Sunday, April 30, 2006
Boo Peter Garrett!
That was a very one-eyed speech from Peter just now on 60 Minutes, which places him firmly in the FRZ camp. Sad, once upon a time I thought he was doing a good thing, now I feel he's jumped.
"Why would Australia get involved in something which creates so much waste?" he asked. "Something that has to be guarded against terrorism and floods?"
Oh no - here I go again... First, Mr "I Jerk Like A Jerk" Garrett, we already ARE involved in something that puts millions of tons of waste out every year. In fact, we're involved in several of those industries. Why aren't you shutting them down Mr Jerk?
Let's see now... Ummm Mining, that's a good one. Burns tons of fossil fuel to dig up a bunch of stuff out of the ground, spreading the wastes over the ground outside by the hundreds of millions of tons actually. And then refining or partially concentrating the product, resulting in a slightly more inimical kind of waste, which is also spread around liberally. (While the media isn't watching, anyway. As soon as the public eye turns back to them, the mines all show off delightful "environmental management plans." Yeah right.)
Oooh! Yeah! I got another one Mr Jerk! Umm mining for uranium! And oops there goes the whole of your "arguemtn" right there actually. We already ARE involoved in nuclear power, we're already involved in that "waste" generating.
And! Oh pick me please Sir! Yeah, we also have coal and oil fired power stations Mr Garrett Jerk Extraordinaire Sir! They only pump a few hundred million tons of soot and ozone-depleting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year...
So the real question Mr Idealist One-Eyed Dork Garrett is this "why are you making so much noise about this? Why aren't you busy shutting down fossil-fuelled powerplants unless they "guard against terrorism and floods" by filtering their wastes? Why are you wasting time tilting at windmills and ducking out of doing anything with a real benefit?"
I think if we dig it up and give it to someone the we should be prepared to take back the mess after they're finished with it and put it back down the bottom of the mine it came from and seal it in. That means that we're taking a responsible stand on nuclear energy and waste management, and perhaps some other countries will follow suit.
See I figure if we're digging uranium up then we don't have a problem with nuclear power, just with semantics... And dicks like Peter Garrett.
Categories - ::/:: posted at 8:56 PM Ted Comment made, yay!
postCountTB('6531');
Trackback (0) -->
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Good Ad, Crap Ads
I couldn't think of a title for this article. That's because what I wanted to talk about defies description. A few years ago I posted this, and looking at the state of TV ads lately I hve to say that we got a few better ads, but we also got a lot of more of the same rude, pathetic, and poorly-thought-out ads too.
GOOD ADS:Tooheys trebuchet/ingredients/barmaids/"rain"deer ad. Brilliant!
"It's A Big Ad!" - beer ads again. Definitely the beer companies have been aceing the ads for decades now.
Domestic-type ute ad: "Maybe we should give them a lift?" - "Nah mate - they're dogs..."
CRAP ADS:Ad for Yaris. It's like watching Terminator Meets The Exorcist. Nuff said...
Ad for some work ute. "What's you ultimate fantasy?" - "Oh, to have one of these beaut utes and cheat on you, my darling." I notice they've changed the ending of the ad now but still, the connection between those utes and spousal cheating is indelibly etched in my mind now.
Some credit union or something showing various people at various stages along the "meet, screw, marry, have kids, life's over" scenario - if had a kid and it pulled a face like that on camera I think I'd put them up for adoption and get something cute and appealing like a sea cucumber instead.
Dodo - I'm no longer sure if these ARE bad ads, they seem to have "unjumped the shark" and come back to being almost cultworthy...
Some golden bank debit card that turns blokes into a perfect gay shopping companion for you? "Get your bag I've got your bag here's your bag..." get it away from meeee!!!!
Colourbond roofing. Need I say more? Tried so hard to have a funny series of ads, recently hit the level of shithouse humour and stuck there.
Every "SMS here to flirt/get laid/be popular/get a ringtoen/get a life" ad. Sheesh!
