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Tram Town
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
 
Category: Time
Look before you leap second. (First one in 7 years; first since Y2K; first since UK switched over (if they have but if they haven't they're about to))

Tuesday, August 30, 2005
 
Category: Language
Essentialist Explanations explains that English is "essentially all exceptions and no rules" or "French converted to 7-bit ASCII".
I found it worth a bit of a look.

 
Category: Apple
Earlier today I got a Mighty Mouse. I've been trying to get one through the retail channel but had failed pretty significantly. I wanted to wander in off the street but every time I did they had sold out. (I could have ordered one through the re-seller/direct channels but chose not to as I'm that kinda bloke).
What's it like?
Looks nice (if you like Apple mice); Scroll nipple is Really, Really Good; Left/Right buttons take a bit of getting used to but I've managed so far (but fingers/joints may well suffer over long use as you cannot rest fingers on mouse or you lose the right click function).
Lack of back/forward browser buttons may well be a deal-stopper but. I'll get back to ya later (I must be the absolute last Mac bloke to post a review, I reckon).

My mate blogless Johnathon said, "DB, it's not a Mighty Mouse, it's a Danger Mouse". I quite like that!

 
Category: War
Christopher Hitchens writes a magnificent article entitled "A War to Be Proud Of" [last word should be capitalised even if it is a preposition].
Let me begin with a simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: "Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad."
I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner? And where should one begin?

 
Category: Bullshit
With apologies to those language sensitive readers of ours (get over it, old people), Imre Salusinszky (that's a name not an anagram) has written a sort of review of an essay (or miniature book according to a bloke I know who has read it but found it too insignificant to take off the plane because he was uncomfortable about travelling cattle class) about the word "bullshit". I want to get the book but while I wait I'll enjoy some of Imre's observations:
we are informed early on that, while "one of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit", the phenomenon is "so vast and amorphous that no crisp and perspicuous analysis of its concept can avoid being procrustean".
and
Of course, the suggestion all bullshit is necessarily uncrafted collides head-on with our use of that allied term, bullshit artist. But Frankfurt has a ready answer to this conundrum, and it takes us to the heart of his project, which is to distinguish the concept of bullshit from straight-out lying.
and
In fact, while lying is a craft, bullshitting is a kind of art; instead of extracting nuggets of truth from an account and substituting them with lies, the bullshit artist uses "improvisation, colour and imaginative play" to create a more spacious account in which there operates, as it were, a suspension of disbelief.
and
Thirty years ago, when he said he did not know about the Watergate break-in, Richard Nixon was lying. But when former NSW premier Bob Carr promised last year that Sydney's rail services would achieve "more robust on-time running" under his administration, he was simply bullshitting.
and
US philosopher Richard Rorty was suggesting something similar in his famous aside about Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction: "He's given bullshit a bad name."
Completely separate but related is a quote from Elwood Blues in The Blues Brothers:
Wasn't lies, it was just... bullshit

Monday, August 29, 2005
 
Category: Celebrities
I never realised (but, then again, I don't know much about this sorta' thing) but she's apparently in quite good company.

 
Category: Trioli comma V fullstop Xenophobia
Being a media lightweight, I hadn't twigged that Tracey Curro is the journalist who interviewed Pauline Hanson on 60 Minutes and elicited Pauline's "Please explain" response when asked if she was xenophobic. Curro's response at the time sounded like a memorised dictionary definition similar to those in that link. Maybe that was why I chose to file her under lightweight.
As a matter of interest, I suggested that I might not yell at the radio so much if the Italian lass packed up the Commodore and drove north. In the best traditions of The Age newspaper (AKA the Tullamarine Trotskyite Tribune), We Were Wrong. Tracey must have a direct connection to the screaming nerve centre of my brain. She is an airhead.

 
Category: Technology
You Ask It a Question...It THINKS...It Remembers
It ANSWERS in Lights! Gosh! (sorry, haven't worked out HTML underline yet) It's The... THINK-A-TRON.
As (sorta) found here which looks a bit like a fascinating site (and cause) in itself.

