Random Belgians

One of the most interesting, not to mention distracting (or should that be "time-wasting"), aspects of the internet is the way you can just keep wandering down random paths.  Just clicking on the links in a Wikipedia article can take you to the most unusual places.  As the old Yellow Pages ad said "Let your fingers do the walking".  And so it was with only a couple of clicks the other day, there I was looking at a list of "The Greatest Belgians".  Now, that's not a list you'll see every day!

As for the list itself, apart from discovering that quite a few French people were in fact Belgians, and that the Dutch-speaking Belgians voted for a largely different top 10, it lost all credibility for me when I saw that there was no Plastic Bertrand or Hercule Poirot in the list.  I mean, sacre bleu!

Who's Counting?

So the Australian Electoral Commission has overturned its previous result for the West Australian representatives in the Senate.  The first time round, the winning margin was 14 votes for the last two spots.  The second time round it was only 12 but with the Australian Sports Party and the Greens replacing the Palmer United Party and Labor for those last two spots. 

There are two big problems with this result.  Firstly, I think if the recount has resulted in a change in outcome, and by a smaller margin than before, they should actually do another count.  I would like to see the count, or at least its outcome, replicated once.  For all we know, it's been counted wrongly again.  The second problem however, is more serious.  In the course of recounting the votes, it's been discovered that 1375 votes have been lost since the first count.  How can we possibly recognise a recount outcome with a margin of 12 votes when we've lost over a thousand of the original votes.  We've effectively disenfranchised 1375 people in the recount.

More worrying is the fact that this is the 3rd such discrepancy in this election and the 2nd time votes have been lost or misplaced.  These events only come to light when the first result is close, which makes you wonder how many other votes have been lost elsewhere, or if they are ever lost before being counted.   

Spies Like Oz

What do you know?  It's not just the United States that spies on other governments.  Apparently we've been doing it too.  The Indonesians are not happy and they've summoned our ambassador to explain.  Now, for me, this is where it gets interesting.  You see, his name is Moriarty.  That's right, Sherlock's nemesis is apparently our ambassador to Indonesia! 

Mark my words!  No good will come of this...

Spies like US

So in the last few weeks, it transpires that the USA is pretty much spying on anyone and everyone in the "war on terror".  This includes hacking into the mobile phones of the presidents of countries that are allied to them.  It's hard to see how listening to Angela Merkel's phone conversations and messages is going to set back a terrorist group in any way.  And the sheer volume of the data being collected, over 70 million phone records in just a 30 day period in France, belies any notion that this can be limited to known or suspected individuals.  Little wonder then at the resultant backlash from the French, German and Spanish governments.

What's more intriguing in this climate, is the absence of any noise whatsoever from our Government.  Do we not have questions?  Do we already know it's happening and are quite happy about it?  I can't believe that even the most pro-US administration could accept the Prime Minister's phone being routinely hacked.  Maybe we naively assume that it couldn't be happening here.

I think we should at least be asking.

90% of It Isn't About the 10% At All

Our retail unions are advocating for the 10% GST to be applied to online purchases from overseas retailers because online retailers have an advantage over local retailers, which are obliged to charge GST.

Even the slightest analysis of this claim however,  reveals it to be a complete red herring.  Those of us who buy goods from overseas retailers do not do it to save 10%.  In fact, I'd happily pay 10% more to buy from a local retailer, but the reality is, I'm usually saving between 40 and 50% on Australian retail prices by buying online.  Why wouldn't I buy overseas?  So, you'd be tempted to say, "Knock me out - add 10% to the overseas price and I'll still be buying from them."  But here's the catch: it would be difficult, not to mention being an unwanted complication, for an overseas retailer to start collecting tax on behalf of the Australian government.  The likely outcome would be that the overseas retailer would simply decide to refuse to ship to Australia (as currently happens with some suppliers).  That's what the retail union is really aiming for.

The unions claim about the 10% advantage is disingenuous at best.  In reality, it's a cynical attempt to try lock Australian consumers back into the over-priced local market.

Voyage of a Lifetime

On September 12 this year NASA announced that Voyager 1 had left our solar system and entered inter-stellar space.  In doing so, it became the first man-made object to leave our solar system.

This is very impressive stuff but when you also hear that it was launched in 1977, it makes you realise that a return trip would take 72 years: literally, a lifetime.

So I guess, we're not going anywhere far, far away, anytime soon!
  

Elections. Again.

Whenever we have elections and, having them nationally every 3 years and state-wide every 4, this seems often, I find myself thinking of the infamous (but not necessarily actual) exchange in the 1956 American election:

Woman voter:      Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person! 
Adlai Stevenson:  That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!

