idea that its a pocket computer that can also make calls. That means a lot of people are going to be disappointed when the shine wears off and they wake up to the fact they could have bought a laptop for the same price. I predict in the next few weeks, we'll see a lot of "I bought an iPhone and wish I hadn't" stories.

Computers Get it Wrong

2007-06-30T13:21:00.000+10:00

The computer illiterate 95% of the population (no, just being able to use one DOESN'T make you computer literate) will tell you that computers never make mistakes, that they are always correct because they use logic and maths. They think this makes them cleverer than the previous generation of people, who blamed "computer error" for everything bad that ever happened.

Any programmer, of course, will tell you that computers DO make mistakes, BECAUSE they use maths and logic. Remember how the world was going to end in 1999 because of Y2K? Remember how Pentiums added 2+2 and got 3.999999? Logic is great until you encounter a statement like "I am lying to you when I say this statement is a lie". Maths is a great way of describing the universe, but it has SOME limits, like the fact that the number zero doesn't really exist, and therefore if you try to divide by it you're in trouble. When applied to computers, there are always limits on maths imposed by the hardware, maximum values on floating bit variables and integers, etc.

A fair while ago, I dropped a tongue-in-cheek email to the creator of Lux, Dustin Sacks, showing that if you sat there putting more and more armies into a country instead of finishing off your opponent, eventually the numbers wrapped around and your chock-a-block country went back to zero population. Even though no-one in a normal game would ever come REMOTELY close to the number of armies I was talking about, Dustin fixed the problem in a later release - or so I thought.

But not quite. See that room in the middle of the screen snapshot with 341 million soldiers in it? The turn before, it has just under 2300 million. Presumably, having reached the magic number of 256 (binary 8 bits limit), my population reverted back to zero plus the income from this turn, which I must admit, was fairly high by this stage of the game. It just goes to show that the best laid plans of mice, men and programmers will always provide a few "hidden features" (programmer jargon for "bugs") for the adventurous or just plain stupid to discover. Just like real life.

Xzibit Continued

2007-06-27T09:47:00.000+10:00

Just a quick update to yesterday's story about Xzibit, the US rapper. After having a rant on his MySpace blog about supposedly being the victim of racism by a member of Rove's staff, the comments started being left by Australians in droves. After some 350-400 comments, 95% of which disagreed with him, suggesting in various ways that he have a little less attitude and a little more understanding, he took down both the MySpace blog post and its comments. That didn't stop people posting comments, they just posted them to other blog entries that had nothing to do with the original post instead. But taking it down? It seems the principle of Freedom of Speech only applies when you agree with Xzibit. To quote the man himself, "If you have a problem with what I say in my blogs stay off my site people." I guess that says everything you need to know about the man.

That Ugly 'Racism' Word

2007-06-26T16:10:00.000+10:00

Racism is in the News today, on at least two fronts. Firstly, John Howard's plan to stamp out abuse in indigenous communities has very predictably been labelled racist, despite him clearly saying these emergency actions would be implemented nationwide; and secondly, US rapper Xzibit stormed off the set of 'Rove' because a staff member said "we came a long way just having you on the program". Its kind of hard to see how that remark is racist, but if you look hard enough, you might be able to interpret it that way. I would think it had more to do with the rap/hiphop culture and Rove's audience demographics and preferences than skin colour, but obviously Xzibit didn't see it that way.

Australia just ISN'T a racist country. Sure, like anywhere, there are individuals who will hold their own bigoted opinions, but this isn't the US, where there are clear socioeconomic boundaries between different ethnic groups. Most people in Australia don't notice race unless its specifically pointed out to them, and the average street of Suburbia has people of different original nationality in almost every house. We are so multicultural now that we simply don't notice differences any more. That is the very OPPOSITE of racist, and a real testament to the Aussie way of life and the principle of a "Fair Go" for all. So "Keep it G", Xzibit, and next time don't impose your own racially-skewed views on us… there's a word for that, and we all know what it is.

The Stunt Men

2007-06-25T12:54:00.000+10:00

In the last few days, Prime Minister John Howard announced the government's response to an appalling report into sexual abuse among indigenous (aboriginal for those who don't understand Political Correctness) communities. The measures are hard-hitting and comprehensive, and must have taken more guts than any PM of this country has shown in the past 50 years. The Opposition labelled it as a political stunt designed to pull votes in the coming election.

Union officials were caught on video berating and abusing employees, but it was just a political stunt according to Kevin Rudd. Rudd's plan to chat with the Dalai Lama is just a political stunt, says Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. Justine Elliot says the Federal Government's new fairness test is just a political stunt. And Mr Howard scratching his nose on camera, I'm sure, is just a political stunt designed to pull in votes from the nasally differently-endowed. Likewise, whenever Mr Rudd goes to the toilet, I'm sure he pulls a few political stunts out while he's in there.

In fact, a search of Google News reveals a whopping 698 political stunts in today's news alone, although to be fair, not all of them are in Australia. It seems even foreign countries are pulling political stunts, presumably for the benefit of one Australian party or the other.

I am getting very sick of the phrase, and the election is still a few months away. It's to be expected that in an election year, those in the running will try to be more visible and remind the public of what exactly it is that they do, to justify their ridiculously high salaries. But whichever way you look at it, Mr Howard's bold action on the indigenous abuse problem took guts, just like his decision to send troops to Iraq did in the face of massive opposition here at home, or his decision to stand firm on same-sex marriages not being allowed. And love him or loath him, THAT is why he's been Prime Minister of Australia for so long now.

The Smoking Gun

2007-06-24T21:38:00.000+10:00

A man who sexually assaulted a woman in Melbourne then forced-marched her to a nearby service station to buy cigarettes (see story here). That's where he made his big mistake, of course. These days courts seem to hand out ridiculously lenient sentences, so if the assault had been all he did to her, he might have been walking the streets again in 18 months or so. But forcing her to buy cigarettes? Surely in this day and age of unbridled smoking antagonism, that's Attempted Murder! Forget prison, let's just hang him now!

Today some of the other Australian States caught up to Tasmania and banned smoking in bars, pubs, etc. In a month or two, smoking in all indoor areas, and most outdoor areas, will be completely banned. I grew up a vehement anti-smoker, took it up at 28, quit at 34, took it up again at 38. I've always smoked 1 mg cigs, in the belief that smoking a whole packet in a day was the same as someone else smoking 2 or 3 or their 12 mg ones. According to doctors, I was wrong, and have the same chance of harm as them.

Smoking is addictive, and there's only one way to fix the problem for good. That's to stop the sale of cigarettes, period. The social consequences would be dire, crime would go through the roof until the jitters of being forced to go cold-turkey passed, and there would always be an underground of illegal tobacco growers, just as there is, and always will be, with marijuana. Publicly, the government says that smoking costs the nation a lot more in healthcare bills than the revenue from selling cigarettes raises, but I don't believe that for a minute. The bottom line is that governments are about money, and if there wasn't a profit from selling cigarettes, they would already have been banned.

Who do you believe? I, for one, believe nobody on the cigarette issue, from the Government to the Quit campaigners to the Doctors of the 50's who told us all how much they recommended Camels. Smoking is a curse, and like all curses, it will take a Witch Doctor to see it lifted.

You Know You're Living in 2007 When…

2007-06-23T22:33:00.001+10:00

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
2. You've forgotten that solitaire used to be played with real cards.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you, and people who live in your house.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.
6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.
7. Every commercial on television has a website at the bottom of the screen.
8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.
10. You get up in the morning and check your email before your shower, shave or coffee.
11. You tilt your head sideways to smile. : )
12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.
13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.
14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.
15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list.

Primetime Bloodbath

2007-06-22T09:46:00.000+10:00

And while I'm still on the topic of television, the following article was in our school's newsletter this week:

House Of Horrors - The Prime Time Bloodbath
350 ACTS OF VIOLENCE
234 GUNSHOTS
139 OBSCENITIES
THAT’S WHAT FREE TV AIRED 6pm-10:30pm IN ONE WEEK!

Those were the headlines in a Sydney newspaper this week. Primetime television is awash with death and violence… disturbing images across all stations and time slots… Those involved in the seven-night survey sat through a week of murder, stabbings, torture, car and airplane crashes and blood shed, as well as sex and nudity. They said they had not realised how desensitised they had become until they started actually taking notes and counting. For example, there was a scene in CSI (Nine) with a man buried up to his neck; then tree sap was poured on his head. You saw him screaming and then the investigators were examining a headless corpse, again and again. The television stations need to be more responsible, BUT we as parents need to be more accountable. The Bible says to train up a child in the way he/she SHOULD go. The premier of NSW said that this relentless march of televised violence and sex into the nation's lounge rooms is a grim reality for parents who are struggling to act as censor for their children. Even the Prime Minister said that parents had the greatest responsibility to monitor their children’s intake. I believe he is exactly right. Stop blaming the television channels and do your God given job. I would recommend that you get rid of your TV, or at least remove off your roof the aerial which brings into your home all this junk! You can control the use of selected DVD’s in your players instead. We will reap what we sow. We cannot do our job properly at school, if you do not support us in this issue.

Personally, I think the statistics quoted in the article are a bit low. Yes, low! I would be amazed if there were not a lot more violent acts and deaths in a whole week's TV. I discovered a site ages ago which, as a parent, I have found very useful. When it comes to deciding whether to hire a certain DVD or whether to take the kids to see that latest movie at the cinema, check out screenit.com

Check out, for example screenit.com's review of the movie "Ocean's 13", here. As well as a handy summary of the movie, shown below, screenit.com goes through every single occurrence of bad language, scary scenes, sex, violence, etc, and even issues to talk to kids about after the movie. One of the web's most useful sites.

More WIN Losers

2007-06-22T09:23:00.000+10:00

A few days ago I had a whinge about free to air commercial TV stations and the number of advertisements they run, which appear to have far exceeded the legal maximum, especially on WIN TV. How bad is the problem? Last night I set my Miglia to record a program starting at 11:15 pm and ending at 11:45 pm, and the Miglia records for 5 minutes before AND after the set time. Out of my total 40 minutes of recording, I didn't get one single second of the program I wanted. That's right, the program which was scheduled to begin at 11:15 pm in the TV Guide hadn't even started yet at 11:50 pm! Pathetic, and definitely not viewer-friendly.

The The Impotence of Proofreading

2007-06-21T16:33:00.000+10:00

You work very horde on a paper for English clash, and then get a very glow raid (like a D or even a D=) and all because you are the words liverwurst spoiler. Proofreading your peppers is a matter of the the utmost impotence. This is a problem that affects manly, manly students. I myself was such a bed spiller once upon a term that my English teacher in my sophomoric year, Mrs Myth, said I would never get into a good colleague. And that's all I wanted, just to get into a good colleague. Not just anal community colleague, because I wouldn't be happy at anal community colleague. I needed a place that would offer me intellectual simulation, I really need to be challenged, challenged dentally. I know this makes me sound like a stereo, but I really wanted to go to an ivory legal collegue. So I needed to improvement or gone would be my dream of going to Harvard, Jail, or Prison (in Prison, New Jersey).

So I got myself a spell checker and figured I was on Sleazy Street. But there are several missed aches that a spell chukker can't can't catch catch. For instant, if you accidentally leave a word your spell exchequer won't put it in you. And God for billing purposes only you should have serial problems with Tori Spelling your spell Chekhov might replace a word with one you had absolutely no detention of using. Because what do you want it to douch? It only does what you tell it to douche. You're the one with your hand on the mouth going clit, clit, clit. It just goes to show you how embargo one careless clit of the mouth can be.

Which reminds me of this one time during my Junior Mint. The teacher read my entire paper on A Sale of Two Titties out loud to all of my assmates. I'm not joking, I'm totally cereal. It was the most humidifying experience of my life, being laughed at pubically. So do yourself a flavor and follow these two Pisces of advice: 1. There is no prostitute for careful editing. And 3. When it comes to proofreading, the red penis your friend.