 
Category: Information SuperHighway
It appears that our favourite quad coloured tech. company is about to supplant Al Gore in the above stakes. (They're buying up dark-fibre (spare capacity) like there's no tomorrow)

 
Category: Gothika
I must have been asleep the year this movie appeared on our screens. Get this user comment:
One rainy night, Halle Berry crashes her Saab and wakes up in a bad movie with Robert Downey Jr. and a bad wig. Lights flicker menacingly and steely grey corridors echo with the sound of Ms. Berry crying 'help, I've fallen down another plot hole'
...
And Ms. Berry? Let's just say that for all her wild bewilderment and wide-eyed fear, she is ultimately defeated by that ridiculous fake hair-do.
Ive gotta see it!
Perhaps the most interesting fact is that it was rated R but got nominated for a Kids' Choice award. How does that work?

 
Category: Football
Emily Power reports from Flinders Island that the Echidnas defeated the Wombats in the FIFA grand final for the third year in a row. Go them!.

Best bit of the article involved Donger who changed teams at every turn around "because he couldn't be bothered changing ends".

Still on football, I wish the A-League folk all best in their efforts to bring on a premium league for the European game in Australia. Personally, though, I have to paraphrase Murray Walker in my attitude to their "sport": in soccer anything can happen and it usually doesn't.

Saturday, August 27, 2005
 
Category: Bridge
On Google Earth, go to 41°22'24.23" North 70°27'13.17" West and you will find a bridge. That is the bridge that a car was driven off on July 19 1969. The car was allegedly being driven at the time by a certain US Senator. If you don't yet have Google Earth, you should probably wait for one of your grandchildren to come around and load it up for you.

 
Category: Consanguinity
An interesting article in FrontPage Mag tells of an Israeli health program aimed at reducing infant mortality amongst an Israeli Arab community. After addressing the obvious issues of cleanliness and home births, a final issue remained: diseases related to inbreeding. The article goes on to draw some pretty long bows in my opinion but it is well worth a read.

Friday, August 26, 2005
 
Category: Weird
I reckon my brother would probably like one of these. Heck, he probably has one.

 
Category: Weird
Hamster-powered phone charger! (and the poor kid only got a C)

 
Category: Red Card
In today's Best of the Web James Taranto publishes an item on Soccer as the communist football. It all makes sense:
  • No one understands the rules.
  • Workers are prohibited from using the tools that would let them be more productive (hands).
  • From time to time petty bureaucrats (officials) interfere with play in such a way as to limit production.
  • Players, coaches, officials and fans are all fully involved (employed) and yet output is miniscule.
  • Any production is met by celebration all out of proportion to its objective value.
  • Followers are slavishly (religiously?) devoted to the system and their own brand of it and resort to violence at any criticism of either.

 
Category: Humour
Here is a rather untidy list of fictional warning labels. I laughed several times.

 
Category: Eddie Everywhere
Plenty of people have been noting Eddide mCGuire's potential conflicts of interest for a long time but Jeff Kennett has managed to put it very well here.
But Mr Kennett said he was confused about what role McGuire had when he was working on The Footy Show.
"Is he speaking as the presenter of The Footy Show or is he speaking as the Collingwood president?" he asked.
"Who am I responding to?
"Am I responding to Eddie McGuire The Footy Show presenter, who's after ratings and entertainment?
"Or am I responding to the president of the football club?"
I fondly remember an exchange between John Jost on the ABC's 7:30 report (is that what it was called then?) and Kennett that went Something like this:
JK: Why do you ask me such questions?
JJ: I have to premier, I'm a journalist.
JK: No you're not, you're a public servant.
That changed the way I viewed ABC hacks forever.

 
Category: Speed
This story of a man who was to be fined for travelling 89kmh in a 90kmh zone doesn't surprise me. I once lost my license for a month for going 30kmh over the speed limit. I was going 132kmh in a 110kmh zone. As they say in America, you do the math.

Thursday, August 25, 2005
 
Category: Dental hygiene
Hmm, Tooth Mousse. Hadn't come across that before.

 
Category: Science
From Best of the Web:
What Did the Control Group Get?
"Study: Placebos Make People Feel Better"--headline, Associated Press, Aug. 24
Also there I learnt that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Who knew?