Two different thrush remedy ads. As bad as the above. (Okay now it's time for love & commitment - does that ring a bell? "I'm going to treat myself for thrush - right in front of the crew" - how about that?) And oh come on - why would I *want* to flirt once I've seen these ads and thought about them?
AND...As you can see the crap ads outnumber the good ads. By a lot. Are advertising companies just not able to hire people with two neurons to rub together any more? It was bad enough when they only had half a brain between them but this is becoming more like total idiocy - come on you advertising firms let me think up your next ads, I could at least make sure the ads were more amusing and not quite as wrong...
I mean - some of those ads actively frighten one away from the product, others are so bad you never pick what the product is.
Categories - ::/:: posted at 10:58 PM Ted More Comments: (2)
postCountTB('6530');
Trackback (0) -->
Friday, April 28, 2006
Been three weeks of ouchies
Well three Sundays ago I woke up and sat down to breakfast and when I went to get up, got this "ow!" feeling at the base of my spine, and that my friends was that. Since then I've had the most painful and difficult three weeks of my life. I can't sit for any length of time, moving my head makes flashes of agony in my butt, - in fact, any wrong movement makes searing agony at the base of spine/buttocks area, including coughing. And since I have emphysema, that happens about ten times a day too often and usually leaves me sweating and white faced.
Have you heard of facets? In relation to physiology, I hadn't. But apparently they are there, sticking out either side of the vertebrae and hooking in between two similar facets sticking upward out of the hip bones. Usually. When they unhook, though, they pinch and bruise muscles and then you get, apparently, what I now have.
It's on the mend but if you ever feel like stretching that last little centimetre while on knees in the garden weeding - don't. Move a bit closer, or one knee will slip, your back will twist a little bit - just so - and you'll feel a little sharp pain at the base of your spine, shrug it off and think about it no more, until later that day you get a two day foretaste of what you'll taste a few months later...
Don't muck around with it, go to the doctor, get di-gesic or similar painkillers, and go to an osteopath or a physio. And spend a lot of time laying down, that helps. So do rubs, heating cream, applied warmth, and exercise. Yep, keep it moving.
Anyway - my butt hurts, my back hurts, and thanks to the surgeon's indelicate wielding of the prostate biopsy causing calcification in the prostate, my private bits ache like they're being kicked. Either alone is pretty intolerable, both together is just about a deal ender, thank god for di-gesic... I'm going to go to sleep, bits and pieces don't complain quite as much then...
Categories - ::/:: posted at 12:41 AM Ted
postCount('6529');
Comment (0)
postCountTB('6529');
Trackback (0) -->
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Still Know Where We Live...
... and it's still a bad ole place. More biased reporting, strangely enough (or not) again emanating from the Nine Network.
Bottled water. Oh come on. They tested it for bacteria. Three bacterial tests. And that's all she wrote.
I have a filter in the kitchen, attached to the tap. If I was worried about bloody bacteria I'd boil my water before drinking it, and as it's been proven that our immune systems actually need bacteria and the like to maintain function, I don't actually do that. If I was worried about bacteria I would not use a cartridge filter, with its great little pool of water for the bacteria to breed and multiply in.
You know what my filter takes out of the water? Sediment, that's what. The iron oxides and sulfides from the rotten pipes. The mud and algae and frogspawn that dissolves in water at the dam and then arrives at my tap. And the godawful taste. Oh yeah and fluoride. That's what my filter removes, and I'm sure so does the filtration plant at each of the bottled water producers.
So the "scientific test" Nine conducted is worth precisely jack shit. But they made it look like they had a story, didn't they? God they are so desperate and such clever little dickikins aren't they?
Let me tell you some things that come down your tap (aside from the choice ingredients I mentioned above) then: Lime and various minerals leach out of the concrete parts of the water system. Asbestos fibres from sections of water pipe, and copper sulfate, too. Um lead, because there are soldered section of pipes or sections that were welded with various choice metals. Some of the exotic chemicals in welding flux can slowly dissolve over decades and slowly build up in your system.