I think he'd have felt right at home in our election.

The Original

Apparently there's been a royal birth.  Watching TV, you could be forgiven for concluding that there is nothing else happening.

But then, just when you're telling your cynical self that you've seen all this royal stuff before: the crowds, the banks of tv cameras and those strange talking heads called "royal watchers", you see something new.  They have a shouty fellow!  With a bell!  Now we're talking!

He's the original Twitter, you know. 

Perhaps You'd Rather Say

I do like how sometimes, the words suggested by your predictive text make for better reading than what you're actually typing. 

The other day, I had tried a rather good Belgian beer, Maredsous Bruin, and, when typing it into Google to find out more about it, the suggested text was "Marvellous Brine", which, in a way, almost seemed to sum it up perfectly. 

Then there was the girlfriend whose name was always suggested as "Annoy" but I digress!

I think there should be a Predictive Text Day where everybody just sends and/or searches for whatever suggested text comes up.  It would make for a marvellously random sort of day!

Just Fix It

Every now and then, you hear something that is just so obviously wrong, it is simply baffling as to why it hasn't ever been fixed. 

This morning I heard that Austalia has 120 taxes.  Now that would seem to me to be a large number, but what's really astonishing is that 110 of them combined raise only 10% of the total revenue collected.  You just know that when you see something like this, you are looking at some makeshift, patchwork approach to taxation.  It begs the question - why not just get rid of those 110 taxes and adjust the other 10 to raise the required revenue?

Not only would there be no shortfall in tax collected but money would also be being saved, both for the government and the taxpayer, through simplifying the process.  Any criticism over the increases to the other taxes could easily be countered by pointing out that 110 taxes have vanished (and which politician wouldn't like to be able to take the credit for having made that happen).  The only people who would be unhappy would be accountants and lawyers, so it must be a good idea.

Tough Critic

As well as obviously being a useful site from which to buy things, Amazon is also a great source for checking out user opinions and reviews.

Unfortunately, the usefulness of these reviews though is badly affected by how people approach the review process.  I have always thought that Amazon should have separate reviews, one for the product and one for the service, because people constantly confound the two.  It's not a bad album just because the jewel case was broken or you couldn't download the mp3 and, likewise, the book isn't bad just because it arrived later than you expected.  As for items never received, technically you can't comment on them!

The toughest review I've ever seen though, has to be the one for the book, "Football: It's a Funny Old Game".  Somebody gave it 1 star simply on the basis that Holly, the computer in Red Dwarf, nominated it as the worst book ever written.  And that's the only review of it, so there it sits with its average rating of 1 out of 5.  And all because of Red Dwarf!  Now that's harsh.

Sport of Kings? Hardly!

All the kerfuffle last weekend over what was said between the trainer and owner of More Joyous has resulted in even more comment and editorialising than usual over the relationship between gambling and sport. 

Now, don't get me wrong, that's a debate worth having, but it's certainly not worth having over horse-racing.  Does anybody really regard horse-racing as a sport?  It's surely only ever been a vehicle (non-pun intended) for gambling.  Who keeps up with who's winning the jockey's championship or which is the leading stable and I'm only assuming that records of these things actually exist.  They sure aren't reported on.  Ironically, if they do exist, the only people outside the industry who could tell you about them would be the gamblers. 

Whenever horse-racing is reported on in the sports news, it's not accompanied by any league ladder or speed/time results - they just tell you how much money you'd have won had you backed the winner or the top 3.  Imagine the football results being given by only showing you the the pick-the-score and pick-the-margins dividends.  

If horse racing is a sport, let's start seeing it in the news without the gambling information.  After all, they don't announce the lottery results in the sports segment, do they?

A Pinch & A Punch

Do kids still give each other a pinch and a punch for the first day of the month and then get a kick for "being so quick" in response? 

Or do they just do it with a calendar app via Facebook now?

Q&A &A &A &....

We have all those TV channels so you'd think that would mean more stuff to watch.  Not when they put the same show on multiple channels!  What is this about? 

The ABC is one of the prime offenders.  Take Q&A - and I really wish someone would take it - Monday night and on it comes, so I flick over to the 24 hour news channel and it's also being shown there.  So I decide to listen to the radio instead.  What do you know?  They're playing it on the radio as well!  Why do they think this show is so good that it has to be broadcast simultaneously on 3 channels across 2 mediums?  And that doesn't even include the lunchtime repeats of the show.  Someone needs to tell them that the show just isn't that good.  Watching politicians trot out their party line in front of a sycophantic audience isn't that interesting.  I really don't mind if I miss it.  In fact, I go to great lengths to avoid it. 