 
Category: Art
The blue tree story continues. It turns out that the underperforming pamphleteer had handed over the dough before council approval and the blue-barker has spent over a quarter of it with not a single tree yet blue. Just keep in mind that it's your money they're ploughing through to not paint trees!
The Bolta has a few words to say about subsidised art in his Wednesday offering. None of them are kind.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005
 
Category: Web
I'm developing more time for Idiot Toys. Patchy, but when it's good it's very good (colourful language and content warning).

 
Category: RDC
By Jingo! It's been a bad week for electronic music pioneers. Vale Musique Concrete.

 
Category: Art
I earlier mentioned that artist idiot who was going to paint trees blue. It turns out that "THE State Government is red-faced after city councillors yesterday turned off the green light to paint trees blue". Homework pamphleteer Mary Delahunty appears to be disappointed because she
had wanted the blue trees to impress visitors during the International Arts Festival, Australian Open and Commonwealth Games.
They're an easily impressed lot those visitors.
But just a moment... what about Grand Prix visitors? Nuh, they'd be way too gauche to be impressed by blue trees.

 
Category: Biology
James Taranto at Best of the Web noted this story from Canton, Ohio
65 Girls At Area School Pregnant
CANTON, Ohio -- There are 490 female students at Timken High School, and 65 are pregnant, according to a recent report in the Canton Repository.
The article reported that some would say that movies, TV, videogames, lazy parents and lax discipline may all be to blame.
School officials are not sure what has caused so many pregnancies.
and offered up the suggestion
If Timken High has a biology teacher, maybe the school officials should ask him if he has any theories.
There's a bit of uncommon sense for you.
The article proceeds:
School officials are not sure what has caused so many pregnancies, but in response to them, the school is launching a three-prong educational program to address pregnancy, prevention and parenting.
This week, in creative writing class, they are covering alliteration.

 
Category: Media
(and not the kind that Tram Town normally comment on) One DVD to bind them all. Not!

Tuesday, August 23, 2005
 
Category: mp3
Hmmm, iPod Mini Chewie thingy?

 
Category: Celebrities
Muslim Starlets.

 
Category: Kyoto
Tim Blair posts on the subject of New Zealand's commitment to Kyoto:
So if sending money to Russia will solve global warming ... maybe sending skateboards to Portugal will fix global poverty! It’s worth a try!

 
Category: Who Knew?
In breaking news... Apparently Harold Holt drowned.

 
Category: Art
All I know about Art is that it's short for Arthur. I am learning that spending $100,000 painting trees blue is also art. Do these people not realise why they are held in such contempt by the broad community?

 
Category: Addiction
Japanese kids give up addiction to fund addiction.

 
Category: RDC
Gasper Goblin.

 
Category: Love...
or perhaps the lack of it. Courtney Love who is "on probation in three separate drug and assault cases and will be sentenced for the violations on September 16" is pregnant to Steve Coogan. Here's her take on it:
"What does it make me look like that I have slept with Alan Partridge?" she allegedly told her friend. "Given the A-grade stars I've dated it's embarrassing. I mean ... Alan Partridge!"
A-ha!

UPDATE: Perhaps it's not such a thing after all. The earliest reference to this that I could find is from the slightly shy of credible News of the World. The TTT even cites the NotW as its source (don't forget bugmenot for a password). Coogan is in denial.

Monday, August 22, 2005
 
Category: RDC
moog

 
Category: Trioli comma V fullstop
I'd missed the official official, but why is it that THEY can listen in real time (hmmm, memo to self: I can check out VT's morning style) and WE can't?
UPDATE: I'd never seen this biog before. Was it on the local site or is the positioning changing for up there?
UPDATEUPDATE: Found it cached
OK, She's no longer a larrikin, frequent lecturer, public speaker, gardener, cook, Victoria Market shopper or movie watcher. That makes sense for up there, I apoligise, sorry.

LASTUPDATE: (I think I'm turning into Semi here, check the "publish date" on the respective links -- both biogs have the same date, some subby's off the job here)

 
Category: Technology
It's a door that opens just enough automatically.

Sunday, August 21, 2005
 
Category: Birthdays
Hey, I'm exactly one year older than the 50th. State of the Union.