And you know, I'm still not convinced of the stuff they put in the water to "improve" it. Fluoride is still a bad thing in my book. Of literally hundreds of studies made of fluoride only a handful claim to have found that fluoride is healthy for you overall, another handful says that it's not actually bad for you, and the majority have found that whatever slim benefit you may get to your teeth are well and truly overshadowed by the effects on learning and on nerve cells and the combination effects with other chemicals. But which studies are you told about?
And fluoride is not the worst kind of chemical by a long shot. How do you kill bacteria? With something that kills bacterial cells. Which are the same cells as the cells that compose our bodies. It's just lucky that we have many more cells to kill off before we die...
And that's why I'd buy bottled water if I can't get to my filter, because of all the chemical impurities - NOT because of bacteria. Yes there are bacteria that can be really nasty (just think e colii or certain salmonella bacteria) but I think bottled water would still be a better bet.
Categories - ::/:: posted at 8:09 PM Ted
postCount('6528');
Comment (0)
postCountTB('6528');
Trackback (0) -->
What Did You Do?
Today Trish and I headed for breakfast out. Anzac Day 2006 was a first in many ways. First Anzac Day in ages that got rained on, apparently. First Anzac Day where there weren't any WW1 veterans left... Very sad to watch the riderless horse... First Anzac Day to make me cry as I relised that one more veteran (my father) wasn't going to be there either.
So something cheery was in order, and breakfast at Jourdains was it. Look - a great - and I really mean great! - meal and a great little cafe, and obviously we weren't the only ones to think that - the place was cheerful, bustling, and packed. It was lovely to sit inside and watch the rain outside, one of those moments that'll live in my memory for a long time.
Afterwards we drove to Gosnells and fence-shopped the Winnebagos, caravans, and one totally awesome converted bus, dreamed a bit more about the upcoming time when we sell up and make that dream a reality, and drove home for a quiet late afternoon.
Hey I say it in the foodie blog article and I'll say it here too - Perth is awesome! What great weather - it rained for just long enough that we could enjoy breakfast sitting snug and warm in Jourdains, stopped for us when we wanted to get out and look at caravans, and the day was pleasant, maybe a trifle cool but definitely one of the kindest climates I've ever lived in. THAT's what our soldiers fought and died for, they did it so that we could today and forever more enjoy one of the best places in the world.
Categories - ::/:: posted at 12:14 AM Ted
postCount('6527');
Comment (0)
postCountTB('6527');
Trackback (0) -->
Monday, April 24, 2006
Where Do You Live?
You know you live in the worst of all possible worlds when...
TV reportage bias shows itself in the report the other evening from Gallipoli by a Nine reporter where he claimed Gallipoli was a "sacred site." No you asshole it is not a sacred site, it has nothing to do with religion and is instead a site of great significance to Australians. How dare he suggest that Australians died protecting the notion that our imaginary friend was better than someone else's imaginary friend! How trivialising for all that life that was lost! Channel Nine should just go out and shoot itself.
...or when a 60 Minutes reporter spends 12 minutes harassing an alleged child molester and infanticide - who's twice been acquitted. How much more do you want from the guy you ass? Were you hoping to make him suicide on camera? Or are you just naturally a pushy shallow dropkick who shouldn't be let near people? For the love of justice, you may not like it and you may not agree with it but he either didn't do it or else he got away with it. Deal! Channel Nine should just shoot you...
And you know you live in the worst of all possible worlds when an asshole like Bush spouts about the great American nation "founded in Christianity" - what a crock! USA was founded specifically to separate Church and State. Look what happens when you confuse the two, Dubya! Someone should take you out and just shoot you, too...
Are you noticing something? The thing which brings out the most bias, which causes otherwise normal people to want to kill defame cheat and bring low other people, is religion? And the very bodies that are supposed to be there to intervene between us and the fanatics, are fanatical themselves?