By Taylor Mali

World Wide Colossal Cave

2007-06-21T15:51:00.000+10:00

Who is the man in that picture? If you don't know, shame on you... you're looking at Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web. I was doing a little browsing on the history of the Internet and the World Wide Web today (no, they are NOT the same thing) and ended up at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. That's where Berners-Lee first proposed the idea, and CERN also, therefore, had the world's first website. Check out the story, and the original proposal he submitted, here.

In the proposal, Berners-Lee refers to two things I would never have guessed were influential in the creation of the web we all take for granted.

Firstly, the original ADVENT game by Crowther & Woods, also know as Colossal Cave to later generations, which was probably the first game to create an alternate world with which one could interact realistically and with some degree of intelligence. Its use of nodes and links were a major influence on the idea of the web.

Secondly, Apple and their much-maligned early programming language, presentation software, and all-round ideas visualiser - HyperCard. Over the years HyperCard copped a lot of flak, but for those of us who were there, it was the first programming language which made graphics as easy as text, and allowed the creation of just about anything, in a very simple to learn language.

Strange to think that two of the oldest bastions of popular computing pathed the way for the globe-spanning super-encyclopedic oracle of human knowledge we have today.

Berners-Lee's original Proposal

TV or Not TV

2007-06-19T14:06:00.000+10:00

Free-to-air television sucks, we all know that, especially here in Tasmania where we only have 4 stations. In these days of Pay TV, video and DVD, online movie and TV channels, etc, the only programs that the free-to-air stations can afford are the cheap or old ones, with a sprinkle of newish popular stuff just to keep the viewers from turning off completely. We can't expect quality, so surely we should at least be able to expect quantity...

There are laws governing what can be shown on TV, how much of the airtime can be advertisements, etc. But those laws are obviously ignored. Take, for example, the program I recorded with my Miglia TVMax last Saturday, mid afternoon timeslot, the classic "How the West Was Won". You can see from the screenshot that the total length of the program was 194 minutes, and that when I marked the adverts to be cut out, it reduced the running time to 137 minutes. That's 70% program, 30% adverts, or if you prefer, one minute of advert for every 2 minutes of actual program. In amongst a total of 137 minutes of content, WIN TV managed to squeeze 57 minutes of advertising, and that's in a low-view timeslot. In primetime, the ratio of adverts to actual content sometimes runs close to 50%, I suspect.

The practice is self-defeating. In a bid to squeeze more out of the budget, the stations are forcing viewers to switch away from them in droves. This means the advertisers are getting less and less value for their money, which means the TV stations need to put even more adverts into every hour of TV to pay the bills. It won't be too many years, I suspect, before TV channels in Tasmania close completely, a victim of their own shortsightedness.

Flights of Fancy

2007-06-06T10:51:00.000+10:00

I am sooooo sick of people knocking the Virgin Blue and JetStar airlines and swapping horror stories of how terrible their service was, how they did everything wrong, and how they will never fly with them again. Its the same in the UK, but the target of their frustration there is EasyJet. To all these people I say "Do what you're told and there's no problem." Let me throw my own personal experience into the pot. Every time I've flown between Tassie and the Mainland, it's been with Virgin Blue. Firstly, there was the price - Virgin flew two adults and 3 kids to Melbourne and back for around $400, and the nearest competitor was over $900, the plane didn't crash and we got a cup of tea and a biscuit. What more do you want on a flight? Do you expect when you catch a bus that you'll be waited on hand and foot?

These airlines operate on a shoestring budget, and the savings are passed on to the consumer. That means if they say be there by 9:00 am and you arrive at 9:10, they can't help you. Live with it, you're all grown up now and you were told when to be there. The airlines have rules and procedures to follow, and even if there is still half an hour till the plane actually takes off, if they keep letting people on, they will never take off. Fuel calculations have to be made, safety procedures explained, etc. Try doing that to an audience when people keep trickling in.

The big airlines can afford to give you another flight free when you were stupid enough to be late, because every passenger is paying for the late idiots in every ticket they buy. If you want a no-frills price, you have to accept the fact that that means everything in the process, from check-in times to baggage weight, has to be much more strict to meet that price. So lay off the cheap airlines and stop blaming them for the simple fact that you, a supposed adult, couldn't follow simple instructions. I've yet to hear a single one of these rants where the airline could really be said to be at fault, and I'll continue to fly Virgin Blue, and be quite satisfied with them, for the foreseeable future.

Use Algebra

2007-06-02T11:31:00.000+10:00

The mother is 21 years older than the child. In 6 years from now the mother will be 5 times as old as the child. The question you need to answer is: "Where is the father?" Hint: You can solve the puzzle using ordinary algebra. Check the Comments of this post for the answer.

Brain Teaser

2007-06-01T15:42:00.000+10:00

Find at least 18 creatures in the italicized sentence. The names appear in the words, they're not mixed up anagrams, jumbled or combined words. Check Comments for answers (not now, after you've had a try! Shheesh!)

Kneel in the kayak grasping the boat, but don't wrench the bullion or scowl at the chart. Behind the taped and sealed painter is a benevolent collier. The foxglove is in the bath.

No Yahoo's from Me

2007-06-01T09:46:00.001+10:00

Last night I saw an advert on TV for a Pirates of the Caribbean competition which could be entered online at yahoo7, by following the links there. I went to Yahoo7 and couldn't find any mention of the movie or the competition, and their search box just did a Google search which brought up lots of references to the first 2 movies, but nothing recent. There were some competitions down the bottom of the page, and every one that I clicked on took me to pages which said "Thanks, but that competition has already closed". Almost every link on the page took me to some sort of ad-referral sponsored page, in fact.

On the face of it Yahoo7 seems to be a great place to make your home page - after all, there are TV Guides, Weather, Mail, Music and Messenger, all sorts of topics life Lifestyle, News, Photos, Travel and Real Estate. But overall, the site is just waaaay too commercial now. What happened to the "good old" Yahoo which was just as likely to be your home page as Google or the now defunct Excite? Unfortunately, like so many successful websites, it was bought out by business, who then set about changing it to what they, in their business frame of mind, thought it should be. Businesses should stick to what they do best, running a business. If the dotcom implosion and fallout of a few years ago teaches us anything, its that the web is a very fickle place, and normal rules of commerce don't apply there. The inevitable result of big business trying to run the web is that they ruin whatever they touch, just as King Midas did. The web isn't about business, no matter how many opportunities they think they see there, and never will be. Most of these sites get you to sign up so they can tell their shareholders they have x million members, but the fact is that most people who sign up never go back to the site again. Yahoo7.com.au may look great in PowerPoint presentations to the shareholders, but it's not worth the server space it takes up, and in a year or two it will join many, many other "Once Were Great" websites in the "Jumped the Shark When It Was Bought Out" trash pile.

Late Night TV Asks "How Dumb Are You?"

2007-05-31T14:30:00.000+10:00

Let's face it, late night advertising isn't ever likely to be interesting or informative. Anyone who can only afford to pay the very low rates for advertising in the 1 am to 4 am timeslot probably hasn't got a product that's worth selling. But with so many recording and timeshift options these days, perhaps advertising in that timeslot is actually a smart thing to do, given that more people than ever before will see your advert, next day when they watch what they recorded last night. That being the case, advertisers in that time slot need to start treating their audience as normal human beings, and stop assuming that because their advert is on at 2 am, anyone watching has incredible bowel pain, is lonely for company, or is just completely stupid.

Mind you, you'd have to be incredibly stupid to fall for some of the sexy-sms style adverts. In the centre of our picture is the "Text your postcode and we'll set you up with a root in your area" scam. They assume you already have internet access, because the only way to read the full terms and conditions is on their website, and yet somehow you will never have heard of Messenger, MySpace, Meetro, FriendFinder and a thousand other online services which allow you to search by area, for free. Never mind the small print on the ad, which charges you $4 per message received by you from them - if you're stupid enough to send in your postcode and live in a big city, what is to stop them from sending you a thousand contacts at $4 each?

Then there's the "Guess my cup size and win $5,000" scam. Seems easy to me, she's obviously a C-cup, but again, the small print takes the cake. You've actually got to answer 2 rounds of 5 questions each, at $5 per message, to even go into the draw for the prize. That's a raffle that costs $50 per ticket, and you can bet that the last question would be something like "What was the population of Brazil in 1867, and name them all". How dumb are people? Well obviously dumb enough that the promoters figure they'll make a fortune off this moronic scam.

An Honourable Mention has to go to the Adult Literacy adverts. For years, the people who organise these campaigns haven't been able to figure out the fundamentals of their target market - that they can't actually read! I used to live with an illiterate guy, and I can tell you that having the phone number dancing around with little eyes and singing the number at you just doesn't work because (a) you've had to make the jingle so complicated to get all those numbers in that no illiterate can remember it, and (b) just because he's illiterate doesn't mean he's 5 years old. One of the biggest problems my friend had with the whole Adult Literacy sector is the tendency to treat every client like he was a naughty 3 year old, not an adult. Better results could be had by using a plain sans-serif font, large and totally immobile, on screen in the same place for the whole advert. Stupid jingles like "One-three-double-Ooooo-six-triple-five-oh-six" with overlapping digits that are comic-style, move, jiggle and blink are the last thing likely to get results. They may not be able to read, but they can probably copy numbers down - if only you'd give them something decent to copy from. And as for the genius who decided to put adverts on the back of taxis that say "Can't read? Phone…" - he or she should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

More things I've learned watching TV lately

2007-05-29T22:52:00.001+10:00

1. Even in a murder where there is only one witness, the witness will be asked 1 or 2 questions by each attorney and then dismissed, spending less than 2 minutes on the stand.

2. No meeting is ever concluded when everyone says "That's it"... you always have to wait until the person leaving the office opens the door and is halfway through it, before making them pause so you can say your final piece.

3. Every class ends with the bell ringing 10 seconds after the teacher starts the lesson, and he always picks a person to wait a minute.

4. No-one can ever walk past a table in a prison without having their tray upset by the person at the table.

5. In any trial, as long as the opposing attorney keeps saying "Objection" the Judge will keep saying "Over-ruled" and allow the questioning to continue, no matter how irrelevant it appears.

6. Any time a witness breaks down on the stand and admits to fault, the accused is automatically innocent of whatever he was charged with.

The Long Way

2007-05-26T11:52:00.000+10:00

If you want to do a road trip all the way around Australia but you're worried about the rising price of fuel, here's a handy tip - the trip is almost 1 km shorter if you drive around Australia anti-clockwise than if you drive clockwise. It takes a bit of lateral thinking but most people can work out how and why fairly quickly. Just in case you're having an off day though, I'll post the answer in Comments to this post.

Clean Up

2007-05-24T16:40:00.001+10:00

It's not exactly springtime, but maybe its time for some spring cleaning! I was filling some ink cartridges, spilled ink everywhere on my wife's best tablecloth, and she'll kill me if she sees it like this! Luckily, to clean it up all you have to do is stare at the dot in the centre, and all that messy ink will disappear...

Moonbow

2007-05-23T16:23:00.001+10:00

No, its not a rainbow. Commercial photographer Brent Gilstrap captured this moonbow over Yosemite Falls. Ideal conditions for moonbows include clear skies, abundant mist at the base of a fall and the absence of artificial light.

Agreeable Guy

2007-05-21T15:11:00.001+10:00

Several men are in the locker room of a golf club. A cell phone on a bench rings and a man engages the hands-free speaker- function and begins to talk. Everyone else in the room stops to listen.

MAN: "Hello"
WOMAN: "Honey, it's me. Are you at the club?"
MAN: "Yes."
WOMAN: "I'm at the mall now and found this beautiful leather coat. It's only $1,000. Is it OK if I buy it?"
MAN: "Sure, go ahead if you like it that much."
WOMAN: "I also stopped by the Mercedes dealership and saw the new 2007 models. I saw one I really liked."
MAN: "How much?"
WOMAN: "$65,000."
MAN: "OK, but for that price I want it with all the options."
WOMAN: "Great! Oh, and one more thing. The house we wanted last year is back on the market. They're asking $950,000."
MAN: "Well, then go ahead and give them an offer, but just offer $900,000."
WOMAN: "OK. I'll see you later! I love you!"
MAN: "Bye, I love you, too."

The man hangs up. The other men in the locker room are looking at him in astonishment. Then he smiles and asks, "Anyone know whose phone this is?"