Saturday, August 20, 2005
 
Category: Tram Town
Hey Semi, we've just passed 2000 posts since Tram Town started, go us.

 
Category: Homes
It's a wee house. The tiny cube provides a double bed on an upper level and working table and dining space for four or five people on a lower level. The kitchen bar is accordingly arranged to serve these two levels. etcetera.

 
Category: Web
Pimplier Batgirls and rhubarb underkill! Go figure.

 
Category: Footy
Drew Morphett just quoted Jack Dyer, this time in reference to Nathan Ablett playing in a Great Victory™ for Geelong over the Weagles: "He made a great debut last week and an even better one this week".

 
Category: Trioli comma V fullstop
She nearly had me crying during various moments of her last show yesterday. But here is the definitive comment on Sideshow Trioli.

Friday, August 19, 2005
 
Category: Web
A really stupid, stupid site that features stupid pictures of stupid cats posted by stupid people with way too much stupid time on their stupid hands. Stuff On My Cat (sometimes I reckon the internet should be shut down, fair dinkum).

 
Category: Trioli comma V fullstop
The bookies odds are shortening on Curro, Hausegger and Keyte apparently.

 
Category: Technology
I seriously don't understand this. It appears to be a Bluetooth, USB Star Trek Barbie! What'll they think of next?

 
Category: Trioli comma V fullstop
Miranda Devine senses that Sydney is not going to be particularly welcoming to Virginia:
Unlike Loane, Trioli doesn't have children, is avowedly left wing in an '80s post-feminist Melbourne University way, and is said to be "up herself" and "Brunswick cool" - as in wears a lot of black.
Bruswick cool? Maybe she means Bruswick Street cool. If Brunswick has hit cool I am anly one suburb away from coolness. Ick!

 
Category: Trams
Well, tram stops actually, in the Bourke Street Mall.
BOURKE St Mall's tram stop strips will soon be transformed with a "cosmic-themed design" reminiscent of the Milky Way, the city council has revealed.
And this bit from the Sydney-based artist...
"There's nothing like it in the world," he said. "We're doing it special for Melbourne. It's got its own unique look."
And...
"It's like a big painting in a way. It's hard to explain it," Humphries said.
"I'm being cautious about it until I see it ground back."
You're the only one being cautious, artist dude. The council is throwing $200,000 at some stones that the artist thinks are paint and the appearance of which he has doubts about.

Thursday, August 18, 2005
 
Category: RDC
Vale Joe Ranft.

 
Category: Meeja
Let's all laugh at Alan Ramsey.

 
Category: Risks
Holden's Elizabeth plant shut down its production line yesterday when some Windows machines were infected with the ZOTOB virus. What do you reckon about a production line of that size being dependant on Windows, Auffers?

Wednesday, August 17, 2005
 
Category: Space TFF
If you know your satellites maybe you can see your country in (I think) real-time from space!

 
Category: mp3
It's a very cool Chewie Tripod.

 
Category: Telecommunications
Hmmm, Siamese Telstra twins to be separated?

 
Category: Dubya
I'd somehow missed Dubya's new role as a Time Lord. Is this part of the War Against Terrorism? (As an aside the sidebar is also quite interesting).

 
Category: AFD
Anthony Dowsley couldn't help himself with his opening paragraph in this article in the Hun:
HARDENED criminals are on the run after stealing thousands of sex-aid pill Viagra from pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
Were the caps to make sure everyone got the joke? Stick to the news, Tone.
UPDATE: My boy on-the-spot in the newspaper caper has this to say about the probable source of the gag:
It's got a sub's grubby mitts all over it.
Nice one.
So maybe Dowsley, A. is not as susceptible to temptation as I had thought. Were I him I would be pretty irritated by the sub-editor changing a by-lined article.

 
Category: iRiot
iBook sale erupts in chaos, stampede. I blame Dell.

 
Category: Rubbish
Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, pointed me at a fascinating article in the New York Times about landfill. It would seem that there is a glut and prices to dump rubbish have been dropping over the past 15-or-so years. That is totally contrary to the message we usually get from the media, isn't it?