At least on the radio you don't have to sit through the tweets?  Why do they show these?  Do they think it's "cool" or something?  As little interest as I have in what they say, I think it's disrespectful to the guests.  It's also distracting.  You have a bunch of supposed experts taking questions and then you stream drivel from anonymous tweeters over the top of their answers.  I care even less about what they have to say.  Surely, the least ABC could do is enable you to switch off the tweets by using one of those coloured buttons on the remote, or, you know, because it is being shown on two channels at once, at least offer a twitter-free version on one of the channels.  That would at least show some sophistication in applying the technology but I'd still rather they showed something completely different on the other channel? 

How about some long lost cartoon?  Top Cat?  The Twins of Destiny? Sir Prancealot?  Anything, really. 

Reading Between the Likes

Sometimes what's being reported as news is less interesting than the background to the story.  For example, I heard the other day that Facebook use had dropped by 500,000 users in Australia.  Then it was mentioned that there are over 11 million "active" Facebook users in Australia.  11 million?  That's one in every two people updating their Facebook page so that everybody knows what they're doing. 

It really is the digital equivalent of Kath and Kim - 11 million people shouting, "Look at moey! Look at moey!"  

No wonder nothing gets done.

Slow Train to Never

Over 50 years ago, on 25 May 1961, President J F Kennedy announced the goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade.  On 20 July 1969, just 8 years later, that undertaking was completed.  From vision to accomplishment it was a breathtaking technical and logistical achievement.  Compare that to what passes for vision in this country.   

Today, it is being announced that we could build a high speed rail link between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.  The timeframe?  That would be 9 years before we even can start building and a mind-numbing 40 years to complete the railway.  40 years!  It would be finished in 2053.  We will take more time to just get started than it took to complete the lunar mission.  I don't know why they didn't announce it on 1st April. 

How can we take almost half a century to build a railway?  Maybe you can't get iron, coal or steel in this country.  Maybe we only have horses and carts to transport the raw materials.  Perhaps it's the first fast train in the world ever to be made so we have no examples on which to base it.  Or are we building it out of moon-rock?   Sure it would be about 400 km longer than the Beijing-Shanghai line but then they didn't start building that in 1973.  In fact, construction commenced in 2008 and it opened in 2011.  The world's longest high-speed line built in 3 years.  3 years vs our 40 years.  I understand that it would cost us more but how can it also take us more than ten times longer to build it?  I despair of what that says about this country.  

We also all know that if we say it will take 40 years, it will take longer (and probably cost twice as much).  That's the Australian way.  Actually, the real Australian way is to just talk about it.  Forever.  It's like the second Sydney airport. That was being talked about even before my arrival in this country (in 1978).  Where are we now?  Oh, we're still talking about it.  After 40 years of talking, we still don't even know where to put it. 

In this country, everything is in the too-hard basket.  To see change talked about in your lifetime actually delivered, you need to live to about 150.  I would have loved to be able to hop on a fast train to Melbourne but, sadly, I now know that I will never do so.

Gas! Gas! Gas! It's a ... Bill!

This week I finally sorted out my gas bill. This is the 3rd one in a row I've had to query.

Original amount invoiced: $255
After adjustment (and many phone calls): $80

I knew $255 was excessive when the previous bill, which had been during winter, was only $92. Mind you, I also had to argue to get that one reduced from the $179 originally charged.  Note the recurring theme here as to whose favour the discrepancies are in...

It's hard to understand why it's so hard to work out a gas bill when it's simply based on meter readings taken at each point in time.  Surely, it's just about subtracting the numbers to determine the usage and then applying the calculation.  No doubt however, there's some amazing piece of technology somewhere that's constantly screwing it up.

Sadly, it's taken 3 months to resolve this, which means that I'll shortly receive another bill.  Hopefully I won't complete the full year with every bill having been in dispute.

The First Since...Oh, The Last One?

So we have a new pope and all the media outlets are gushing about how it was 1000 years since the last non-European.  Who was that guy?  Where was he come from?  And what was going on 1000 years ago that this occurred?  I have no idea.  They just love passing on that piece of trivia without any of the context.  Now I know I can look all this up on the internet but why should I have to work out the ending of the story?  It wasn't me that started telling it.

It's just like how you hear about some athlete setting the 2nd fastest/highest/heaviest/most whatever in history.  They never tell you about the original.  Perhaps they just figure you're so parochial, you'll only want to know about "your guy" or the one from "your time". 