Nobody Home

2007-05-20T15:36:00.000+10:00

And while we're still on the subject of pictures, have a look at the one below. There is NO WOMAN in the picture below... whatever you THINK your eyes are telling you, if you look carefully, you'll see there is no-one there!

Free Fireworks

2007-05-20T09:58:00.000+10:00

Today's amazing picture from the web shows two Fireworks shows at once… on the left, humans let theirs off, while on the right, God puts on his own show at the same time.

And Now the Weather

2007-05-19T09:50:00.000+10:00

Today will be mainly fine, bright and sunny, then becoming heavy storms, torrential rain and zero visibility in about 2 minutes time...

All About SECS

2007-05-18T21:17:00.001+10:00

Ever wondered how the years went past so fast? You hit 40 and you think, "Where did all that time go?" It seems like just a month or two ago you were 18 or 20, and you can't believe you're actually as old as you are. And the problem gets worse the older you get, so that you turn 70 and still can't believe you're more than 25 or so. You see teenagers and you think "Man, you think you have all the time in the world, but I know that soon you'll be thinking 'where did all the years go?'" And it gets much worse when you have kids of your own, because you have no idea of what you're meant to do to raise them right, and just about that same time comes the realisation that your own parents weren't the Wise Ones you thought they were, and that they had no idea either about how to raise kids, and were winging it day-by-day just like you are doing now.

Well, I have a simple explanation for it all, which I call Significant Event Chronology Scale, just so that I can say to people (very loudly of course) "Hey, I'm the inventor of SECS" and watch their reaction.

In a nutshell, imagine you're starting on a train journey. At first, you look out the window and watch every passing house, bridge, tree and interesting sight. After a while, though, you've seen enough of them that you lose interest, and only look out the window at some new, not-seen-before sight, like a waterfall perhaps. You only mark the passage of time in your brain through the 'Significant Events' of the journey.

Now consider life. When you're 5, every day brings heaps of new events and things which you haven't encountered before. To use a computer metaphor, let's say that each time one of these things happens, your brain creates a new Inbox for that subject. As time goes on, you encounter a lot of the Significant Events you've seen before, and they are largely filed as 'been there, done that', but new events still get a new Inbox created for them.

On a graph it might look like this:

Imagine that every time a Significant Event happens, we shout out our age at that time. Obviously, it will sound like "I'm 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 20, 20, 20, 20, 30, 30, 40" etc. From this we can see that the more time goes by, the less we notice how old we're getting, because (for the sake of argument) we only notice it when we shout it out. So if we take special notice of our age every 10th time we shout something out, it will appear as if we were 10, then 30, then 90, all in the same breath.

Using this view of things, some pretty disconcerting trends emerge. Assuming that at age 70 we have 1 SE per year, a decrease of only one-tenth per year means that at age 10 we had 304, or just under 1 per day, and at age 1 we have 790, just over 2 per day. No wonder we say thats kids learn much faster than adults, that early reading, writing and maths tuition is a big benefit, and that habits learned in the first 5 years are the most formative! According to this scale, 61% of everything that you learn, and therefore every Significant Event for which a new Inbox was created, is experienced by Age 9! By the time you reach 20, you've experienced 86% of the SE's in your life, and by the age of 30, its 94%!

So that's why everyone feels old before their time, and why they still feel in their mind that they are much younger than their real age. Our brain is only shouting out our age whenever a Significant Event occurs, with all the boring bits of life in between them left out or relegated to the Junkmail box. So by age 40, 98% of your life's exciting bits are in the past, and you have the option of hanging in there for the remaining 2% in arthritic pain and agony, or finding a friendly Doctor who'll promise to pull the plug when you just can't take it any more. I know which one I'd prefer.

Peacekeepers

2007-05-18T12:51:00.000+10:00

Beautiful but deadly… no, I'm not talking about any of my ex's (well actually, maybe I am…). Today's picture shows a US Peacekeeper missile test. Nice to look at when you're at this end of the flight path, but not so funny if you're on the receiving end. Ever been to a fireworks show and wondered how much it cost? Well each Peacekeeper is worth $20-$70 million, so in this one scene you're looking at between $160,000,000 and $560,000,000 being shot off - perhaps making this one of the most expensive photos ever !

Footy Fan

2007-05-17T14:29:00.001+10:00

A reporter from the Melbourne Herald is wandering the streets looking for a story because its a slow news day, when he spots a small kid in a playground about to be attacked by a vicious pitbull terrier, frothing at the mouth and clearly out for blood. He jumps out of his car, wondering what to do, but before he can decide, another older boy runs over, picks up a stick, and hits the dog with it, landing a lucky hit and killing it instantly.

The reporter runs over to the boy and says “Mate, I'm a reporter from the Melbourne Herald and I saw the whole thing. You're a hero, you'll be on the front page of the Herald tomorrow morning. I can see the headline now - 'Brave Bombers Fan Saves Defenceless Child'…”

"Uh yeah", says the boy, but I'm not a Bombers fan."

"Oh…", says the reporter, "you've got to be a Hawks fan then eh? Selfless Hawks Hero Takes On Rabid Killer…"

"No, no…", says the boy, "I'm a Sydney Swans fan!"

So the next day's headline read "Beloved Family Pet Clubbed to Death by Psycho Swans Thug"

Deer Fire

2007-05-17T10:14:00.000+10:00

Continuing on with the 'best pics from the web' theme, today's is the famous deer fire photo. It was snapped by a fireman fighting a bushfire in the US, and it probably would have won all sorts of awards in the photographic journalism world, perhaps even been rated as the best photo ever, except for the fact that because he was on the job at the time, he is prohibited from making any profit from it. Nonetheless, we're glad he chose to upload it and share it with the rest of the world.

Amazing Photos

2007-05-16T19:50:00.000+10:00

Haven't got a lot to say at the moment, so for a few days I thought I'd just post some of the most amazing photos I've come across here and there on the web. To start with, the lot of a lighthouse-keeper isn't always a comforting one...

What's Wrong?

2007-05-15T16:12:00.000+10:00

What's wrong with the above picture? No, you don't get a hint, except to say its not a trick question and the answer is fairly obvious if you use your eyes and a little intelligence. I'll post the answer as a Comment to this post, tomorrow, or someone else might care to post the answer first...

Trophy Winners

2007-05-14T15:29:00.000+10:00

As you've probably guessed by now, I've been spending a fair bit of browsing time on bored.com lately, a site dedicated to taking all your spare time. Some people, of course, have way too much spare time, and fill it in in the stupidest ways imaginable. Here are some real-life cases, to whom the British Sunday Express gave Gongs (medals) for dubious distinctions:

Tortoise Trophy
To British Rail, which ingeniously solved the problem of lateness in the InterCity express train service by redefining "on time" to include trains arriving within one hour of schedule.

Rubber Cushion
To John Bloor, who mistook a tube of superglue for his hemorrhoid cream and glued his buttocks together.

Crimewatch Cup - Gold Star
To Henry Smith, arrested moments after returning home with a stolen stereo. His error was having tattooed on his forehead in large capital letters the words "Henry Smith." His lawyer told the court: "My client is not a very bright young man."

Crimewatch Cup - Silver Star
To Michael Robinson, who rang police to deliver a bomb threat, but became so agitated about the mounting cost of the call that he began screaming "Call me back!" and left his phone number.

Crimewatch Cup - Bronze Star
To Paul Monkton, who used as his getaway vehicle a van with his name and phone number painted in foot-high letters on the side.

British Cup
To the passengers on a jam-packed train from Margate to Victoria, who averted their eyes while John Henderson and Zoe D'Arcy engaged in oral sex and then moved on to intercourse ... but complained when the pair lit up post-coital cigarettes because it was a 'non-smoking' compartment.

Flying Cross
To Percy the Pigeon, who flopped down exhausted in a Sheffield loft, having beaten 1,000 rivals in a 500 mile race, and was immediately eaten by a cat. Alas, the 90-minute delay resulting from finding his remains and handing his ID tag to the judges relegated Percy from first to third place.

Lazarus Laurel
To Julia Carson, who as her tearful family gathered 'round her coffin in a New York funeral parlour, sat bolt upright and asked what the hell was going on. Celebrations were short-lived, due to the fact that Mrs. Carson's daughter, Julie, immediately dropped dead from shock.

Silver Bullet
To poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock ... and was killed instantly when it fell on him.

Toilet Training

2007-05-13T12:22:00.000+10:00

WorldWierdWeb reaches a new low - with an entire post about toilet humour. You know your toilet habits are a bit weird - you fold the toilet paper, never read anything, and wipe front to back. Other people somehow manage to do everything so nicely that even their... punctation symbols... smells like roses, right? Well maybe not. Get the truth from real people out there in the world, and compare your crapping capers to the rest of the world's, at BathroomSurvey.com.

And what are all the hidden, unwritten laws governing public toilets? If 2 men are already standing at the urinals, where do you stand in order not to look gay? Do you talk to the guy, or not? And what goes on in women's bathrooms, and why do they always go to the toilet in pairs? Check out the facts at this link here.

And if you think you know where to stand and where not to, take drinknation's urinal test to see if you've really got it all figured out yet.

Men are Like…

2007-05-11T17:02:00.000+10:00

Don't Call Us…

2007-05-03T15:19:00.000+10:00

Ah, its a dream come true... or is it? After years of complaints about telemarketing, the Federal Government has finally established a national 'Do Not Call' Register which allows phone subscribers to add their number to a list of banned numbers for telemarketers. If anyone does make a telemarketing call to you, and your number is on the list, they face fines of up to $1 million. But the service went up - and straight back down. It was swamped by people wanting to register, and crashed (see Do Not Call list swamped).

Telemarketers are just plain rude. Sure, we all acknowledge that the best time to catch you is at home in the evening, but does that really give them the right to ring you at 1:00 am? Or to ring back the very next week when you told them you weren't interested? And what about your instructions to them to remove your number from their list and never call again - why is it none of these companies will, on moral grounds alone, obey this simple request?

It's about time that a register like this existed. There already were a few, in fact, like the one run by ADMA, the Australian Direct Marketing Association, but they were voluntary and didn't have the legislative teeth that this new, government-run Register, has. Unfortunately, its not all as sweet as it appears. For starters, how will the Australian Government be able to fine overseas telemarketers, since they are subject to the laws of the country they are calling from, not ours? And secondly, the Do Not Call Register makes exemptions for political parties and their members, religious organisations, charities, polling companies and educational institutions. Between them, those groups would make up 75% of the nuisance calls anyway. So although its a step in the right direction, its certainly not what it should be. My phone is my own private line to the world, and no-one should be allowed to call it if I choose not to let them. That includes pollsters, pollies, and beggars. I pay the rental on it, so why should someone else benefit from my expenditure without my permission?

Put your phone number of the Do Not Call Register

42 Million Ways to Waste Money

2007-05-02T22:11:00.000+10:00

42, as we know, is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, but the big problem has always been - "but what is the question?" The Australian Government is about to spend $42 million on upgrading its website to allow users to create their own personal accounts and be able to log into them (see Feds to Spend $42m on website). It's an incredible amount of money, especially in an election year where the whole country's future hangs in a delicate balance. Big spending and overspending by governments is nothing new, but the sheer scale of this plan has me in awe.

For a start, let's get down to the basics - anyone with half a brain, PHP MyAdmin and a completely free webpage design program like iWeb can design and put online a website with personalised accounts. Add a couple of hundred dollars for web hosting and you've got everything the government just announced, for less than $1,000, including the time it took to do. That's $41,999,000 under-budget, and that's designing a site from scratch, not upgrading an existing one.

Let's look at the sort of hardware that kind of money could buy. For $42 million, you could buy:
93,541 500Gb hard drives.
352,941 ipod Nano's.
4,242,4242 music tracks from legalsounds.com.
28,000 top of the line PC's.
3,112 brand new Toyota Yaris cars.

You can never expect to get best value out of the tax you pay, but paying $42,000,000 for a job that should only cost $1,000? C'mon, Australia, and especially our politicians - WAKE UP.