Tuesday, August 16, 2005
 
Category: Cuisine
When I bumped into Semi's Mum over the weekend she enquired as to whether I had subscribed to the Tram Town Poached Egg Paradigm yet. I have to admit that I did after she'd jogged my memory and me and the girls reckon they're absolute Crackers.

 
Category: Digests
Risks is 20 years old. Bugger! I feel old (Semi in fact put me on to it roughly 20 years back or probably a bit less).
New and old Tram Town readers should all have a look at Risks if they're interested. It's a fascinating forum on the risks to the public in computer and related systems (<valleygirlspeak>like, Technology </valleygirlspeak>) and is an absolute cracker (I personnaly subscribe to the e-mail digest (roughly weekly))

 
Category: Edge-a-kasion
Jack H., if you are reading this, being an educator of educators as you were, you might be able to explain what Neil Hooley is on about in this article in the Tullamarine Trotskyite Tribune. I suspect Neil might be an intellectual because only an intellectual could be that stupid.

 
Category: AIM
Here's the best thing about these AIM test scandals:
one student looked forward in the booklet to the English test, to be examined the next day, after finishing the maths test early
So the only thing stopping every year 5 student in the state seeing the English questions a day early was constant surveillance from their teachers who, in reality, are the ones being tested. You can just imagine the classroom before the test: "Do not look past page 10 in the test booklet or we'll have to declare tomorrow's test null and void". And what would the students do?
State Education Minister Lynne Kosky has had a few ideas, amongst them:
SEPARATING the English and maths tests and printing them in separate booklets.
It's good to know we have such brilliant people on the job in Spring Street, isn't it?

 
Category: Driving
Ashley Gardiner has a bit of help with this article from Mark Buttler. I wonder which of them came up with this important fact:
in June, an Altona P-plater, 19, nabbed doing 173km/h on the Princes Freeway at Laverton said he was going to Carlton for a kebab
The main point of the article is that "ALL new drivers will be banned from using hands-free mobile phones under plans to cut the youth road toll". Are they going to ban those thumping speakers as well?

Monday, August 15, 2005
 
Category: Korp
Goat sacrificed to ward off evil is an extraordinary article in the Hun about some of the behaviour of the Korp couple.
DEEPLY religious Maria Korp once sacrificed a goat to ward off evil spirits from her Mickleham home.
The animal's throat was cut by Maria, who bled it before placing the carcass on a large wooden pyramid she built.
The structure was then set alight, the Herald Sun has been told.
This story is very sad but it is certainly curiouser and curiouser
UPDATE: Joe Korp made a video in the days leading up to his death. Thus far we haven't been given an OFLC rating for it.

 
Category: Who Knew?
The NZ basketball team is called the Tall Blacks. I'm probably the last person on the planet to discover this.

Sunday, August 14, 2005
 
Category: War
Mohammed at Iraq the Model has a message for Cindy Sheehan. It gives us a perspective that is all too rarely covered in the regular press.

Saturday, August 13, 2005
 
Category:
I have a look at the Borowitz report most weeks. This headline amused me quite a bit:
CUTTING COSTS, NASA SAYS IT WILL WAIT FOR MARTIANS TO COME TO US
Mars Must Share Financial Burden of Space Exploration, NASA Chief Says

 
Category: Perception
The Brain Gal pointed me at some amazing illusions. Go look!
UPDATE: There are quite a few more illusions at the same site.
UPUPDATE: The site is only going to be free until sometime in September so look and play quickly.

 
Category: Biggs
Ben English (well what are you now?) writes from London that Ronnie Biggs was "at home in bed with my wife Charmaine" when the Great Train Robbery took place. He supposedly "lied to police before because I knew they wouldn't believe me when I said I wasn't there". What was the name of that song he sang in 1980? No-one Is Innocent.

 
Category:
Paula Beauchamp was obviously struggling for something to write about in her education portfolio at the Hun when she stumbled over this story about a teacher who had an affair with a girl that he had taught. The affair did not happen while their teacher-student relationship was in place. It might warrant a private hearing but it hardly needs coverage in the country's largest selling dead tree publication.