Maybe I have this wrong. Back in BBS days we had a term for fanatical fundamentalists of any religion or belief, we called them FRZ's, for Fanatical Religious Zealots.
Fanatical: adj : marked by excessive enthusiasm for and intense devotion to a cause or idea; "rabid isolationist" [syn: fanatic, overzealous, rabid]Religious: Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity. /Of, concerned with, or teaching religion: a religious text. /Extremely scrupulous or conscientious: religious devotion to duty.Zealot: One who is zealous, especially excessively so. /A fanatically committed person.
I always thought the Fanatical Zealot part was the problem with those people, but these days I'm no longer so sure...
Categories - ::/:: posted at 11:28 PM Ted More Comments: (2)
postCountTB('6526');
Trackback (0) -->
How Not To Sell A Car
Anyone been watching the ads for the Toyota Yaris? Does it make you want to run out and buy one? (No, the link is not to that ad, I can't find one online but I'm sure you've seen the ad on TV.)
The ad features a car morphing between various states and features, with a bit of an ambient tecnological soundscape, and is supposed to drive home the idea that the clever little Yaris is all the latest Toyota technology crammed into one compact car.
Watching that ad has, if anything, made me frightened of Yaris. I mean, all that technology - I wonder if Skynet is in there. The whole ad gives me the horrible feeling that I'm watching a Terminator undergoing a psychotic episode, and then they expect me to buy one? Haven't they seen Christine?
Categories - ::/:: posted at 8:35 PM Ted
postCount('6525');
Comment (0)
postCountTB('6525');
Trackback (0) -->
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Alternate Power To You My Friend
With the price of petrol going up, for sure there must be a few people out there thinking about The Next Big Thing and how they might be the ones to invent it. It's a no-brainer, that if you can provide something that says "up you" to the oil companies then people will buy it, right? Right?
Here's an example of what we DON'T want, if we want the cost of transportation to come down. You let the Government control the fuel pump and waht comes out of that pump and you are just bending over and assuming the position. Again... So it's no surprise, that article. Basically it's a push to keep the American vehicle owner paying excise to the Government. And of course we with our John George Bush Howard dinkleweed would of course adopt the Great American Ideal and also pay half of the money we spend on fuel to John Suck-A-Da-Money.
What's so annoying is that there are literally hundreds of answers out there already,and none of them have been pursued. For the sake of maintaining some freedom from being owned by a bunch of poltiicians I would have thought we'd be pumping money into anything at all that can't be regulated but I guess the majority of people are just dying to have sex with John...
Personally, have a couple of ideas which I'm happy to speak to people about but not here on the blog soapbox - get anyone interested to contact me directly - and I know of at least three great ideas out there which all show promise, but I'll leave it as an exercise to you to find the (Aussie) air engine, the high school solar conversion that does 5 miles a day on less than 2 metres of solar cell on a LIGHT TRUCK, and the high-efficiency engine which threatens to cut oil companies' profits to one thenth.... In the words of X-Files, they're all out there....
Categories - ::/:: Edited on: Sunday, April 23, 2006 4:56 PMposted at 4:43 PM Ted
postCount('6524');
Comment (0)
postCountTB('6524');
Trackback (0) -->
Saturday, April 22, 2006
What NOT To Do.
Quickie: The Foundry Cannington that's where we had us dinner tonight and the review says it all. I couldn't get impressed with the entertainment, maybe because of my bad back or maybe because the guy was just bad, and the meal was barely worth the hassle but coffee afterwards at the Dome steadied things down a lot. Trish wasted no time in pointing out to me that tonight was MY night, as loads of well-stacked lasses sashayed past us in every direction, and i had to agree - there were few fine lads for her to watch and dream over...
Ah well, we got an evening out anyway, that was worthwhile. And neither of us had to cook or wash dishes, that was even better. and gthere's just bee a long weekend and is going o (almost) be another one.