On Evil

2007-05-01T22:25:00.000+10:00

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Evil prevails when good men fail to act. It has been made abundantly clear to me in recent times that the better the appearance of the man, the more evil he likely is. For a certain time of my life I daily hung out with druggies, thieves, alcoholics and whores; and never did one of them (nor I at the time, for I was one of them) consider what they did evil. The burglar setting out on a job was convinced in his heart that what he did was right, for no-one would be harmed, insurance would pay anyway, and it was only his right and just due for all the disadvantages that life had dealt him, though he would admit perhaps to being biased in his opinion. Reflecting back on that time, and seeing the events of recent weeks, I am caused to admit that some of the most worldly, rough and uncaring people in the world, were better men than some who stand upright and claim Christian virtue. When the unChristians are more honest than the Christians, we have cause to re-examine our whole world view.

Join the Army and Terrorize the World

2007-04-30T18:25:00.000+10:00

Concerns have been raised over the mental health of soldiers serving in Australia's Armed Forces, with allegations that victims of post-traumatic stress syndrome are victimised, and that adequate counselling etc aren't available (read the ABC transcript). I've been hearing stories of psycho soldiers all my life, and certainly you can't even say the word "Vietnam" without the mental problems of veterans being raised next. Well pardon me if you disagree (as many of you will), but it all seems to me to be pointing out the bleeding obvious. You would have to be mentally unstable to the point of being insane to join the Armed Forces in the first place. Sure, all the advertising on tele makes it sound like you're signing up for the valuable leadership training, to discover your inner strengths, to learn new technology and be at the cutting edge of science, but the basic fact is that a soldier's job, fundamentally, is to commit murder, and to do it for no other reason than because someone else told you to. You train to kill people, and all the window dressing in every PR department doesn't change that simple fact. So before we go making too many accusations about the Army not providing counselling to its soldiers when they crack up, we should look at the simple fact that they weren't entirely sane when they joined up, either. Apparently though, the sort of violence and sadism which passes for "following orders" is excusable when you wear a uniform and get paid to murder people, whereas the psychotics in the general population, like the lunatic who gouged out his girlfriend's eye with a cattle prod or the sicko who tortured a 74 year old woman in her own home are condemned. He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. Next time that ex-SAS veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq in the ABC story has a traumatic attack, he should stop and think of how many of his victims are suffering the same thing as a result of his actions.

Scotty Finally Beamed Up

2007-04-29T15:10:00.000+10:00

James Doohan, Star Trek's "Scotty", has finally made it to space for real. He died in 2005 aged 85, but this week his ashes, along with those of Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and about 200 others, were launched into space from Spaceport America, a commercial spaceport, which charged US$495 per... er... ex-person. Star Trek Creator Gene Rodenberry had his ashed launched into space in 1997.

Perhaps at this point its worth stopping and considering how much of the science fiction and fantasy that Star Trek showed, has actually become real in the 35 years or so since the show was first envisaged. Yesterday I downloaded the latest episode of a TV show from a world-wide computer network, transferred it to my pocket-size ipod device, and watched it on the bus on the way into town, pausing only to answer my cell phone (half the size of Kirk's communicator). When I bored of that, I listened to a few of the 8,000 music tracks on the device. I watched the show through a disposable plastic lens in my eye which corrects my poor vision, and when I got home I heated food in 2 minutes in a microwave, a device unthought of in original Star Trek time, and brushed my teeth with a motorized toothbrush. Then I turned on the wall-size-image video projector and watched the News that had been on half an hour earlier, and skimmed the entire world's News headlines on the computer on my desk (which has 80,000 times more storage than the entire State Education Department computer system had when I was at school), where I noticed a story about Scotty's ashes and commercial spaceports trying to out-compete each other for customers. Because I was moved by the story, I wrote a few paragraphs about it and seconds later, anyone anywhere in the world could read my comments.

When you've got an hour or two to spare, go and watch some of those early Star Trek episodes. Remember that most of what you see on the show was intended to show the amazing things of the future, even though they look laughably ancient to us now. See for yourself just how lucky we are, to live when we live.

Triage Time

2007-04-28T16:20:00.000+10:00

tri·age (noun) - the process of sorting victims, as of a battle or disaster, to determine medical priority in order to increase the number of survivors (dictionary.com)

Australia is going through its worst drought ever. Nothing new in that, people have been saying "this is the worst drought ever" since we first settled on this continent. But in the last couple of weeks, we've seen pictures of the Murray-Darling basin, which provides 40% of all food production in this country, that look like photos of the Simpson Desert. We've seen photos of 100 metre high dams with 10 km long dry lake beds behind them, where once were trillions of litres of water. And now we're actually beginning to evacuate entire towns because there isn't any water to drink, and it can't even be trucked in. Last week our Prime Minister said that if the basin didn't get rain in the next couple of weeks, all of the available water we do have would have to be diverted to the cities on the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range, to ensure the survival of people there. That's a triage situation if ever I saw one. With no water at all for irrigation, the farms, towns and industries on the west side of the Range might never be re-established after just one season without water. And cutting off 40% of Australia's production might save the maximum number of people in the short term, but food prices would skyrocket, and the economy would be in tatters with the increased ratios of imported necessities.

It doesn't paint a very nice picture for the future, and there isn't much man can actually do when compared to the awesome whims of nature. All our Prime Minister, Mr Howard, could suggest was that people pray for rain. Australia's politicians usually avoid all mention of religion, in public at least, so Mr Howard calling for prayer shows the seriousness of the situation more than a thousand photos could.

That was a week ago, and after years of drought, its now raining. Not heavily, to be sure - perhaps enough to make a difference to one of the worst crises Australia has ever faced, or perhaps not. But either way, Christian or atheist, you have to wonder about the power of prayer when you see that rain.

Read the whole story at economist.com:
The Big Dry - Australia's Water Shortage

Fruity Flies

2007-04-27T20:10:00.000+10:00

Oh dear, fruit flies have been found in Tasmania. The larvae was found in fruit bought from a Hobart supermarket this week - it appears a shipment of fruit intended for Queensland was accidently sent to Tasmania after a mix-up at a vegetable market in New South Wales. Tasmania has maintained a massively complicated quarantine system for decades in order to keep the fruit fly out of the State, even to the point of regularly seaching people and vehicles on the interstate ferries and airlines. Because, the authorities say, it would absolutely destroy our fruit industries if they ever got in. Except it obviously hasn't destroyed the fruit industries in NSW, because that's where the shipment of fruit came from, and QLD wasn't worried about it, because that's where the fruit was supposed to go. Fruit flies haven't destroyed their industries, but they would destroy ours somehow.

I well remember science class at High School. We did experiments with ether and... fruit flies. We knocked the little mongrels out, examined them under the microscope, and tossed them out the window whenever the science teacher's back was turned. I reckon every science class in the State did the same thing, but somehow we never managed to wipe out the Tasmanian fruit industry despite our best efforts. Of course, that was then, when Kids Were Kids, and this is now, when Kids Are Young Persons With Unique And Valuable Skills And Assets Which Can Enrich The Wider Community Including People of Diversified Ethnic Backgrounds And Those With Differing Abilities. Whatever way you look at it, one crate of apples with a couple of fruit flies in it isn't anything to panic about, unless there's government money in panicking. In that case, like the so-called fox epidemic, it's "goodbye common sense and keep those cheques coming."

The Wrong Flag

2007-04-26T10:34:00.000+10:00

Australia is often described as the 51st state of the US, because so many of our habits, and our standard of living, are similar, and because our Politicians generally do exactly what the US tells them to. Much of our TV is US-made, but you notice one thing in almost every program which we here in Australia should learn from. The Yanks show their flag constantly. It hangs from businesses, ordinary homes have flagpoles in their front yard, its everywhere. 'Old Glory' is an affirmation of their pride about being American, and a constant reminder of their patriotism. At the risk of adding one more piece of American culture to our own, I suggest that we Australians should take a leaf from their book in this regard, and show the flag more often. We DO show the flag on special occasions and sporting events, but I'm suggesting that, like Americans, we should show it more, personally.

Anzac Day yesterday was awash in Aussie flags, of course, as is every war memorial occasion. Its just a pity it was the wrong flag. At the time of the Anzacs and Gallipoli, the flag we went to war under was the red ensign shown here. If you're going to commemorate an historical event, how about doing it accurately? We already celebrate Christmas as the birth of Christ (who was born somewhere nearer the middle of the year), and Easter as his death (it was his resurrection). Perhaps in 50 years we'll use roses for Remembrance Day because poppies are controlled plants now. Perhaps in remembering Auschwitz we will mourn for all those Muslims who lost their lives there, because the Jews now all live in New York. Perhaps we'll move Australia Day to April 1st, and we'll have a giant white rabbit in Anzac uniform driving a sleigh and handing presents out to Moms and Dads only, so that we can roll all our mistaken holidays into one.

There is only one thing worse than being ignorant of our history, and that is thinking you know it. As Mark Twain said, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”

Australia's Forgotten Flag - The Red Ensign

Anzac Day 2007

2007-04-25T09:57:00.000+10:00

The Anzac tradition - the ideals of courage, endurance and mateship that are still relevant today was established on 25 April 1915 when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula. It was the start of a campaign that lasted eight months and resulted in some 25,000 Australian casualties, including 8,700 who were killed or died of wounds or disease. The men who served on the Gallipoli Peninsula created a legend, adding the word ‘Anzac’ to the Australian and New Zealand vocabularies and creating the notion of the Anzac spirit.

In 1916, the first anniversary of the landing was observed in Australia, New Zealand and England and by troops in Egypt. That year, 25 April was officially named ‘Anzac Day’ by the Acting Prime Minister, George Pearce. By the 1920s, Anzac Day ceremonies were held throughout Australia. All States had designated Anzac Day as a public holiday. Commemoration of Anzac Day continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s with World War II veterans joining parades around the country. In the ensuing decades returned servicemen and women from the conflicts in Malaya, Indonesia, Korea and Vietnam, veterans from allied countries and peacekeepers joined the parades.

Anzac Day Official Site
Educational Resources
Frequently Asked Questions
Audio Downloads
Anzac Day entry on Wikipedia

Inglish as She is Goodly Spoken

2007-04-24T15:24:00.000+10:00

You may laugh at the title, but today's heading is actually the name of a real book. We often laugh at foreign languages, like the French swear-phrase "Sacre blu", which literally means... as you might guess... 'sacred blue'. Why 'sacred blue' should be their equivalent of English's 'f^%@!' is anyone's guess. And what about foreigners trying their best to write signs in English using only a Local-Language to English dictionary, and some of the hilarious signs which result? See engrish.com for heaps of examples. But when its all said and done, you can't really blame them for having trouble. These are just some of the reasons why English is so hard to learn:

The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full it had to refuse more refuse.
There is no time like the present, so he thought he would present the present.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
He did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
The oarsmen had a row about how to row.
He was too close to the door to close it.
A stag does strange things when the does are present.
After a number of injections my jaw became number.
The artist saw a tear in his painting and shed a tear.
She had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
An army chef decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

And of course, there are no eggs in an eggplant, and no apple or pine in pineapple. Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square, Guinea pigs are neither from Guinea nor are they pigs. Writers write but fingers don't fing. A slim chance and a fat chance are the same thing, so are quite a lot and quite a few. But overlook and oversee are very different. You fill in a form to fill it out, an alarm goes off by going on, when the stars are out you see their light but when the lights are out you see nothing. And why do you wind up a watch to start it, but wind up a story to finish it? Why is a parcel that goes by car called shipment, and one by ship called cargo? And why do you drive on the parkway, but park in the driveway?

One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night

2007-04-23T18:01:00.000+10:00

A man came up to me in the street today and pointed a key at me. I said "Don't start anything, mate". "What's it to you?", he demanded. "It's a two-letter word to me", I said, looking daggers at him. He dodged the daggers and snarled "You wanna make something of it!?" "Can't make much out of it", I said, "except maybe ti, and that doesn't make sense anyway." "No", he replied, "besides there aren't enough letters in that to make sense". "This is stupid", I said. "No", he replied, "THIS is stupid", holding up a piece of paper with the word stupid on it, "but I see your point." "Sorry", I exclaimed, and did my loose fly back up. "Right then", he said, "I'm off", so he went off to the right, while I left to the left. Unfortunately his right was my left and we ended up back where we started from. Some days you just can't win.