Friday, August 12, 2005
 
Category: Trioli comma V fullstop
She has just announced that she is taking on the Sally Loane gig in the morning up in Sydney. Who is taking her spot???
UPDATE: After a bit of Image Googling I came across a TTT 25 sexiest people of Melbourne list. While I like Virginia (whilst simultaneously thinking she is a political midget [for me that means left wing]), I wouldn't have had her in the list. Just One Guy's Opinion™.

 
Category: Nostalgia
Semi and I are currently designing sound for a theatre show we're doing and are researching a few things vaguely relevant to it. In the course of my research I just came across this site. By jingo, it looks like an absolute cracker.

 
Category: Audio
Our friend BloggingAuffl is after advice about Noise Cancelling Headphones. I'm still happy with my Sony's and don't travel enough these days to justify upgrading. I'm sure Semi has an opinion though.

 
Category: Music
NYT has an interesting artice on Theremin's Theremin. (probably sub required)

 
Category: Science
In an article entitled Expanding our world we are provided with some insight into the ways of astronomical scientists:
Prof Joss Bland-Hawthorn used a new hi-tech telescope to look at the edges of a similar, close galaxy called NGC 300.
"We found NGC 300 is twice the diameter we thought it was before. Therefore we would imagine that our own galaxy is twice as big as currently believed," he said.
Closer to home this might interpret as "I was looking in Google Earth and was surprised to see that New York is a lot bigger than I thought it was. Therefore I can imagine that Melbourne is a lot bigger than we thought". I hope, for our sake as taxpayers who pay his salary, that Bland Joss Hawthorn was misquoted.

Thursday, August 11, 2005
 
Category: Higher Education
Finally, an Australian University in touch with today's values! (wish I worked there)

 
Category: Anti-Technology
Don't like your phone? Smash It! (thanks blogless Kevin)

 
Category: Theft
There's a lesson to be learnt here. Only steal stuff that you can later unload.

 
Category: A Lost Hope
I got a big laugh out of this Episode III parody. YMMV.

 
Category: Spin
Pursuant to this... My problem with all that Apple spin is that people who are convinced to move are likely to be a bit disappointed with the fact that the experience is not that dissimilar to the experience on the dominant platform. As for the claim that Apple machines don't crash, type in the command "rm -rf /" and see how stable it is.

 
Category: Blog
I fonly for the name, RightWingDeathBogan is worth a look:
Please leave your Political Correctness at the door. Freedom of speech and thought are mandatory. Good grammar will be rewarded (although posting and drinking may impact upon this at times).
Straight to the Poolroom methinks.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005
 
Category: Radio One
Pursuant to this I reckon that Semi may have to scream quite a bit louder at the wireless if the rumours are true.

 
Category: Spin
Apple computers are the best systems, best OS, best peripherals, best mighty mouses, best screens, best software, best looking, best manufactured, best designed and best "bring your ancestors back from the grave" computer systems ever. That must be true 'cos Apple's updated their "Switch" site to tell us all about it. Isn't it fantastic?
Semi? Any analysis?

Tuesday, August 09, 2005
 
Category: Culture
Me? I've always been a bit of a fan of the 60's/70's popular television idiom. I can recite/sing (without referring to notes) the theme tune to Patty Duke, Dick Van Dyke, Gilligans Island and ,last week, the George Reeve(s?) 50's/60's Superman show (and, ofcourse Semi and I covered the "Theme from Petticoat Junction" in a band from a previous incarnation).
I think I may have stumbled across a repository worth investigating.

Monday, August 08, 2005
 
Category: Technology
CNet takes a look at the Top 10 tech we miss. Interesting but I'm not sure I agree with most (with the possible exception of #1, 4 & 6). FWIW

 
Category: mp3
iTunes has become Japan's number one online music store in just four days.

 
Category: Apple
Interesting architectural article on iStairs. As Semi would almost certainly say "Something that ugly MUST'VE been designed by an Architect".

 
Category: Food
Over at sp!ked, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick suggests that the British government is lying to its people about their eating habits:
The government's attempts to get us to change our ways have been an abject failure. The 'Five-A-Day' campaign, even with the helpful support of food producers and retailers, has made little difference to our fruit and veg consumption - but it has convinced many healthy people that their otherwise satisfactory diets are killing them. The result has not been behaviour change but fatalism, a belief that eating and drinking what we like might cause us harm.