Life is okay.
Categories - ::/:: posted at 1:07 AM Ted More Comments: (2)
postCountTB('6523');
Trackback (0) -->
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
New Fun.
Comics. IMblog. Memories. How can I not be happy? Spending an evening browsing around the flotsam and jetsam of the Internet, because TV is boring. Survivor Part 5,982,777,219,736. And counting...
Okay, so I could also be bored. But having fun. Reading Matazone, Threebrain, Youtube. Nope, can't actually be bored. Have you ever considered how much we (me and you people reading this) use the Internet as our multicolour dream TV? Ever wonder what it would be like not to be able to check your email, or read the news online?
Cheerful Thought Of The Day:Somewhere out there, someone is trying to figure out how to make all this Lascivious Distraction From The One True Way stop. One way or the other...
Categories - ::/:: Edited on: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 11:01 PMposted at 8:12 PM Ted
postCount('6522');
Comment (0)
postCountTB('6522');
Trackback (0) -->
Monday, April 17, 2006
Got Eaten?
Got Eaten?
Bunch of posts got eaten by a crash, which means that the comments for those articles also got mislinked, and I'm not as happy as I thought I'd be... Sorry all. Have reposted the text of the missing articles but not the links and stuff. Sorry again.
Got Rat?
Seems like, the more ya try and keep an area all local and pure and unsullied and all that, the more it gets to be mixed up with other places. Reading this article, (and yep I agree that using the terms "pure" and "unsullied" is probably more wronger than anything I normally do, but give me some poetic license,) just points out that we're 'leet at messing up any environment.
If there's an ecological niche, something will get in there and exploit it. And if there's any exploiting to be done, we humans seem to be all for that, and get in there and help the niche invaders. I think we must identify with the "invader" bit...
So here's Seattle Wash. having a nutria problem, their swamps now have a new breed of swamp rat that's renowned for breeding and multiplying. And they're shittin' kittens about it because they're worried that these things will do a cane toad on them and take over from the more refined local rats or whatever.
These coypu rats would have to have come from somewhere though. Who in their right mind keeps swamp rats as pets or whatever though? And, who keeps enough breeding pairs that they can (apparently) sustain genetic variance? Also, I recall reading somewhere that the South Americans eat coypu because they are actually a decent source of meat.
To top it all, their Department For Ecological Backflipping is wondering how to eradicate the critters before they get too far out of hand. Man, even I could tell them what they need to do. Picture this:
"Are you satisfied wth YoR Size??? Coypu Ekstrakt, garante to increes ur volume length and size in just too weeks!" would be Phase One, a few choice rumours placed in the gourmet magazines would complete Phase Two, and the last would be a total ban on hunting them by the American government... I'd like to see the little buggers survive that!
Good Grief It's Friday!
I read the West Australian, not fanatically or regularly, but en passant, in the smoko room or waiting room or whatever. I like the "In Brief" because it often has more info in one easy to read column than the rest of the paper together. And it's usually amusing. But the issue I picked up, one paragraph just annoyed the shit out of me
The writer of that piece penned some total invective against the shops that would be open today despite that author's opinion that there are only "two real holidays" left to the Australian worker and these traitors were undermining truth justice and the catholic way. Whaddevva. It just shat me to see such a bigoted attitude As I said before and I'll say again - Australia was founded by a predominantly Christian population and therefore we're a predominantly Christian country.
But there it stops folks.
If you want to open a store during a Christian religious observance I say go for it, spirit of enterprise, freedom of religion, all that. We've come a long way since the Inquisition, to the point in fact where eveyone DOESN'T have to be a fanatical rabid Christian any more. One of the advantages of that newfound freedom from religious persecution is the ability to open a store and not get abused by some total dick in a newspaper.