The post-title comes from that old poem: One fine day in the middle of the night, two dead men got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other. A paralyzed donkey passing by kicked a blind man in his good eye, cracked his head on a rubber wall, fell into a dry ditch and drowned them all.

And let's not forget that creepy ghost-story: The other day upon the stair, I saw a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today! Oh how I wish he'd go away!

And Now, Good News!

2007-04-22T22:44:00.000+10:00

No news is good news, they say. And certainly a look at world news today indicates that it must have been a very good day indeed. The authorities have called off the search for the crew of a catamaran near Queensland. Or to put it another way, they're not looking for some people who weren't on a boat that wasn't where it should be. Kevin Rudd, Opposition Leader, is not releasing any information about IR. And there's a possibility that the bodies of two young women, found close to where two young women went missing last week, could be them. Mufti is still defiant, just like he was yesterday. Victoria's health chief has said the source of a salmonella outbreak at a Melbourne nursing home may never be found. Islamic prison gangs may be cracked down upon, because it is feared they might be forming gangs behind bars. There could be no irrigation water for farmers in the Murray-Darling basin if rain doesn't fall. Queensland's borders will remain open, says Deputy Premier Anna Bligh. And the first blind pilot to fly half way around the world hasn't arrived yet in Darwin.

Does anyone else notice a trend here, to report News that isn't actually based on anything happening, but on things that didn't happen, might happen, or won't happen? These weren't stories specifically chosen from a larger list to illustrate my point - the above are genuinely the first 9 stories in Google News (Australia) today. When did the media decide that there wasn't enough actually happening in the world, and start to report on anything they liked, whether it happened or not? From a young age I was taught that the essence of writing a report was to know Who, What, Why, Where, When and How. Nowadays, it must be Nevermind, Perhaps, Anyway, Maybe and Whatever.

The Beamer Breathes - Just

2007-04-21T17:46:00.000+10:00

Not a lot of chance to blog anything today because Kierran has been hogging the computer all day playing Runescape, but it did give me the opportunity (or perhaps 'push') to get outside into natural light for a change, and I opened up the BMW for the first time in 3 years. She's been sitting under a tree, was covered an inch thick in leaves, twigs, etc, and I wasn't sure whether to be more worried about the 1 foot huntsman spider dropping down the back of my neck, or the snake living underneath. Luckily neither showed. She was dead as a doornail, of course, but when I jumped it from the ute the motor turned over and the status panel shows green on all systems. Things didn't go quite so well when I took the battery out, though, and put the ute's in - I had sparks everywhere as I attached the neg lead, and smoke started curling up from below. A lot of twigs and debris had made their way into the engine bay, so it may have just been them catching fire, or it might be a serious short somewhere from corrosion of the electrical system. Either way, I high-pressure hosed out the entire engine bay and put the original battery on charge; with so much moisture in there it will be a week before I can give her another try anyway. But it says a lot about Germans engineering, I guess, that I had no doubt in my mind at all that if I had a charged battery, she'd start straight away, even after 3 years of being left to the elements.

The East Side of Town

2007-04-20T14:47:00.000+10:00

Pardoe Downs, Ravenswood, Bridgewater - every city in the world has an Eastside. The part of town where the lower classes live, the dole bludgers, unemployed, single mothers, druggies, slums and no-hopers. In almost every city in the world, these people live on the east side of the town, for one simple reason - in general, thats the way the wind blows, so all the smog and pollution drifts that way. These are the areas where everyone is on the lawn bitching at their neighbours, all the lawns are 2 feet high, and the marijuana, beer and cigarettes are bought before the rent is paid. Two kids have an argument in the playground and it comes to "my dad can whoop your dad"; at 3 pm at the appointed place and time only one man turns up, to find he's supposed to be fighting himself. Its the sort of area where a man can have 2 six year old daughters who aren't twins. On Father's Day the men have more houses to visit than if they were trick'n'treating on Halloween, and a kid can live in the wrong house for a week before anyone notices. The dramas that are played out daily are the source of every soap opera ever made; a wise TV producer would forget ideas like Big Brother and just install cameras in every house in the suburb, but the problem then would be how to edit it all down. A week's life in the Eastside would make a year's TV. Not that I want to get stuck into them or paint everyone with the same brush, I've been an Eastsider myself. You might think some of the above is funny, if you've never been an Eastsider. But satirical or not, its 90% true. It's not necessarily a bad thing, either. However disfunctional, this is where real family life is happening in modern society, with single or defacto mums popping out well above the average 2.6 children, and the kids leaving home in their mid teens. For all the dramas and personality shaping, THIS is where the majority of our next generation are coming from, for better or worse.

Around the World

2007-04-19T15:27:00.000+10:00

Andy Warhol said that everyone in the future would have 15 minutes of fame. He was almost right, but he didn't stop to consider that with world population going up and up and the amount of hours in the day staying the same, that time would have to be divided amongst more and more people and so each would get a little less fame time. Currently I think it averages about 2 days if you're a politician, 1 week if you hire a shonky tradesman and get it shown on Today Tonight, and 2 months if you carry drugs into a foreign country in a surfboard bag.

Having a look at the ClustrMap of visitors to my blog always gets me thinking. Sure, there are blogs out there which get gazillions of visitors, and which quite frankly are far more interesting than mine. But this one man, with his ordinary thoughts, has had someone nestled into a cold bay in northern Canada reading his words. Over in Alaska, on some cold winter's night, someone sat up late over a cup of coffee reading. Down in South America, someone read the words of a man who will never see what they are privileged to have outside their window, the magnificent Andes. In the deepest jungles of Africa, in the poor nation of Ethiopia, in the rich affluent society of Dubhai, and in the overcrowded cities of India, people looked at my page. Across Europe from one end to the other, people who speak a variety of languages read what I wrote. In Russia, once a police state, people have read my words. And even in Alice Springs, the desert centre of Australia, someone visited me.

It's all rather humbling. Thank you, and may the Great Bird of the Galaxy roost on all your planets.

Pathetic Portables

2007-04-18T17:34:00.000+10:00

There are a lot of good reasons why you'd buy a portable DVD player. My kids enjoy being able to tuck themselves in a corner with their favourite movie and a pair of headphones, and I tend to watch a movie or an episode of Star Trek at bedtime every second day. They're particularly useful for people with contact lenses - you can take your lenses out before going to bed and still watch a bit, because you sit so close to them.

But... and its a big but... don't expect value for money or long-term use, or you'll be disappointed. Mine is a Shinco SDP-1750A, cost $185, and 9 months after I bought it, the screen died completely. I took it back to Harvey Norman and 3 weeks later, instead of repair, it was replaced with an entirely new unit. That one lasted 3 more months, and died 3 days after the original 12-month warranty ran out. Harvey Norman wouldn't come at replacing it because the warranty had expired, and the replacement one hadn't come with its own 12 month warranty - that applies from the date of original purchase, not the date you got this particular unit. So on average, for your $180, you get 6 months use, or in other words, one of the cheapest portables costs you $1 a day.

I bought both kids a Dick Smith branded portable. These were a little more expensive, and given the experience with Shinco, I took the option to extend the warranty to 3 years, which added considerably more to the cost. In the 4 months they've had them, no problems so far with the units, other than the extremely poor design and function. All the basic things the kids want, like cursor keys to select a particular episode, aren't on the unit, only on the remote, and the remote often isn't anywhere to be found. I have often found that I put a movie into one of theirs, and can't play what I want. Picture zoom, screen ratio changing, even chapter skipping are all unintuitive or not on the actual unit at all. To top things off, the screen is mounted high on the flip-up panel with a large blank space between it and the hinge, so that lying on the floor watching it, the kids are bound to get a sore neck from craning forward too much. Overall, the Dick Smith ones are poorly designed for their intended function. If the designers had actually bothered to put a disc into the player and watch it, these faults would have been evident. As for the long-term reliability, I'll post an update if and when one of them develops a fault.

The lesson here is evident - if you want a well designed, reliable portable DVD player, pay the extra money and go with a good brand name like Sony.

Weather Wars

2007-04-17T17:48:00.000+10:00

Curse these Western Australians, they've invented time travel and won't let the rest of us have it. Not only that, but are they using it to solve the great mysteries of history, to seek the advice of the legendary Solomon, or take a photo of a dinosaur that doesn't look like it was made by a kinder kid with a clay kit? No, they're wasting it on clouds.

How do I know? Because I got a phone call earlier today from a friend in Western Australia. WA is 3 hours behind us here in Tassie, so it was 2 pm there and 5 pm here. It was raining in WA, according to my friend, and in 2 hours that raincloud would be here in Tassie, since weather almost always travels west to east. That means that the rain would leave WA at 2 pm, and arrive here at 4 pm. And I can tell you, an hour ago it wasn't raining here! But now, thanks to the WA'ians and their secret time machines, it apparently IS going to rain here an hour ago now.

I tried to explain this to a mate from the USA on MSN, but didn't have much success, which is hardly surprising because he is 18 hours behind me. So not only was he taking 18 hours to answer my questions (duuuh), but I was answering his 18 hours before he even asked them.

Whoever came up with the Greenwich Mean Time and time zones ought to be shot. Once, everywhere in the world you went the time was 'Now'. But now, its then there and now here, and its only now there when its then here. Perhaps someone should nuke Greenwich completely off the map, but then would anything exist any more anywhere at all, or would that be the End Of Time?

Sign My Petition

2007-04-16T21:22:00.000+10:00

These bloggers, what can you do to shut them up? I know you really don't want to be here, and you're being forced to read this against your will. So what better way to get me back, than to add your name to the petition I've started on gopetition.com. Add your voice now and get these useless blogs off the internet and back into the secret diary hidden under the pillow, where they belong!

Petition to take bloggers off the internet, at gopetition.com

Back to the Blog

2007-04-15T17:28:00.000+10:00

Alright Sue, stop complaining. After a break of a few months to have a really crap time, I've decided to add an entry. If you're really, reaaaally nice I might add more than one this year. A few ups and downs lately... some disappointments over getting my daughter for Easter, which didn't happen until a few days after Easter and got me all depressed. Secondly, things in the organisation I'm a Board Member of have gone from bad last year to much worse now. It's being sorted.

All that's pretty serious, so here's the "feelgood" blog post. Like most sensible people, I have a Miglia TVmax attached to the computer so that I can record live TV directly. It's a great product and the compression ratios for video are amazing, I can fit just over 3 months of 24 Hr/Day TV on my hard drive. Given that there's only about 2 hours of TV a week actually worth watching, that means you can record things forever. One of the really nice things about it is that it uses an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) called IceTV, which allows you to set programs to record with a single click, or indeed record every episode of a show if you like. Its nice, easy to use, and very powerful. There is just one catch - the price.

IceTV costs $13 a month, and that's just way too much to pay in a place like Tasmania where there are only four channels. Luckily, they have a free month's trial option, and even after it expires you can use it for a while, so for now at least, I don't have to pay.

One of the nice things about IceTV is that they write their own program description, and its probably best to describe these as "hidden extras". Many of them give me a laugh, because the guys or gals who write them don't serve up the usual drivel, they tell it like it is. Take, for example, these:

Police Files Unlocked
Footage from police cameras is cobbled together to make a cheap program about the general public's lack of respect for road rules and law & order in general.

Media Watch
Everyone loves it until they're on it. Media Watch turns a critical eye on the Australian media in general, and journalism in particular.

Today
The giggles are the same and you could argue they they're better groomed at Today. However, it's six of one half a dozen of the other really. A magazine style format with a smattering of news, current affairs, celebrity goss and the scandal of the day to get the early morning juices flowing.

Gotta love it. Keep up the good work, guys.

New Year's Eve

2006-12-31T17:15:00.000+11:00

New Year's Eve, another year come and gone and they seem to go faster and faster the older you get. Since lots of you will be downing a few bottles of Liquid Courage this evening and then hitting the Karaoke stages, I thought I'd better provide you with the full lyrics to Auld Lang Syne:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp ! And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes, and pou’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit, sin’ auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl’d in the burn, frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d sin’ auld lang syne.
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere! And gies a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie-waught, for auld lang syne.

