Tram Town
Friday, September 28, 2007
| Category: Science Creationists make the link between peanut butter and the dishonesty that is evolution in this extraordinary YouTube: |
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
| Category: Religion As an atheist, I find some religious biases unfathomable and some just plain unbelievable. |
| Category: Security In grand final week we have a classic example of not keeping eyes on the ball from Mick Keelty with this item in the Oz. Keelty warning on global warmingSo something that is quite tangible and is causing deaths around the world and has identifiable villains is to be deprecated as a threat in "favour" of something intangible that is likely to save more lives than it causes deaths and for which no villain can be identified except for the supposedly guilt-ridden "us". That makes me feel secure in my home, Mick. He did, however, raise one real and current threat, this time it was the dangers of carbon trading. He equated the potential for corruption in carbon trading to the billion-dollar Barings Bank fraud, which brought down Britain's oldest merchant bank 12 years ago.Me, I'm not so sure that the problems will be in the abstract market place, rather, I think the danger of fraud is at the deliverable stage. It's reasonably easy to point at a tonne of wheat or a million barrels of oil and know that they have been delivered. How do you audit at individual, company and country level for the production of an invisible gas from thousands if not millions of identifiable sources? And all the while we have headlines like this: Halve global-warming pollution by 2050, Europe tells UN summitThese are the sort of people who believe they can achieve the economically impossible 43 years into the future by empty declaration. Who gives these pea-brains the oxygen? |
Monday, September 24, 2007
| Category: Typography For those interested in typography, this story on the FedEx logo will fascinate. |
| Category: Politics From an issue of the Oz a couple of weeks ago, Bundoora Bob Manne gives us a list of bullet points on why not to vote for Kevin '07 including: * If Rudd is elected, the gulf between the government and the country's creative artists will be bridged.Good point, Bob. Why would we want actors and painters to have a large influence on the way we are governed. |
Sunday, September 23, 2007
| Category: Travel I'm at a coupla' conferences this week and staying here which is sorta OK but a bit out of the way from anything (and they seem to have both buggered up and then fixed my interwebtubes access. I flew in to BNE so as to take a QF flight and then took this down to Sin City. First 2/3 was pretty much standard metro rail but last 1/3 was a peculiar mixture of Industrial/Semi-Rural/Horrid. They had many unfinished stations (I think the service is relatively newish) but it reminded me a lot of what WA Rail did for the Americas cup that I can't find an easy link for sorry. |
| Category: Phones Stephen Fry has an ultra-geeky discussion of smart phones that, of our readers, I'm guessing DB may be the only one interested. |
Friday, September 21, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
| Category: Insanity [Sit down and take a deep breath before you click through to this one, Jack. It will amaze you!] Slatts pointed at this article about a lesbian mother of twins who finds them stressful and is blaming everybody but herself. Now, I'm a fairly liberal person and if a responsible adult wants to be a parent I can accept them for what they are. This, however, seems like utter madness and you have to wonder how it ever made it into the courts. Read it all. |
| Category: Science From the Wall Street journal comes this: We all make mistakes and, if you believe medical scholar John Ioannidis, scientists make more than their fair share. By his calculations, most published research findings are wrong.Bur what if his study is wrong? |
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
| Category: Culture Blogger Play is almost a meme. It presents a slide show of photos posted on Blogger recently -- Hmm, may not be work safe, I guess |
| Category: Art We went to see this yesterday and I loved it. Semi would probably hate it. It's not often you get to see the likes of Oldenburg, Lichenstein, Pollock, Rothko, Koons etcetera (I think I mis-spelt some of those). On 'til early October. Like the Pixar thing, get there early (1000), go straigt to the installations (second gallery) check them out before the crowds, then double back to the works on paper/canvas once the crowds get too much. The last exhibit in the installation gallery is very good and, in an unlikely manner, interactive. From a distance it looks like a standard piece of abstract sculpture (quite pretty really) but is actually a huge pile of cellophane covered licorice boiled sweets. Now, and this is the cool part, you can grab a handful and eat them and all of the arty, beret wearing wankers think you're an absolute philistine and that's part of the effect the artist wanted to achieve. The curators re-stock each night! (yeh, Semi'd hate it) |