Thanks to our enlightenment we no longer have to cower in our homes and do without just because a religious holiday has been decreed. Yes I agree Easter is about abstinence and following the life of an important figure in the christian religion - but these days the term "abstinence" to me means not turning on Foxtel, or leaving the computer alone for a day. I worked all week, and today, I wanted to go out and get something to eat, and something for dinner.
We shopped for our food at the Station St Markets, which were open and allowed Trish and I to have a nice day together, and yes I did spare thoughts for the reason for the holiday, including that it's actually a "christianising" of an ancient Pagan holiday, just as fish on Friday was an invention of the Catholic church to drum up business for its fishing boats, and that holy Sunday is an adaptation of the Roman days of worshipping a Sun god.
And all of that reminds me that this is one reason why Australia leads the multicultural world, because we welcome the blending of different cultures, morals, and observances, we embrace the differences, and one day, we may even be wise enough to deal with it in an adult fashion. For now though, let's be proud of the fact that we're at least one of the best countries in the world at it.
Happy Easter to those of you who observe it, and have a good long weekend to anyone else who doesn't.
Food-directed evolution
As you probably know there's a blook here about healthy eating, mainly brought about because I had some prostate irregularities and needed to watch my diet carefully. And if you read pretty much any part of it you'd know that I figured that we evolved to take advantage of certain foods.
Isn't it nice when independent research validates one's theories?
The lactase gene is what allows humans to metabolize dairy products as adults. It's widely believed to have evolved in response to humans' domestication of dairy animals -- individuals who could enhance their diet with dairy products had such a strong survival advantage that the gene spread at the speed of, well, several thousand generations.
A storm of publicity greeted Pritchard's recent paper on signals of selection across the human genome. The response came in large part because Pritchard and his colleagues had found such overwhelming evidence that many human genes are evolving: not just ones that govern the brain, but also ones associated with reproduction, disease resistance and the ability to process certain kinds of foods.
I was basing my theory on the fact that alcohol tolerance is something we've only relatively recently acquired and there are differences between European and Asian genes which means that the ability to tolerate alcohol only occurred after the racial split between Asiatic and African/European stock. Lactose tolerance also happened after that split. This, in evloutionary terms, is sort of like now.
It's good to see that they specifically mention the ability to process certain kinds of foods separately from lactose. It makes me think I'm on the right track with the book. My next tests are due in a few weeks so I'm interested - I tried to stick to the diet ideas even when my situation has made it difficult to, and there should be some signs.
MOG, the multi-homed blog
First things first! - Congratulations to Skribe and Toxicpurity for the birth of a little one, Saturday early afternoon I believe - what a happy event for them.
Just testing yet another incarnation of this blog - this time, the data is living on a server and the software across about three laptops and PCs around the place. It means that hopefully I can keep blogging wherever I am. (No smart comments okay?)
Been doing rather a lot of work again lately, and was at a client's office this weekend, and thought how handy it would be if my blog and other files weren't all stored on individual machines around the place. Having the software, my files now lie on a little server somewhere in the middle, and is synchronised to each machine I use.
We're so damn clever, we people... Once upon a time you carried your own personal millstone around with you and when you left some place or situation, the millstones usually stayed behind... Now I can keep them firmly around my neck wherever I am...
Speaking of which I am still very much in mind to sell up and buy an RV and blog my way around Australia. And then, this would perhaps be a good thing.
Categories - ::/:: posted at 8:10 PM Ted
postCount('6521');
Comment (0)
postCountTB('6521');
Trackback (0) -->
Thursday, April 06, 2006
blogs in space
Yay again...
>
Categories - ::/:: posted at 6:25 PM Ted
postCount('6520');
Comment (0)
postCountTB('6520');
Trackback (0) -->
Monday, April 03, 2006
just the title cracks me up...
Rice, Straw Make Unannounced Visit to Iraq
What else can one do but laugh?
Categories - ::/:: posted at 1:27 AM Ted
postCount('6519');
Comment (0)
postCountTB('6519');
Trackback (0) -->
No comments:
Post a Comment