And if you can't understand any of that, don't worry, no-one else can understand you either when you start singing up on the Karaoke Stage, so just sing anything that comes out. Well, words that come out, anyway! No crying weakly for Ralph or Hewey, please!

Links:
What the hell does the song actually mean? (Wikipedia)
Auld Lang Syne in WAV format

Microsoft Never Fails… to Fail

2006-12-28T19:40:00.000+11:00

Just 4 weeks after it's release, security flaws have been discovered in Windows Vista. The Big M spent 5+ years developing it, and released it 2 years(!) late. In fact, according to an article in The Australian newspaper, it's the first major upgrade since Windows 95, 11 whole years ago! And what do they have to say about the problem? "Well, sure it's there, but there aren't any nasty programs taking advantage of it… yet… Oh, and Explorer has a few security holes in it as well, sorry about that". Still, Mike Reavey, operations manager at Microsoft's Security Response Centre, isn't worried… "Windows Vista is our most secure platform to date." Well, since Windows has some 114,000 viruses so far, versus the Mac platform's… er… has anyone found any yet?… I wouldn't be too proud of that, Mike.

I use both platforms, so let me say it straight from a real-world side-by-side user: Get a life and get a Mac. Once you've gone Mac you'll never go back. Well, hardly ever anyway.

In the Year 2525…

2006-12-24T19:59:00.000+11:00

In the year 3535, ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies.
Everything you think, do and say is in the pill you took today.
In the year 4545, ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew, nobody's gonna look at you.
In the year 5555, your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do, some machine doing that for you.
In the year 6565, ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife.
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too, from the bottom of a long glass tube.
In the year 7510, if God's a-comin, he oughta make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say, "Guess it's time for the judgment day".
In the year 8510, God is gonna shake his mighty head.
He'll either say, "I'm pleased where man has been", or tear it down and start again.
In the year 9595, I'm kinda wonderin if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken everything this old Earth can give, and he ain't put back nothing.

Now it's been ten thousand years, man has cried a billion tears.
For what he never knew, now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight.
So very far away, maybe it's only yesterday.

Zager and Evans In The Year 2525

Saltwater

2006-12-24T19:18:00.000+11:00

We are a rock revolving around a golden sun
We are a billion children rolled into one
So when I hear about the hole in the sky
Saltwater wells in my eyes

We climb the highest mountain, we'll make the desert bloom
Were so ingenious we can walk on the moon
But when I hear of how the forests have died
Saltwater wells in my eyes

We light the deepest ocean, send photographs of Mars
Were so enchanted by how clever we are
Why should one baby feel so hungry she cries
Saltwater wells in my eyes

We are a rock revolving around a golden sun
We are a billion children rolled into one
What will I think of me the day that I die
Saltwater wells in my eyes

Julian Lennon
Saltwater

Evil Santa's Site

2006-12-23T17:21:00.000+11:00

Admit it - like me, you always thought the "Nice Old Do-Good Man in a Red Suit" cover-story was a bit suspect, and Santa was actually up to no good at all! Check out the website at Letters from Bad Santa for form letters, unusual gifts, etc. And on a more serious note, don't over-eat, don't over-argue and don't whatever you do drink and drive. See you again after the X-bomb fallout settles!

Or for something a bit more family-friendly, take the kids to NORAD Tracks Santa so they can see how amazingly technologically advanced the good-ol' US of A is, and how even though they're pretending to track good old Santa, those same technologies are what makes them God's Own Nation! Yes, combining myth, religious dogma, and killing machines in a form kids can relate to and learn to love - now that's the real Christmas spirit.

And for all us poor bloggers, stuck "out there" in cyberspace, what would Christmas be without a reply from Santa to the letter we sent him a few weeks ago?

A Million Years in One Afternoon

2006-12-15T19:08:00.000+11:00

With the hype-up to Christmas in full swing, I've posted a few religious-oriented entries in the last week or two, so I'll leave the subject alone for a bit now with this parting shot. Anyone who still believes that the world is billions of years old (or perhaps its trillions or millions now, the figures in popular science journals change every 3 or 4 years), I would suggest a visit to creationwiki.org. Now I know what you're thinking, but the fact is that if you truly believe in science, then that includes the belief that any rational theorum which explains things more accurately than your current model, is a more scientific approach. For me, Creation explains what I see in the world a lot more accurately than Evolution. Consider this example, from creationwiki:

Perhaps the most remarkable catastrophic events to have occurred at Mt St Helens was the rapid erosion that was accomplished by mudflows, landslides, and waves of water. On March 19, 1982 a small eruption melted the snow that had accumulated in the crater over the winter, and a resulting hot mud flow carved a system of canyons up to 140 feet deep and 17 miles long in a single day. The deepest of the canyons has affectionately been called the little Grand Canyon of the Toutle River, and is 1/40th the size of its namesake. The small creek that now flows through the bottom would appear to have carved this canyon over a great length of time, but this unique event has demonstrated that rapid catastrophic processes were instead responsible. The Grand Canyon in Arizona has also been claimed for some time to have been carved gradually by the Colorado River, but it is now becoming clear this American icon is as well the result of catastrophic erosion.

Depressed Yet?

2006-12-14T17:10:00.000+11:00

In case you missed this story in the News, a US Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended Wednesday that warnings on anti-depressants be changed. It seems that anti-depressants cause an increased risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children and adolescents, and the debate is whether that extends to young adults or older patients as well, and whether the warning labels should be changed to reflect the fact. Now forgive me for exclaiming "WTF!?", but surely anti-depressants are to stop this kind of thought/behaviour pattern? I can just picture a man walking into the Doctor and saying "I'm so depressed, Doc, I think I want to kill myself", and the Doctor says, "Here, take these pills, then you'll be sure!"

It shouldn't come as any surprise, though. Scan through old newspapers sometime and find any article that says something is good for you, then scan ahead a year of two and find the corresponding "No it isn't" article. We've been told to eat more chocolate, don't eat chocolate, drink more tea and coffee, drink less tea and coffee, no red meat, lots of red meat, minimal dairy, as much dairy as you can, more sugar, less sugar, no sugar, more sugar, take an aspirin every day for your heart's sake, don't take aspirin ever. What a world.

The only thing you can discern for sure out of the whole thing is that anybody claiming to be an expert is best not listened to, and the best way to live life is to use your own common sense. As my Dad used to say, "The whole world is mad except me and thee, and I'm not so sure about thee."

FDA Panels Urges Changes to Antidepressant Labeling

What Did Jesus Really Look Like?

2006-12-13T08:57:00.001+11:00

Which of the images above is the real Jesus? Well, most people would say number 4, or perhaps 1 or 5. And they'd be wrong. In fact, number 6 is probably the most accurate picture of Jesus, although even that's just guesswork. The simple fact is that we've all been conditioned by Hollywood and Sunday School to accept an image of Jesus as tall, lean, with flowing blonde hair, fair skin and light-coloured eyes, but that doesn't fit with any of the evidence.

We only have two hints from the Bible about his looks, and both are fairly uncomplimentary. Isaiah says that he has "no comeliness" and that "there is no beauty that we should desire him". And that His face was "marred more than any other man". And in the 3rd century, Tertullian said that Jesus' body "did not reach even to human beauty, to say nothing of heavenly glory".

Apart from these direct references to his appearance, a lot can be assumed from other evidence. First, Jesus looked ordinary - when a mob was out to get Him, He hid from them simply by melting into the crowd. And at His betrayal, Judas had to point Him out to the soldiers, even though there were only 12 people in the garden, with a pre-arranged signal. These incidents show us that Jesus looked like any other Jew of His day. Archeological evidence shows the average semetic male of the era was around 5'1" and 110 pounds. Since Jesus worked outdoors as a carpenter until He was about 30 years old, it's reasonable to assume He was more muscular and physically fit than our portraits suggest, although He did a lot of walking when He began His ministry, so it's fair to assume He would have become leaner.

How did Jesus wear His hair? Well, the apostle Paul saw Jesus and knew exactly what He looked like. In the time of Christ most men wore short hair, and in 1 Corinthians Paul wrote, "Doesn't even nature itself teach you, that if a man have long hair, it is shameful?" Would Paul have made such a statement if Jesus had long hair?

The simple fact is, although there were no pictures of the real Jesus, or accurate descriptions, that hasn't stopped people through the ages inventing them. From the static yet profound icons of Eastern Orthodoxy to the punishing bruiser of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment", Jesus served the needs of the day. Slave-era blacks painted an African Jesus, Jesus took on almond eyes in Asia and blonde hair in Scandinavia. The consistent trend has been to make him more human, to make a Jesus that His followers could easily identify with. Caravaggio did it for Italians in the 17th century with a suffering, peasant Jesus, and the filmmaker Kevin Smith reflected the modern "Jesus is my best friend" mentality by introducing a smiling "Buddy Christ" in his movie "Dogma."

Ultimately, then, the answer to the question, "What did Jesus really look like?" is: Whatever you want Him to.

Further Reading

A Safe & Healthy Workplace

2006-12-12T08:03:00.000+11:00

These days every organisation seems to have a Political-Correctness-Police approved mission statement, most of which are simply copied and pasted from someone else's, all the way back to the original model statement which originated in some disabled vegan lesbian aboriginal's poetry book. Take, for example, this excerpt from the Tasmania Fire Service website, and let's stop for a moment to think on what it really means, and if the principles stated really would provide for a better workplace.

The TFS works hard to have a safe work place where people are able to fulfil their potential and contribute to the achievement of our goals. We want a workforce where diversity in all areas is valued, particularly in the areas of gender and ethnicity. It is our view that the way we deliver our services will be improved if we have people from a wide range of backgrounds and social groups working in our organisation.

Fighting fires isn't a safe activity, by its very nature, so that part is just drivel. It's nice to give humans the opportunity to reach their potential, find Nirvana, and be one with the universe, but in most cases, fulfilling your potential means stopping someone else from reaching theirs. It's on this very point that most Political Correctness falls down - the simple fact that giving a Right to one person automatically implies you are taking it away from everyone else. And the chances that what I need to do, to fulfill my own personal potential, will coincide with the goals of the Tasmania Fire Service are very remote indeed. Having a job is all about giving up personal freedom in exchange for the pay cheque, no matter what the PC Police say.

As for a workplace where diversity is valued, nothing could be further from desirable for any organisation, which needs all its staff to work toward it's goal with one mind, one purpose, and one set of actions - the complete opposite of diversity, in fact. And although there are certainly businesses where it might be an advantage to have a German, for example, on staff, they are a small percentage. In most businesses it doesn't make one iota of difference if your staff are of varied ethnic backgrounds, or a mix of male and female, yet the TFS, like so many other PC-correct groups, says it wants this, even needs it, so that it's "delivery of services" will be improved by the most diversity it can squeeze in.

The sad thing about all this, is that everyone knows statements like the above are just so much legally-required garbage, from the people who draft them to the people in the government who tick off the box that says the organisation's mission statement is acceptable. And day-to-day, despite the stated desires for ethnic variety, culturally sensitivity, male and female interaction and spiritual closeness, people are still being employed based solely on their ability to do the job they were hired for. Shame, shame, shame.

The True Origin of Christmas

2006-12-11T01:23:00.000+11:00

There are a lot of Christians running around these days chanting "Put Christ back into Christmas". Well, I am a Christian, but I've got some bad news for you guys. Christ was never a part of Christmas in the first place!

The Shepherds and the Wise Men
Jesus wasn't born on December 25th or anywhere near it. Shepherds don't sleep out in the fields watching their flocks by night in the middle of the Middle East winter, so the best guess for Christ's birth is somewhere in September, but the date isn't recorded. A lot of people get confused because they've heard the Wise Men may have taken years to get there, but the shepherds were on the scene pretty much straight away. The Wise Men were almost certainly Astronomers from China or Persia. They came from the East, and took up to 3 years to get there, because Herod ordered all children under 3 killed. There weren't 3 of them, either, this is a common assumption based on the fact that 3 different types of gift were given. Considering the length of the journey and their importance, there may have been a caravan of hundreds of people in their retinue.