Meanwhile, if it's taken us a thousand years to elect a pope from outside Europe, perhaps those medieval types weren't as unprogressive as we like to think they were and perhaps we should be less obsessed with "our time".

Freedom From Choice

One of the tragedies of a federal system is that you have a lot of politicians. If it's not bad enough having to put up with the bickering federal parliament, we also have to plumb great depths of despair at the state level.

And things are bad in this state.  On the one hand if it wasn't bad enough to have endured one of the most ineffective and corrupt state governments in NSW history, we now have the unsightly race between ex-ministers scrambling to distance themselves from Eddie Obeid and shouting loudly how little they had to do with him.  It's remarkable - he apparently accumulated all that money and an Order of Australia without anybody knowing him. 

You would think any change could only be for the better but unfortunately, the crooked only seems to have been replaced by the cretinous. 

Govt::  Need some infrastructure?
Public: A second airport would be good.
Govt:   Um no, but how about a floating helipad in the harbour instead? Or, perhaps a second casino, you  know, with a view of the one we already have?  Or how about we start mining for gas under your home?

Thankfully, the public uproar resulted in two of these braindead proposals getting dropped (sadly building of the casino goes ahead regardless) but why should it take a public outcry for the correct decision to be arrived at.  None of these schemes would have been on anyone's list of things that needed doing, so where do these very bad ideas come from?

Given their huge mandate, you'd think the new government could tackle some of the big issues in the state but the only difference between this government and the previous one would appear to be whose nest is getting feathered. 

Government of the people, by the people...but for whom?

Preaching to the Converted

Why is it that when I am watching a DVD/Blu-Ray, I have to sit through a lengthy advertisement telling me why I should I buy the DVD.  I've done that - that's how I'm now watching this stupid advertisement. 

It annoys me so much that I might start exploring other options.  That piracy one they mention looks interesting...

Such An Ice Man

I found it intriguing the other day to hear Kevin Rudd suggest that speculation on his leadership aspirations be cryogenically frozen. 

It was quite clever really.  While appearing to imply that he had no such aspirations, the statement glossed over the fact that cryogenically freezing things doesn't actually end them.  Methinks he will be thawing out sooner rather than later given the government's current woes.

     

Hartley-Poole

I discovered today that not only does Hartlepool have players named Hartley and Poole, but that they also both scored the other day.  Brilliant!

This, in the words of that pigeon and sparrow-feeding chap, "gives me a sense of enormous well-being."

There should be more news like this.

Grimm Marketing

I see they're showing not just Hansel and Gretel at the cinema but Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters.  Clearly the original title wasn't dramatic enough.  What next? Little Miss Muppet: Dragon Slayer?

And coming soon, we have Jack the Giant Killer which sounds so much more exciting than Jack and the plain old Bean Stalk.  Now I have since found that there is actually an old variation of the tale called Jack the Giant Killer, but you can't tell me that they did not simply pick the most exciting sounding name.  The trouble is, it kind of gives the ending away.

No Longer Smarter Than My Phone

I recently bought my 3rd phone - and I don't mean for current use - I mean ever.  And, before you ask, despite what appearances might suggest, the new one is actually the second one I've purchased this century.

First thoughts can only be that these things are getting bigger - much bigger.  First they got smaller and we were very impressed but now they keep getting larger.  What ever happened to miniaturisation?  What would James Bond make of it if Q was to hand him the latest king-sized gadget for subtle espionage use?  And no mini-gun, mini-magnet or mini-condom for Maxwell Smart in his elbow patch?  Which also means no great line in reply, "I'm curious.  What use do we have for a mini-magnet?"

I've been busy searching for apps and downloading them.  I don't have time to use them; I just download them.   Subsequently, I'm now really looking forward to the next time I have to wait in a doctor's surgery or a hairdresser's, just so I can do something other than flick through women's magazines or the Reader's Digest.

As a device, it apparently can do everything.  Other than phone calls, that is.  Well not quite, but it was surprisingly difficult to answer my first phone call - no amount of button pressing worked at all.  Now I know.  You're not supposed to just press the button.  Who'd have thought?  Buttons are a whole lot smarter than being just for pressing   Welcome to the 21st Century.

Death of An Inventor

I heard this morning that Andre Cassagnes had died last night, age 86.  "Andre who?", you might ask, as did I when I first heard his name.  He was the inventor of the Etch A Sketch, that almost magical drawing toy that allowed you to create a new blank canvas with a simple swipe.  We loved that toy as kids and with over 100 million sold, we were not alone.  It's an invention that still brings a smile to my face. 

I think his obituary should be written on one, or perhaps his tombstone could feature one so that people could add their own temporary epitaphs.