The irony is that the campaign is unnecessary. Quite apart from the fact that life expectancies continue to rise, it is clear from Family Food that we are eating and drinking better already - not because of the exhortations of ministers and health professionals, but because we have a bit more money in our pockets and a more interesting selection of things to spend it on.
Go and read it all.

Sunday, August 07, 2005
 
Category: Radio One
I missed this article in Friday's TTT.
While the official line from ABC Radio is "no comment", Aunty's Southbank headquarters are awash with rumours that drive-time's Virginia Trioli is packing her bags.
It would be good for my vocal cords if it happened because I would do way less screaming at the wireless.

Saturday, August 06, 2005
 
Category: Football
This is a [clickable] picture of Melbourne taken from the grandstand at the Port Melbourne football ground. None of the buildings in the background resemble any particular consumer product (certainly there are no mobile phones) though I suspect Freud may have had a field day with some of them.
On this occasion Port beat Coburg well and truly. You can see (if you squint enough) an orange maggot just above those rail-pushers behind the cyclone wire fence. These guys are well positioned to spit on the umps at the end of the game. The true ump haters are in the stand. You should have heard the language coming out of them during the game.
One of the more surprising incidents in this game came when Port player LaCroix (the radio guys' attempts to pronounce this name were interesting - they settled on "the frenchman") got a free kick and one of the Coburg runners ran between LaCroix and the man on the mark delivering a 50 metre penalty and an easy goal to Garlic Boy.
The oval has had naming rights purchased by the Tokyo Electro Acoustic Company and is generally known as the TEAC.
This game was played a little earlier than most other Sat'dy arvo games because of television demands (if the picture was good enough you would be able to see Phill Cleary's mug in the squashed Ned Kelly device to the left on the other side of the ground). As a result of this early start we managed to get home to a local game. No names here but the skills didn't even go close to the Borough-Burger game. I suspect the local team selection committee bases many of its decisions on which players are up for parole this week.

 
Category: Architecture
The Telefonica Building courtesy of our good friend Santiago Si:

The Pascoe Vale South Telefonica Building:

 
Category: Curry
This article titled Curry clown free to reclaim crown seems to be an advertisement for a restaurant and an autobiography. My experiences of the restaurant, when it was in Bank Place, were not as good as Cher's or Mick Jagger's or the Indian cricket team. The thing is, though, Larry Mendonca has not yet been cleared at all...
Justice Kim Hargrave quashed the charges against Mr Mendonca on a legal technicality. The curry king must return to the County Court for a rehearing.

 
Category: Dukes
This is an article about a family named Duke from Hazard county Kentucky. None of their cousins looked like Daisy Duke as it happens.
You might need a password. If so, got to BugMeNot and type in www.miami.com. It worked for me.

Friday, August 05, 2005
 
Category: Apple
OK, I'm becoming even more anal.
"Mr Trouble never hangs around, when he hears this mighty sound".
Now who's gonna pick that reference?

 
Category: Unlucky
On the Lawyers show this morning an Ambo was saying that not only has this bloke had that bother but that on Tuesday he had an armed robbery and on Wednesday he'd had a Car explode whilst filling up!
I'd be buying a Tatts Ticket me.

 
Category: mp3 fashion
Thanks to blogless Kevin for a pointer to an essential fashion requirement for the modern toddler. (jeez some folks will sell anything but I guess there are also folks who'll buy anything)

 
Category: Fashion
This important article by Sarah Wotherspoon (who tells her to have a name like that?) informs me that Anna Rita N is now selling her clothing products in Melbourne and has been already for a couple of days. How come that wasn't on 774 radio news? I've gotta read the paper more.
I'm glad Anna Rita N got her clothing into our stores before the Games so visitors will see that every attempt is being made to turn Melbourne's decline around.
I wonder if Anna Rita N will be advertising in the small paper?