December 25th
December 25th was the Roman Festival of Saturnalia, where lawlessness, intoxication, debauchery, rape and human sacrifice reigned, all without punishment. Human-shaped biscuits were eaten, and singing naked in the streets was common (the precursor to modern carol singing). In the 4th century, the Catholic Church, hoping to convert the heathen, adopted the Festival by promising they could continue to celebrate it after conversion, and in 1466 Pope Paul II revived many of the old customs to persecute Jews.

Christmas Trees and Mistletoe
Worshippers of the pagan Asheira cult worshipped trees in the forest and brought them into their homes to decorate. Their practices also were adopted by the Church, giving us the modern Christmas tree. In Norse mythology, Hoder killed Balder while fighting for the female Nanna, using a mistletoe-poisoned arrow. Druid rituals used mistletoe to poison their human sacrifices. The custom of kissing under the mistletoe is a mixing of the sexual nature of the Saturnalia Festival and Druidic sacrifice.

Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the Emperors forced citizens to bring them offerings and gifts during Saturnalia. The Catholic Church simply invented Saint Nicholas and adopted the gift-giving practice.

Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus
Nicholas was Bishop of Myra around 300, and was named a saint in the 19th century. In 1087 a cult worshipping him developed, and in Turkey he supplanted a female deity called The Grandmother in the role of giving gifts to children. The Nicholas cult spread north and was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped many gods but their leader was Woden, father of Thor, who had a long white beard and rode a horse through the sky every August. The legends of Saint Nicholas and Woden merged, and his schedule was changed to December 6th, Nick's birthday. In an attempt to convert pagans in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and moved the date to December 25th. In 1809 novelist Washington Irving wrote a satire of Dutch culture which referred to Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

Santa Becomes Famous
In 1822, Professor Dr Clement Moore published a poem, "The Night Before Christmas", based on the character of Saint Nicholas after reading Irving's book. The modern image of Santa is largely the work of illustrator Thomas Nast, who from 1862 to 1886 drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper's Weekly. Nast also invented the North Pole address, the workshop filled with elves, and the list of good and bad children. The only thing missing was Santa's red outfit, and for that we can thank the Coca Cola company, who contracted Haddon Sundblom to create an advertisement featuring Santa drinking Coke - and insisted that his suit be Coca-Cola red.

Disastrous News!

2006-12-11T00:23:00.001+11:00

Bushfires burned out of control on the island state of Tasmania yesterday, with up to 600,000 people killed and many others missing from their homes. The devastation was total in some areas as entire populations lost their homes. Experts say most of these victims will never build a house again. Thick black smoke turned day into night in various locations, and firefighters worked desperately to save anyone they could, despite being inches from deadly fires themselves. Possibly 4,000 homes were destroyed in Hobart alone, and police were on the lookout for looters throughout the night. One witness, a World War 2 veteran, described the scene at his former home as "the worst thing he'd ever seen in his life."

Bushfires wiped out the entire state in 1967, at least according to a Time Magazine article. I lost all faith in that magazine when I found an old issue as a teenager, and read how devastated the entire island was in 1967, how Tasmanian industry was wiped out and would never recover, and how bare the island now was. But in fact, horrific though the 60's bushfires were, they only covered an area of 2,642 sq km, or about 3% of the state. And it's with this paragon of reporting style as my model that I wrote for you the above account of what the bushfires did in Tasmania yesterday. The amazing thing about my story above is… every word is true. But not necessarily in the way you think.

Some parts of the bushfires yesterday weren't being controlled, while firemen worked on other parts of the fire instead. No people were killed - zero is certainly in the range of numbers up to 600,000. Across the state, people were missing from home because they were at work, school, etc as normal. Where the fires had burned down trees, the devastation was total, and the animal populations which lived in those trees lost their homes. They will never rebuild, because animals don't build houses. At the base of any of those fires, a few inches from the ground, smoke made it very dark, and also inside trees, etc. Firefighters always work to save whoever they can in any fire situation. Fire is deadly if you're caught in it, and every firefighter is somewhere within a million inches of a fire. No homes were destroyed in Hobart, though there is always a possibility that could happen. And police keep a watch out for burglars, looters, etc 24/7 every day of the year, fires or not. The World War 2 veteran, who never went overseas and served in a recruiting office in Melbourne for the whole war, went for a drive to where his home used to be 30 years ago, it had nothing to do with the fires, he just sold it back then. When he got there he saw two dogs engaging in… well, anyway, he said it was the worst thing he'd seen in his life.

And there you have it, a prime example of how the News can be true and untrue at the same time. Thanks, Time Magazine, for teaching me this important skill, and keep up the crappy work.

The 1967 Tasmanian Bushfires
Bushfires in General

Smoke if You've Got 'Em

2006-12-10T15:24:00.000+11:00

I just thought a second blog entry for the day might be appropriate, since I'm pretty much shut inside for the day. The sky for 360° around is filled with smoke from the 22 separate bushfires currently burning around Tasmania, making the day fairly dark and ominous. As a sort of false evening approaches, the sky can be seen glowing and flickering here and there where some of the fires are. Earlier today we heard repeated, regular blasts of a fog-horn, which I've never heard before in my whole life, from the Port of Devonport, some 10 km away, presumably guiding the Spirit of Tasmania, or smaller vessels without satellite navigation, into port. Checking the Tasmania Fire Service's website, I found something else I've never seen before in my life - an Asthmatics Warning. That's right, they're officially telling people to stay inside, where the air is better. The feeling in my chest (a sort of magical weather bureau) tells me we're in for a dramatic downward change in weather over the next few days. The weather widget says its 30°C today (terribly hot to us Tasmanians, we consider 18° a hot day) with the next 3 days going down to 16°, 15° and 18°, so I guess my chest is correct. I bet those firefighters out there are looking forward to it even more than the rest of us!

Eddie's Etymology Lesson

2006-12-10T11:52:00.000+11:00

FORMER TV star Eddie McGuire is so unhappy he's considering quitting as Channel 9 chief executive. He's on record as saying he wants to "bone" TV personality Jessica Rowe, but it's not what you think - "bone" is his term for dismissing someone, according to Eddie. That's really convenient, because no-one I have ever met uses the term for sacking someone from their job. Nor anyone you've ever met, either, I'll bet. The slang term "bone" means to have sex with, and Eddie's attempts to pretend that he personally has a different meaning are just so much bullshit. Oh, please don't get offended at that expression - my personal meaning for the term "bullshit" is "a promise to put money in the collection plate next Sunday".

Assigning a personal meaning to the term "bone" avoids a great many problems as far as Channel 9, and Eddie, are concerned. After all, in his capacity as chief executive, he has every right to talk about sacking someone, whereas the alternative - the meaning everyone else in the world assigns to the term - would make him guilty of sexual harassment and would cost 9 and Eddie a hell of a lot of money in court.

Years ago, the policy of Education Department's in Australia was that if a child spelled a word wrong three times, then the teachers shouldn't correct him or her, because it was obviously "the right spelling, for that child". This is taking political correctness and citizen's rights to a ridiculous extreme. Just imagine if I smash windows as I walk down the street, and when the police stop me, I point out that I smashed more than 3, therefore it is correct and legal behaviour, for me.

Eddie is a bonehead, and as far as I'm concerned, he can bend over and bone himself. And I don't mean give himself the sack.

News Article

Ancient Empires Lux

2006-12-09T18:35:00.000+11:00

Head on over to SillySoft and check out the new offering, Ancient Empires Lux. Unlike the real Lux, which has a map editor built in, this is a standalone bunch of campaigns, more like Mark Bauer's American History Lux, but there are enough different civilizations, and skill levels, and easy or hard starting positions, that you'll be quite some time defeating everything the game has to offer. And at only $20 US, it's priced right where good games should be. Free downloads are available, and it works on any platform, so check it out.

Santa's Force

2006-12-08T10:21:00.000+11:00

You'd better watch out, you'd better not cry,
You'd better lock up, I'm telling you why…
Santa's Force is coming to town.

He sneaks in when you're sleeping.
He brings a sack with him.
Everyone thinks he's bringing gifts,
But he's really stealing them!

You shouldn't go up to the North Pole.
Santa's got a warehouse there you know,
Where he stores the loot that he steals.

The DEA is raiding,
The CIA are there.
The FBI are standing around,
And pretending they really care.

You'd better arm up to your back teeth,
Or all you'll be getting is a brand new wreath.
Santa's Force is coming to town.

Santa's Not Coming

2006-12-07T10:24:00.000+11:00

There is only one species of reindeer and it definitely cannot fly! But there are perhaps several hundred thousand species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and micro-organisms, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. But since Santa doesn't appear to handle the Shinto, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Animist, and atheist children, not to mention the bah-humbug non-Santa believers, that reduces his workload to 15% of the total - about 378 million. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seemes logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each household with good children (well, good enough) Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to go to the toilet, which most of us must do at least once every 31 hours (In that time he also, of course, consumes almost 100 million pies and about 25 million litres of of sherry - are you surprised you don't see him for the rest of the year!?)

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, a space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

Now consider the huge load in the sleigh. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (almost 1 kg or 2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, non-flying reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" could pull ten times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the QEII cruise liner.

353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team (all 214,000 of them) will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

9 Things I Hate

2006-12-06T20:26:00.000+11:00

1. People who point at their wrist while asking for the time. Hey, I know where my watch is pal, where's yours? Do I point at my crotch when I ask where the toilet is?
2. People who are willing to search the entire room for the TV remote because they refuse to walk to the TV and change the channel manually.
3. When people say "Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too". Damn right... what good is cake if you can't eat it!?
4. When people say "it's always the last place you look". Of course it is - why the hell would I keep looking after I've found it? What sort of people do this?
5. When people are watching a film and they say "did you see that?". No, I paid $12 to come to the cinema so I could stare at the floor.
6. People who ask "Can I ask you a question?" Got me there, didn't really give me a choice, did ya sunshine?
7. When something is 'new and improved!'. Which is it? If it's new, then there has never been anything before it. If it's an improvement, then there must have been something before it, couldn't be new. And why do all these companies keep making their washing powder 'whiter and brighter'? What the hell were we washing with before, mud!?
8. When people say "life is short". What the hell?? Life is the longest damn thing anyone ever does!! What can you do that's any longer?
9. When you are waiting for the bus and someone asks "Has the bus come yet?" Now look, if the bus came would I still be standing here!?

One Mongrel to Ruin It All

2006-12-04T21:17:00.001+11:00

Every year, I take my kids to the Latrobe International Speedway's Fireworks Spectacular meeting. They look forward to it all year. But this year, they won't be having that special Christmas season treat.

The permit for the Speedway to hold the Fireworks meeting this Saturday night has been revoked, because of one complaint by one pathetic miserable sad loser who complained that he didn't like the noise.

Never mind that the Fireworks evening is a north-west Tasmanian tradition.
Never mind that he bought his house with the full knowledge that the event had been held for 30 years.
Never mind that it only goes for 15 minutes.
And never mind that about 5,000 people attend on that night, in fact for about 3,000 of them its the only Speedway meeting of the entire year they attend.

None of that matters, apparently, when it comes to a minority being able to ruin it for everyone else.

The objector's name, address and phone numbers are in the map above (click on the map for a larger view). I hope everyone will ring the person up and make their opinion of his selfishness known, or write him letters saying so. I suggest you don't make prank calls, throw bags of faeces on their lawn, or any of a hundred other nasty pranks that a quick search of Google could inspire you to do, because that would be plain nasty. But certainly, let your opinion be know. Writing to, or ringing up, the Latrobe Council is also a good idea.

Thanks very much to the Mountain Dew Ice International Speedway, at Latrobe, Tasmania, for putting on its fireworks every year, and to its longtime sponsor, Wyllie Tiles. And a thousand curses on the one person who can't tolerate 15 minutes of noise for the sake of 5,000 other people's enjoyment.