Sunday, September 16, 2007
| Category: Time Meg noted this interesting clock. Some of the numbers are probably dodgy but it is definitely interesting nonetheless. Whatever else, the PoodWaddle site warrants a serious investigation for its freebies. |
Saturday, September 15, 2007
| Category: I went down to the Melbourne Museum of Printing on Thursday afternoon and I will go again sometime soon. Once the footy season is over I might take the whole family. It is very small but quite thorough and the people are very pleasant and, more importantly, knowledgeable. It is open Thursdays and Sundays from 2pm and has a $6 entry fee. Parking is easy. Also, yesterday, I accompanied son number two's class on an excursion to the MCG. The tour is very interesting but be prepared to be on your feet for a good 1½ hours and be prepared to be given details that are often only "approximate". The problem for me was that I had taken the dog for a walk before we set off and then, when we reached the city, we walked along the river from the Queen's Bridge and over the new footbridge to the 'G. After the tour we had to do that walk in reverse. By the time I got home I had been on my feet for around about five hours (that's a lot for me). I won't even mention the fact that for a significant portion of the walk there and back we had to look at Hideous Federation Square™. Oops, I just did. |
| Category: Politics The Queensland premier's husband changed his name by deed poll just before the birth of their first child and then changed it back after the birth to avoid "patriarchal tyranny". You couldn't make this stuff up! If you read the whole thing you might conclude that Queensland is in real trouble. |
Friday, September 14, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
| Category: Theatre Probably just for the sake of bookmarking something for me and DB, this is a good resource entitled Free and Cheap Theatre Sound Software. |
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
| Category: Goodbye Via Slatts comes a very sad piece of news as noted in the Sun thus: MURTON. _ Charles Rodney.With him goes a vast body of knowledge and wisdom as evidenced at his blog Diogenes' Lamp. As it happens, the main building of the old Coburg High School has been finally demolished over the course of the past week. Charles was one of the last generation of students of Coburg High as a great teaching establishment. By the time I got to Coburg High in the seventies (about ten years after Charles) it was owned by the left and no more capable of providing a decent education than it is now as rubble. |
Sunday, September 09, 2007
| Category: Pitchers The most noteworthy feature of Ratatouille is that it has a Facel Vega driven by the villain. The other bad-guy character Anton Ego, voiced nicely if a bit over the top by Peter O'Toole, looked for all the world like a slightly less evil Paul Keating. With a name like that, who knew? Long, boring and full of ridculous, unfunny slapstick. 3.0/10.0 All 3 marks because of the Facel Vega. |
Friday, September 07, 2007
| Category: News This is a very funny news item which includes [WARNING!] bare breasts. It is about a Danish speeding drivers initiative. |
Thursday, September 06, 2007
| Category: Apple Apple has introduced some new iPods and ditched the iHiFi which I tried to find a link to but they all seem to have been pulled (it was their iPod in-house speaker system). Also some ring tones for US folks and some other stuff. I'm pretty much non-plussed but wouldn't mind playing with the iPod Touch for some video and user interface stuff specifically but, as it has solid state (non hard-disk) storage the capacity is only(!) 16Gb. FWIW |
| Category: Humour?? Are the good folk at the Sydney Morning Herald trying to be funny by consulting a nutritionist about the contents of Dubya's plate at a barbecue or are they just desperate for reasons to criticise him? |
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
| Category: Comics My God Daughter is doing a big line in comics Zombolette! I'm proud of her a lot. (some bits might be a bit mucky a little warning). |
Monday, September 03, 2007
| Category: Space TFF Being a child of the 60's I'm still fascinated by space (although I am a bit Pollyanna about the politics et al). One of the things that has interested me has meen mooted since the original space race -- Elevator going up! |
| Category: Footy Finals season is here and we went down to Sandy to see them be beaten by Willy on Saturday. The older boy couldn't join us at the Coburg v Geelong game at the North Port oval on Sunday because he was umpiring up the road at the Disconnect Dome.  And from another angle...  Also, down at Sandy, I got this picture of the members' pavilion:  Look at the signage...  The older boy missed a sad loss by Coburg but they played very well and only faded to a much taller Geelong team in the last quarter. Go 'Burgers! |
Sunday, September 02, 2007
| Category: Camouflage This is an interesting set of photos showing how a Lockheed factory was hidden during WWII. Fascinating! |