 
Category: Games Watch
With the Commonwealth Games coming to Melbourne early next year there are almost daily items in the press echoing concerns of the form: What will Games visitors think? This example is about Flinders Street station looking a bit shabby. It's looked shabby as long as I can remember but it seems Games visitors deserve better.
This comment from a failure takes it right over the top:
Failed lord mayoral candidate Gary Morgan said the station's decay "typifies Melbourne -- a city in decline which has lost its leadership in a world market".
Me, I've been telling my children to finish their homework because we don't want Games visitors thinking Melbourne children are idiots.

 
Category: Children
There's another example of our governments trying to deny our children a childhood in today's Hun:
Upset at kinder gay family guide
Am I Partner A or Partner B? Maybe they should use Partner A and Partner 1 so that no particular order of importance is implied.

Thursday, August 04, 2005
 
Category:
Further to DB's post on Bob Carr's retirement, the Melbourne Truth of blogs posted this item about his possible successor (a post now filled by a consonantially-challenged dude named Iemma).
Though who knows, maybe the party will follow that other Labor tradition of getting a woman to carry the can, like they did with Carmen Lawrence, Joan Kirner and Barry Unsworth.
BTW, Barrie [not Barry as it happens] Unsworth appears on this page among with some other Labor luminaries and the Sheikh who did so much to help Douglas Woods.

 
Category: Where they belong
The South Australia Government is putting speed cameras into rubbish bins.
In Victoria, the Hun is talking about some of the issues metioned in the 50-page Speed Camera Policy and Operations Manual.
Also in the Hun, in another article by Ellen Whinnett (where is Ashley Gardiner when he is needed to seriously misinterpret the facts?), an article about what appears to be an ex-police officer appearing in the Broadmeadows Magistrates Court as a defence witness for Glenn Hilburn, who is fighting a charge of driving at 69km/h in a 60km/h zone.

 
Category: Apple
AppleInsider reviews the mouse that comes to save your day whilst Joy of Tech has a cartoon. It's a mouse for God's sake! (which, of course, begs the question why did I bother to post this?)

 
Category: Words
One in particular: invigilation. Tony the Teacher over at the AGBlog used it and I had to look it up to make sense of his post. The post is, as it happens, quite an interesting little story. It become handy.

 
Category: Video
Videohelp.com looks like a terrific site for help on all aspects of home video. It was pointed out to me by a bloke called Peter Moon on the wireless this morning.

 
Category: Homework
When I wrote this item about an article by Sally Morrell I had tried to find a little info about "PSYCHOLOGIST Michael Carr-Grieg" to whom she referred. It turns out he is actually Michael Carr-Gregg; she had misspelt his name. In the context of all of the rest of her article, incorrect spelling of the name of one of your sources is, in my opinion, unforgivable.
I've left the best 'til last. Michael Carr-Gregg opens his bio with "Described recently as Australia's Dr Phil". That's something to be proud of, isn't it? Oh, and also, "In 2002 Michael was asked to be the official psychologist to Girlfriend Magazine"

Wednesday, August 03, 2005
 
Category: Apple
It's Mighty Mouse. Gosh!

 
Category: Spuds
Muir, the potato commission chief, said Atkins' misfortune would send farmers "jumping up and down in the potato fields of Idaho today."
Atkins Nutritionals Inc. has gone belly up! Good riddance I say. I reckon that the people who had success with the diet were previously big sugar eaters. The reduction of complex carbohydrates would have been a negative but the elimination of sugar tipped the balance. Just One Guy's Opinion™.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005
 
Category: Web
My good buddy Charles pointed me to this. She's sorta weird (and double jointed I reckon).

 
Category: No news
The threshold for distinguishing between "possibly carcinogenic to humans" and "carcinogenic to humans" by the World Health Organisation's cancer research group - the International Agency for Research on Cancer - has been altered for HRT and the Pill.
"We have always been aware that there is a small increased risk, this report is not saying there's a further risk to what we already know," said the president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal.
"It's putting the risks up front as being a warning, but there are no more dangers." [my emphasis]
So the headlines:
HRT cancer link found - Melbourne Herald Sun
Pill and HRT drugs cause cancer, say researchers - Sydney Morning Herald
And many more presenting the long known risks as fresh news. Disgraceful Journalism™.

 
Category: Technology
This is a cool keyboard. I can't imagine springing the moolah for it, though.


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