This is not a paid advertisement

2006-11-15T14:28:00.000+11:00

Quite a few years ago, I bought Apple G3 'Wall St' laptops for my kids. They had a lot of fun with them, and then the power supplies packed it in on both of them. Every now and then I sourced replacement power supplies, but they were so expensive in relation to the decreasing value of the computers that they just weren't worth buying. That is, until yesterday, when I thought 'hang the expense' and ordered one from a supplier I found on the web - mobilepower.com.au

I ordered the replacement power supply from them yesterday at 3:17 pm. It came, from another state of Australia, in this morning's mail. That's damn good service by any account, but when you consider that I had previously sourced the power supplies elsewhere at $135 plus $15 freight, and that MobilePower charged me just $105 including freight, it's incredible. And did I mention that they supply power supplies for just about every brand and breed of laptop ever?

Let's sum it up with a score table:
Product Range = 10/10 Speed of Delivery = 10/10 Pricing = 10/10

What more could you ask for? Dust off your old laptops and head over to their website today - this is one company that really deserves your business. And thanks a heap, MobilePower. You can expect me to order another one for the second G3 laptop in the next month or so.

MobilePower's Website

McStunt Burgers

2006-10-24T19:50:00.000+11:00

Have you ever noticed that McDonalds employ stunt, or stand-in, burgers for all their advertising? You look up at the menu board and see those beautiful, pristine burgers with their fancy backlighting, then buy one, unwrap it and say, 'WTF!?'. I witnessed an argument between an old man and a serving wench in McD's one day - he had ordered one of 'those' he said, pointing angrily at the board, and they had given him the wrong thing! The poor wench tried to explain that the Big Mac shown on the board was what he had been served, but how much hope of success have you when they look so different? To demonstrate the point, below is an example: The Big Mac on the left is from the McDonalds web site, and the one on the right is a freshly unwrapped one - look carefully and you may spot slight differences between them… found any differences yet…?

That's right, real Big Macs look nothing like the publicity photos! For starters, consider the size - those stunt burgers look about 5 inches tall, whereas the one above, fresh out of the wrapper, measures just 4.5 cm! I invite you to email your own photos of McD food to me - omfgnotyouagain@hotmail.com - so I can include them here. No rigging the shot… the photo must be taken immediately upon unwrapping the food, and within 5 minutes of purchase. There's no need to cheat to show McDonalds what their food really looks like, so tell it just like it is, and the photos will speak for themselves!

Cna uyo rdea sith ko?

2006-10-22T23:27:00.000+11:00

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.

Rare Videos

2006-10-16T15:56:00.000+11:00

Wow, I found these Star Trek Animated Series videos on Australian ebay, and the starting price is only $20! What a bargain! These are a very rare item these days, and a search of US ebay only turned up one set, starting at 3 times this price! Of course, I found them in the first place because… well, I admit it, I'm the Seller. But honestly, they are rare, and they are definitely worth this asking price. Check them out if you're an Aussie reader - and remember, Only You Can Make Sure Your Kids Get Hooked On Star Trek - by starting them young!

Bargain of the Year

Scumbag of the Year

2006-10-15T14:32:00.000+11:00

As some humans come to terms with the loss of their homes and possessions, there are others who act like prowling animals and think of nothing beyond themselves. There are a lot of people out there who are wasting what precious little oxygen is left on the planet by prolonging their useless, pathetic, parasitic life, but the award for Scumbag of the Year has to go to the sad, stupid idiot who stole a firefighting vehicle while the crews were battling bushfires near Hobart yesterday. You don't have to be just spastic to do something like that, you have to be completely heartless and brain-dead as well, and when you get caught and brought up for trial, the Judge needs to ask, "is there any real benefit to society in letting this individual continue living?" I hope they throw the book at you, moron. In fact, I hope they chain you and lock you in a shed then set fire to it, then ring the fire brigade and see if they can get to you on time on foot! You're scum, mate. Do us all a favour and shoot yourself.

The Age story

Bushfire Season

2006-10-14T19:35:00.000+11:00

Here we are not even officially into summer yet, and we're experiencing some of the hottest days of ANY season. Across Australia, firefighters have been battling bushfires already, and I predict that the next 3 or 4 months will see one of the worst Bushfire seasons ever in Australia. Last week, my parents went to Hobart to stay for a few days and had to hose down the house while a bushfire burned just 500 metres downhill, on Mount Nelson, which I visited 2 months or so ago with the kids to see some snow. This isn't the first time my Mum and Dad have stayed at a place where there was a fire while they were there, or shortly after. In fact it seems to happen with surprising regularity… Meanwhile, the NSW Police Force knows how to combine business with pleasure, announcing today that a veritable army of police will be spending those long, hot summer days on the beach, supposedly to prevent a repeat of last summer's beach riots. Yeah, sure guys. 'We'd better question those two bikini-clad blondes over there immediately, Constable'. 'About what, Sarge?' 'Gawd I dunno, make something up, quick, before those surfie guys get to them…'

ABC News - Fire threatens Hobart homes

Song Contest Blues

2006-10-13T12:13:00.000+11:00

Feel like crud, my path's turned to mud,
Had a lover's spat then stepped on the cat,
Leaking roof, got an aching tooth,
Car broke down miles out of town,
Lightning struck my last living duck,
Mother-in-law is knocking at the door,
Got a flat tyre, the barn caught fire,
The school caught my son playing with a gun,
Mormons turned up, kidnapped my pup,
The oak tree fell over on top of poor Rover,
Washing's all dirty, I'm approaching thirty,
Bank accounts as clean as I've ever seen,
Daughter needs braces, lost big at the Races,
Her boyfriend loves bon-bons but not using condoms,
My wife wants divorce and won't do her chores,
The Parson came by just as she started to cry.
Song Contest, I'm in it and I really want to win,
But how can I write a Blues Song,
When I can't think of anything to put in it!?

IQ test

2006-10-12T19:08:00.000+11:00

I'm a bit worried about the mental calibre of the people I'm getting reading my blog, so I thought it was time to weed out the riff-raff with a little test. If you get less than 8 correct, perhaps you would be happier reading some other blog…

Answers below… answer the questions first before you look!

1. Write your name.
2. Do they have a 4th of July in England?
3. In a non-leap year, some months have 31 days, and some 30, but how many have 28?
4. If a doctor gave you three pills and told you to take one every half hour, how long would they last?
5. If you had only one match and entered a room where there is an oil lamp, an oil heater, and kindling wood, which would you light first?
6. A farmer had 87 sheep and all but 21 died. How many did he have left?
7. Divide 30 by half and add 10. What is the result?
8. How many animals of each species did Moses take aboard the Ark?
9. If you take 31 apples from 93 apples, how many apples do you have?
10. You drive a bus with 31 people from Oatlands to Hobart, pick up 6 more there, drive on to Campbell Town and drop 5 off, then pick up 4 more and continue to Devonport where 7 get off and 2 get on. Based on this information, what is the bus driver's name?

BONUS QUESTION:
11. Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden for eating… what?

ANSWERS
1. You should have written the words your name as instructed.
2. Yes, they have a 4th of every month, just like everyone else.
3. Twelve. Every month has at least 28 days.
4. One hour, not an hour and a half!
5. The match, obviously.
6. He has 21 left.
7. The answer is 70. 30÷2+10=25, but 30÷1/2+10=70.
8. None. Noah took animals on the Ark, Moses wasn't around.
9. You'd have 31 apples because that's how many you took!
10. The bus driver's name is whatever your name is. 'You drive a bus…'
11. Adam and Eve were evicted for eating 'the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil', not an apple. See Genesis 2:17 if you don't believe me!

Flying High

2006-10-11T21:34:00.000+11:00

I haven't blogged for a week or so; I'd like to say it's because things of earth-shattering import have been occupying my limited temporal allotment, but the fact is, I just haven't had anything much to say - for once!

Still, all good things must come to an end, and so I post once more. Today I got a phone call (actually a series of them) from a customer who is also a member of the Exclusive Brethren. In case you don't know, they aren't allowed to use technology, so he asked me to book him some flights from Melbourne to Tassie on the internet for him.

Firstly, Regional Air Express (Rex) told him on the phone (which is also technology, but apparently allowed) they had $104 seats at 8:30 am on November 4th for Melbourne to Burnie, and 6:30 pm on November 8th for the return flight. Except they didn't. Online, I couldn't find any flights on those days at that price. He called them back, they insisted they did, he called me back, I said they didn't, and so it went on. Eventually, I told him that if they said the flights were there on their internet, then they could book them for him, because they weren't showing up on my internet! We should have been looking at the same thing; last time I checked, I wasn't mirroring the entire internet on my computer, but with all the internet-savvy and phone-home software these days, I can't be sure. Perhaps I am and just didn't realise it. That would go part-way to explaining why the terabyte of storage I bought 2 weeks ago is almost full already.

Secondly, when i found the cheapest flights that were available, they came to $396 - plus about $190 taxes and surcharges! What are these surcharges? There was the Domestic Passenger Levy, which I thought was a bit cheeky - even though the airlines are privately owned, I have to pay the government for the privilege of flying in Australian airspace as well. But the second surcharge really got me - the Fuel Excise Surcharge of about $130. Melbourne to Burnie is about 120 km, which would take about $10 of petrol in a car, but I understand that aviation fuel costs more. What it effectively means is that whenever you get on a plane in Australia, you're paying for your own fuel - not as part of your ticket, but completely separately.

So what I want to know is this: When the pilot announces we'll be arriving 10 minutes early because we've had a good wind behind us, surely that means we've used less fuel than expected? So shouldn't the airline be refunding some of our money for the fuel we paid for but didn't use? Next time I fly, at the end of the flight, I'll make a point of asking the pilot how much he owes me and when he's going to pay up.

All Upside Down

2006-09-30T18:01:00.000+10:00

Just watched the new Poseidon movie. The original, done way back in the 70's, was full of mistakes, mostly where the set designers had had trouble thinking upside-down or the carpenters just didn't think when making the sets. You'd think in a remake of the film they'd be very careful of that, perhaps even build every set right way up and then flip them. But no, the modern version has a number of similar mistakes as well. About 2 minutes after the ship rolls over, our heroes are crossing an elevator shaft and a grill on the wall is the right way up. Grills have slanted vanes to stop the dust getting inside, but this one, when the ship was upright, would channel the dust into it. And not long after, our intrepid ex-fireman doesn't know basic Rule One of firefighting - aim the extinguisher at the base of the fire, not 4 feet into the air. Good thing the door was hot but the fire had already gone out! And my favourite one of all, the multi-story theatre room with balloons everywhere - which presumably weren't helium-filled and were drooping down sadly before the ship flipped, because the still are now. Guys, helium balloons would still be the right way up! Anyway, you get my drift. Check out moviemistakes.com, a great site for picking the nits out of your favourite movies, if you want to see a few more.

Movie Mistakes - Poseidon

Apple Still #1

2006-09-29T15:21:00.000+10:00

First a quick joke: In the Post Office one day the mail sorters see a letter addressed to "God, Heaven", in a child's writing. They open it up and read "Dear God, mum is very sick, can you send $500 to help us out? Signed Johnny." Well, they immediately run around the mailroom showing everyone, they all put in money to help out, and they come up with $350, which they send off to the boy. A week later another letter arrives addressed to God, and they all stop work and gather around to hear what is in it as one of them opens it and begins to read aloud: "Dear God, thanks for the money, I only got $350 of it because you know what thieving bastards those Post Office people are…"

Recently I ordered a Mac Mini, and got up Apple on this blog because their order confirmation said it would take 14 days to ship when their website said 24 hours. I rang them, and said they don't listen to their customers. Here's what happened:

• I emailed a complaint to them and asked them to read the blog entry.
• I received an explanation of the delay by email after they had done so.
• I was asked to fill in a survey of their service even though they knew I wouldn't say nice things.
• I received another email saying my Mac had shipped.
• I received my Mac yesterday.

Shipping to Tasmania always goes through third-party and very slow couriers. This means that not only did Apple listen to me, the customer, but someone at Apple must have moved hell and high water to get it to me so quickly. This was certainly service above and beyond the call of duty. So I certainly won't be like the boy in the joke; if Apple Store staff read this blog again to see if I'm still complaining, let me assure you I'm not! You've done very, very well indeed, and this customer is once again happy. Thank you.